From October to Brest-Litovsk | Page 3

phrases,
secret exhortations or appeals addressed to the Allied Governments,
while they were actually following the same path as the liberal
bourgeoisie. The masses of soldiers in the trenches could not, of course,
reach the conclusion that the war, in which they had participated for
nearly three years, had changed its character merely because certain
new persons, who called themselves "Social-Revolutionists" or
"Mensheviki," were taking part in the Petrograd Government.
Milyukov displaced the bureaucrat Pokrovsky; Tereshtchenko
displaced Milyukov--which means that bureaucratic treachery had been
replaced first by militant Cadet imperialism, then by an unprincipled,
nebulous and political subserviency; but it brought no objective
changes, and indicated no way out of the terrible war.
Just in this lies the primary cause of the subsequent disorganization of
the army. The agitators told the soldiers that the Czarist Government
had sent them into slaughter without any rime or reason. But those who
replaced the Czar could not in the least change the character of the war,
just as they could not find their way clear for a peace campaign. The
first months were spent in merely marking time. This tried the patience
both of the army and of the Allied Governments, and prompted the
drive of June 18, which was demanded by the Allies, who insisted upon
the fulfillment of the old Czarist obligations. Scared by their own
helplessness and by the growing impatience of the masses, the leaders
of the middle class complied with this demand. They actually began to
think that, in order to obtain peace, it was only necessary for the
Russian army to make a drive. Such a drive seemed to offer a way out
of the difficult situation, a real solution of the problem--salvation. It is
hard to imagine a more amazing and more criminal delusion. They
spoke of the drive in those days in the same terms that were used by the
social-patriots of all countries in the first days and weeks of the war,
when speaking of the necessity of supporting the cause of national
defence, of strengthening the holy alliance of nations, etc., etc. All their
Zimmerwald internationalistic infatuations had vanished as if by magic.
To us, who were in uncompromising opposition, it was clear that the
drive was beset with terrible danger, threatening perhaps the ruin of the
revolution itself. We sounded the warning that the army, which had

been awakened and deeply stirred by the tumultuous events which it
was still far from comprehending, could not be sent into battle without
giving it new ideas which it could recognize as its own. We warned,
accused, threatened. But as for the dominant party, tied up as it was
with the Allied bourgeoisie, there was no other course; we were
naturally threatened with enmity, with bitter hatred.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKI
The future historian will look over the pages of the Russian newspapers
for May and June with considerable emotion, for it was then that the
agitation for the drive was being carried on. Almost every article,
without exception, in all the governmental and official newspapers, was
directed against the Bolsheviki. There was not an accusation, not a libel,
that was not brought up against us in those days. The leading role in the
campaign was played, of course, by the Cadet bourgeoisie, who were
prompted by their class instincts to the knowledge that it was not only a
question of a drive, but also of all the further developments of the
revolution, and primarily of the fate of government control. The
bourgeoisie's machinery of "public opinion" revealed itself here in all
its power. All the organs, organizations, publications, tribunes and
pulpits were pressed into the service of a single common idea: to make
the Bolsheviki impossible as a political party. The concerted effort and
the dramatic newspaper campaign against the Bolsheviki already
foreshadowed the civil war which was to develop during the next stage
of the revolution.
The purpose of the bitterness of this agitation and libel was to create a
total estrangement and irrepressible enmity between the laboring
masses, on the one hand, and the "educated elements" on the other. The
liberal bourgeoisie understood that it could not subdue the masses
without the aid and intercession of the middle-class democracy, which,
as we have already pointed out, proved to be temporarily the leader of
the revolutionary organizations. Therefore, the immediate object of the
political baiting of the Bolsheviki was to raise irreconcilable enmity
between our party and the vast masses of the "socialistic intellectuals,"
who, if they were alienated from the proletariat, could not but come
under the sway of the liberal bourgeoisie.
During the first All-Russian Council of Soviets came the first alarming

peal of thunder, foretelling the terrible events that were coming. The
party designated the 10th of June as the