The Kornilov affair had opened the eyes of large numbers of peasants as well. To them Kornilov’s action was an obvious attempt to reinstate the landlords in the old “nobles’ nests” and meant the destruction of all hopes of receiving land from the Provisional Government. As it was, very little of an encouraging nature was to be heard about the land, and here was the old class enemy again active, the enemy at whose hands the peasantry—to use a phrase current at the time—had been “Kornilised and Kerenised” for half a year. In response to the attempt of the landlords to take a firmer hold on the land, the peasants rose up in revolt all over the country.
The files of Kerensky’s militia contain detailed reports illustrative of the stormy rise of the peasant movement. The reports as a rule contain only the most outstanding facts, and those chiefly which occurred in districts not very remote from the centre. But even so, they present a vivid picture of the character of the movement. The number of peasant actions (such as arbitrarily felling timber, trampling down fields, harvesting crops, seizing estates, etc.), varied from month to month as follows:(1)
| May | June | July | August | September |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 259 | 577 | 1,122 | 691 | 629 |
At a first glance, it might appear that after the July days the peasant movement had tended to subside. And this, in fact, was the conclusion drawn from these figures by those figure-jugglers, the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders. They tried to prove that the peasants were quieting down and were prepared to defer “discussing the land question” until “the arrival of the master,” i.e., until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.
Apart from the fact that Kerensky’s militia was unscrupulous in its selection of data, it presented them in its reports in an utterly dishonest way. The bourgeois statisticians excluded the most acute form of the agrarian struggle—the wrecking and burning of manors and the seizure of land and farm property—from the group of agrarian crimes and included them in the group of “crimes of destruction and seizure,” where the seizure of estates was combined under one heading with common murder and robbery. But even this unscrupulous trick could not conceal the truth about the peasant movement. While the general total of peasant actions declined, the number of cases of destruction and seizure of landed estates rapidly rose:(2)
| May | June | July | August | September | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crimes of destruction and seizure | 152 | 112 | 387 | 440 | 958 |
The peasant movement radically changed its form. The trampling down of landlords’ fields, the seizure of their crops, and economic conflicts gave place to “smoking out” the landlords from their nests: the peasants began to wreck and burn manors, to seize the land and to divide up the farms. Reports of fresh revolts in the countryside were a common feature at the meetings of the Provisional Government. On September 27, Vice-Premier Konovalov reported that the destruction of manors in the Saratov Province had become widespread; on October 3 it was reported that manors were being destroyed in the Volhynia Province; on October 4 news was received of the seizure and division of estates in the Provinces of Kursk, Penza and Ryazan; on October 6 a report was made on the spread of the movement in the Vladikavkaz, Minsk, Kharkov and Volhynia Provinces. The peasant movement spread like wildfire from region to region and steadily approached the war front, where millions of soldiers greedily drank in all rumours of the seizure of landed estates.
The approach of the wave of peasant revolts to the front, where feeling was already tense, induced the Provisional Government to launch another counter revolutionary plan.
On October 15 the Ministry of the Interior, on the plausible pretext of improving the food supply of the army, proposed that the cavalry should be withdrawn from the front to the interior. The plan was to distribute the cavalry over as many districts as possible, but almost exclusively in such where peasant revolts were rife: Ryazan, Tambov, Penza, Saratov, Kursk, Orel, Kiev, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, Novgorod, Perm, etc. That the intention was indeed to launch a huge punitive expedition, in which the whole cavalry was to be employed to wreak vengeance on the peasantry, is borne out by telegrams exchanged between the Minister of the Interior, Nikitin (a member of the Menshevik Party), and General Dukhonin. Requesting the dispatch of cavalry, Nikitin pointed out that
“for foraging purposes and with advantage from the standpoint of the restoration of order, the cavalry divisions may be redistributed urgently. . . .”(3)
And then follows a list of areas where revolt was rife—about twenty provinces or more than one-third of European Russia!
The Menshevik Minister proposed to chastise a good third of the peasants by the hand of their own soldier sons.
Dukhonin replied to this zealous defender of the landlords:
“War conditions and the robbery and brigandage which have recently become prevalent in the immediate rear make it impossible just now to withdraw the cavalry from the front and to dispatch it far into the interior. . . . The maintenance of order within the country should be entrusted to a properly organised militia consisting of selected and reliable men retired from active service because of age.”(4)
With soldier-like bluntness, General Dukhonin blurted out the truth about the plan: the cavalry was to be withdrawn not for foraging purposes, but solely to crush the peasant movement. The plan did not come off: there was a shortage of reliable cavalry regiments, because such as were sent soon became hotbeds of revolutionary ideas themselves. But the fact that the plan had been conceived, showed that the landlord and bourgeois government was prepared to drench the country in blood in order to smash the resistance of the peasants.
The punitive expeditions into the rural districts added fuel to the flames: the last hopes were dissipated—peasant revolt flared up all over the country, surrounding the provincial capitals in rings of fire.
“The crucial point of the revolution in Russia has undoubtedly arrived,” Lenin wrote at this period. “In a peasant country, and under a revolutionary, republican government, which enjoys the support of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, parties that only recently dominated the petty-bourgeois democracy, a peasant revolt is developing.
“It is incredible, but it is a fact.”(5)
A vigorous movement also began among the oppressed nationalities of Russia.
The bourgeois nationalist organisations began to regard Kornilov and his chauvinist, Great-Russian policy as a serious menace to their existence, and hastened to condemn the action of the counter-revolutionaries.
“It would be a serious disaster,” an appeal of the Ukrainian Central Rada stated, “if General Kornilov succeeded in turning the people and the army against the government. . . . The peasants and workers would be utterly ruined and would be condemned to their former slavery to the nobles and the tsar. . . . The Ukrainian Central Rada appeals to the population of the Ukrainian land not to obey the orders of Kornilov and the other enemies of the revolution. The Ukrainian Central Rada proclaims to all citizens of the villages and cities of the Ukraine that the only lawful government in Russia is the Russian Provisional Government, and in the Ukraine the Ukrainian Central Rada and its General Secretariat.”(6)
Even an All-Russian Congress of Mullahs held in Kazan, which joined the general Moslem Congress, called upon the vast Mohammedan population of Russia
“to link its destinies with the power and the organs of democracy which ever since the revolution have been the bulwark of the liberties won.”(7)
In Transcaucasia the local bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois parties issued a call to resist Kornilov. In Buryatia and Turkestan the native bourgeoisie passed resolutions protesting against the Kornilov revolt.
But the scope of the mass movement frightened the native bourgeois and their Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik lackeys.
The continuation of the imperialist war, the growing famine, and what was virtually a direct refusal to settle the national question, convinced the masses of the oppressed nationalities that not only the Great-Russian bourgeoisie, but even their own bourgeoisie was incapable of leading the fight for emancipation.
After the dispersal of the Finnish Diet by the Provisional Government, the leaders of the Diet decided to restore it without official sanction. But on September 15 the Governor-General of Finland, the Constitutional Democrat Nekrasov, sealed the doors of the hall in which the deputies met. The Helsingfors Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, led by the Bolsheviks, supported the Diet. “The Diet will meet under the protection of our bayonets,” the representatives of the Soviet declared to the Governor- General. The Provisional Government gave orders to withdraw the revolutionary troops from Finland in order to smash the resistance of the working population. It became clear to the proletariat and the people of Finland generally that only a Soviet government could bring them liberty.
In the Crimea the Tatar working population compelled a Congress of Crimean Mohammedans, held on October 8 in Simferopol, to demand the summoning of a Crimean Moslem Diet before the Constituent Assembly met. The oppressed population of the Crimea had no faith in the promises of the Provisional Government and endeavoured to take the settlement of the national question into their own hands.
Collisions between government Commissars and local organisations became frequent in all the regions inhabited by non-Russian nationalities. Every attempt at national self-determination, every slightest move towards political independence was vigorously resisted by the Russian Provisional Government. On the other hand, the workers and peasants of the oppressed nations demanded that the nationalist organisations, which in the early stage of the revolution had assumed the lead of the bourgeois national liberation movement, should adopt a vigorous policy and demand the cessation of the war, the confiscation of the landed estates and the abolition of national inequality.
The situation grew more and more acute as the revolution took firmer hold: the workers and peasants exercised pressure from below, while the repressive machinery of the Provisional Government exercised pressure from above. The conviction gained ground among the people that only by a simultaneous fight against imperialism and their own native bourgeoisie, only by a fight for the power of the Soviets, could their emancipation be achieved.
Writing of the national struggle of that period, Stalin said:
“Since the ‘national’ institutions in the border regions displayed a tendency to political independence, they encountered the insuperable hostility of the imperialist government of Russia. Since, on the other hand, while establishing the power of the national bourgeoisie, they remained deaf to the vital interests of their ‘own’ workers and peasants, they evoked grumbling and discontent among the latter. . . .
“It became obvious that the emancipation of the toiling masses of the oppressed nationalities and the abolition of national oppression were inconceivable without a break with imperialism, without the overthrow by each nationality of its ‘own’ national bourgeoisie and the assumption of power by the toiling masses themselves.”(8)
The process of social differentiation within the united national movement proceeded with more or less intensity among all the nationalities, depending on the degree of organisation and class consciousness of the proletariat. The process is illustrated by the fight waged by the poor of Uzbekistan for control of the Samarkand City Duma at the end of August 1917. The national bourgeoisie put forward a united list of Mohammedan candidates in the elections, consisting exclusively of bais, mullahs and merchants. When the workers and poor of Samarkand demanded that ten of their representatives should be included in this list, they were refused and told to content themselves with two candidates. The poor of Samarkand, organised in the Union of Toiling Mohammedans, rejected this proposal.
The Union issued the following leaflet addressed to the working population:
“Is it fair that of a total of seventy-five members of the City Duma, seventy-three should represent the bais, mullahs and intellectuals, who do not constitute even one-tenth of the population of the city, while we, the poor and workers, who constitute the majority of the population should have only two representatives? That is why we rejected the terms proposed by the Shura [the bourgeois nationalist organisation—Ed.].
“But this same Shura,” the leaflet went on to say, “which refused us ten representatives—do you know what it has done? It has joined with a Russian alliance known as the Society of Houseowners and has included twenty-five Russians in its list. On hearing this, we said: ‘Very well!’ And, trusting in God, we drew up our own list made up of one representative from every group of workers in our city. Certain people are very much alarmed at our action, because they are afraid that if we secure the election of our poor to the City Duma no seats will be left for them. . . . Workers, do not be heedless of your own interests, do not let yourselves be deceived!”(9)
This document vividly reflects the new feature in the national movement that inevitably appeared as the revolution progressed from the bourgeois-democratic phase to the Socialist phase. Even the most backward sections of the proletariat of the non-Russian nationalities were taught by experience that their “own” exploiters and the Russian exploiters were united by class interests. It was not without reason that the native bourgeois feared that “no seats will be left for them.”
The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nationalities endeavoured to check this process of differentiation within the national movement. This could be done only by fencing themselves off from Russia, from which the revolutionary infection of Bolshevism was irresistibly spreading.
“Russia is at present in a state of disintegration and disseverance, and is ceaselessly writhing in the throes of revolution,” the Finnish bourgeois newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet stated. “The Russian people are possessed by a spirit of unbridled anarchy and self-destruction. That being the case, ought we not to endeavour as far as possible to separate ourselves from this chaos, so as not to be dragged to destruction ourselves?”(10)
The Finnish bourgeoisie very frankly expressed the secret wishes of the bourgeoisie of all the oppressed nationalities. But their cherished ambitions became more and more obvious. After the suppression of the Kornilov revolt, the bourgeoisie grew more anxious than ever to fence themselves off from the revolutionary centres. This desire was fostered not only by the imperialist policy of the Provisional Government, but also by fear of the activities of their “own” workers and peasants.
In many of the regions inhabited by non-Russian nationalities class conflicts began to assume the form of an armed struggle. The peasant movement was most intense in the national regions: in September there were only thirteen peasant outbreaks in the Vladimir Province in Central Russia, but there were fifty-one outbreaks in the Kazan Province, fifty-seven in the Minsk Province, and thirty-nine in the Kiev Province. In some places the movement of the peasants of the oppressed nationalities began to merge with the strike movement of the workers, which created an extremely tense situation in these national regions. At a meeting of the Provisional Government held on October 4, the Minister of the Interior, the Menshevik Nikitin, reported that the peasants were waging an armed struggle in the Grozny, Vedensk and Khasav-Yurt districts of the Terek Region. What alarmed the Minister most of all was the fact that at this period a strike had broken out in the Grozny oilfields. How terrified the government was of a union of the revolutionary national movement with the workers’ revolution can be judged from the fact that the government hastened by telegram to proclaim martial law in the districts mentioned.
The workers’ revolution and the peasants’ revolt were joined by the war of national liberation.
“The national and agrarian questions,” Lenin wrote, “are questions of fundamental importance for the petty-bourgeois masses of the population of Russia at the present time. That is indisputable. And with regard to both these questions the proletariat is a long way from being ‘isolated.’ It has the majority of the people behind it. It alone is capable of pursuing a bold and truly ‘revolutionary-democratic’ policy on both these questions, such as would immediately assure a proletarian government not only the support of the majority of the population, but also a veritable outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm on the part of the masses.”(11)
[1] Central Archives, The Peasant Movement in 1917, Moscow, 1927, Appendix.
[2] Ibid., Appendix.
[3] Central Archives, Disintegration of the Army in 1917, Moscow, 1925, p. 134.
[4] Ibid., p. 135.
[5] Lenin, “The Crisis Has Matured,” Selected Works (Eng. ed.), Vol. VI, p. 225.
[6] “Appeal of the Central Rada,” Kievskaya Mysl, No. 210, August 29, 1917.
[7] “Appeal to Mohammedans,” Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, No. 151, August 31, 1917.
[8] J. Stalin, “The October Revolution and the National Question,” Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (Eng. ed., 1935), pp. 69-70.
[9] “To the Toiling Mohammedans of the City of Samarkand,” Khurriyat, No. 33, August 25, 1917 (In Uzbek).
[10] “Finnish Affairs,” Ryech, No. 226, September 26, 1917.
[11] Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” Selected Works, (Eng. Ed.), Vol. VI, p. 258.
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