Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/30

 were called to the colors, emphasizing the horrible slaughter and futility of the war. Eleven members of the "Workmen's Group" of the Central Military Committee, a patriotic civilian body, were arrested, charged with belonging to revolutionary organizations and with planning to establish a "Social Democratic Republic" in Russia. Four others in Petrograd were arrested on similar charges. The people were stirring, agitators active. While the guns spat out death on all the bloody fields of Europe and the ghastly military machinery of the Czar was apparently working smoothly, while the elite of society were enjoying this best of al possible worlds, while the comfortable "representatives of the people" were still playing the old game of talk, talk; talk, the masses were thinking in their own slow, apparently dumb and yet eloquent way, an elemental calm which gradually accumulates the explosives for the great upheavals of history.

And the bourgeoisie, the liberals, the representatives of industrial and profit-yearning Russia? They were masticating the bitter herbs of approaching defeat, of the collapse of their dreams of "appropriating" Galicia and Constantinople. They were intriguing to get through the pro-German camarilla of the Czar, to approach the Czar with the request to dean out the corrupt bureaucrats responsible for Russia's defeats, and organize a new government for victory. Michael Rodzianko, president of the conservative Duma, tried to approach the Czar hat in hand, but was ruddy rebuffed. The liberal representatives of the bourgeoisie were preparing a palace revolt, the "reformation" of Czarism, by means of which the Czar would recognize the right to power and rule of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois liberals did not want to overthrow the monarchy, but to bend the monarchy to their will,—as the imperialistic bourgeoisie did in Germany. They did not want a revolution, being afraid that in that event the proletariat might seize power—and how prophetic was their fear! These liberals did not act, they pleaded and intrigued; they did not appear as the daring, magnificent makers of a new world, but as humble beggars at the gates of Czarism.

All the pleading, all the intrigues of the liberals availed them nothing, and when the Duma convened they were prepared to resume their old task of talking, while Czarism acted. The Duma was not only a conservative, even reactionary body, it was in its very nature incapable of creative action: this creative action could arise only out of the people itself. On March 4, Deputy Milyukov dedared that Constantinople as the goal of Russian efforts seemed certain—"if we cannot conquer with this Government, we will conquer in spite of this Government, but we will be victorious." Deputy A. F. Kerensky demanded that the Allies should refrain from all aggressive and imperialistic schemes—and we shall see Kerensky again demanding this at a time when he was not a simple deputy, but Premier of Revolutionary Russia. Deputy N. S. Cheidse, Socialist, denounced the exploitation of the masses and the Duma's failure to intercede, accusing the government and the employers of waging a struggle against the workers and breaking the "national unity." The government was warned that relations between it and the country were unchanged, that the internal crisis was dragging along. And Deputy Kerensky declared that a conflict in "decisive form" was coming between the government and the people.

The people were in the grip of hunger, and hunger was again playing its historic role of developing revolution. The Duma was asked to vote an