Inside the Russian Revolution

by Rheta Childe Dorr

“The right of small peoples to govern themselves” is one of the easiest gospels in the world to preach. As a principle it is not even debatable. In practice, however, it very often is far from expedient or practicable. But the recently liberated Russians, each separate language and racial group smarting from remembered wrongs inflicted by the old government, took fire with the idea of self-government, and in every corner of Russia are found provinces, governments, even cities, repudiating the central government and setting up republics of their own. Provisional governments were created last summer in provinces of Siberia, in the rich province of Ukrania, in the town of Kronstadt, in the Siberian towns of Tomsk and Tsaritsine, and in a number of other localities. Finland very early started an agitation for a separate government, and only the closing of the Diet and the prevention by armed force of the convening of a new Diet stood in the way of a socialist manifesto of separation. The Socialists are the majority party in the Diet, and they counted on the support of enough people in the three “bourgeois” parties—the Swedish, old Finnish and young Finnish parties—to carry their measure through.

Every one of these attempts at secession was marked by riots, murders and excesses of every kind. A report from Kirsanoff, a city that wanted last June to be a republic all by itself, told of a garrison of soldiers who broke loose, fell on the inhabitants of the town, robbed and murdered them, outraged women, burned houses, looted shops and generally behaved like maddened animals. There seemed to be no reason why the soldiers, who had previously behaved like decent men, should have been seized with sudden criminal mania. Liberty simply acted on their systems like a deadly drug.

It was the same thing in Kronstadt, only in Kronstadt they developed a drug habit, so to speak. This fortified town of some 60,000 inhabitants is situated at the mouth of the Neva on the Gulf of Finland. The fortress of Kronstadt, which dominates the town, in normal times constitutes one of the chief defenses of Petrograd, a few miles up the river. The Gulf of Kronstadt, on which the fortress stands, is the chief station of the Baltic fleet. With a strong garrison, a fleet of battleships and a well-organized Bolsheviki, Kronstadt was able for many weeks to defy the Provisional Government, to maintain what it called a government of its own, and to commit more horrible crimes and more stupid excesses than almost any other place in Russia. Murder on a wholesale scale marked the progress of the revolution in the fortress and on the battleships. More than a score of young officers in training were killed in the fortress in one day last spring. They were not even arrested and tried on any charges. They were just butchered. A number of other officers were killed, including the commandant and vice-commandant of the fortress, and other officers were thrown into cells and kept there for months without even the farce of a trial.

Kronstadt set up a republic in late May and by mid-June the orgy was in full swing. The civil population looted and robbed, and the soldiers and marines aided and abetted them heartily. Once a band of looters sacking a warehouse were arrested by the militia police after a lively shooting match and put in jail. Cases where the militia actually arrested thieves were so rare in Russia last summer that this one received considerable newspaper publicity. The papers were obliged to record that, a few hours after the men were arrested, a crowd of armed soldiers and sailors demanded the liberation of the prisoners. Of course their demands were honored.

The provisional government was able to keep Finland in partial check by threatening to withhold cereals and other provisions from her in case of secession. But Kronstadt, being a fortress, had plenty of provisions, as plenty goes in Russia these days. Kronstadt had more food and fuel than Petrograd. That is why her orgy was able to last so long. It lasted until the days of the July revolution, when thousands of loyal troops were recalled from the front to restore order, many of the ringleaders of the mutinous troops were expelled from the army and several regiments were disbanded in disgrace. The orgy still goes on to a certain extent in the fortress, and no one knows yet how far disaffection among the naval forces went.

The Kronstadt Soviet, or Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, covered itself with glory during the existence of the republic. The Soviet, or one of its committees, undertook the solving of the housing problem as follows: The committee went all over the town and inspected houses and apartments. They inquired in each case at the different places the amount of the rent, and then they proceeded to cut down the rent, one-third to one-half. They didn’t say anything about the reduction to the landlord, but they passed the word around to the Tavarishi. A perfect exodus of renters out of their apartments into bigger and better ones ensued. Everybody moved, and when rent day came around and the landlords or their agents called on the new tenants they were calmly told: “Not on your life is my rent thirty rubles a month. It is fifteen rubles, and if you don’t take that you will get nothing.”

The landlords appealed to the Soviet, but all the satisfaction they got there was a threat of confiscation. “You’ve robbed the working class long enough,” said the Soviet. “We ought not to pay you any rent, and perhaps after a while we won’t.”

From one point of view not the least outrage the Soviet perpetrated on the helpless population of Kronstadt was an attempt to talk it to death. There is a fine cathedral in Kronstadt and in front of it, as is customary in Russia, a large open square. In this square the Soviet erected a speaker’s stand and every day the population, or as much of it as could get into the square, assembled and listened for hours to fervid oratory. The people had to come because the Soviet ordered them to, and very likely they enjoyed themselves at first. Even in Russia, however, a continual political meeting, carried on three months at a time, every day at 5 p. m., must be a trial.

Tomsk was another city where the right of small peoples to govern themselves was demonstrated last summer. In the newspapers of June 8, old style, appeared a telegram from Tomsk to Minister-President Kerensky, the Minister of Justice and the all-Russian Council of Deputies, Workmen and Soldiers, then in session in Petrograd. The telegram was sent by the commanding general of loyal regiments and it read in part thus: “Criminal and mutinous soldiers in company with other criminal elements of the population have organized themselves into bands and have set themselves systematically to pillage and assassination. Under the flag of anarchy they have looted the banks, the shops, business houses of all kinds. They were prepared to murder all heads of public organizations, and declared that they would next move on to other towns and cities and continue their robberies there.”

The telegram went into more particulars of these outrages, and closed by saying that martial law had been established in Tomsk on the 3d of June, 2,300 persons had been arrested and the city, thanks to the presence there of a few brave and loyal troops, was now in order.