The Workshop Of The Revolution. I. N. Steinberg 1953
With life and limb Russia’s revolutionists were all dedicated to the revolution. Each put the interests of the revolution above his individual aspirations, his private needs, above personal survival. Their life span was marked by self-denial, by rejection of the world’s most precious goods, and frequently ended in heroic sacrifice. They stood out- even in their appearance fromthe normal run of men, absorbed as these are in the daily problems of family, business, communal duties and private happiness. The revolutionists labored for the future; they lived in the future.
But despite the similarity between them, they differed from each other depending on the motivation of their revolutionary thoughts and actions. Though the disparity in motivation, naturally, placed its stamp on their bearing, the spiritual differences can be recognized more clearly by closer scrutiny. It might then appear that some individuals, generally considered revolutionists, were really incompatible with the concept and image of revolution.
There were five types of revolutionists, best studied against the broad backdrop of the Russian Revolution. None of them was a perfectly crystallized and complete type. Elements of many were contained in each concrete personality. But each warrants separate psychological study.
He was the spontaneous fighting man who sincerely battled for himself and his own violated rights-the revolutionist for himself. His kind made up a major element in the revolutionary movements of history-as the rank-and-file. He was the rebel in the slave uprisings of antiquity, in the peasant rebellions at the end of the Middle Ages, in the stormy years of the French Revolution. The slave, the peasant, the artisan rose from degrading slavery to “settle the score” for the centuries of oppression and helplessness. Abruptly, in critical moments of history, downtrodden man lifted his eyes to heaven. As in a flash he saw himself without chains on his hands. And with volcanic power the hot lava of pain, fury, hatred, revenge poured from his heart. His devotion and love for family and tribe, mingling with a long- repressed irritation against a hostile world, burst into flames. He was ready to destroy not only the social structures of his environment, but also the very symbols of their domination. In his zeal he thought only of his suppressed rights, his outraged honor, his years of poverty and degradation.
It was no different in Russia. Even in the years 1904-1906 these oppressed men made their first grandiose attempt to rise, but the state machine of the Czar and the avenging landowning class thrust them back to the ground. Their bloody measures of reprisal left the people stunned and prostrated. By the beginning of 1917, the people had recovered. As czarism failed in war, Russian soldiers, workers and peasants rose in mighty protest. The immediate driving force was self-preservation, a desire to save their lives from war, their land and bread from grasping rulers. Each saw before him his own sufferings, his own salvation.
Symbolically, the rebellion in 1917 began in the long bread lines of Petrograd. Bread!-first of all for myself and my children! Soldiers and sailors vented their hatred upon the officers, the men who had been their Barons, their squires, in the village and were now in command on battlefields or decks. And the angry cry carried across the country: “You've drained enough of our blood!” Memories of torment in prisons and Katorgas rekindled with hellish fire. And in a few villages, squires’ estates were put to the torch. Thus did the humbled slave protest his wretchedness.
The nobler minds of Russia understood the spiritual sources of such outbursts. The poet Alexander Block vividly described his own insight into the mind and heart of the people while outriding with his bride, daughter of the great Russian scientist Mendeleev, somewhere near their estate. Calmly and proudly the young couple bestrode their well-fed horses. The sunny countryside itself seemed to join in their happiness. Suddenly, trudging along the bridle path, appeared an ancient clodhopper, one of Russia’s innumerable peasants, dressed in rags, his back bent and his face furrowed by generations of serfdom. Instinctively, as he saw the two mounted Barins, he jumped off the path into the swampy field. From their height Block and his bride looked down on the peasant. What they read in his eyes was respect, awe and trepidation, but deep-seated hatred also sparked in his eyes. The gay young couple understood then what went on in the soul of the people. The gulf between the misery of the many and their own exclusive comfort had grown too wide. That was why, Block remarked later, estates were being burned.
The primitive rebelliousness which demands retribution for past wrongs came to a head in the revolution. In the first, February phase, of 1917, the defiant rebel came face to face for the first time in modern history with his immediate political and social oppressors: the czarist state official, police officer, priest, factory foreman, estate manager. In part, he settled accounts in spontaneous “hate” attacks, which luckily were like a swiftly passing storm. But the social order itself stood fast. Both the political organs and economic institutions still blocked his way to the real rulers-the industrialists, bankers, merchants, landowners. . . .
But in the October period, the oppressed people came into direct contact with their social, economic and spiritual foes. Hatred flared even brighter. And the age-old anger manifested itself in acts of violence, in the psychology of the “upstart slave,” in imitation of the defeated enemy and the abuse of power. Bolshevism gave this hatred legal charter and scientific sanction. Instead of struggle against social institutions, it inspired and promoted the fight against social enemies, against the individual man.
But it would be a mistake to think that rebels of this type were spurred only by egoism, only by motives of hatred and envy, without any ethical considerations. If so, they would have been no more than the revolution’s “butchers” (there were some such, though in small numbers), and they would naturally have fallen outside the framework of the revolution. In their eruptive, elemental fury these rebels were also guided-deeply, though perhaps unconsciously-by moral indignation. “Where is justice in this world?” they exclaimed inwardly. “Where is God’s truth if my back is scourged, if my wife is a beast of burden and my children without future? Where is charity and good will among men?”
It was these conditions of physical defenselessness, economic poverty, and spiritual humiliation which gave rise to ethical anxiety, to the passionate demand for a “little truth and justice” for the whole world. In such men the rebellion of the ego developed against the background of degraded humanity. The personally aroused individual was simultaneously fired with breath-taking vistas of a better world and he was ready for the greatest sacrifices to end injustice for all who suffered as he did.
But still, the main impetus was his ego, his degradation, his own wasted life, particularly if he was haunted by the fear lest “the old days” come back, restoring poverty, impotence and, worst of all, the torments in prison. In 1919 Moscow witnessed the first session of the association of former czarist Katorga prisoners. They reminisced about their years of torture and indignity. The actors of the Moscow Art Theater presented a play about the notorious Katorga prison in Orel. “There was no plot-only the Katorga prisoners in chains and their daily routine. There were the wardens, the conflicts with them, the various types assembled in this ‘death house.’ And suddenly there was heard the singing of the prison song to the accompanying clang of chains. The entire hall wept. 1 saw how seasoned fighters bowed their heads and let the tears stream down their cheeks. Workers sitting near me whispered in agitation: ‘That was our cell. Must we be in it again? Shall we go through this accursed life once more?’ “ [16]
This fear of the accursed life helped to condition the behavior of this type of rebellious man. And whenever this fear holds millions in its grip, when it is coupled with egoism and pent-up hate, it becomes a dominating factor. Think what happens when such people seize the staff of power! They then embark on that perilous road which begins with liberation and ends with renewed enslavement.
A short formula lists the signposts on that road: humanity, power, violence, cruelty, inhumanity.
The scientific revolutionist based his activities neither on instinct nor emotion. He attached importance to his ideas only because they were founded on clear calculation, on a logical division of the means of action into just and unjust or, rather, into correct and false. In our time his field is Marxism. But even before Marx, the nineteenth century produced such scientifically minded revolutionists. They, the liberals of those days, invoked the logic of reason, the laws of necessity. During the French Revolution many of its spiritual leaders deduced the new social order and the transformation of the ways of life from the basic principles of their liberal philosophy. And Robespierre put the guillotine in the service of his logic of reason.
In an epoch when God was exiled from the clouds and turned over to astronomers, and the concept of life was entrusted to physicists, chemists and biologists, it was natural that sociological phenomena, too, be explained in the same manner, according to the laws of a “social physics.” In an epoch of scientific enthusiasm, of Darwin’s discoveries and “positivist” achievements, social upheaval, even the revolution, was to be conducted according to such laws of necessity and dialectical predetermination.
The Marxist revolutionist thought along such lines on an even deeper level. He had, after all, formulated his position in sharp contradiction to utopianism, to utopian socialism. The latter had been based primarily on the feelings of moral protest, on ethical evaluation and rejection of social inequities. But, while the utopian drew his energy from moral passion and poetic yearning for the future, the Marxist tried to base his socialism on theoretical truth, or the logical means to its realization. To secure its standing in the proletarian movement, Marxism not only rejected, but scorned and ridiculed, all emotional motivation of revolution. It sought to write it off as loose sentimentalism and romanticism, though its own ranks included men of sentimental and romantic inclination.
Its appealing strength lay in the idea that “revolution is the engine of history,” that is, a machine that operates according to scientific rules of physics and technology. ‘There was truly a tremendous spell in the vision that the turbulence of human masses with innumerable desires and interests could be guided according to plan. Nothing seemed mote inspiring than, with power in one’s hands, to lead mankind from chaos to liberation on the rock-fast foundation of economic and sociological laws. Such an exponent of scientific revolutionism was Lenin.
It is therefore no accident that Lenin never sought to thrust his own person on to the stage of world events. For in his philosophy, he was but a machinist servicing the engine of history. This was shown in his attitude after the attempt made on his life by Dora Kaplan in August, 1918. His close friend V. Bontsch-Bruyevitch related that when Lenin recovered from his wound he began reading the newspapers published during his confinement. “He was very upset at the limitless praises of him and the glorification he found in newspapers and telegrams sent him.” “ ‘What is this for,’ he asked me. ‘I find it difficult to read the press. Wherever you look, they write about me. I think this pushing of an individual is non-Marxist and tremendously harmful. And look at the photographs. There’s no place to hide from them. . . . Please talk it over delicately with whoever is responsible and have them stop it.’ From then on,” the writer continued, “the waves of newspaper ecstasy began to decline.” [17]
One can therefore work and fight for a new social order just because it seems “more logical,” more efficient, less wasteful of energy and suffering than the present; because it is, as it were, pre-formed in the development of history. One can actually fight for it, without ever thinking of the social, moral and spiritual needs of man. There are such economically and industrially minded social engineers who seek the transformation of capitalist society not because of socialist ideals but because they repudiate the “aimless” process of production, the misuse of natural and human resources, the “misguided” management of economic bosses. More than that: the more that revolution in general and in each of its phases is seen in the light of historical necessity, the more the humane and moral aspects of revolutionary liberation are rejected and obscured. The first casualty of such a revolutionist is individual man. After all, what can the little man, limited in space and time, comprehend of the majestic march of history? What worth is his “today” compared to the magnificent future, and what value is his “here” in face of universal evolution?
Thus the question of individual sufferings never presents itself, either during civil-war battles, the entrenchment of a dictatorship or during construction of socialism. Thus it was possible for Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky and their successors to sacrifice masses of people for the sake of “great projects,” and to do so with an easy mind and a calmness that was scientifically justified. That is how the “destruction of the Kulaks as a class” was carried through with unheard-of heartlessness. The designation “as a class” shows how the very notion of individual destiny had been abandoned. The same is true of the whole system of the “Five-Year Plans,” or the construction of the great canals which connect the White Sea with the Black or the Caspian. It was thus, and no different, that long ago human ants were used to build Egypt’s pyramids for the eternal glory of the Pharaohs.
True, the ethical idea of socialism was somewhere in the back of their minds, just as it was with the “rebel for himself.” Even the objective, calculating viewpoint originated somewhere in a sense of moral indignation. Who knows but that this humanistic source provided them, unconsciously, with the demonic power to act. But more important than the background was the main motive or spiritual motor of their activity: the logical, schematic calculation, the thought-out doctrine. II the axe and the firebrand were the arms of the first-type revolutionist, for the second the arms were the pen of the pamphleteer, the scalpel of the laboratory investigator. Ami it was unfortunate that mankind’s greatest danger stemmed from the “learned” revolutionist, because he was a slave to his doctrine and tolerated no exceptions to his “laws.” That is why Lenin, on principle, countenanced no leniency.
And thus we return to the same formula: Humanity, power, violence, cruelty, inhumanity.
It might be said that the esthetic revolutionist embraced socialism and a quest for fundamental change in the world because his sense of beauty and harmony had been outraged. He saw ugliness, indignity and baseness in contemporary life, both among the poor and (the eternal boomerang!) in the propertied classes. At every step he encountered vulgarity-in manners and customs, in human faces and bodies, in speech and relationships (between man and wife, parents and children, master and servant)-vulgarities that offended a sensitive soul. The words of Disraeli come to mind, of the two nations in England: the poor and the rich. How different are their women in the streets, how different their faces, their gait and their clothes.
These observers were repelled by the filth in society and therefore dreamt of a new future, a beautiful-esthetically beautiful-future. John Ruskin and William Morris were two men of such mind in England. They described in powerful language the spiritual rottenness of society, the ugliness engendered in the lives of the poor (so much so that they had ceased even to sense it), the disharmony between high human goals and despicable ways of life. Hence they emphasized in their plans for the future the artistic structure and planning of life, of human relationships, even of the objects surrounding them (houses, clothes, tableware).
Such revolutionists were not, of course, esthetes only. If so, they would have been adrift from ethical ideas, recalling Oscar Wilde’s creation, Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray was ready to destroy the privileges of the aristocrats because he could not abide their pretentious airs, their wasteful wealth, their spiritual drabness. That, indeed, was a purely esthetic approach to the social drama: not affection for the suffering fellowman, but contempt for the ruling fops. William Morris and John Ruskin were not like Dorian Gray, because behind their esthetic and artistic goals were moral protests and longings. They searched for moral beauty and harmony. Their noble senses were insulted not only, and not so much, by the physical ugliness of objects and customs, as by the moral falseness, artificiality and cruelty of the ways of life. William Morris wrote:
“The study of history and the love and practice of art forced me into a hatred of the civilization which would turn history into inconsequent nonsense. . . .
“Less lucky than King Midas, our green fields and clear waters, nay, the very air we breathe, are turned not to gold but to dirt; and to speak plainly, we know full well that under the present gospel of Capital not only is there no hope of bettering it, but that things grow worse year by year, day by day.”
Then how should the change come?
“It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full ami reasonable life before him (the workman), a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to matt as his daily bread . . . the beginnings of social revolution must he the foundations of the rebuilding of the Art of the People, that is to say of the Pleasures of Life.” [18]
But there was another type of esthetic revolutionist-the man who took pleasure in the process of revolution because of its intoxicating sweep, its grandeur, its scope-the man who would enjoy, artistically or intellectually, the storm that destroys age- old trees, that shatters the lives of individuals and classes, that rips open the earth for new seeds and plants. Such men re-enact the joy of Nero fiddling within sight of the city he had burned. And similar in mental attitude were those participants in wars (both directly and indirectly-those who fought them and those who glorified them in words) who found exhilaration in the magnificent, the brutal spectacle of battlefields.
How fascinating to those who prepare for war (way back even in military schools) were the accounts of former wars with their famous victories and defeats; the heroic figures of battle leaders; the grandiose movement of masses of men, horses and machines, the brilliant staffs and generals; the superhuman excitement in the dramatic game of life and death, of half-life and half-death. How exulting was the power of officers to give orders, to send men into fire, to be master over thousands of lives; and how inspiring also was it to march in step, ranks closed, under fluttering banners, to the accompaniment of music and the church’s blessings-to march into battle for the glory of a fatherland, a dynasty, an “idea.” How beautiful became the manly friendships between buddies in the trenches, in this atmosphere of dangerous living. Man felt himself bursting with heroic strength such as he never experienced in the quiet, drab, everyday life of duty and routine. Who, but Tolstoy in War and Peace could think at such moments of ethical demands, of the individual personality and its sufferings and despair after the magnificent spectacle of war? Who could think of the tears that flowed, hidden from the patriotic street, in the homes of mothers, wives and children?
That is how the esthetic reveler viewed the most tragic periods of history. Such a man, for instance, was the Soviet Commissar for Education, the Bolshevik Anatole Lunacharsky, whose concern was for the preservation of art treasures during the revolution. In the very beginning of the October Revolution the week when barricade battles were raging in Moscow, Lunacharsky threatened to resign and he issued a public protest against-the bombardment of and damage to the art buildings in Moscow. Artillery fire might have damaged such treasures as the Greek Orthodox Church of Vassili Blazheniyc (built by Ivan the Terrible) and the walls of the old Kremlin. His sensitive artistic soul could not bear such sacrilege even while the fratricidal war was in progress. Lenin only laughed at Lunacharsky’s threatened resignation. Yet no one heard, over the years, Lunacharsky ever publicly protesting against the damage to human dignity or the destruction of human lives by the relentless blows of the Bolshevik terror.
Such “lovers of the arts” submerged themselves completely in the grandiose panorama of the revolution. They felt inspired by its scope: of millions of men marching under red banners and singing the Internationale. All walls, all dams would be torn down in this social upheaval. Entire classes would vanish as if cut down by some gigantic scythe, the choked voices of the defeated mixing with the proud hails of the victors. And these revolutionists exulted, We-you and I – are actually writing a new chapter in world history. What is heroism of war compared with the greatness and beauty of social revolution? Particularly when in me, in my hand, lies the power to remake the world. With a move of this hand whole institutions and structures of yesterday can be removed; and at the same time it can create, bring into the world new, never-before-known institutions and forms of life. Truly, man has become partner to the Creator. Both the masses in the country and nations and governments outside listen with bated breath for word from Russia. This power itself is right, is morality! How can one but immerse oneself in the glory of power, how can one be expected in the tumult of “history” to reserve an inner ear for the individual? How can one sense that there is not one but two colors which symbolize this drama of history-that the red flag is always draped in the black of sorrow?
This type of revolutionist included also those who were driven to the revolutionary process by the urge and the will to power. For these the great dramatic event was primarily a stage on which to display and satisfy their domineering instincts in big things and little, but always with cold calculation and-cynical enthusiasm. By their inner indifference to human suffering and heroic strivings, they actually resembled the scientific revolutionist. And perhaps both are well described in the flaming icy verses of Oscar Wilde’s “Sonnet to Liberty.”
“Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes See nothing save their own unlovely woe.
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,-
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother-: Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved - and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.”
Fortunately, this type revolutionist in his “purest” form has been rare in the reality of history. The other four have constituted the majority by far-both in number and influence.
Now perhaps the mysterious saying of the Talmud might be better understood: “He who walketh on the road and studies the Law and interrupts his learning and sayeth how beautiful is this tree, how beautiful is this field, is as if he had forfeited his life.”
How often did men, confronted with this saying, attempt to draw the conclusion that esthetic values are alien to the Jewish spirit. But it was not against art and beauty that the Talmud warned; but rather against a mingling of the learning of the law with the enjoyment of nature. Study, particularly when one is on the “road” to a great goal, demands such moral concentration on the part of the traveler that he may not dissipate it on the enjoyment of life-not even for a short, passing moment. There are no clear frontiers in nature, no wide gulfs between good and evil. Nature is sublime and neutral, whereas the Law is a refining furnace in which the good is ever separated from evil. Man must therefore always be on guard lest, God forbid, he loses his footing, mistaking the right for the wrong. Once man treads on the hard road of revolution, he dare not confound the ethical law with esthetic feelings, lest the ethical is cast aside. And if that happens, he forfeits life itself, endangering the future of that moment of human liberation so rare in history.
The esthetes, though they were participants in the revolution, accepted it as a “spectacle.” Hence they became not only dangerous, but heartless.
They too came to follow the same destructive formula: humanity, power, violence, cruelty, inhumanity.
Not everybody, of course, had taken the path of revolution to escape a personal fate, or for scientific and esthetic considerations. The great majority dove into the stormy waves of revolution not for their own sakes, but for the sake of others, for their suffering fellow men, for mankind as a whole. A man of “insulted honor” and “wounded conscience” (beloved concepts in Russian literature) could not ignore the coercion and the wanton cruelty perpetrated in his sight. His sense of human dignity was tormented by the knowledge that an entire people lay submissive in the dust. In the hearts of such men there developed a pity for those degraded and humiliated, those men of whom Dostoyevsky wrote with such penetration.
Russian literature in the nineteenth century attached great importance to this sense of pity for people. Not all men were always capable of that all-absorbing and compelling feeling called love. This concept, which has become the bedrock of all world religions and which found articulation in the words, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” was deeply cherished by all sections of the Russian people. They loved not only a man, a woman or a child; they could love no less an idea and every genuine creation of the spirit.
While the complex scale of emotions called love could not be expected of all men, compassion could, and should. You were required to pity not only the poor or the suffering innocent, but the fallen and even the criminal. In popular usage the criminal was called “the pitiable one.” Russians were taught to pity Raskolnikoff, in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Katyusha Masslova in Resurrection by Tolstoy and the tramps in Maxim Gorki’s novels. Russians were taught to have compassion, to stretch out a helping hand-not only within their own circle, toward those who belonged to the same class-to know the feelings and troubles of all “neighbors.” Thus compassion also was expected from the highly placed, the social and cultural elite. One might have said that theirs was an even greater duty to minister to the fallen. To “bend down” in charity, to shed a tear of pity over man was indeed an accepted moral duty. But did not this attitude imply the relationship of the strong toward the weak? Did not this sense of pity, unnoticeable even to the good man himself, contain a note of condescension, of kindness between people not equal among themselves? Then, too, when a strong man helps a weaker brother (be it spiritually or physically), he frequently comes to believe that he knows best what is good for those who need his help. It is as if he assumed responsibility for the others and, as a result-whenever necessary- he will coerce them “for their own good.” Thus the blessed act of charity comes to involve a condemnation of the weak, and a tendency to dominate their lives.
Bitter fruits can therefore grow wherever the revolutionist, in his efforts for the liberation of man, is guided by this noble feeling of pity. The more active and passionate this feeling, the sooner he will sense the weaknesses of people, their lack of understanding of historic trends, their helplessness and blindness and, as a result, the need to take upon himself responsibility for them and to guide them with a firm helping hand. Was not this the source of the terrifying, destructive force of the “ Grand Inquisitor"? Such pity hides the sting of dictatorship, that is, of force and coercion, of cruelty and slavery.
Perhaps to this type revolutionist belongs the somber figure of Felix Dzershinsky. His significance for us is so great as to merit a fuller discussion later in this book. We shall then grasp how he fulfilled to the utmost the perilous formula of the false revolution: humanity, power, violence, cruelty, inhumanity.
Revolution can be symbolized as a figure, prostrate on his knees before a throne, which suddenly, with a burst of unsuspected strength, overturns that throne. This symbol can be applied to all revolutions known in history, yet the symbol alone does not characterize each revolution individually, the difference being with what intent, and in what spiritual climate, the people rise suddenly to their full threatening height. Two logical, or psychological, alternatives are possible here.
It is possible that, when the masses of the people lay in the dust before the throne, their souls were filled with wrath at the oppressive order. Their only passion was thirst for revenge, a desire to get even with their rulers so that they themselves might sit upon the throne. And woe then to all who stood in their path, and woe also to the new society in which yesterday’s slaves became today’s masters.
But it may also be that the suffering masses nurtured thoughts and emotions of a different kind. Their hatred and contempt for human oppression ran so deep, had so suffused their entire being, that their dream was the overturn of the throne not only for themselves, but for all. When, in that rare moment, their liberation dawned, they rose with faces lit by an inner glow so as to destroy all thrones-for all and forever. The rebellious slaves sought no new masters, but man.
In the first case the conqueror is the spontaneous, egocentric revolutionist; in the second he is the revolutionist by love.
This latter revolutionist must not be confused with the rebel by pity, even though both think in terms of others rather than of themselves. Pity permits no equality, but only relationship between a subject and an object, kindness bestowed. In relationships of love, there is equality, moral and factual, on the part of two subjects. In pity, the concept “we” is based primarily on the “I”; in love, the same “we” rests primarily on the “thou.” When inspired by love the revolutionist seeks to help the suffering, not as a benefactor but as a comrade.
Profound resources of love impelled the full hundred years of the struggle of the Russian people for liberation. Against the bright background of that century behold an endless galaxy of fighters-radical and moderate, liberals and democrats, socialists and anarchists. No matter how divergent their political philosophies, their temperaments and their activities, they were all united in one thing: deep love for people and truth. It is no accident that the impoverished, serf-ridden Russia of the Czars produced that magnificent group of people who, under the description of “intelligentsia,” aroused the admiration of all the world. The Russian intelligentsia was not merely a professional group of the educated; it included men and women of all social classes and levels of education. They were united by great social and ethical ideas, by the will to liberate the Russian people and, with it, mankind. Frequently this intelligentsia was called the “Moral Order” of the new era.
In the conditions prevalent in those days it was only natural that the majority of this intelligentsia came from the wealthier classes of Russian society. Until almost the end of the nineteenth century the thinkers, activists and martyrs of the Russian revolution came from the families of the landed gentry and the urban middle class. In the seventies of the century they took to action from a sense of duty toward the people. “If 1 am a thinking person,” wrote the great Russian thinker Nikolai Mikhailovski, “if I recognize that my intellect and all the enjoyment derived from it is bought by the sweat of the many, then what must be my conduct?” That was the primary question.
This intelligentsia answered the question with the powerful movement of “Going Among the People.” In this voluntary mass mobilization for service, they sought nor only to repay their debt and share with the oppressed masses, at least in part, their education and comprehension of life; they sought as much to learn from the people, to imbibe some of their moral strength and innocence, to stand beside them in the struggle for the future. At the root of such a movement was, of course, a love for the people.
This attitude became a firm tradition of the Russian revolution during all the difficult decades of its preparation. Compare, for instance, the notes in Felix Dzershinsky’s diary, permeated by feelings of pity for the poor, with the innumerable statements of Russian revolutionists at their trials. How brightly did love for the oppressed and defense of the dignity and honor of the downtrodden burn in the words of the latter. How much there was of concern for, and faith in, the man in the peasant, for the very concept of man and his inalienable rights. Read, for instance, Gregory Gershuni’s speech in 1904 before the military tribunal which condemned him to death. His is the unforgettable phrase: “We hate you not because you shed our blood, but because you force us to shed yours.”
Read the speech of Maria Spiridonova in 1906 before the military tribunal in Tambov. Read Maxim Gorki’s novel The Mother, in which there is a long gallery of Russian industrial workers who, not conscious themselves of their merit, were magnificent members of the “Order of the Russian Intelligentsia.” And perhaps, best of all, this love was demonstrated by one of the most beautiful figures in the Russian battle-a person who never became a leader, but who expressed in full the love principle in the revolution-Yevstolia P. Ragozinikova.
It was 1907, when all Russia groaned under the bloody knout of the czarist regime, when jails and Katorgas overflowed with prisoners, when prison officials-on orders from Petersburg- subjected their charges to brutal corporal punishment. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the seventeenth of October, Yevstolia Ragozinikova in a black dress and a flowing cape entered the waiting room of the chief prison administration in Petersburg. The young woman filled the room with a distinctive aroma of perfume. She told the orderly that she wished a personal interview with Maximovsky, chief of the prison administration; and was asked to wait. She aroused no suspicion since she was very calm and talked without constraint.
But the night before, her girl friend wrote later, Tolya (as her friends called her) had sat up writing her last letters. Her comrades had finished sewing a bodice and filling it with thirteen pounds of dynamite. In the morning Tolya put on the bodice. The day was cold and foggy. All the way to the prison administration building she watched children with intense concentration and she chose the noisiest streets so as to see more people. And on the way also she talked about her comrades in prisons and in exile; she repeated over and over that she loved all the world, that a bright sun was sparkling in her soul, that she felt wings growing on her back. She hail a wonderful voice and great musical talent.
About five o'clock she was admitted to Maxituovsky’s officc. Two or three minutes later a shot rang out. Maximovsky fell, mortally wounded. Without dropping her gun, Ragozinikova ran to the door of the waiting room. Someone grabbed her from the back. She tore toward the window to signal her comrades who were waiting in the park outside and to throw the gun-as had been arranged-into the street. She did not succeed. To the question of the orderly who held her: “Why did you kill this good man?” she replied, “Who introduced corporal punishment for political prisoners?”
She was calm and soothed the frightened men around her. “Don’t be afraid, my dears. You only obey orders. I won’t touch you.” Then the chief of the Okhrana (the Czar’s political police) arrived and began to search her person. She protested bitterly against a search on the spot demanding to be taken to the Okhrana building itself. Her purpose had been to use there the dynamite she had on her body and to blow up herself together with the institution all Russia hated. In this, too, she failed. The men threw her on the floor and, handling her gingerly, discovered the dynamite and detonator. When the questioning began, she stated, “I do not wish to give you my name. I am a member of the northern section of the party of Social-Revolutionaries. I will answer no further questions.”
The next day, October 16, she stood before a military tribunal. She refused both a lawyer and the right to a last word. At dawn on October 18, at a deserted spot near Kronstadt, she was hanged. Four months later two soldiers related how they had taken her to her execution, and that in the carriage she had sung and talked with animation. She told them that she had killed-not a man, but a robot. On the spot of the execution she asked the officer who nervously conducted the “operation” to hold off until dawn so that she might see one more sunrise. They did not accede to this request.
Here is a fragment from her last letter to her family: “I am writing to tell you, my dear ones, that I am not afraid. Death itself is nothing. We all must die. Frightful only is the thought of dying without having achieved all I could have done. I did what I could, and this gives me peace and courage. I wanted to achieve more in life than I did. I don’t know if I, or circumstances, are to blame. . . .
“Only a higher duty forced me to this deed. No, not even duty, but love, a great love for mankind. For its sake I sacrificed all I had. How good it is to love people. How much strength one gains from such love.
“All my failures seem small, unimportant compared to the goals of mankind.”
Ragozinikova was then twenty years old.
Wherever love guided revolutionary action, there the emphasis was not so much on destruction and overthrow of the old, but on a passionate surge to new, harmonious building. One has but to listen to the voice of Russian Social-Revolutionaries to discern their longing for peaceful constructive living, for the brotherhood of men and nations. That is why these men and women, who took into their hands guns and bombs and other weapons of the struggle, really hated violence with all their souls. A Russian poet once wrote of “hateful love,” trying to express the thought that even in the hatred of Russian revolutionists a great love was hidden.
That was the situation in the period before the Revolution of 1917; and that is how it remained later, in the process of the revolution’s realization. These revolutionists by love were not intoxicated by the incredible power they held, for they sensed all its inherent dangers; they did not strive to perpetuate it in a workers’ state. They knew that in the violent Hood of state coercion not only the rights, but the very being of man, would drown. And if revolutionists of this type were not destined to see victory, if they were made despairing witnesses of how the movement of the people, born in the surge for humanity, was corrupted into a system of inhumanity, they accepted defeat rather than partake in this corruption. For the sake of the idea of love, they were ready to suffer personal defeat. In the conflict between a triumphant Kremlin and the seemingly powerless Golgatha, they knew their place.