Ten Days That Shook the World - John Reed (some good books to read TXT) 📗

IT was on November 18th that the snow came. In the morning we woke to window-ledges heaped white, and snowflakes falling so whirling thick that it was impossible to see ten feet ahead. The mud was gone; in a twinkling the gloomy city became white, dazzling. The droshki with their padded coachmen turned into sleights, bounding along the uneven street at headlong speed, their drivers’ beards stiff and frozen…. In spite of Revolution, all Russia plunging dizzily into the unknown and terrible future, joy swept the city with the coming of the snow. Everybody was smiling; people ran into the streets, holding out their arms to the soft, falling flakes, laughing. Hidden was all the greyness; only the gold and coloured spires and cupolas, with heightened barbaric splendour, gleamed through the white snow.

Even the sun came out, pale and watery, at noon. The colds and rheumatism of the rainy months vanished. The life of the city grew gay, and the very Revolution ran swifter….

I sat one evening in a traktir-a kind of lower-class inn-across the street from the gates of Smolny; a low-ceilinged, loud place called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” much frequented by Red Guards. They crowded it now, packed close around the little tables with their dirty table-cloths and enormous china tea-pots, filling the place with foul cigarette-smoke, while the harassed waiters ran about crying “Seichass! Seichass! In a minute! Right away!”

In one corner sat a man in the uniform of a captain, addressing the assembly, which interrupted him at every few words.

“You are no better than murderers!” he cried. “Shooting down your Russian brothers on the streets!”

“When did we do that?” asked a worker.

“Last Sunday you did it, when the yunkers—”

“Well, didn’t they shoot us?” One man exhibited his arm in a sling. “Haven’t I got something to remember them by, the devils?”

The captain shouted at the top of his voice. “You should remain neutral! You should remain neutral! Who are you to destroy the legal Government? Who is Lenin? A German—”

“Who are you? A counter-revolutionist! A provocator!” they bellowed at him.

When he could make himself heard the captain stood up. “All right!” said he. “You call yourselves the people of Russia. But you’re not the people of Russia. The peasants are the people of Russia. Wait until the peasants—”

“Yes,” they cried, “wait until the peasants speak. We know what the peasants will say…. Aren’t they workingmen like ourselves?”

In the long run, everything depended upon the peasants. While the peasants had been politically backward, still they had their own peculiar ideas, and they constituted more than eighty per cent of the people of Russia. The Bolsheviki had a comparatively small following among the peasants; and a permanent dictatorship of Russia by the industrial workers was impossible…. The traditional peasant party was the Socialist Revolutionary party; of all the parties now supporting the Soviet Government, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were the logical inheritors of peasant leadership-and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who were at the mercy of the organised city proletariat, desperately needed the backing of the peasants….

Meanwhile Smolny had not neglected the peasants. After the Land decree, one of the first actions of the new Tsay-ee-kah had been to call a Congress of Peasants, over the head of the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviets. A few days later was issued detailed Regulations for the Volost (Township) Land Committees, followed by Lenin’s “Instruction to Peasants,” (See App. XII, Sect. 1) which explained the Bolshevik revolution and the new Government in simple terms; and on November 16th, Lenin and Miliutin published the “Instructions to Provincial Emissaries,” of whom thousands were sent by the Soviet Government into the villages.

1. Upon his arrival in the province to which he is accredited, the emissary should call a joint meeting of the Central Executive Committees of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, to whom he should make a report on the agrarian laws, and then demand that a joint plenary session of the Soviets be summoned….

2. He must study the aspects of the agrarian problem in the province.

a. Has the landowners’ property been taken over, and if so, in what districts?

b. Who administers the confiscated land-the former proprietor, or the Land Committees?

c. What has been done with the agricultural machinery and with the farm-animals?

3. Has the ground cultivated by the peasants been augmented?

4. How much and in what respect does the amount of land now under cultivation differ from the amount fixed by the Government as an average minimum?

5. The emissary must insist that, after the peasants have received the land, it is imperative that they increase the amount of cultivated land as quickly as possible, and that they hasten the sending of grain to the cities, as the only means of avoiding famine.

6. What are the measures projected or put into effect for the transfer of land from the landowners to the Land Committees and similar bodies appointed by the Soviets?

7. It is desirable that agricultural properties well appointed and well organised should be administered by Soviets composed of the regular employees of those properties, under the direction of competent agricultural scientists.

All through the villages a ferment of change was going on, caused not only by the electrifying action of the Land decree, but also by thousands of revolutionary-minded peasant-soldiers returning from the front…. These men, especially, welcomed the call to a Congress of Peasants.

Like the old Tsay-ee-kah in the matter of the second Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets, the Executive Committee tried to prevent the Peasant Congress summoned by Smolny. And like the old Tsay-ee-kah, finding its resistance futile, the Executive Committee sent frantic telegrams ordering the election of Conservative delegates. Word was even spread among the peasants that the Congress would meet at Moghilev, and some delegates went there; but by November 23d about four hundred had gathered in Petrograd, and the party caucuses had begun….

The first session took place in the Alexander Hall of the Duma building, and the first vote showed that more than half of all the delegates were Left Socialist Revolutionaries, while the Bolsheviki controlled a bare fifth, the conservative Socialist Revolutionaries a quarter, and all the rest were united only in their opposition to the old Executive Committee, dominated by Avksentiev, Tchaikovsky and Peshekhonov….

The great hall was jammed with people and shaken with continual clamour; deep, stubborn bitterness divided the delegates into angry groups. To the right was a sprinkling of officers’ epaulettes, and the patriarchal, bearded faces of the older, more substantial peasants; in the centre were a few peasants, non-commissioned officers, and some soldiers; and on the left almost all the delegates wore the uniforms of common soldiers. These last were the young generation, who had been serving in the army…. The galleries were thronged with workers-who, in Russia, still remember their peasant origin….

Unlike the old Tsay-ee-kah, the Executive Committee, in opening the session, did not recognise the Congress as official; the official Congress was called for December 13th; amid a hurricane of applause and angry cries, the speaker declared that this gathering was merely “Extraordinary Conference”… But the “Extraordinary Conference” soon showed its attitude toward the Executive Committee by electing as presiding officer Maria Spiridonova, leader of the Left Socialist Revolution aries.

Most of the first day was taken up by a violent debate as to whether the representatives of Volost Soviets should be seated, or only delegates from the Provincial bodies; and just as in the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Congress, an overwhelming majority declared in favour of the widest possible representation. Whereupon the old Executive Committee left the hall….

Almost immediately it was evident that most of the delegates were hostile to the Government of the People’s Commissars. Zinoviev, attempting to speak for the Bolsheviki, was hooted down, and as he left the platform, amid laughter, there were cries, “There’s how a People’s Commissar sits in a mudpuddle!”

“We Left Socialist Revolutionaries refuse,” cried Nazariev, a delegate from the Provinces, “to recognise this so-called Workers’ and Peasants’ Government until the peasants are represented in it. At present it is nothing but a dictatorship of the workers…. We insist upon the formation of a new Government which will represent the entire democracy!”

The reactionary delegates shrewdly fostered this feeling, declaring, in the face of protests from the Bolshevik benches, that the Council of People’s Commissars intended either to control the Congress or dissolve it by force of arms-an announcement which was received by the peasants with bursts of fury….

On the third day Lenin suddenly mounted the tribune; for ten minutes the room went mad. “Down with him!” they shrieked. “We will not listen to any of your People’s Commissars! We don’t recognise your Government!”

Lenin stood there quite calmly, gripping the desk with both hands, his little eyes thoughtfully surveying the tumult beneath. Finally, except for the right side of the hall, the demonstration wore itself out somewhat.

“I do not come here as a member of the Council of People’s Commissars,” said Lenin, and waited again for the noise to subside, “but as a member of the Bolshevik faction, duly elected to this Congress.” And he held his credentials up to that all might see them.

“However,” he went on, in an unmoved voice, “nobody will deny that the present Government of Russia has been formed by the Bolshevik party-” he had to wait a moment, “so that for all purposes it is the same thing….” Here the right benches broke into deafening clamour, but the centre and left were curious, and compelled silence.

Lenin’s argument was simple. “Tell me frankly, you peasants, to whom we have given the lands of the pomieshtchiki; do you want now to prevent the workers from getting control of industry? This is class war. The pomieshtchiki of course oppose the peasants, and the manufactures oppose the workers. Are you going to allow the ranks of the proletariat to be divided? Which side will you be on?

“We, the Bolsheviki, are the party of the proletariat-of the peasant proletariat as well as the industrial proletariat. We, the Bolsheviki, are the protectors of the Soviets-of the Peasants’ Soviets as well as those of the Workers and Soldiers. The present Government is a Government of Soviets; we have not only invited the Peasants’ Soviets to join that Government, but we have also invited representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to enter the Council of People’s Commissars….

“The Soviets are the most perfect representatives of the people-of the workers in