Then there was the issue of war and peace. In theory, all the leading parties represented in the government and the Soviet, the Bolsheviks excepted, favored continuation of the war until victory. This stand reflected the mood of the population. Contrary to a widespread belief that the February Revolution was brought about by war weariness, anti-German sentiment ran high. The overthrow of the tsarist regime had been in the first place inspired by the beliefs that it was too incompetent to lead the country to victory, it sought a separate peace, and it even betrayed secrets to the enemy. “In the first weeks [of the February Revolution],” observes Sukhanov, “the soldier mass in Petrograd not only would not listen to talk of peace, but would not allow it to be uttered, ready to bayonet any uncautious ‘traitor’ and anyone who ‘opened the front to the enemy.’ ”182 In March and April, it was common to see soldiers carry placards calling for “War to the End!”183 A French historian who had the opportunity to read the messages sent to the Provisional Government and the Soviet in the first two months of the new regime, confirms Sukhanov’s impression. Worker petitions placed at the head of demands the eight-hour working day; only 3 percent called for peace without annexations and contributions. Twenty-three percent of the peasants’ petitions wanted a “quick and just peace,” but even among them this was a secondary issue. As for the soldiers, their petitions indicated they “were likely to treat proponents of immediate peace as supporters of the Kaiser.”184 The issue was so sensitive that the Bolsheviks, who alone favored such a peace, exercised great caution in public pronouncements. It is indicative of the Petrograd garrison’s animosity toward them because of their war stand that in the elections to the Ispolkom in the Soviet Soldiers’ Section on April 8 no Bolshevik won a seat.185 Much of the violence perpetrated in February and March was directed against individuals who bore German names and for this reason were suspected of treason. Admiral Kolchak, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, reported that the main disturbances under his command were against officers with German names.186 The same held true for the naval base of Kronshtadt. When on February 27 a mob set fire to the Petrograd residence of Count Fredericks, the Tsar’s aide (who happened to be of Swedish ancestry), it did so because his name aroused suspicions of pro-German sympathies.187
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Despite the hatred of Germans and the general support of the war against them, the question of war aims acquired great importance in the popular mind due to socialist agitation. It was characteristic of the socialist intellectuals to advocate contradictory policies linked by pious intentions. They wanted war to victory, yet labeled the war “imperialist” and passed legislation (e.g., Order No. 1 and the eight-hour working day) that made the pursuit of the war all but impossible. They wanted national victory, yet in their declarations spoke of the masses of all the belligerent countries sharing a common interest in bringing down the “ruling classes.” In an “Appeal to the Peoples of the World” on March 15, the Ispolkom called on the world’s peoples to rise in revolution:
Turning to all nations, bled white and ruined by the monstrous war, we declare that the time has come to launch the decisive struggle against the rapacious strivings of the governments of all countries. The time has come to take the decision on war and peace into one’s own hands.
Conscious of its revolutionary might, Russian democracy declares that it will resist with all means the rapacious policy of its ruling classes, and calls on the nations of Europe to undertake jointly decisive actions on behalf of peace.…
We shall staunchly defend our own freedom against all reactionary infringements from within and from without. The Russian Revolution will not yield to the bayonets of conquerors and will not allow itself to be crushed by foreign military might.188
Such rhetoric must have appeared reasonable to the intellectuals who drafted the “Appeal,” but, like the concept of “dual power,” it left the man in the street perplexed. If Russia’s “ruling classes” indeed pursued a “rapacious policy,” why keep them in power and why be “bled white” in their “monstrous war”?
