The question of the ownership of the land by the landlords was thus not merely a matter of selfish class interest, all the more as, not only the landlords but the wealthy peasants were subjected to violence by order of the Committees, and in spite of them. One village rose against another. It was not a question of the transfer of riches from one class or individual to another, but of the destruction of treasures, of agriculture, and of the economic stability of the State. The instincts of proprietorship inherent in the peasantry irresistibly grew as these seizures and partitions took place. The mental attitude of the peasantry upset all the plans of the Revolutionary Democracy. By converting the peasants into a Petite Bourgeoisie, it threatened to postpone to an indefinite date the triumph of Socialism. The villagers were obsessed by the idea of land distribution and by their own interests, and were not in the least concerned with the War, with politics, or with social questions which did not directly affect them. The workers of the village were being killed and maimed at the front, and the village, therefore, considered the War as a burden. The authorities disallowed seizures of the land and imposed restrictions in the shape of monopolies and fixed prices for corn. The peasantry, therefore, bore a grudge against the Government. The towns ceased to supply manufactured goods and the villages were estranged from the towns and ceased to supply them with grain. This was the only real “conquest” made by the Revolution, and those who profited by it grew very anxious as to the attitude of future Governments towards the arbitrary solution of the land question. They therefore actively encouraged anarchy in the villages, condoned seizures and undermined the authority of the Provisional Government. By this means they hoped to bring the peasants over to their side as supporters, or, at least, as a neutral element, in the impending decisive struggle for power.
The abolition of the police by the order issued on April 17th was one of the acts of the Government which seriously complicated the normal course of life. In reality, this act only confirmed the conditions which had arisen almost everywhere in the first days of the Revolution, and were directly due to the wrath of the people against the Executive of the old regime, and especially of those who had been oppressed and persecuted by the police and had suddenly found themselves on the crest of the wave. It would be a hopeless task to defend the Russian police as an institution. It could only be considered good by comparing it with the militia and with the Extraordinary Bolshevik Commission....
In any case it would have been useless to resist the abolition of the police, because it was a psychological necessity. There can be no doubt that the attitude and actions of the old police were due less to their political opinions than to the instructions of their employers and to their own personal interests. No wonder, therefore, that the gendarmes and the policemen, insulted and persecuted, introduced a very bad element into the Army, into which they were subsequently forcibly drafted. The Revolutionary Democracy, in self defence, grossly exaggerated their counter-revolutionary activities in the Army; nevertheless, it is absolutely true that a great many ex-officers of the police and of the gendarmerie, partly, perhaps, from motives of self-defence, chose for themselves a most lucrative profession—that of the demagogue and the agitator. The fact is that the abolition of the police in the very midst of the turmoil—when crime was on the increase and the guarantees of public safety and of the safety of individual property were weakened—was a real calamity. The militia, indeed, far from being a substitute for the police, was a caricature of them. In Western countries the police is placed as a united force under the orders of a Department of the Central Government. The Provisional Government placed the militia under the orders of Zemstvo and Municipal Administrations. The Government Commissars were only entitled to make use of the militia for certain definite purposes. The cadres of the militia were filled by untrained men, devoid of technical experience, and, as often as not, criminals. By virtue of the new law, there were admitted to the militia persons under arrest or who had served a term of imprisonment for comparatively grave offences. The system of recruiting practised by some forcibly “democratised” Zemstvo and Municipal institutions tended quite as much as the new law towards the deterioration of the personnel of the militia.
The Chief of the Central Administration of the Militia himself admitted that escaped convicts were sometimes placed in command of the militia. The villages were sometimes without any militia at all, and they administered themselves as best they could.
In its proclamation of April 25th the Provisional Government gave an accurate description of the condition of the country in stating that “the growth of new social ties was slower than the process of disruption caused by the collapse of the old régime.” In every feature of the life of the people this fact was clearly to be observed.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
The Activities of the Provisional Government: Food Supplies, Industry, Transport and Finance.