Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/205



In a session of the National Duma held March 3, 1916, M. Milyukov replied as follows to a criticism from the left: "I do not know for certain whether the government is leading us to defeat—but I do know that a revolution in Russia will unquestionably lead us to defeat, and our enemies, therefore, have good reason to thirst for it. If any one should say to me that to organize Russia for victory is equivalent to organizing her for revolution, I should answer: It is better, for the duration of the war, to leave her unorganized, as she is." This quotation is interesting in two ways. It is not only a proof that, as late as last year, M. Milyukov considered pro-German interests to be at work not in internationalism alone, but in any revolution at all; it is also a typical expression of Liberal sycophancy. Extremely interesting is M. Milyukov's prediction: "I know that revolution in Russia will unquestionably lead us to defeat." Why this certainty? As an historian, M. Milyukov must know that there have been revolutions that led to victory. But as an imperialistic statesman, M. Milyukov cannot help seeing that the idea of the conquest of Constantinople, Armenia and Galicia is not capable of arousing the spirit of the revolutionary masses. M. Milyukov felt, and even knew, that in his war, revolution could not bring victory with it.

To be sure, when the revolution broke out M. Milyukov at once attempted to harness it to the chariot of Allied Imperialism. That is the reason why he was greeted with delight by the sonorous, metallic reverberations of all the banking-vaults of London, Paris and New York. But this attempt met with the almost instinctive resistance of the workers and soldiers. M. Milyukov was thrown out of the ministry: the Revolution, evidently, did not mean victory for him.

Milyukov went, but the war stayed. A coalition government was formed, consisting of petit bourgeois democrats and those rep-