From October to Brest-Litovsk | Page 3

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 day for an armed demonstration at Petrograd. Its immediate purpose was to influence the All-Russian Council of Soviets. "Take the power into your own hands"--is what the Petrograd workingman wanted to say plainly to