Inside the Russian Revolution

by Rheta Childe Dorr

Did the mob ever obey Kerensky’s will? Take the army situation, for example. The day I arrived in Petrograd, May 28, I had a talk with the then American consul, Mr. North Winship. He told me what he had seen of the revolution, and spoke gravely and apprehensively of the future. The sedition in many regiments at the front was, to his mind, the most sinister single menace that had yet developed. “Kerensky, the new war minister, has just been sent down to the front,” he told me. “He will save the situation if any living human being can. His influence over the Russians is enormous. He can sway them like the tides with his eloquence.”

Kerensky, who all the world knows is a sickly man, spared himself no whit during those critical days. He tore all over the front in motor cars. He made scores of speeches, thrilling speeches. Every one reading in the newspapers of his wonderful speeches breathed more freely and whispered, “We are saved.” But were they?

One incident. It may have been cabled to the American newspapers. On one front where Kerensky was speaking a soldier, doubtless deputed by the less brave in the regiment, stepped forward and said: “It is all very well to urge us to fight for liberty, but if a man is killed fighting what good is liberty to him?” Instantly Kerensky’s wrath poured out in a torrent of eloquence. He denounced the man for a traitor and a disgrace. The man who would think about his miserable skin when the freedom of his mother country was threatened was unfit to live with brave men. Turning to the colonel of the regiment, he demanded that the soldier be degraded and immediately turned out of the army, sent home a branded coward.

The colonel replied that there were others in the regiment who might, with justice, receive the same treatment. But no, said Kerensky, one man disgraced was enough. He would be a symbol of dishonor. The Russian army needed nothing more. The unfortunate man is said to have fallen in a swoon. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was so. But he was probably glad enough after he recovered that he was sent home. Nor was the symbol of dishonor enough for the Russian army. It continued to desert.

Often after one of Kerensky’s speeches he would call on the troops to declare whether or not they would fight. Always they roared out that they would, to the death. Sometimes they did, it is true, but sometimes also they didn’t. At present no one can tell whether any soldiers, except the Cossacks and the women, are going to go forward when commanded.

When the army demoralization, fraternization and desertions began to assume recent frightful proportions Kerensky issued a manifesto telling the soldiers what he was prepared to do to deserters. They would not be shot—no, the death penalty was for all time abolished in Russia. But deserters would be treated as traitors. Their families would receive no soldiers’ benefits, and they would not be allowed to participate in the redistribution of land. The Minister-President, for by this time Kerensky was at the head of the Provisional Government, would give the deserters time to get back to their regiments. He named a date about three weeks in advance. But on that day, at the extreme limit, all soldiers must be back in their regiments. This manifesto was issued not once, but three times, as I have stated. Three separate dates were given, three ultimata pronounced. But none of them was even noticed by the demoralized soldiers. On one date, June 18, it is true, Kerensky’s order to advance was obeyed. At all events, the troops advanced on that day and fought a victorious fight. It may have been in response to Kerensky’s order, or it may have been a coincidence.

Kerensky’s idealism began to suffer. He began to see his people as an unruly, unreasoning, sanguinary mob. But he loved the mob and could not bring himself to do it violence even for its own good. In July he agreed that Korniloff should be made commander-in-chief of the army, with power to shoot deserters in the face of battle. Korniloff’s demand for full command of the army, both at the front and in the reserve, with power to shoot all slackers, Kerensky would not agree to. However, in that same month of July, 1917, Kerensky had progressed so far that he told the world that he was prepared to save Russia and Russian unity by blood and iron, if argument and reason, honor and conscience, were not sufficient. Apparently they were not sufficient, but where was the blood and iron? Beating Russia into submission would be a big job for anybody just then, and it would be interesting to know just how Kerensky thought he could do it. He was the only man of first rate ability in his ministry, the only strong force. He would have had to have some backing, and where could he get it?

The Soviets? They have over and over, after fierce fighting, voted to give Kerensky support. Once they voted to give him supreme power. But they were never in earnest about it, and Kerensky knew it very well. They proved that they were insincere, it seems to me, by their action in October in refusing to support any ministry not made up exclusively of Socialists, and then making such a body subject to criticism and control.

“The Germans are at our very gates,” Kerensky told those men. “While you sit talking here, and are refusing to listen to words of reason from your commander-in-chief, your revolution is in danger of destruction. Are there no words of mine to make you see it?”

Words, words, words! Hurled passionately from a burning heart into a whirling void. That seems to me to typify Alexander Feodorovitch Kerensky talking to the Russian revolutionary mob.