Thus the tale could be continued. Finland, usually a peaceful, orderly, law-abiding and intelligent country, by far the most enlightened in Russia, lost its head completely over the right of small peoples’ idea. Helsingfors has seen days of violence in the old years of rule by fire and sword. But Finland has never answered with fire and sword, but by the most intelligent kind of passive resistance. With the revolution passive resistance became violence. Most of this, it is true, came from soldiers and sailors of Sveaborg, the island fortress of Helsingfors. Murder of officers went on there and in the town also. Marines pursued their hapless officers through the streets, cutting them down with swords and knives, shooting them and killing them by torture before the eyes of women and children. The townspeople did no such shocking deeds as that, but there were bloody strikes and many riots, and finally the attempt to open an illegal diet and to force a separation from the empire. Kerensky handled that situation very well, sending the best men in the government to Helsingfors, where some kind of a truce, temporary no doubt, but a truce, was patched up.
Kerensky’s fiercest battle last summer was with Ukrania, where a real government was established. It was real enough at all events to force a kind of recognition from the central Provisional Government. Ukrania is an enormous territory in the south of Russia. It extends into southwestern Siberia and southward to the Black Sea. Odessa is its principal port, and within its borders are many important cities. Kiev is one of the largest of these. About 35,000,000 people inhabit the Ukraine, as it is called in Russia. The people are not Russian, strictly speaking. They are Slavs, but they have a language of their own, a literature, a culture. They have been Russian subjects for nearly 300 years.
The Ukraine is a self-contained country and could be made a very rich one. It is rich already in agricultural resources, the “black earth” of certain regions producing the most splendid crops of wheat and other grains. The fruits of the Ukraine are the best in Russia, and the vineyards furnish grapes for excellent wines. Russia would be poor indeed without this country.
Last June the Ukranian Rada, or local diet, voted to establish a republic, restore the old language and customs, and cut themselves off absolutely from the Russian empire. They actually created a provisional government on the spot. Some of the more moderate members of the Rada favored remaining in the empire as a federated state having complete autonomy, and this was finally accepted, I believe, by the majority. But immediately the Bolsheviki of the south began to clamor for separation, and the Ukranians in the army began to show dangerous signs of unrest. A congress of Ukranian armies was held in Kiev in the middle of June, in which it was decided that the armies of the south and southwest ought to be completely and exclusively made up of Ukranians. If this had been done the Rada would have been in a perfect state to dictate terms of any kind to the Russian Provisional Government.
As it was there was considerable dictating done. The military Rada, meeting in June in Odessa, served notice on the Provisional Government that unless the Ukranian soldiers were prevented from forming their own regiments no more soldiers of their force would be sent to the front. The Ukranian regiments were formed, some of them in Petrograd, and the strains of the national hymn, “Ukrania is not dead,” were heard on the streets, played by military bands or sung by soldiers, almost as often as the classic “Marseillaise.”
Kerensky made a frantic dash to Odessa, to Kiev and other cities of the Ukraine. He took with him Tereshtshenko, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and one or two other ministers, and they met the new provisional government in parley. The result was that Kerensky made a complete surrender, recognized the provisional government—at least informally—and agreed that the Ukraine should be a separate state. There was a perfect tempest of protest when the ministers returned to Petrograd. The rest of the ministry declared that Kerensky had overstepped his authority in committing the entire government to a policy which ought to have been left to the constituent assembly to decide. They said that his act, entered into without the knowledge or consent of the full government, was illegal. Perhaps it was; but it stood, and all the most aggrieved ministers could do about it was to resign.
The greatest task ahead of Russia is federation, and she probably will in the end learn how to give autonomy to her states and establish a central government which will bind all the states together in happy union. But she has years of strife and monumental effort ahead of her before the task is done. The wisest men in Russia—even Prof. Miliukoff, who lived for years in the United States—appear to be in a complete fog on the subject of federation. Half the wise men want an empire like Great Britain or Germany, with practically all the power in one central governing body. The other half see nothing ahead but dismemberment of the empire. Nobody apparently can see Russia as another United States.
I believe that part of our responsibility, after the war—perhaps before that time comes—will be to teach Russia how to establish a peaceful federation on republican lines. Russia perhaps does not need to be taught democracy. When she emerges from this present anarchy she may be trusted to establish a safely democratic civilization.