THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION Six months from the beginning of the Revolution the new re public was in a state of rapid disintegration. The Provisional Government was formally invested with full and sovereign power and was responsible neither to the Petrograd Soviet nor to the recently convoked Pre-Parliament. But actually it possessed no power at all and was a government of marionettes. The actual authority, then more than at another time in the Revolution, was held by the Soviets in the capitals and in numerous provincial towns, which openly defied the Government and exercised, each in its area, legislative as well as executive powers. In many of the provincial Soviets as well as in those of Petrograd and Moscow the Bolsheviks now counted on solid majorities; and in most cases the Bolshevik provincial Soviets constituted themselves quasi-independent republics. And not only were Soviet Republics set up but the various nationalities, which had long been clamour ing for autonomy, now began openly to secede from the State and to organize their own armies by withdrawing their nationals from the army under the plea of defending their newly created frontiers and their national flags. The whole country, town and villages alike, was in a state of feverish unrest, which soon de veloped into riots and anarchy. In the towns bread-riots broke out; and in the villages the demand was for land. To enumerate all the places where bread-riots, arbitrary division of land, ex propriation of property and incendiarism took place would be impossible: they ranged practically from Finland to the Caucasus The most destructive of these revolts were those of the peasants, who began to solve the land problem in their own way by ex propriating the land, driving off the cattle, burning down the land owners' dwellings and barns, demolishing agricultural machinery, felling wood in the forests and wantonly destroying trees in the orchards. In places in which the landowners delayed their flight they were captured, tortured and murdered. Yet the ministers were inactive and helpless. To put down these all-Russian pogroms by force, they lacked the necessary military backing : even the Cossacks refused to obey orders, remembering how they had been repudiated by Kerensky in the Kornilov episode. Reprisals would in any case have proved ineffective : the only measure which might have tranquillized the countryside would have been the speedy convocation of the constituent assembly with a guarantee that it would be invested with full power to solve the land ques tion But the Government, composed as it was of landlords and capitalists, could not and would not take this step. Closely con nected with the peasants' revolt and with the general anarchy prevailing everywhere were the crimes committed by bands of armed soldiers who spread over the whole country robbing and killing, and almost destroying transport.
At the front the army still preserved on the surface a certain degree of discipline ; but the mutual distrust and hatred of soldiers and officers was so profound that at any time an open clash might be expected, especially as a shortage of food and supplies, and in some cases actually famine, made the preservation of military subordination increasingly difficult. It became obvious that the
army was likely to withdraw from the field either in the autumn or at any rate before the winter had passed. The soldiers dis cussed this possibility openly, declaring that they cared neither for freedom nor for land but only for peace. Even leading gen erals like Cheremisov (who held the Northern Command) advised the Government that the army was unreliable and might of its own volition, irrespective of every command to the contrary, withdraw from the field at any time.
Trotsky.—Meantime the Germans had been penetrating fur ther and further into the Baltic provinces. On Oct. 12, with the support of their fleet, they occupied the island of Esel and so secured the command of the Baltic. Petrograd was now obviously menaced and ministers declared their intention of transferring the seat of government to Moscow. This attempt to abandon the capital strengthened enormously the Bolshevik scheme for over throwing the Government. To dream of continuing the War after abandoning Petrograd, the biggest arsenal in the coun try, was denounced as sheer treason; and the Bolsheviks had accordingly an easy task in exciting the opposition of the workers to the policy of evacuation. Ministers, realizing their mistake, speedily gave up their intention, but not before the Bolsheviks had denounced them as usurpers and traitors. While their proposal to evacuate Petrograd thus furnished the Bolshe viks with an admirable lever for stirring up the masses, another mistake which ministers made, an attempt to replace the Petro grad garrison by more reliable troops from the front, was used by their enemies as a pretext for openly organizing military forces for an attack on them. Kerensky's declaration that these meas ures were dictated by the menacing situation in the Baltic was glaringly absurd; for the moral of the Petrograd garrison was notoriously low and the withdrawal from the front of troops with a higher moral was in sheer contradiction to ministers' declared purpose. The Petrograd Soviet accordingly under Trotsky's com mand, promptly came forward and countermanded the movement of troops. On Oct. 26, the leaders of the Soviet constituted a military revolutionary committee which declared itself the highest military authority in the capital and province of Petrograd. This step was ostensibly taken for the defence of the capital against the enemy ; but actually it was a movement for the creation of a general staff for the Bolshevik Revolution. Regarded from this point of view Oct. 26 should be considered the actual date on which this Revolution occurred. In the 14 days which intervened before Lenin was actually established as the head of the State, a very strange tragicomedy was enacted, in which Trotsky, figuring as the General Monk of that Revolution, openly organized his forces without meeting with the slightest interference from the Government.