THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.*
IT is always well to learn from the enemy, if we can. The pamphlet in which the notorious Trotsky professes to give the history of the Russian Revolution up to February, 1918, is therefore worth reading. It reveals at any rate the mental condition of the Bolshevik. Trotsky seems to have been in a frenzy verging on madness when he wrote or dictated it. All the bitterness of the Jewish outcast, all the intense craving • The History of the Russian Resolution to Brest-Litovsk. By L. Tioterri London: Allen and Bnuln. 14s. ed. mt..' for power which characterizes the horn revolutionary, come out in this curious tract. The author is a veritable Timon, hating or despising almost the whole of Russia, for the "proletariat" with whom he professes to sympathize appears to include only the inferior workmen of the towns. He despises, of course, all educated people, but bourgeoisie as a term of abuse seems to cover the humblest servant of the State, such as a postman or a telephone operator, all Trade Union and Co-operative officials, and all the Socialists who do not belong to the little Bolshevik group. For the Social Revolutionaries, whose traits are virtually indistinguishable from his own, Trotsky professes an acrid contempt, apparently because they tried to establish a Government that had some claim to be repre- sentative of the Russian people. The peasantry is " amor- phous " ; the "proletariat," which is clearly distinguished from the peasantry, is to be ruled by self-appointed demagogues like the author. There is no doubt about Trotsky's " will to power." He and his accomplices meant to become masters of Russia, and they achieved their purpose for the time being. He does not believe in democratic institutions " As Marxists, we have never been worshippers of formal democracy. In a society 'split into classes, the democratic institutions, far from abolishing the class struggle, only lend the class interests a highly imperfect form of expression. The possessing classes have always at their disposal thousands of meanato pervert and adulterate the will of the labouring masses. In time of revolution democratic institutions form a still less perfect apparatus for the expression of the class struggle. Marx called Revolution the locomotive of history.' The open and direct struggle for power enables the labouring masses to acquire in a short time a wealth of political experience and thus rapidly to pass from one stage to another in the process of their mental evelution. The ponderous mechanism of democratic institu- tions cannot keep pace with this evolution--and this in pro. portion to the vastness of the country and the imperfection of the technical apparatus at its disposal."
In other words, Trotsky has not, and does not pretend to have, any better title to power than the Tears possessed. He is neither more nor less democratic than they were. The demand that a majority should be clearly ascertained by legal means is for him a mere " pedantry." In the " heated atmosphere " of Petrograd, to which he often refers, this kind of thing might pass muster. To sober people elsewhere it can make no appeal.
It was the Army that made the Revolution, according to
Trotsky., politicians, whether Constitutional Democrats or Sociasts, who tried to guide it, had, he says, no solid support anywhere. The troth is, we imagine, that they were too weak as well as too inexperienced to grapple with the formidable problems that presented themselves. At any rate M. Kerensky, who reminds us of Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways, was bound to fail. Trotsky assails hint with specially venomous abuse. The explanation is that H. Kerensky arrested him but did not have him shot. A little of Denton's " audacity " might have saved Petrograd and Russia in the summer of 1917. Yet the Bolshevik is deliberately falsifying history when he accuses the Kerensky Government of neglecting the Army. If the Russian troops were half-starved and mutinous, it was mainly due to the treasonable propaganda of Trotsky and his friends, in collaboration with the enemy. The strife of parties nullified all the efforts of the Government to carry on the war and to restore order within Russia. It was not to the interest of the Bolsheviks that any decent Administration should be established, or that tae Constituent Assembly should most and frame a democratic Government for Russia. Trotsky virtually admits that, had M. Kerensky been a resolute man, he would have held hie own. The Bolsheviks were very doubtful up to the last moment whether they could upset the Social Revolutionary rule. They had, however, corrupted the Petrograd garrison. The Army at the front was willing to support any one who promised it bread and peace. Possibly the soldiers regret their folly now that they have neither bread nor peace ; but Trotsky and his kind could afford to be lavish with promises. After M. Kerensky had fallen, the Assembly met, only to be dissolved at once. Trotsky enters into an elaborate apology for this, urging that the electors had voted for party lists which had become obsolete in two or three months, so that they had returned a Kerensky majority without meaning to do so. The argument may prove that Russia is wholly unripe for modem democratic government, but it proves nothing more. The " Soviets" or local Councils are in theory re-elected daily or weekly, or whenever it occurs to any one to have a poll of the carefully selected " proletariat." But of course the ruling junta, nominally dependent on the "Soviets," does not change at all. If it Were opposed by a
" Soviet " majority, it would have them shot as bourgeoisie, inasmuch as every one who is not a Bolshevik must be a bourgeois.
The pamphleteer wrote this wild stuff, he tells us, in the intervals of talk at Brest-Litovek. His apology for the Bolshevik betrayal of the Allies there was published at the time, but is given somewhat more fully in this book. It is clear that he did not expect the Allies to win the war. On February 27th,1918, he described an Allied victory as a "rather improbable event. uality," and said that, even if it came about, Russia would be "still more exhausted and ruined" than she was then. We can all see now that Trotsky and Lenin, even if they were honest fanatics, had backed the wrong horse. They thought that Germany would win, and they believed, or professed to believe, that she might be beaten in her hour of triumph by the contagion of Russian anarchy. Trotsky admits, however, that he did not suppose that the Germans would impose such harsh terms after they had unctuously accepted the fine formulae about " self- determination " and "no annexations nor indemnities." The Bolsheviks were clever enough in their way, but they were extremely short-sighted. Their method of ensuing peace by allowing the Germane to transfer their armies to the West had, of course, the effect of prolonging the war, and tended also to assist Germany to win. A victorious Germany, we may be sure, would have been absolutely immune to Bolshevism. More- over, the Germans would have occupied Petrograd and Moscow, and stamped out the Bolsheviks with scant ceremony. They would, Trotsky says, have met with no effective resistance if they had pressed their advance in February, 1918. The Bol- sheviks had rejected the peace terms at first, in what we may describe as a lucid interval, but they collapsed as soon as the Germans began to move. Had they acted as honest patriots, Russia would not have suffered more than she has done, but would have retained her self-respect and the respect of all her Allies. A German military occupation of Western Russia could not have done more harm than the Bolshevik Terror, and it would not have lasted so long. As it is, the Bolsheviks owe their continued existence to the Allied victories in France and Flanders, and to the inability of the Allied statesmen in Paris to regard Russia as part of the world which is to be " made safe for democracy." Trotsky when he wrote looked forward to a "protracted civil war," the outcome of which would be a Socialist order, with disciplined and more productive labour. He does not prate about liberty. The word scarcely occurs in his book. Discipline is his watchword—discipline prescribed by himself or some one like him and enforced by Chinese mer- cenaries. It seems a poor result to attain at the price of so much blood and so many tears.
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