The Russian Revolution

The Russian Offensive.

The origin of the decision to renew the offensive is still obscure. There is reason however to believe that pressure exerted by the Allies was responsible for the adop tion of this policy. Many experts were totally opposed to it as likely to fail and thereby to accelerate the disintegration of the army. They pointed out that an offensive, if not strong and de cisive enough, would give the Germans who had been inactive since the fight for the Stokhod (April 3) a much-wanted excuse for taking the counter-offensive on a much wider front than the Russians could hold. Sound strategy therefore demanded that while a most determined effort should be made to increase the fighting morale of the army, it should not be submitted too early to the test of challenging the enemy. But the offensive which the Kerensky Government so blindly and so enthusiastically adopted was obviously undertaken more for political than for military reasons. The effect of renewing the offensive, it was believed, would be either to prove in case of victory that Russia had still to be taken into account and so to compel the Germans to come forward with the offer of a democratic (that is non-annexation) peace, or, in the event of defeat, to compel the German Socialists definitely to take their stand either in defence of the Russian Revolution or in support of German militarism.

This fateful offensive, the failure of which destroyed the Rus sian army's last vestige of fighting strength, was undertaken then with a frivolity almost unparalleled. The preparation of it was equally frivolous and fantastic, based as it was on the naïve belief that the army's will to fight could be resuscitated by melo dramatic speeches made by the war minister and a group of mili tary and civil idealists. In the speeches which he made to the troops on his theatrical tour of the front Kerensky was fatuous enough to declare that the country expected them to work a miracle. But the effect which his rodomontade had on them was purely transient. They listened to it, applauded it, and even swore to fight and to die for the Revolution. But the moment the war minister left they went back to their barracks and refused to go to the trenches and thereby to relieve the first-line men. Several regiments indeed had to be disbanded for refusal to obey orders. In this atmosphere then the offensive was launched on July i At first it proved remarkably successful : the Austrian lines were broken and many prisoners and guns were taken. But in less than a fortnight after operations opened not only were the Rus sian armies destroyed but Russia had ceased to exist as a great Power.

The Bolsheviks.

Meantime the Bolsheviks were making their first bid for power in the capital. Ever since his arrival from Ziirich and his unsuccessful debut at the Petrograd Soviet Lenin had been biding his time and maturing his plans. At first he was disposed to despise the Soviet as a petit bourgeois assembly and was determined to organize the proletariat for a single-handed revolt against the bourgeois state. But in April, as a result of wit

nessing the anti-Milyukov demonstrations, he perceived that this assembly could easily be used as a recruiting ground and rally ing point for such a revolt. Accordingly he invented the watch word "All power to the Soviets" and disseminated it widely among the masses. But when the leaders of the Soviet compromised their principles and made a coalition with the representatives of the bourgeoisie he began to fear that the former were very unlikely to show either the courage or the zeal which would enable them to bring about the second or Socialist Revolution. In June there fore, during the sittings of the first all-Russian Congress of Soviets, he obviously returned to his original plan of staging a purely Bolshevik revolt.

A plot was actually formed at this time to call out the Bolshevik adherents among the factory workers and the garrison and a strong detachment of Kronstadt sailors; but news of it leaked out and Lenin, not yet prepared to break with the Soviet, postponed the venture. In three weeks' time, however, he revived it. The July rising was a very strange demonstration, the most marked characteristic of which was its lack of leadership. The members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party hesitated to iden tify themselves with it beforehand for fear it might prove unsuc cessful. Ostensibly a demonstration in favour of the transference of power to the Soviet it was in essence an attempt to stampede 'Battles of Brzezany (July i-6) and Zborow (July 19-26).

that assembly, a fact which its leaders were prompt to recognize. For nearly two days the gunmen were in occupation of the capi tal ; but their lack of objective and of leadership perplexed them and paralyzed their efforts. The obvious failure of the rising pre vented Lenin and the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party from showing their hands, and they strongly protested their non complicity in the emeute—in which over 40o persons lost their lives.

But these protests were not taken seriously; and it can now be definitely asserted that the whole scheme was inspired by the Bolsheviks, who hoped that they might reap some advantage by fishing in troubled waters. During the two days the rising lasted the Coalition Government was absolutely quiescent. But Keren sky on the very first day proceeded to the front, where he procured picked troops, which arrived in the capital on the day after the movement had fizzled out. Meantime any attempt to renew dis turbances was rendered hopeless by the publication of docu ments which purported to prove that Lenin was a spy and a paid agent of the German General Staff. The result of this publication was the practical suppression of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin and Zinoviev went into hiding, to the considerable dismay of their friends. Trotsky, Kamenev and Lunacharsky were thrown into prison. The "Pravda," the organ of the Party, was suppressed and its machines destroyed by the mob.