Page:Arthur Ransome - The Truth about Russia.djvu/6

 ment in the direction of peace. The Government made its representations to the Allies, but, at any rate at first, gambled in the future, and pretended that things were not so bad, and that Russia could still take an active part in the war. There was a decisive moment when Miliukov wrote a note to the Allies calculated to lull them to believe that the changes in Russia meant nothing and that Russia stood by her old claims. The soldiers and people poured into the streets in protest, and that lie had to be publicly withdrawn.

Already there was serious opposition to the Moderate party in the Soviets from the Bolsheviki, who urged that coalition with the bourgeoisie was merely postponing peace and bringing starvation and disaster nearer. The Moderates proposed a Stockholm conference, at which the socialist groups of all countries should meet and try to come to a common understanding. This was opposed by the Allied Governments and by the Bolsheviki, on the ground that the German Majority Socialists would be the agents of the German Government. One deadlock followed another. Each successive deadlock strengthened the party of the Bolsheviki, who held that the Provisional Government was an incubus and that all authority should belong to the Soviets.

The Bolshevik leaders, Lenin and Trotsky, had come from exile in western countries not merely to take their share in a Russian revolution, but to use Russia in kindling the world revolution. They called for peace, but peace, for them, was not an end in itself. They could say, with Christ, that they brought not peace but a sword. For they hoped that in stirring the working classes of the world to demand peace from their governments, they would be putting into their hands the sword that was necessary for the Social Revolution, in which cause they had both, like many of their friends, spent the best years of their lives.

In their own country, at any rate, they have proved that they were right in their calculation. The struggle for peace, the failure to obtain it, shook the Government into the disastrous adventure of the Galician advance, shook it again with the Galician retreat, weakened it with every telegram from Allied countries that emphasised the continuance of the war. Each shock to the Government was also a shock for the Moderate party in the Soviets. The struggle in Russia became, as the Bolsheviki wished it should become, a struggle between the classes, a struggle in which the issue became ever clearer between the working and the privileged classes. The Government went to Moscow for moral support, and came back without it. The Kornilov mutiny, a definite attempt against the Soviets by a handful of the privileged classes, merely strengthened the organisations it was intended to overthrow. Within the Soviets the Moderate party, which had already come by force of events to be a sort of annex of the bourgeoisie, grew weaker and weaker. Just as the Government went to Moscow to seek support in a conference, so the Moderate party, feeling support slipping from under it, knowing