1917-1920 the Struggle for Existence

Lenin used his breathing-space to patch up the administrative and economic machine and to drill an army to defend the Revolu tion. The fight against sabotage was not yet won, and the ad versaries of the new regime were growing bolder. Trouble was brewing in the Cossack provinces and in Manchuria, where a reactionary army was assembling on Chinese soil. The German threat against Petrograd had driven the Soviet Government in flight to Moscow. The fact that the Allied ambassadors, instead of accompanying the Government, had preferred residence at Vologda, junction of the trunk lines of escape eastward to Siberia and northwest to the coast, was no good omen for future relations with the Powers they represented.

Relations with the Allies.

In the field of foreign affairs the Soviet Government had two severe handicaps. From the first the Allies suspected complicity with Germany, and were inclined to regard the Peace of Brest-Litovsk as a betrayal of the Allied cause. Secondly, neither they nor the Central Powers believed that a Soviet Government in Russia could endure. For many years opportunities for a friendly settlement were lost owing to the conviction that the regime was about to fall. The Allies de clined to recognize the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which they held responsible for Ludendorff's victory in March. Their missions in Russia reported that trainloads of war supplies, leather, copper, oil and food, were being shipped into Germany. Although the Bolsheviks claimed that this was part of the indemnity imposed by the treaty, the Allies saw it as "aid to the enemy," to be pre vented if possible. It was suspected that some of their repre sentatives in Russia co-operated with anti-Bolshevik elements to hamper the transfer of supplies.

The Social Revolutionary Revolt.

The breach between the other political parties in Russia and the Bolsheviks had been widened by the suppression of the Constituent Assembly, which met in Moscow on Jan. 18, 1918. Its membership represented a large majority of Left and Right Social Revolutionaries, with a smaller proportion of "Cadets" or bourgeois representatives. The Bolsheviks had only 4o per cent of the delegates. The election of a Right Social Revolutionary, Chernov, as president, convinced them that they had nothing to gain from the Assembly and it was closed by Red soldiers on Jan. 19.

The Left Social Revolutionaries continued for a time to col laborate with the Soviet Government, but broke away completely after unsuccessful opposition to the ratification of the Brest Litovsk Treaty. The strength of the Social Revolutionary Party was mainly drawn from the villages, which were growing in creasingly restive as the Bolsheviks developed their basic pro gamme of a workers' government, class warfare and socialism.

The peasants had thought that the Revolution gave the land to them. They now found it was the property of the State, and that its surplus produce over their needs was required for State purposes. The bourgeois groups had become more hostile still, as they realized that their very existence was menaced by the new regime.

Differences between the Right and Left Social Revolutionary sections and the bourgeois groups tended to disappear in their common belief that the Bolsheviks had betrayed their country to Germany. Led by Boris Savinkov, Kerensky's former war minister, the Right Social Revolutionaries became the pivot of patriotic and anti-Bolshevik sentiment, eager to co-operate with military representatives of the Allies to nullify the effects of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. From attempts to blow up depots of stores, railway bridges and trains carrying supplies westwards, the Social Revolutionaries proceeded to the desperate coup of assas sinating the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Mirbach, on July 6, 1918, in the hope of provoking Germany to break with the Soviets. The Germans were otherwise occupied and no break occurred. The Social Revolutionaries then tried to incite the country to rebellion.

Savinkov captured the town of Yaroslav, 18o m. north of Moscow on the railway to Vologda and Archangel, with a disci plined force which he had hoped to make the nucleus of an army of insurrection. The Red troops from Moscow and Petrograd converged on Yaroslav too swiftly, and retook the town after two weeks. Savinkov escaped, but all possibility of overt resist ance by the Social Revolutionaries vanished.

The Czechoslovaks.—Meanwhile alarmist rumours agitated London and Paris. It was stated that the Bolsheviks were arming German and Austrian prisoners in Siberia by tens of thousands, to combat the Czechoslovak Legion. Forty-five thousand Czecho slovak deserters from the Austrian forces had been formed into an army to fight for their country's freedom beside the Russians on the Austrian front. When the Russians collapsed they remained a fighting force, and plans were made in Paris to move them round the world to the western front. In early March, 1918, the Soviet Government agreed to provide transport across Russia, but the Czech legionnaires had continual trouble with local soviets over food supplies and right of way for their trains.