Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/216

 government activity assumed the form, chiefly, of the printing of paper-money, assignats.

Having as his senior colleagues Messrs. Lvov and Shingariev, it turned out that Chernov was prevented from revealing, in the domain of agrarian matters, even the radicalism of words only, which is so characteristic of this typical representative of the petite bourgeoisie. Fully aware of the role that was assigned to him, Chernov introduced himself to society as the representative, not of the agrarian revolution, but of agrarian statistics! According to the liberal bourgeois interpretation, which the Socialist ministers also made their own, revolution must be suspended among the masses in a passive waiting for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and as soon as the Social-Revolutionists enter the ministry of the landholders and manufacturers, the attacks of the peasants against the feudal agricultural system are stigmatized as anarchy.

In the field of international policy, the collapse of the "peace programs" proclaimed by the coalition government came about more swiftly and more catastrophically than could possibly have been expected. M. Ribot, the Premier of France, not only categorically and unceremoniously rejected the Russian peace formula and pompously reiterated the absolute necessity of continuing the war until a "complete victory" should be secured, but also denied the patriotic French Socialists their passports to the Stockholm Conference, which had been arranged with the co-operation of M. Ribot's colleagues and allies, the Russian Socialist ministers. The Italian government, whose policy of colonial conquests has always been distinguished by exceptional shamelessness, by a "Holy Egotism," replied to the formula of a "peace without annexations" with its separate annexation of Albania. Our government, and that includes the Socialist ministers, held up for two weeks the publication of the answers of its allies, evidently trusting in the efficacy of such petty devices to stave off the bankruptcy of their policy. In short, the question as to the international situation of Russia, the question of what it is that the Russian soldier should be ready to fight and die for, is still just as acute as on the day when the portfolio of Minister of Foreign Affairs was dashed from the hands of Milyukov.

In the Army and Navy Department, which is still eating up the lion's share of the national powers and of the national resources, the policy of prose and rhetoric holds undisputed sway.