Kerensky: The soviets must not rule

Submitted by Anon on 30 November, 1997 - 11:38

This article, abridged and translated by Stan Crooke from Sovremenniye Zapiski, 1922, is by Alexander Kerensky, formerly the head of the February-October 1917 Russian Provisional Government. Kerensky presents an unintentionally, self-damning defence of his government. He was replying to an article by VM Chernov, himself a former member of the Provisional Government, who had accused members of the Social-Revolutionary Party of lacking political energy after the February 1917 revolution.

What then is the mortal sin of, “that group of individuals in whose name speaks comrade Rudnyev [a leader of the Social-Revolutionaries], who on more than one occasion shared in the responsibility for events in the political arena?” Above all it is the following: “In the course of the entire period from March to October 1917 that group championed the idea of a coalition, whatever the price that had to be paid. When the Left SRs detached themselves from the party (what a tender expression for triple treachery — to the Fatherland, the Revolution, and the party!) and the party equilibrium was temporarily ruptured, the group forced the party to follow once again the path of capitulation to the demands of the Kadets (Constitutional Democratic Party), and to accept the changes in the Provisional Government and its programme which they demanded.”

Everything here is a completely fictitious legend! All the nonsense about “that group” must be disposed of. There was no such group in the name of which Rudnyev would have had the right to speak.

Once that piece of fiction has been disposed of, then it becomes clear what really happened in 1917: from the time of the entry of the representatives of the Soviet into the Provisional Government (the end of April) and up to the Kornilov plot, a properly constituted and substantial majority of the SRs approved of the participation of its members in the government coalition. And it did so not because it was eager for a coalition, “whatever the price that had to be paid,” but simply because it did not regard it as possible to place the responsibility for governing the state and for the conduct of the war exclusively upon the shoulders of the Soviet and socialist elements alone.

I remember perfectly an incident at in June at the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets. In response to a question I posed in the bluntest terms possible, whether any of the representatives of revolutionary democracy present at the conference were ready to take upon themselves full responsibility, the auditorium replied with the silence of the grave. Only someone from among the Bolsheviks, sitting next to Lenin, and with the silent approval of the latter, openly declared: “We will take it.” And I remember how people who heard this sentence responded to it, as if it were a not particularly clever joke on the part of the “irresponsible opposition.”

What kind of force would the SRs and the Menshevik elements have represented if they had split away from those layers of the bourgeoisie and non-Soviet democracy which in one way or another went along with the revolution and its government, in a situation where the Bolsheviks were again growing in strength after the Kornilov plot? What kind of force would they have represented? Very little! If they did not recognise this by September, then, at any rate, they certainly felt it.

They felt very intensely that the Bolsheviks were pushing them to break with the tradition of revolutionary power — its support from all sections of Russian society — and were only wanting to weaken and dissipate the organized revolutionary forces, just as, from the opposite direction, all military and non-military plotters were striving after the same goal, after having achieved the departure of the Kadets from the Provisional Government after July. The task which the Bolshevik strategists had set for themselves was only too clear: to facilitate for themselves the seizure of power, which they had already resolved to achieve by destroying the unity of the revolutionary forces and by using a homogeneous socialist government as a springboard.

Yet the majority of the SRs voted to maintain their links with the government of the revolution and to continue with their participation in the government of the state. What else could they do in that situation — just wash their hands of everything? Step aside and passively observe the further development of the tragedy? No, such a Pontius Pilate role cannot be played by a political party! The party always acts, always speaks!

[Then] another accusation, one which, in my opinion, is the most serious one.” “Oh, bold prevaricators! Did you not prevaricate in Russia from February to October of 1917, did you not prevaricate on the question of reorganization of the army, the policy of peace, and the land question, hopelessly hanging on to the rump of a coalition with the Kadets until there bore down upon you those forces which were thrown up by your policies of patience and which — not without your share of the blame — resulted in the October Revolution and all its destructiveness.”

This is a very real and very concise accusation, but also a very weighty one, levelled against the entire state politics of the February Revolution. It is even more than this. It is, of course, an unintentional justification — yes, a justification — of the “October Revolution.”

What was the situation from March to October? Instead of revolutionary daring — hopeless prevarication in relation to the Kadets, i.e. in the language of Soviet Russia, in relation to the most authentic forces of reaction. If this is correct, if the official organ of what was then one of the parties of government is now obliged to recognise this, then the revolt of genuinely revolutionary forces was utterly justified — and the counter-revolutionary October coup is transformed into a genuine popular revolution!

But let us look more closely at the three mortal sins of our prevarication — the army, land and peace.

“Did you not prevaricate on the question of reorganization of the army?” In what sense are we to understand this reference to reorganization of the army? Clearly, what is meant here is that slowness which we had to show as a matter of necessity in the Sisyphean task of strengthening discipline in the army and in restoring normal relations between commanders and their subordinates.
I remember how energetically all members of the Provisional Government — including the Minister of Agriculture, none other than VM Chernov himself — spoke out against “revolutionary excesses” in the army! I remember how bitterly, but nonetheless unanimously, the entire Provisional Government voted for the law restoring the death penalty at the front after the collapse of our front at Tarnopol! I remember all this, and therefore completely understand that the slowness of the Ministry of War in its task of liberating the army from the “liberation” which it had suffered under Minister of War Guchkov should still provoke from V Chernov and all Russian patriots the obligatory measure of anger and chagrin.

The Ministry of War is guilty of this slowness in restoring discipline in the army. But by way of mitigating circumstances does not our strident accuser recall the obstacles which we had to overcome in this reorganization? Does he not remember the inhuman energy and self-sacrificing efforts which the commissars of the Ministry of War (almost all of whom were SRs and Mensheviks) had to expend at the front and in the rear in freeing the army from the hypnosis of Bolshevik and enemy propaganda? Does he not remember that even in his own areas of responsibility we were sometimes helpless in the face of the effects of the demagogy?

“Did you not prevaricate on the land question?” is the second accusation raised against us. With regard to this question I must confess to finding myself in a somewhat delicate position: I have to defend the agricultural policies of the Ministry of Agriculture against charges levelled against them by the longest-serving of all the Ministers of Agriculture during the period of the February Revolution, VM Chernov.

Rather than run through the actual activity of the successive Ministers of Agriculture and the role they played in accelerating or slowing down the preparation of the great land reforms placed on the political agenda by the Provisional Government in the first days of the Revolution, I find it easier to quote from a conversation held with E K Breshko-Breshkovskaya in Moscow in the spring of 1918: “…The grandiose land reforms, unheard of in the history of humanity and embracing the infinite space of the Russian state, could not have been achieved in six months, or even in six years. Any hastiness, any fidgeting under the pressure of appetites whipped up by demagogy, would merely have led to such chaos in agriculture that decades would pass by before it could be cured.”

In the pursuit of their agricultural policies the Bolsheviks have clearly demonstrated how well-founded were my fears. Just as their policy of “armistice by individual military companies” transformed itself into an unending succession of foreign and domestic wars, so too their “spontaneous socialization” of land transformed itself into total agricultural anarchy. I do not deny that there was much unnecessary slowness in carrying out the land reforms of the Provisional Government. But nonetheless there was no “prevarication”. The fundamental land reforms had been decided upon by the Provisional Government, and we constantly made progress in achieving those reforms.

“Did you not prevaricate on the policy of peace?” is the final question. Yes, we prevaricated in the sense that we did not opt for a separate pace! The Bolsheviks did so — but look at what became of their peace! How then did our “prevarication” express itself? Well, let us suppose that the Provisional Government did indeed prevaricate because it was hopelessly in the hands of “Western capitalists and imperialists” and so on and so forth. But what of the Soviets? Was it not the case that after issuing the famous appeal “To The Peoples of the Entire World” on 14 March they then came to recognise, having experienced the debacle of Stockholm in May, that the key to the speediest possible conclusion of general peace could lie only in strengthening the military capabilities of the country and in an active policy on the front?

One must stare reality in the face. Those who, in Russia, regarded themselves as the spokespersons of the real opinions of the international revolutionary proletariat were in reality expressing the opinions of an insignificant minority of a minority of the socialist opposition in the West. The war in Europe was not a war between governments but between peoples. The proletarian masses in Europe felt — and their leaders recognised — that “the international solidarity of the workers in defence of their interests against capitalism” did not exclude a sense of solidarity between people of one and the same nation when their shared interests and rights were subject to external threat.

Among all the great states of Europe there was no country which had a greater justification to defend itself than Russia. As the future collaborator with the Bolsheviks, NN Sukhanov, demonstrated as early as 1915, our motherland had no aggressive capitalist goals in the World War. We could not throw away our weapons without betraying the fatherland, without betraying the revolution!

Yes, the army, land and peace — these were truly three inhuman tasks which the February Revolution had to accomplish, but it had to accomplish them whilst defending the country from the most brutal blows of the enemy, and defending the freedom which had only just been achieved from the insane pressure of domestic anarchy, selfishness and treachery!

Let me declare in conclusion that not only did the February Revolution not prevaricate in its efforts to satisfy the revolutionary impatience of the masses, but that it went to the very edge of catastrophe in its efforts. In that historical situation, in those conditions of war, no state, not even one a hundred times more revolutionary, could have given more to the masses. We were on the edge of a precipice, beyond which already lay the chaos into which Russia was plunged after October.

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