Through the Russian Revolution

In Moscow I saw two peasant soldiers gazing at a poster being stuck up on a kiosk.

“We can’t read a word of it,” they cried, indignant tears in their eyes. “The Czar only wanted us to plough and fight and pay taxes. He didn’t want us to read. He put out our eyes.”

“To put out the eyes” of the masses, to put out their minds and consciences, was the deliberate policy of the Russian autocracy. For centuries the people were steeped in ignorance, narcotized by the church, terrorized by the Black Hundreds, dragooned by the Cossacks. The protesters were thrown into dungeons, exiled to hard labor in Siberian mines, and hung up on gibbets.

In 1917 the social and economic fabric of the land was shot to pieces. Ten million peasants dragged from their ploughs were dying in the trenches. Millions more were perishing of cold and hunger in the cities while the corrupt ministers intrigued with the Germans and the court held bacchanalian revels with the notorious monk, Rasputin. Even the Cadet, Milyukov, was forced to say: “History does not know of another government so stupid, so dishonest, so cowardly, so treacherous.”

All governments rest upon the patience of the poor. It seems everlasting, but there comes an end to it. It came in Russia in March, 1917.

The masses felt that more vicious even than the Kaiser in Berlin was their own Czar in Petrograd. Their cup of bitterness was full. They marched forth against the palaces to end it all. First, out of the Viborg district, came the working women crying for bread. Then long lines of workingmen. The police turned the bridges to prevent them entering the city, but they crossed on the ice. Looking at the red-flagged throngs from his window, Milyukov exclaimed: “There goes the Russian Revolution–and it will be crushed in fifteen minutes!”

But the workingmen came on in spite of Cossack patrols on the Nevsky. They came on in face of wilting fire from machine gun nests. They came on until the streets were littered with their bodies. Still they came on, singing and pleading until soldiers and Cossacks came over to the people’s side, and on March 12 the Romanov dynasty, which had misruled Russia for 300 years, went crashing to its doom. Russia went mad with joy while the whole world rose up to applaud the downfall of the Czar.

It was mainly the workers and soldiers who made the Revolution. They had shed their blood for it. Now it was assumed that they would retire in the orthodox manner leaving affairs in the hands of their superiors. The people had taken the power away from the Czarists. Now appeared on the scene the bankers and lawyers, the professors and politicians, to take the power away from the people. They said:

“People, you have won a glorious victory. The next duty is the formation of a new state. It is a most difficult task, but fortunately, we, the educated, understand this business of governing. We shall set up a Provisional Government. Our responsibility is heavy, but as true patriots we will shoulder it.

“Noble soldiers, go back to the trenches. Brave workingmen, go back to the machines. And peasants, you go back to the land.”

Now the Russian masses were tractable and reasonable. So they let these bourgeois gentlemen form their “Provisional Government.” But the Russian masses were intelligent, even if they were not literate. Most of them could not read or write. But they could think. So, before they went back to the trenches, the shops and the land, they set up little organizations of their own. In each munition factory the workers selected one of their number whom they trusted. In the shoe and cotton factories the men did likewise. So in the brickyards, the glass-works and other industries. These representatives elected directly from their jobs were called a Soviet (Council) of Workmen Deputies.

In like manner the armies formed Soviets of Soldiers’ Deputies, the villages Soviets of Peasant Deputies.

These deputies were elected by trades and occupations, not by districts. The Soviets consequently were filled, not with glibly talking politicians, but with men who knew their business; miners who understood mining, machinists who understood machinery, peasants who understood land, soldiers ,who understood war, teachers who understood children.

The Soviets sprang up in every city, town, hamlet and regiment throughout Russia. Within a few weeks after the old state-apparatus of Czardom went to pieces, one-sixth the surface of the earth was dotted over with these new social organizations–no more striking phenomenon in all history.

The commander of the Russian battleship Peresvet told me his story: “My ship was off the coast of Italy when the news arrived. As I announced the Czar’s fall some sailors shouted, ‘Long live the Soviet.’ That very day on board ship a Soviet was formed, in all aspects like the one in Petrograd. I regard the Soviet as the natural organization of the Russian people, finding its root in the mir (commune) of the village and the artel (co-operative syndicate) of the city.”

Others find the Soviet idea in the old New England town-meetings or the city assemblies of ancient Greece. But the Russian workingman’s contact with the Soviet was much more direct than that. He had tried out the Soviet in the abortive Revolution of 1905. He had found it a good instrument then. He was using it now.

After the Czar’s overthrow there was a short season of good will amongst all classes known as the “honeymoon of the Revolution.” Then the big fight began–a battle royal between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat for the mastery of state power in Russia. On the one side the capitalists, landlords and finally the intelligentsia lining up behind the Provisional Government. On the other side the workmen, soldiers and peasants rallying to the Soviets.

I was set down in the midst of this colossal conflict. For fourteen months I lived in the villages with the peasants, in the trenches with the soldiers, and in the factories with the workers. I saw the Revolution thru their eyes and took part in most of the dramatic episodes.

I have used the names Communist and Bolshevik interchangeably, tho the party did not officially change its name to Communist until 1918.

In the French Revolution the great word was “Citizen.” In the Russian Revolution the great word is “Comrade!”–tovarishtch. I have written it more simply tovarish.

For the right to use here some of my articles I am indebted to the editors of Asia, the Yale Review, the Dial, the Nation, the New Republic, and the New York Evening Post.

The visitor to Soviet Russia is struck by the multitudes of posters–in factories and barracks, on walls and railway-cars, on telephone-poles–everywhere. Whatever the Soviet does, it strives to make the people understand the reason for it. If there is a new call to arms, if rations must be cut down, if new schools or courses of instruction are opened, a poster, promptly appears telling why, and how the people can co-operate. Some of these posters are crude and hurried, others are works of art. Ten of them are reproduced in this book in almost the exact colors of the originals. The cost has been borne by friends of Russia, and the reader is particularly indebted to Mrs. Jessie Y. Kimball and Mr. Aaron Berkman.