Thus, the overwhelming masses of Non-Socialist Russia were not represented at all; even the elements that were either non-political or belonged to the groups of the right and were elected by the Soviets and Army Committees as non-party members, hastened for motives altogether in the interests of the State to profess the Socialistic creed. In these circumstances the Revolutionary Democracy could hardly be expected to exercise self-restraint, and there could be no hope of keeping the popular movement within the limits of the Bourgeois Revolution. In reality the ramshackle helm was seized by a block of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, in which first the former and then the latter predominated. It is that narrow partisan block which held in bondage the will of the Government and is primarily responsible for the subsequent course of the Revolution.
The composition of the Soviet was heterogeneous: intellectuals, bourgeoisie, workmen, soldiers and many deserters. The Soviet and the Congresses, and especially the former, were a somewhat inert mass, utterly devoid of political education. Action, power and influence afterwards passed therefore into the hands of Executive Committees in which the Socialist intellectual elements were almost exclusively represented. The most devastating criticism of the Executive Committee of the Soviet came from that very institution, and was made by one of its members, Stankevitch: the meetings were chaotic, political disorganisation, indecision, haste, and fitfulness showed themselves in its decisions, and there was a complete absence of administrative experience and true democracy. One of the members advocated anarchy in the “Izvestia,” another sent written permits for the expropriation of the landlords, a third explained to a military delegation which had complained of the Commanding Officers that these officers should be dismissed and arrested, etc.
“The most striking feature of the Committee is the preponderance of the alien element,” wrote Stankevitch. “Jews, Georgians, Letts, Poles, and Lithuanians were represented out of all proportion to their numbers in Petrograd and in the country.”
The following is a list of the first Presidium of the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets:—
- 1 Georgian
- 5 Jews
- 1 Armenian
- 1 Pole
- 1 Russian (if his name was not an assumed one).
This exceptional preponderance of the alien element, foreign to the Russian national idea, could not fail to tinge the entire activities of the Soviet with a spirit harmful to the interests of the Russian State. The Provisional Government was the captive of the Soviet from the very first day, as it had under-estimated the importance and the power of that institution, and was unable to display either determination or strength in resisting the Soviet. The Government did not even hope for victory in that struggle, as, in its endeavour to save the country, it could not very well proclaim watchwords which would have suited the licentious mob and which emanated from the Soviet. The Government talked about duty, the Soviet about rights. The former “prohibited,” the latter “permitted.” The Government was linked with the old power by the inheritance of statesmanship and organisation, as well as the external methods of administration; whereas the Soviet, springing from mutiny and from the slums, was the direct negation of the entire old régime. It is a delusion to think, as a small portion of the moderate democracy still appear to do, that the Soviet played the part of “restraining the tidal wave of the people.” The Soviet did not actually destroy the Russian State, but was shattering it, and did so to the extent of smashing the Army and imposing Bolshevism on it. Hence the duplicity and insincerity of its activities. Apart from its declarations, all the speeches, conversations, comments, and articles of the Soviet and of the Executive Committee, of its groups and individuals, came to the knowledge of the country and of the Front, and tended towards the destruction of the authority of the Government. Stankevitch wrote that not deliberately, but persistently, the Committee was dealing death-blows to the Government.
Who, then, were the men who were trying to democratise the Army Regulations, smashing all the foundations of the Army, inspiring the Polivanov Commission, and tying the hands of two War Ministers? The following is the personnel elected in the beginning of April from the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet to the Executive Committee:—