[CHAPTER XII.]
The Activities of the Provisional Government—Internal Politics, Civil Administration—The Town, the Village and the Agrarian Problem.
I will deal in this and in the subsequent chapters with the internal condition of Russia in the first period of the Revolution only in so far as it affected the conduct of the World War. I have already mentioned the duality of the Supreme Administration of the country and the incessant pressure of the Soviet upon the Provisional Government. A member of the Duma, Mr. Shulgin, wittily remarked: “The old régime is interned in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and the new one is under domiciliary arrest.” The Provisional Government did not represent the people as a whole; it could not and would not forestall the will of the Constituent Assembly by introducing reforms which would shake the political and social structure of the State to its very foundations. It proclaimed that “not violence and compulsion, but the voluntary obedience of free citizens to the power which they had themselves created, constituted the foundation of the new administration of the State. Not a single drop of blood has been shed by the Provisional Government which has erected no barrier against the free expression of public opinion....” This non-resistance to evil at the moment when a fierce struggle, unfettered by moral or patriotic considerations, was being conducted by some groups of the population for motives of self-preservation and by others for the attainment by violence of extreme demands, was undoubtedly a confession of impotence. In the subsequent declarations of the second and third Coalition Governments mention was made “of stringent measures” against the forces of disorganisation in the country. These words, however, were never translated into deeds.
The idea of not forestalling the will of the Constituent Assembly was not carried out by the Government, especially in the domain of national self-determination. The Government proclaimed the independence of Poland, but made “the consent to such alterations of the territory of the Russian State as may be necessary for the creation of independent Poland” dependent upon the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. That proclamation, the legal validity of which is contestable, was, however, in full accord with the juridical standpoint of society. With regard to Finland, the Government did not alter her legal status towards Russia, but confirmed the rights and privileges of the country, cancelled all the limitations of the Finnish Constitution and intended to convoke the Finnish Chamber (“Seim”) that was to confirm the new constitution of the Principality. The Government subsequently adhered to their intention to entertain favourably all the just demands of the Finns for local reconstruction. Nevertheless, both the Provisional Government and Finland were engaged in a protracted struggle for power on account of the universal desire for the immediate satisfaction of the interests of the separate nationalities. On July 6th the Finnish Assembly passed a law (by the majority of Social-Democratic votes) proclaiming the assumption by that body of supreme power after the abdication “of the Finnish Grand-Duke” (the official title of the Russian Emperor). Only foreign affairs, military legislation and administration were left to the Provisional Government. This decision corresponded to a certain degree with the resolution of the Congress of Soviets, which demanded that full independence should be granted to Finland before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, with the above-mentioned restrictions. The Russian Government answered this declaration of the actual independence of Finland by dissolving the Assembly, which met, however, once again in September of its own free will. In this struggle, the intensity of which varied according to the rise and fall of the political barometer in Petrograd, the Finnish politicians, disregarding the interests of the State and having no support whatsoever in the Army, counted exclusively upon the loyalty or, to be more correct, the weakness of the Provisional Government. Matters never reached the stage of open rebellion. The conscious elements of the population kept the country within the limits of reasonableness, not out of loyalty, but perhaps because they feared the consequences of civil war and especially of the sabotage in which the licentious soldiers and sailors would have presumably indulged.
May and June were spent in a struggle for power between the Government and the self-appointed Central Rada (Assembly). The All-Ukrainian Military Congress, also convened arbitrarily on June 8th, demanded that the Government should immediately comply with all the demands of the Central Rada and the Congresses, and suggested that the Rada should cease to address the Government, but should begin at once to organise the autonomous administration of the Ukraine. On June 11th the autonomous Constitution of the Ukraine was adopted and a Secretariat (Council of Ministers) formed under the chairmanship of Mr. Vinnichenko. After the Government envoys—the Ministers Kerensky, Tereschenko and Tzeretelli—had negotiated with the Rada, a proclamation was issued on July 2nd, which forestalled the decision of the Constituent Assembly and proclaimed the autonomy of the Ukraine with certain restrictions. The Central Rada and the Secretariat were gradually seizing the administration, creating a dual power on the spot and discrediting the All-Russian Government. They thus provoked civil strife and provided moral excuses for every endeavor to shirk civic and military duties to the common Mother Country. The Central Rada, moreover, contained from the outset sympathisers with Germany and was undoubtedly connected through the “Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine” with the headquarters of the Central Powers. Bearing in mind the ample material collected by the Stavka, Vinnichenko’s half-hearted confession to a French correspondent (?) with regard to Germanophil tendencies in the Rada, and finally the report of the Procurator of the Kiev Court of Appeal at the end of August, 1917, I cannot doubt that the Rada played a criminal part. The Procurator complained that the complete destruction of the machinery of intelligence and of criminal investigation deprived the Government prosecutors of the possibility of investigating the situation; he said that not only German espionage and propaganda, but the mutinies of the Ukrainian troops, as well as the destination of obscure funds of undoubted Austro-German origin ... could be traced to the Rada.
The Ministry of the Interior, which, in the old days, practically controlled the Autocracy and provoked universal hatred, now went to the other extreme. It all but abolished itself, and the functions of that branch of the administration were divided among local, self-appointed organisations. The history of the organs of the Ministry of the Interior is, in many ways, similar to the fate of the Supreme Command. On March 5th the Minister-President issued an order for the suppression of the offices of Governor and of Inspector of Police (“Ispravnik”), which were to be replaced by the presidents of the Provincial and District self-governing Councils (“Oupravas”), and for the police to be replaced by a militia organised by Social Institutions. This measure, adopted owing to the universal dislike for the agents of the old régime, was, in fact, the only actual manifestation of the Government’s will; because the status of the Commissars was not established by law until the month of September. The instructions and orders of the Government were, on the whole, of an academic nature, because life followed its own course, and was regulated, or, to be more correct, muddled up, by local revolutionary changes of the law. The office of Government Commissars became a sinecure from the very outset. They had no power or authority, and became entirely dependent upon revolutionary organisations. When the latter passed a vote of censure upon the activities of a Commissar, he could practically do nothing more. The organisations elected a new one, and his confirmation in office by the Provisional Government was a mere formality. In the first six weeks seventeen Provincial Commissars and a great many District Commissars were thus removed. Later, in July, Tzeretelli, during his tenure of the office of Minister of the Interior, which lasted for a fortnight, gave official sanction to this procedure and sent a circular to the Local Soviets and Committees, inviting them to send in to him the names of desirable candidates, which were to replace the unsuitable ones. Thus there remained no representatives of the Central power on the spot. In the beginning of the Revolution the so-called “Social Committees” or “Soviets of Social Organisation” really represented a social Institution comprising the union of towns and Zemstvos, of Municipal Dumas, professional Unions, Co-operatives, Magistrates, etc. Things went from bad to worse when these Social Committees were dissolved into class and party organisations. Local power passed into the hands of the Soviets of Workmen and Soldiers and in places before the law had been produced to “democratised” Socialistic Dumas, closely reminiscent of semi-Bolshevik Soviets.
The regulations issued by the Government on April 15th, on the organisation of Municipal Self-Government, comprised the following main points: