The Russian and the French Revolution Compared—The Gloomy Outlook of Russia
By Arthur J. Balfour
British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
[From an Address Delivered in Parliament March 14, 1918]
The inference that Russia would have been kept in the war if we had announced that we proposed to go in for the status quo ante and readjustments is wrong. Pronouncements made by Russian statesmen always included self-determination. Self-determination can never be squared with mere adjustments. It may be that self-determination might conceivably receive a large measure of fulfillment, I agree, up to a certain point, but that Russian statesmen by their declarations have materially limited the scope of the war I believe to be inaccurate. But whether accurate or not, one is entirely misrepresenting the political and social forces of Russia if he thinks that the reason Russia went out of the war was that our war aims were not publicly or semi-publicly reconsidered in concert with the Allies.
I do not profess to have a remedy for the misfortunes that have occurred—as I think to civilization itself—from the fact that the Russian revolution occurred in the middle of a European war. I welcome the change from autocracy to what we hoped and still hope, what we believed and still believe, is going to be a reign of ordered liberty. But the revolution, unfortunately, came at a time when Russia was weary with the sacrifices of a great war, and it was mixed up and almost overshadowed on its political side by the pacifist influences which were allowed to reign uncontrolled in the army and navy and all the other forces which might and should have been co-ordinated to resist the common enemy.
There are resemblances between the Russian revolution and the French Revolution, but from our point of view, and from the point of view of the war and of how we are to secure in the future the freedom of small nationalities, and how we are to save the world from the domination of one overgreedy power, from that point of view no greater misfortune could have occurred than the coincidence between the Russian revolution and the fact that a war was being conducted in which Russia was one of the great Allies. I personally am an optimist about Russia, but I am not an optimist about the immediate future of Russia, because it seems to me that difficulties are thrown in Russia's way by the fact that the war raged before the revolution. Russia is only nominally out of the war at the present time, but is still suffering from the invasion of her enemies. The French Revolution was associated with great military operations. It ended in the production of an army whose fiery efficiency was the wonder of Europe and which overturned all the decrepit monarchies in the Central European States. Contrast that with what has happened in Russia since the revolution. There is not a single fighting instrument possessed by Russia which the Russian revolutionaries have not deliberately but absolutely and completely destroyed.
RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION
The Russian Army no longer exists and the Russian Navy no longer exists. The Rumanian Army—that most gallant and most unfortunate body, which might have and would have co-operated to preserve both Russia and Rumania from the tyranny of the Central Powers—had been betrayed by Russia itself. The unhappy results of the revolution from the military point of view are quite plain and obvious to the most casual observer. The actual course pursued by the Bolsheviki has rendered them completely helpless in the face of German aggression. Now they express the desire—I am sure they express it genuinely and earnestly—that they should reconstitute the Russian Army for the purpose of Russian defense, and they would welcome our assistance, doubtless, in carrying out this object. But can you reconstitute it for purposes of national defense? Can you improvise a new instrument when fragments of the old instrument are lying shattered around you? It cannot be done in a day.
Had Russia not been at war I believe it would have taken many years to complete what I hope and believe is to be the beneficent course of the Russian revolution. Autocracy—and it is very difficult to see how the Russia we know could have been created without it—showed itself quite incapable of bringing into existence that frame of mind which makes a great self-conscious nation independent of the particular form which its institutions may have at the moment. Autocracy was destroyed, and immediately Russia fell into chaos.
I am not sure that it was not my honorable friend (Mr. MacCallum Scott) who said exactly the same thing happened in France. The same thing really did not happen in France. I do not say we cannot find in this or that episode parallels to the French Revolution, but the total effect of the Revolution was not the disintegration of France but its integration. The units out of which modern France was constructed were no doubt compacted into a nation under the old monarchy, but the divisions between these units were still obvious; they still remained in the institutions of the country, and it was not until the Revolution that France became homogeneous from end to end and all the old provincial distinctions were swept away.
Precisely the opposite has happened in Russia. The revolution comes and immediately all the old divisions between populations, between different regions, between different creeds, suddenly become marked and prominent. First this body and then that body threatens to fall way, and it must inevitably take time before we see the end of that process and know clearly how much of the old Russia, if any, ought to cease to form part of the new Russia and how the new Russia will be constituted. A very difficult process in time of peace, a very difficult process in time of prosperity, but how are you going to carry it out in time of war when you have at your gates an enemy remorseless, persevering, quite unscrupulous, like that which is dealing at its own sweet will with Russia at the present moment? That is the real difficulty which we have always had to deal with and to think over to the best of our ability when we consider some of the problems raised by the honorable gentleman who initiated this debate.
JAPAN AND SIBERIA
[The speaker then took up an inquiry regarding a suggestion of Japanese intervention in Siberia. He said the hypothesis that whenever one country sends troops into another country those troops invariably stay where they are sent, and annexation is the result, was false; if such were the case there would be a bad outlook for the north of France. He argued that if the Japanese did intervene it would be as friends of Russia and enemies of Germany, to preserve the country from German domination, and he proceeded thus:]
Russia lies absolutely derelict upon the waters, and now it has no power of resistance at all; there can be a German penetration from end to end of Russia, which, I think, will be absolutely disastrous for Russia itself, and certainly will be very injurious to the future of the Allies. I suspect that at this moment a German officer is much safer traveling at large through Russia than an allied officer. Why? Not because the Russians love the Germans, but because, as a matter of fact, the German penetration has really struck at the root of Russian power. I was informed the other day that only one bank was allowed at Moscow. That bank is a German bank.
The Bolshevist Government, I believe, sincerely desire—I hope not too late, though I fear it may be so—to resist this German penetration. How can they resist it when they themselves or their predecessors have destroyed every instrument which makes resistance possible?
Inevitably Russia's allies have to ask themselves whether, if Russia herself has destroyed every instrument of self-protection which she once possessed, they cannot themselves among themselves supply that which she now lacks. We do that in Russia's own interests and for Russia's own sake, if it is done. It is not done to satisfy the greed of this or that power. That is the Allies' point of view. May I ask the House to consider the question from the Russian point of view? It is impossible to penetrate the future. Russia has always been a country of surprises, and that she remains at the present moment. What are the things which most of us fear for Russia when we look to the future? Frankly, I tell the House what I myself fear for Russia is this: Under the impulse, under the shadow of the great revolution, the cataclysm of social order has been shaken to its foundations, and many disasters, and I fear many crimes, have been committed.
DIVIDE AND GOVERN
It is Germany's interest, I believe, to foster and continue and promote that condition of disorder. Those who watch her methods throughout the world know that she always wishes to encourage disorder in every other country but her own. If the country is a republic she wishes to introduce absolutism; if it is an absolutist Government then she seeks to encourage republicanism. She counts it her gain that other Governments should be weak, and she knows that there is no better way of making other countries weak than by making them divided—a house divided against itself. Therefore I believe that Germany unchecked will do her best to continue those disorders which have unhappily stained the path of the Russian revolution.
What must be the result? The result must be—especially in a country where the sense of national unity appears, at all events, for the moment to be singularly weak compared with that which prevails in other civilized countries—that men will at last look around and say to themselves, "This disorder is intolerable; it makes life impossible; human effort cannot go on; something must be done, good or bad, to put an end to mere chaos." There will therefore be classes in Russia, some with patriotic motives, but some with personal and selfish motives, who will welcome anything in the world which gives them the semblance of a stable, orderly, and civilized Government.
When that time comes, then I can see Germany will say, Now we will step in; we will, by both the open and subterranean methods which we have developed and cultivated, now exercise our power in the country. We will re-establish, possibly in the same form, possibly in some new form, the autocracy which we in this House hoped had gone forever; and you will have in a Russia shorn of some of its fairest provinces set up again an autocracy far worse than the old autocracy, because it will lean upon a foreign power to continue its existence. Then, indeed, if that prophecy came to pass—and I most earnestly hope I am in this a false prophet—all our dreams of Russian development and Russian liberty would be gone. Russia under this Government would be a mere echo of the Central Powers; she would cease to be a make-weight in any sense to German militarism. She would have lost all that initiative, all that power for self-development that we so earnestly hoped the revolution had given her.
A GLOOMY HOROSCOPE
I admit that this picture is dark and sombre. Will anybody have the courage to say he can draw a horoscope for the future more likely to be fulfilled, if Russia remains, as I fear she is at this moment, absolutely helpless in face of the German penetration? It all turns upon that. If Russia could only rouse herself now and offer effective resistance to the German invader, that might give her a national spirit and sense of unity, and make her future far more splendid than her past. Therefore the question will inevitably be asked: Can any of the Allies give to Russia in her extremity that help and that sympathy of which she so sorely stands in need? It is help and sympathy which the Allies desire to give, and not invasion and plunder. I agree that there may be circumstances, prejudices, and feelings which render assistance in the East by the only country which can give it in the East a question of difficulty and doubt—a question which must be weighed in every balance and looked at from every point of view; but that the Allies—America, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan—should do what they can at this moment to help Russia, if she fails to help herself, through the great crisis of her destiny appears to me to be beyond doubt, and I will not reject, a priori, any suggestion which seems to offer the slightest solution of our doing any good in that direction.
THE LOYALTY OF JAPAN
I do not think this debate should finish without repudiating the suggestion made that Japan is moved by selfish and dishonorable motives in any course which may have been discussed in Japan, either among her own statesmen or the Allies. Japan has maintained perfect loyalty. She has kept all the promises made to the Allies. I hope I have said enough to indicate the general problems as they present themselves to this Government, and at the same time also to show that we recognize to the full how difficult this problem is, how hard it is to help a nation which is utterly incapable for the moment of helping itself. The House will feel, I think, that the decisions which the Allies may have to give are not without difficulty, and the principles upon which those decisions will be come to are neither ungenerous, unfair, nor hostile to Russia or the Russian revolution; but on the contrary that our one object is to see Russia strong, intact, secure, and free. If these objects can be attained, then, indeed, and then only, will the Russian revolution bring forth all the fruits which Russia's best friends desire to see.