THE REVOLUTION—THE ABDICATION OF NICHOLAS II.
 
(MARCH, 1917)
RASPUTIN was no more and the nation was avenged. A few brave men had taken upon themselves to secure the disappearance of the man who was execrated by one and all.[51] It might be hoped that after this explosion of wrath faction would die down. Unfortunately it was not so. On the contrary, the struggle between the Czar and the Duma became more bitter than ever.
The Czar was convinced that in existing circumstances all concessions on his part would be regarded as a sign of weakness which, without removing the causes of the discontent which resulted from the miseries and privations of the war, could only diminish his authority and possibly accelerate a revolution. The opposition of the Duma revealed the incapacity and impotence of the Government and in no way improved the situation. Faction became more intense, intrigue multiplied{188} at a time when nothing but the presentation of a united front by all the intelligent classes of the nation could have paralysed the evil influence of Protopopoff. A universal effort would have been required to avert the catastrophe which was rapidly approaching. It was true that this meant asking the upper classes to prove that they could show as much self-denial as enlightened patriotism, but in the tragic circumstances through which the country was passing such action might have been expected of them.
How is it that in Russia no one realised what everyone in Germany knew—that a revolution would inevitably deliver up the country to its enemies? “I had often dreamed,” writes Ludendorff in his War Memories, “of the realisation of that Russian revolution which was to lighten our military burden. A perpetual illusion! We had the revolution to-day quite unexpectedly. I felt as if a great weight had fallen from my shoulders.”[52]
The Germans were the only people in Europe who knew Russia. Their knowledge of it was fuller and more exact than that of the Russians themselves. They had known for a long time that the Czarist régime, with all its faults, was the only one capable of prolonging the Russian resistance. They knew that with the fall of the Czar Russia would be at their mercy. They stopped at nothing to procure his fall. That is why the preservation of the existing system should have been secured at any cost. The revolution was inevitable at that moment, it was said. It could only be averted by the immediate grant of a constitution. And so on! The fact is{189} that the perverse fate which had blinded the sovereigns was to blind the nation in turn.
Yet the Czar was inspired by two dominant sentiments—his political enemies themselves knew it—to which all Russia could rally. One of them was his love for his country and the other his absolute determination to continue the war to the bitter end. In the universal blindness which was the result of party passion men did not realise that, in spite of all, a Czar pledged to the cause of victory was an immense moral asset for the Russian people. They did not see that a Czar who was what he was popularly supposed to be could alone lead the country to victory and save it from bondage to Germany.
The position of the Czar was extraordinarily difficult. To the Extremists of the Right, who regarded a compromise with Germany as their only road to salvation, he was the insurmountable obstacle, who had to make way for another sovereign. To the Extremists of the Left who desired victory, but a victory without a Czar, he was the obstacle which the revolution would remove. And while the latter were endeavouring to undermine the foundations of the monarchy by intensive propaganda at and behind the front—thus playing Germany’s game—the moderate parties adopted that most dangerous and yet characteristically Russian course of doing nothing. They were victims of that Slav fatalism which means waiting on events and hoping that some providential force will come and guide them for the public good. They confined themselves to passive resistance because they failed to realise that in so acting they were paralysing the nation.
The general public had unconsciously become the docile tool of German intrigue. The most alarming rumours, accepted and given the widest currency, created an anti-monarchist and{190} defeatist atmosphere behind the front—an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion which was bound to have a speedy effect upon the men in the firing-line themselves. Everyone hacked at the central pillar of the tottering political edifice, and no one thought of attempting to shore it up while still there was time. Everything was done to accelerate the revolution; nothing to avert its consequences.
It was forgotten that Russia did not consist merely of fifteen to twenty million human beings ripe for parliamentary government, but that it had one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty million peasants, most of them rude and uneducated, to whom the Czar was still the Lord’s Anointed, he whom God had chosen to direct the destinies of Great Russia. Accustomed from his earliest youth to hear the priest invoke the name of the Czar in the offertory, one of the most solemn moments in the Orthodox liturgy, the moujik in his mystical exaltation was bound to attribute to him a character semi-divine.[53]
The Czar was not the head of the Russian Church. He was its protector and defender. But after Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate the people were inclined to regard him as the incarnation of both spiritual and temporal authority. It was an error, of course, but it survived. It was this double aspect of the person of the sovereign which made Czarism mean so much to the masses, and as the Russian people are essentially mystic, the second factor was not a whit less important than the first. For in the mind of the moujik, autocracy could not be separated from Orthodoxy.
The Russian revolution could not be exclusively a political{191} revolution. It must necessarily have a religious character. When the old system fell it was bound to create such a void in the political and religious conscience of the Russian people that unless care were taken it would involve the whole of the social organism in its fall. To the humble peasant the Czar was both the incarnation of his mystic aspirations and in a sense a tangible reality, impossible to replace by a political formula, which would be an incomprehensible abstraction to him. Into the vacuum created by the collapse of the Czaristic régime the Russian revolution—in view of the passion of the absolute and the proneness to extremes which are characteristic of the Slav nature—was certain to hurl itself with a violence that no government could control. There was a fatal risk that it would all end in political and religious chaos or sheer anarchy.
As the revolution was desired, preparations should have been made to avert this eventuality. Even in times of peace it would have been a formidable risk: to venture upon such a step in war was simply criminal. We Westerners are apt to judge Russian affairs by the governing classes with which we have come in contact—classes which have attained a degree of culture and civilisation equal to our own. We too often forget the millions of semi-barbarous and ignorant beings who understand the simplest and most primitive sentiments alone. Of these the Czarist fetish was one of the most striking examples.
The British Ambassador, getting his information from Russian politicians whose patriotism was above suspicion, but who saw their country as they wanted it to be and not as it really was, allowed himself to be led astray. Insufficient account was taken of the special conditions which made Russia a religious, political, and social anachronism to which none of the{192} formul? or panaceas of Western Europe would apply. They forgot that in any country at war the early stages of a revolution almost always produce a weakening of the national effort and adversely affect the fighting power of the army. In a country like Russia this would be true to a far greater extent. The Entente made a mistake[54] in thinking that the movement which the beginning of February, 1917, revealed was of popular origin. It was nothing of the kind, and only the governing classes participated in it. The great masses stood aloof. It is not true that it was a fundamental upheaval which overturned the monarchy. It was the fall of the monarchy itself which raised that formidable wave which engulfed Russia and nearly submerged the neighbouring states.
 
After his return from G.H.Q. the Czar had remained at Tsarsko?e-Selo for the months of January and February. He felt that the political situation was more and more strained, but he had not yet lost all hope. The country was suffering: it was tired of the war and anxiously longing for peace. The opposition was growing from day to day, and the storm was{193} threatening, but in spite of everything Nicholas II. hoped that patriotic feeling would carry the day against the pessimism which the trials and worries of the moment made general, and that no one would risk compromising the results of a war which had cost the nation so much by rash and imprudent action.
His faith in his army was also unshaken. He knew that the material sent from France and England was arriving satisfactorily and would improve the conditions under which it had to fight. He had the greatest hopes of the new form............