Chapter XV: Blasting at the Established Order

Revolution is unconstitutional and illegal. In the scramble that follows the fall of tsar or kaiser, the spoils are to the nimblest. Any government that ensues is an illegitimate child. It can have no lawful parentage.

After the March Revolution, the first hurriedly organized ministry took its power from the Duma; but the Duma itself had lost its legality with the overthrow of the Tsar who created it. Each successive ministry was equally without legal basis. No election giving them validity had taken place.

There were, however, certain democratic movements in the army and navy and among the workers and peasants. The soldiers and sailors assumed power and immediately elected committees. The workers organized soviets. The peasants, constituting approximately one hundred and twenty-five million of Russia’s hundred and eighty million organized committees. There were all-Russian conventions of each of these bodies that functioned nationally.

In its inception the government of Lenin and Trotzky was not sacrosanct in the eyes of the law, but the largest democratic forces in the country voted to support it.

The Soviet had its origin in the Revolution of 1905. At that time it was composed of workers. Early in the Revolution of 1917 it was joined by the Soldiers’ Deputies, and became a Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers. Soon after the accession of the Bolsheviki to power, the peasants’ delegates combined with the others, and the All-Russian Soviet was the result.

The local Soviet was simply a village or community council, like the old New England town meeting. The will of the majority prevailed. The local councils considered community problems and elected delegates, who met in what is known as the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.

It was this Congress that was in session at Smolney on that November night when the Bolshevist guns on the cruiser _Aurora_ were deciding the fate of the Kerensky Cabinet. It was this Congress that created the Council of People’s Commissaries--that astounding government which was to make the old world stop still in its path and gasp with amazement.

Night after night in the white hall at Smolney I watched it hurling decrees at the established order, smashing every “sacred” rule and precedent of diplomatic procedure, and tossing verbal bombs with equal dexterity at enemies and allies.

Not until some quiet hour of the future, when the sociologists have had time to analyze those decrees, will the bewildered spectators looking on at those “madmen,” with theories in their heads and bayonets in their hands, know how much constructive work along the lines of their idealism went into their making.

Even a superficial study will show the fallacy of the popular Western conception that the confusion in Russia was due to the absence of a formal government. The chaos existed in spite of the government, and continued because of lack of material power to enforce the decrees.

That government amazed foreign diplomats. The longest span of life allotted to it by them was three weeks. Hourly they awaited its demise. No diplomatic group in Russia, excepting only the American Red Cross Mission, realized the depth of its roots, the strength of its power, or its probable longevity.

Even the Bolsheviki themselves were surprised at its growing power.

“We can’t succeed--Russia is too dark, too backward. But we have shown the way the world can follow. Other countries will succeed where we fail,” they said.

The first decree of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets defined the form of what has generally come to be known as the Soviet Government. It provided that, until the convocation of a constituent assembly, “the direction of the individual branches of the state’s life will be intrusted to certain committees.” “The governmental power belongs to a collegium of the presidents of these committees, called Council of People’s Commissaries.”

The decree of the new democracy of Russia adopted a principle of recall declaring: “The control of the activities of the People’s Commissaries, and the right of removing them, belongs to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates, and to its Central Executive Committee.”

This Central Executive Committee functioned as a permanent parliament. The executive power was vested in the Council of People’s Commissaries, who also exercised legislative functions. The decree named as temporary president of the Council of People’s Commissaries, or as Commissary of Commissaries, Vladimir Oulianoff (Lenin), and as Commissary of Foreign Affairs L. D. Bronstein (Trotzky). Commissaries of other departments were chosen and governmental activities allotted much as they are in the Western democracies. The decree mentioned the commissaries by their own names and the names by which they have come to be known in the revolutionary movement.

Several subsequent decrees defined further governmental powers and limitations. Decree number nine vested all local power in local Soviets, automatically abolishing all previously existing governing bodies; and a later decree confirmed the right of the Soviet to levy taxes for local needs. The eighteenth decree provided what to my Western mind, looking for differences from and similarities to other governments, seemed to be either a veto or a referendum. It declared that all regulations or laws passed by the commissaries could be “postponed, changed, or removed” by the Central Executive Committee or the Soviet.

From the outset, the sessions of the Central Executive Committee were stormy ones. There were few objections to the passage of any decree that we who looked on could have offered which were not made by some one of those soldiers, workers, or peasants of Russia, nightly groping along strange paths for a way to peace and happiness.

In a bill of rights they declared for equality and sovereignty of peoples. It was in accordance with the second clause of this bill that the Soviets later voted to permit Finland and Ukraine to secede from Russia and establish independent states. The bill declared:

“The right of the peoples of Russia for a free self-organization up to partition and the organization of an independent nation.”

“The abolition of all national and religious privileges and limitations.”

“A free development of national minorities and ethnic groups populating the territory of Russia.”

The last two clauses in effect granted religious freedom to all sects, and affected particularly the “old believers” and the Jews, who had always been the object of pogroms and persecution.

The first decree passed after the creation of the government was the decree of peace. By this decree the government proposed at once to begin negotiations for a “just and democratic peace.” It defined such a peace to be one “without annexations and indemnities, and with the right of self-determination.” The decree abolished secret diplomacy, and the government declared its intention to publish the secret treaties. It appealed to the workingmen of France, England, and Germany for aid, and after adverting to the Chartists Movement in England and the revolutions of the French proletariat, said:

“All those examples of proletarian terrorism and historical creative genius are giving us a guaranty that the workmen of the above-mentioned countries will understand that the liberation of mankind from the horrors and consequences of this war depends on them. They give us a guaranty that those workmen, with their resolute and unlimited energy, will help us to bring successfully to an end the question of peace, and the liberation of all the working and exploited masses from any kind of slavery and exploitation.”

The day after Krylenko, the chief of the army, started negotiations for an armistice conference, I heard Trotzky begin his speech about the men with whom he was to negotiate in a fashion quite new in the annals of foreign diplomacy.

“Comrades,” he said, “the bloody Kaiser and his generals have entered into negotiations with our comrade Krylenko, but not out of feelings of deep sympathy for Russia and the Russian revolution. If Germany could have had her own way she would have attempted more than once to seize revolutionary Russia by the throat.

“If the Kaiser and his generals, gritting their teeth, are now expressing willingness to enter into negotiations with a mere _praporschik_ [non-commissioned officer]--if they do that, it is only because the Russian Revolution has cried to the people of the world of slaughter, famine, and disease in the trenches.

“The German Kaiser is now talking to us as an equal with equals because he knows that the uprising of the German workmen and soldiers would be fatal to him if he should make a different answer.”

Sometimes, when a critical situation developed, Lenin himself came to the meetings.

“We have to act, when action is due,” said Lenin. “We have the right to function as a government because we are a government.”

One night, when one of Lenin’s decrees was under discussion, Trotzky came to speak for him.

The Soviet government knew that the peasant would tolerate no further delay in the settlement of the land question.

The land decree was passed, not by the People’s Commissaries, but by the whole Russian Soviet. It abolished the landlords’ property in land and confiscated all landed estates with their movable and immovable property, excepting the small holdings of peasants and Cossacks.

The decree vested the administration of the land in district land committees or district soviets, and declared that “any damage to the confiscated property, which from now on belongs to all the people, will be declared a heinous crime, punishable by the revolutionary court.”

The regulations for the administration of land were based upon instructions formulated by peasants in two hundred and forty-two districts. These instructions--or regulations, as we would call them--had been collected and published three months before the Soviet government took power. The peasants, impatient of the delays of the Kerensky government in solving the land problems, had taken the matter in their own hands.

The quantity of land to be distributed to the laborer was determined by the needs and conditions of the community. Such land could not be alienated, leased, or mortgaged. It was public property for the benefit of those working on it. The right to use land was granted to all citizens (without regard to sex) capable of cultivating it by personal or family labor. Hired labor was not allowed. In case of incapacity due to accident to a member of a rural community, the community must cultivate his land for two years. Farmers who, due to old age or inability, lose forever the possibilities of cultivating the land personally, lose the right of property. Instead, they receive pensional help from the state. The decree provided relief for those who suffered distress due to the confiscation of land. Such relief was difficult to give because of the poverty-stricken condition of the country, and to the owners from whom the land was taken any relief short of actual payment for the land (which the peasants would not even consider) seemed inadequate.

All mineral wealth of the lands, the forests, and the waterways became the property of the state. Estates in intensive culture, such as nurseries, greenhouses, breeding farms, were not subject for distribution, but were to be used for exhibitional and educational purposes.

The nearest thing to a property interest in land was the provision that, while the land of a “quitting member” must be turned back to the land fund, “the right of preference for receiving the estate of the retiring members belongs to the nearest relative, or to persons indicated by the retiring member.”

The form of the cultivation of the land was left to the decision of the village. The land could be cultivated by the community, by the individual, or by the banding together of any number of farmers.

In case of land shortage, the decree provided for re-distribution of the population by induced emigration.

A later land decree created a body known as a Conciliatory Chamber to deal with all disputes, and also enumerated in detail rules governing the conservation of natural resources. Personal property on the estates was not subject to distribution, but the land committees were ordered to inventory and hold it for the benefit of the community.

Three weeks after the Soviet government took the power, it completed its second most important step in its attempt to create a socialist commonwealth. What the land decree was to the peasant, the labor control decree was to the worker. It applied to all industries employing labor, and provided for control by committees, representing laborers and employers, called “organs of labor control.” The control was not confined to a regulation of hours and wages, but extended to all branches of the industry, including the financial phase.

“The commercial secret is abolished,” the decree declared. “The proprietors are obliged to furnish to the organs of labor control all their books and accounts and business correspondence, under penalty of law.”

The decisions of the organs of labor control were binding alike on laborer and proprietor; but the decree provided for an appeal to a higher organ of labor control sitting in Petrograd and made up chiefly of technicians. The right of appeal was granted to both employer and employee. An all-Russian Soviet of labor control was created to coördinate all industries and direct the economic life. The quantity of production was to be determined by the needs of the community, and the price fixed by the cost of production as determined by the organs of labor control.

The Soviet realized the impossibility of immediately putting into effect any such radical overturn of the competitive system, and the decree stated that the labor control must be effected by gradual steps and regulation.

Just as the peasants frequently had taken the land without waiting for decrees, the workers also took the factories. The industry of Russia was disorganized, and the control of factories had practically passed to the workmen early in the Kerensky régime.

The labor decree merely legalized an existing condition and attempted to regulate that control. The members of the factory committee, sobered by responsibility and a growing knowledge of what was possible of accomplishment, found themselves frequently in opposition to the workers who had elected them. The demands of the workers were naturally out of all proportion to the earnings of the industry, and the chief task of the committee was to educate the workers to understand this.

The head of the shop committee at Sestroretzk, a young Socialist named Woscup, told me that his committee was frequently forced to resign rather than grant the impossible demands of the men.

Sestroretzk is the oldest arsenal in Russia. It was founded by Peter the Great, and in 1917 employed sixty-five hundred men. The first strike of the March Revolution started there, and the first company of Red Guard was organized there. Five thousand of its members were Bolsheviki. The men demanded an increase of wages, which was granted, but they also demanded back pay beginning with May. The committee refused this, and a quarrel followed. The committee resigned. “This is our government, and our government can not pay,” Woscup explained. The men, on second sober thought, saw the justice of the refusal, and voted to reinstate the committee.

“The majority is usually reasonable,” explained the young committeeman.

A decree fixing the salaries of the People’s Commissaries at five hundred rubles a month proved an effective measure in controlling the demands of the workers.

“The Commissary of Commissaries gets only five hundred rubles a month,” one committee told some workmen who were demanding an increase. “Surely you do not want to take more from your government than Lenin takes.” This argument won.

The salary decree provided that an additional hundred rubles a month should be paid to each commissary for each dependent member of his family. Under these terms, Lenin received only five hundred rubles, while Trotzky, who had a dependent wife and two children, received eight hundred. Five hundred rubles was equivalent in January to about fifty dollars gold, but its purchasing power was even less.

The workers in government-owned industries, such as posts, telegraphs, and railroads, were given the same right of control as the workers in privately owned industries.

Organs of the press “appealing to open resistance to the government, or sowing disturbance by means of slander or distortion of facts,” or inciting to criminal action, were decreed subject to suspension.

This prohibitive legislation was so contrary to revolutionary ideas that the Soviet, in passing the decree, apologized in the following terms:

“The Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government asks the population to turn its attention upon the fact that in our modern society the wealthy classes, hiding behind liberal screens, have the possibility of seizing in their hands the lion’s share of the public press, and by means of it freely poison the brains and consciences of the masses. To leave it in enemy hands at such a time, when it is not less dangerous than bombs and machine-guns, is out of the question. That is the reason those temporary but necessary measures of stopping the stream of dirt and slander were taken. The yellow and green press would drown with pleasure our young victory in this stream. As the new order will become consolidated, every administrative oppression of the press will be suspended.”

The press became more and more vituperative against the Soviet government, and published, in addition to the accounts of existing chaos, countless rumors of outrages that never happened. In retaliation, the government decreed advertising to be a public monopoly, and permitted publication of advertisements in government organs only. In America such a provision would mean the annihilation of the press; but in Russia, where circulation rather than advertisement is the source of revenue, its effect was less drastic, and opposition papers continued to be published.

Suppressed one day, they came out the next under a new name. A paper called the _Day_ was published as the _Night_, the _Midnight_, the _Two A. M._, and took various other liberties with the clock.

The decree on education, drawn by Lunarcharsky, a writer and scholar, set forth the Soviet’s ideas of instruction. Since the first Revolution, an educational committee had been at work investigating Russia’s needs and formulating a legislative program. Contrary to the spirit of most of the ministries, this committee reached an agreement with the People’s Commissaries, and continued its work in conjunction with them.

Local self-government in education was the fundamental principle of the program. Each locality had the right to determine for itself what it would learn, and when and where and how. The business of the governmental commission created by the decree was “to serve as a junction and helper, to organize sources of material, ideas, and moral support of the local bodies.”

Marie Leon Trotzky Alexandria
Spiridonova Kolontai

Nikolai Lenin

Lunarcharsky Krylenko Kamineff]

The Soviet declared that, whatever other governmental activities were curtailed, “the expenditure on public instruction must stay high. A generous budget for public instruction is the honor and glory of every people. Every truly democratic power in the domain of instruction of the country where ignorance and illiteracy are reigning, must take as its first aim the struggle against darkness. It must obtain in the shortest time a popular literation by means of an organization of a system of schools answering the first principles of contemporary pedagogy, and it must introduce a general, obligatory, and gratuitous education.”

All decrees regulating the individual lives of people inclined toward wide freedom. The night the marriage and divorce decree was passed, there was a long discussion as to whether there should be any limit to the number of divorces that any individual should be granted.

The decree, as it was finally passed, declared church marriages to be personal and private matters, and prescribed that the government recognize only civil marriages. Marriage consisted merely in the registration of intention made by two people, with a department provided for that purpose. Men were prohibited from marrying under the age of eighteen, and girls under sixteen, except in the trans-Caucasian district, where child marriages are the established custom. Here the age was fixed at sixteen for men and thirteen for girls. Polygamy was prohibited, as was marriage between half brothers and sisters, and between the insane. The contracting parties were given the right to choose the name of either husband or wife, or a combination of both names.

Divorce could be granted on the mere request of either one or both. The law provided for the care of the children in case parents could not come to an amicable decision, and declared all children born out of wedlock legitimate and equal in rights and obligations.

There were various measures for the protection of children. The child-labor decree prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years of age, and while it was under discussion the Commissary of Labor proposed that the year following the age limit be raised to fifteen and eventually to twenty. This suggestion was not adopted, but it fitted in with the general program of education, which aimed to keep all the children of Russia in school until they had been given the opportunities that only a few of the aristocrats in the past had enjoyed.

Women, and children under sixteen, were prohibited from night work; and there was an eight-hour law for workers, and a decree limiting the number of hours of employment a week to forty-eight. Among the social measures was decree thirty-four, which transferred the control of private hospitals to the government and obliged each industry to provide one hospital bed for each hundred workmen, and one maternity bed for each two hundred workwomen.

Social insurance against injuries, sickness, and non-employment was also provided in an elaborately worked out decree.

One of the early measures was a national grant of power to municipalities to commandeer all empty premises suitable for lodgings, and to billet in uncrowded apartments the residents of overcrowded dwellings.

When the Soviet had completed decree thirty-one, the five classes in civil life had been abolished, and only one title was left in Russia--“Citizen of the Russian Republic.”