The Russian Revolution полностью

An immediate result was the collapse of the strike of white-collar personnel in the ministries and private enterprises, who drifted back to work after January 5, some driven by personal need, others in the belief that they would be better able to influence events from the inside. The psychology of the opposition now suffered a fatal break: it is as if brutality and the disregard of the nation’s will legitimized the Bolshevik dictatorship. The country at large felt that after a year of chaos, it at last had a “real” government. This certainly held true of the peasant and worker masses but, paradoxically, also of the well-to-do and conservative elements, Pravda’s “hyenas of capital” and “enemies of the people,” who despised the socialist intelligentsia and street mobs even more than they did the Bolsheviks.* In a sense the Bolsheviks may be said to have become the government of Russia not so much in October 1917 as in January 1918. In the words of one contemporary, “authentic, genuine Bolshevism, the Bolshevism of the broad masses, came only after January 5.”¹³⁰

Indeed, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was in many respects more important for the future of Russia than the October coup which had been carried out behind the smoke screen of “All Power to the Soviets.” If the purpose of October remained concealed from nearly everyone, including rank-and-file Bolsheviks, there could be no doubt about Bolshevik intentions after January 5, when they had made it unmistakably clear they intended to pay no heed to popular opinion. They did not have to listen to the voice of the people because, in the literal sense of the word, they were the “people.”^** In the words of Lenin, “The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by Soviet authority [was] the complete and open liquidation of formal democracy in the name of the revolutionary dictatorship.”¹³¹

The response to this historic event on the part of the population at large and the intelligentsia augured ill for the country’s future. Russia, events confirmed once again, lacked a sense of national cohesion capable of inspiring the population to give up immediate and personal interests for the sake of the common good. The “popular masses” demonstrated that they understood only private and regional interests, the heady joys of the duvan, which were satisfied, for the time being, by the soviets and factory committees. In accord with the Russian proverb “He who grabs the stick is corporal,” they conceded power to the boldest and most ruthless claimant.

The evidence indicates that the industrial workers of Petrograd, even as they voted for the Bolshevik ticket, had expected the Assembly to meet and give shape to the country’s new political and social system. This is confirmed by their signatures on the various petitions of the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, Pravda’s complaints about workers’ support for it,¹³² and the frenetic appeals combined with threats which the Bolsheviks directed at the workers on the eve of the Assembly’s convocation. And yet, when confronted with the unflinching determination of the regime to liquidate the Assembly, backed with guns that did not hesitate to fire, the workers folded. Was it because they were betrayed by the intelligentsia, which urged them not to resist? If that was the case, then the role of intellectuals in the revolution against tsarism stands out in bold relief: without their prodding, it seems, Russian workers would not stand up to the government.

As for the peasants, they could not care less what went on in the big city. SR agitators told them to vote, so they voted; and if some other group of “white hands” took over, what difference did it make? Their concerns did not extend beyond the boundaries of their volosti.