The Russian Revolution полностью

The socialist intellectuals in the Ispolkom had no intention of giving the new government carte blanche. They were prepared to support it only on condition that it accept and implement a program of action to its liking: the Russian formula was postol’ku-poskol’ku (“to the extent that”). To this end, it worked out on March 1 a nine-point program⁸² to serve as a basis of cooperation with the new government. Representatives of the two bodies met at midnight of March 1–2. Miliukov negotiated on behalf of the Duma committee; the Ispolkom was represented by a multiparty delegation headed by Chkheidze. Rather unexpectedly, the Duma committee raised no objection to most of the terms posed by the Ispolkom, in good measure because they sidestepped the two most controversial issues dividing the liberals from the socialists—namely, the conduct of the war and agrarian reform. In the course of negotiations which lasted well into the night, Miliukov persuaded the socialists to drop the demand to have officers elected by the troops. He also succeeded in altering the demand for the immediate introduction of a “democratic republic,” leaving open the possibility of retaining the monarchy, something he ardently desired.⁸³ The two parties reached agreement on what now became an eight-point program, to be issued in the name of the newly formed “Provisional Council of Ministers” with the approval of the Ispolkom, but without its countersignature. The program was meant to serve as the basis of the government’s activity during the brief period that lay ahead until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. It called for:

1. Immediate amnesty for all political prisoners, including terrorists;

2. Immediate granting of the freedom of speech, association, and assembly, and the right to strike, as promised by the tsarist government in 1906 but never fully implemented;

3. Immediate abolition of disabilities and privileges due to nationality, religion, or social origin;

4. Immediate preparations for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, to be elected on a universal, secret, direct, and equal ballot;

5. All police organs to be dissolved and replaced by a militia with elected officers, to be supervised by local government;

6. New elections to organs of local self-government on the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret vote;

7. Military units that had participated in the Revolution to keep their weapons and to receive assurances they would not be sent to the front;

8. Military discipline in the armed forces to be maintained, but when off duty soldiers were to enjoy the same rights as civilians.⁸⁴

This document, drawn up by exhausted politicians in the middle of the night, was to have the direst consequences. The most pernicious were Points 5 and 6, which in one fell swoop abolished the provincial bureaucracy and police that had traditionally kept the Russian state intact. The organs of self-rule—that is, the zemstva and Municipal Councils—which were to replace them had never borne administrative responsibilities and were not equipped to do so. The result was instant nationwide anarchy: anarchy that the new government liked to blame on the old regime but that was, in fact, largely of its own doing. No revolution anywhere, before or after 1917, wreaked such administrative havoc.

Points 1 and 7 were only slightly less calamitous. It was, of course, impossible for a democratic government to keep in prison or exile political activists confined for their opinions. But the blanket amnesty, which covered terrorists, resulted in Petrograd’s being flooded with the most extreme radicals returned from Siberia and abroad. They traveled at the government’s expense, impatient to subvert it. When the British detained Leon Trotsky in Canada as he was making his way home from New York, Miliukov interceded and secured his release. The Provisional Government would issue entry visas to Lenin and his associates returning from Switzerland, who made no secret of the intention to work for its overthrow. The government thus let loose foes of democracy, some of them in contact with the enemy and financed by him—actions difficult to conceive of a more experienced government. And, finally, by allowing the Petrograd garrison to retain weapons and by pledging not to send it to the front, the new government not only surrendered much authority over 160,000 uniformed men but ensconced in the capital city a disgruntled and armed peasantry whom its enemies could turn against it.