Chapter 22

Another Crown Topples

The unnatural alliance of the Czar and the free peoples.—The first Duma and the revolt of 1905.—The Zemptsvos and the people against the pro-German officials.—The death of Rasputin and other signs of unrest.—The revolution of March 1917.—The Czar becomes Mr. Romanoff.—Four different governments within eight months.—Civil war and a German effort for peace.

It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first place by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the unwillingness of Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor crushed, and that England came in to make good her word, pledged to Belgium, to defend that small country from all hostile attacks. Thus the nations of the Entente posed before the world as the defenders of small nations and as champions of the rights of peoples to live under the form of government which they might choose. You will remember that when the central powers said that they were ready to talk peace terms the nations of the Entente replied that there could be no peace as long as the Danes, Poles, and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her empire and as long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either to rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond of saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those enslaved by military rule—a conflict between self-governed nations and those which were oppressing their foreign subjects. Replying to this the central powers would always point to Russia. Russia, said they, oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the Letts, the Esthonians, the Finns. She, as well as Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of Roumanians within her territories. Her people had even less political freedom than the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.

The nations of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact there is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid of a Russian victory. They did not want the war to be won by the one nation in their group which had a despotic form of government. On the other hand the high officials in Russia were not any too happy at the thought of their alliance with the free peoples of western Europe. Germany was much more their ideal of a country governed in the proper manner than was France. As you have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian court were of German blood and secretly desired the victory of their fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep all power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of seeing Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up and demand more liberty.

You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time of the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at all sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of his people away from their own wrongs.

At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg, which they did with great ferocity. All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince, the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy’s food whenever Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few days. The poor little prince, of course, was made sick; whereupon, the Empress would hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon whose arrival the Czarevitch “miraculously” got well. In this manner this low-born fakir obtained such a hold over the Czar and Czarina that he was able to appoint governors of states, put bishops out of their places, and even change prime ministers. There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use his influence in their behalf. It is a sad illustration of the ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could have gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.

The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos. These were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia, elected by the people to decide all local matters, like the building of roads, helping feed the poor, etc. They had been started by Czar Alexander II, in 1862. Although the court was rotten with graft and plotting, the Zemptsvos remained true to the people. They finally all united in a big confederation, and when the world war broke out, this body, really the only patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the grand dukes and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the hands of the enemy.

It was a strange situation. The Russian people through the representatives that they elected to these little county assemblies were patriotically carrying out the war, while the grand dukes and the court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this trouble, were, for the most part, hampering the soldiers, either through grafting off the supplies and speculating in food, or traitorously plotting to betray their country to the Germans. With plenty of food in Russia, with millions of bushels of grain stored away by men who were holding it in order to get still higher prices, there was not enough for the people of Petrograd to eat.

As you were told in a previous chapter, the German, Sturmer, was made prime minister, probably with the approval of the monk, Rasputin. Roumania, depending on promises of Russian help, was crushed between the armies of the Germans on the one side and the Turks and Bulgars on the other, while trainload after trainload of the guns and munitions which would have enabled her armies to stand firm was sidetracked and delayed on Russian railroads. “Your Majesty, we are betrayed,” said the French general who had been sent by the western allies to direct the army of the king of Roumania, when his pleas for ammunition were ignored and promise after promise made him by the Russian prime minister was broken.

Of all the countries in Europe, with the possible exception of Turkey, Russia had been the most ignorant. The great mass of the people had had no schooling and were unable to read and write. It was easier for the grand dukes and nobles to keep down the peasants and to remain undisturbed in the ownership of their great estates if the people knew nothing more than to labor and suffer in silence. There was a class of Russians, however, the most patriotic and the best educated men in the state, who were working quietly, but actively, to make conditions better. Then too, the Nihilists, anarchists who had been working (often by throwing bombs) for the overthrow of the Czar, had spread their teachings throughout the country. Students of the universities, writers, musicians, and artists, had preached the doctrines of the rights of man. While outwardly the government appeared as strong as ever, really it was like a tree whose trunk has rotted through and through, and which needs only one vigorous push to send it crashing to the ground.

It is generally in large cities that protests against the government are begun. For one thing, it is harder, in a great mob of people, to pick out the ones who are responsible for starting the trouble. Then again it is natural for people to make their protests in capital cities where the government cannot fail to hear them. A third reason lies in the fact that in large cities there are always a great number of persons who are poor and who are the first ones to feel the pinch of starvation, when hard times arise or when speculators seize upon food with the idea of causing the prices to rise. Starvation makes these people desperate—they do not care whether they live or not—and, as a result, they dare to oppose themselves to the police and the soldiers.

There had been murmurs of discontent in Petrograd for a long time. This was felt not only among the common people, but also among the more patriotic of the upper classes. In the course of the winter of 1916-17, the monk, Rasputin, as a result of a plot, was invited to the home of a grand duke, a cousin of the Czar. There a young prince, determined to free Russia of this pest, shot him to death and his body was thrown upon the ice of the frozen Neva.

About this time the lack of food in Petrograd, the result largely of speculation and “cornering the market,” had become so serious that the government thought it wise to call in several regiments of Cossacks to reinforce the police.

These Cossacks are wild tribesmen of the plains who enjoy a freedom not shared by any other class in Russia. They are warriors by trade and their sole duty consists in offering themselves, fully equipped, whenever the government has need of their services in war. They were of a different race, originally, than the Russians themselves, although by inter-marrying they now have some Slavic blood in their veins. Their appearance upon the streets of Petrograd was almost always a threat to the people. Enjoying freedom themselves and liking nothing better than the practice of their trade—fighting—they had had little or no sympathy with the wrongs of the populace, and so were the strongest supporters of the despotic rule of the Czar. At times when the Czar did not dare to trust his regular soldiers to enforce order in Petrograd or Moscow, for fear the men would refuse to fire upon their own relatives in the mob, the Cossacks could always be counted upon to ride their horses fearlessly through the people, sabering to right and left those who refused to disperse.

The second week of March, 1917, found crowds in Petrograd protesting against the high prices of food and forming in long lines to demand grain of the government. As day succeeded day, the crowds grew larger and bolder in their murmurings. Cossacks were sent into the city, but for some strange reason they did not cause fear as they had in times past. Their manner was different. Instead of drawing their sabers, they good naturedly joked with the people as they rode among them to disperse the mobs, and were actually cheered at times by the populace. The crowds grew larger and more boisterous. Regiment after regiment of troops was called in. The police fired upon the people when the latter refused to go home. Then a strange thing happened. A Cossack, his eyes flashing fire, rode at full tilt up the street toward a policeman who was firing on the mob, and shot him dead on the spot. A shout went up from the people: “The Cossacks are with us!” New regiments of troops were brought in. The men who composed them knew that they were going to be ordered to fire upon their own kind of people—their own kin perhaps, whose only crime was that they were hungry and had dared to say so. One regiment turned upon its officers, refusing to obey them, and made them prisoners. Another and another joined the revolting forces. It was like the scenes in Paris on the 14th of July, 1789. The people had gathered to protest, and, hardly knowing what they did, they had turned their protests into a revolution. Regiments loyal to the Czar were hastily summoned to fire upon their revolting comrades. They hesitated. Leaders of the mob rushed over to them, pleading with them not to fire. A few scattering volleys were followed by a lull, and, then with a shout of joy, the troops last remaining loyal threw down their arms and rushed across to embrace the revolutionists. At a great meeting of the mob a group of soldiers and working men was picked out to call upon the Duma and ask this body to form a temporary government. Another group was appointed to wait upon Nicholas II and tell him that henceforth he was not the Czar of all the Russias, but plain Nicholas Romanoff. Messengers were sent to the fighting fronts to inform the generals that they were no longer to take orders from the Czar, but from the representatives of the free people of Russia. With remarkable calmness, the nation accepted the new situation. Within two days a new government had been formed, composed of some of the best men in the great empire. The Czar signed a paper giving up the throne in behalf of himself and his young son and nominating his brother Michael to take his place. Michael, however, was too wise. He notified the people that he would accept the crown only if they should vote to give it to him; and this the people would not do.

The government, as formed at first, with its ministers of different departments like the American cabinet, was composed of citizens of the middle classes—lawyers, professors of the universities, land-owners, merchants were represented—and at the head of the ministry was a prince. This arrangement did not satisfy the rabble. The radical socialists, most of whom owned no property and wanted all wealth divided up among all the people, were not much happier to be ruled by the moderately well-to-do than they were to submit to the rule of the nobles. The council of workingmen and soldiers, meeting in the great hall which had formerly housed the Duma, began to take upon themselves the powers of government. Someone proclaimed that now the Russian people should have peace, and when Prof. Milioukoff, foreign minister for the new government, assured France and England that Russia would stick by them to the last, a howling crowd of workingmen threatened to mob him. “No annexations and no indemnities,” was the cry of the socialists. “Let us go back to conditions as they were before the war. Let each nation bear the burden of its own losses and let us have peace.” After a stormy session, the new government agreed to include in its numbers several representatives of the soldiers and workingmen. Prof. Milioukoff resigned and Alexander Kerensky, a radical young lawyer, became the real leader of the Russian government.

Germany and Austria, meanwhile, had eagerly seized the advantage offered by Russia’s internal troubles. Their troops were ordered to make friends with the Russians in the trenches opposite. They played eagerly upon the new Russian feeling of the brotherhood of man and freedom and equality, to do away with fighting on the east, thus being able to transfer to the western front some of their best regiments. As a result the French and English, after driving the Germans back for many miles in northern France were at last brought to a standstill. The burden of carrying the whole war seemed about to fall more heavily than ever upon the armies in the west. Talk of a separate peace between Russia and the central powers grew stronger and stronger. The Russian troops felt that they had been fighting the battles of the Czar and the grand dukes and they saw no reason why they should go on shooting their brother workingmen in Germany.

At this point Kerensky, who had been made minister of war, set out to visit the armies in the field. Arriving at the battle grounds of eastern Galicia he made rousing speeches to the soldiers and actually led them in person toward the German trenches. The result was a vigorous attack all along the line under Generals Brusiloff and Korniloff which swept the Germans and Austrians back for many miles, and threatened for a time to recapture Lemberg. German spies, however, and agents of the peace party were busy among the Russian soldiers. They soon persuaded a certain division to stop fighting and retreat. The movement to the rear, begun by these troops, carried others with it, and for a time it seemed as though the whole Russian army was going to pieces. Ammunition was not supplied to the soldiers. The situation was serious and called for a strong hand. Kerensky was made prime minister and the members of the government and the council of workingmen and soldiers voted him almost the powers of a Czar. He was authorized to give orders that any deserters or traitors be shot, if need be, without trial. Under his rule the Russian army began to re-form, and the situation improved.

In November, 1917, a faction of the extreme Socialists called the Bolsheviki (Bŏl-shĕ-vï′kï) won over the garrisons of Petrograd and Moscow, seized control of the government, forcing Kerensky to flee, and threatened to make peace with Germany. These people are, for the most part, the poor citizens of large cities. They have few followers outside of the city population, for the average Russian in the country is a land owner, and he does not take kindly to the idea of losing his property or dividing it with some landless beggar from Petrograd.

The revolt of the Bolsheviki, then, simply added to the confusion in the realm of Russia. That unhappy country was torn apart by the fights of the different factions. Finland demanded its independence, and German spies and agents encouraged the Ruthenians living in a great province called the Ukraine, to do the same. The Cossacks withdrew to the country to the north of the Crimean peninsula, and the only Russian armies that kept on fighting were those in Turkey. These forces had been gathered largely from the states between the Black and Caspian Seas. Having suffered persecution in the old days, they had hated the Turks for ages and needed no orders from Petrograd to induce them to take revenge.

Finally the Bolshevik government agreed to a peace with the central powers which gave Germany and Austria everything that they wanted. The Russian armies were disbanded and the Germans and Austrians were free to turn their fighting men back to the western front. In the meantime, the Ruthenian republic, now called the Ukraine, was allowed by the Bolsheviki to make a separate peace with Germany and Austria. The troops of the Germans and Austrians began joyously to pillage both Russia and the Ukraine, hunting for the food that was so scarce in the central empires. However, for a whole year hardly anybody in Russia had been willing to do a stroke of work. The fields had gone untilled while the peasants, drunk with their new freedom, and without a care for the morrow, lived off the grain that had been saved up during the past years. As a result, whatever grain the enemy found proved spoiled and mouldy, hardly fit to feed to hogs. As the Germans went about, taking anything that they wished and as food grew scarce, the unrest in Russia grew greater.

The Bolshevik government had not set up a democracy—a government where all the people had equal rights: they had set up a tyranny of the lower classes. The small land owners, the tradesmen, the middle classes were not allowed any voice in the government. When the first National Assembly or Congress was elected and called together, the Bolsheviki finding that they did not control a majority of its members, disbanded it by force.

Little by little people began to oppose this rule. They objected to being robbed of their rights by the rabble just as much as by the Czar.

When the Russian armies were disbanded, there were some troops that refused to throw down their arms. Among them were the regiments of Czecho-Slovaks. These men had been forced, against their will, to serve in the Austrian army. They were from the northern part of the Austrian empire, Bohemia and Moravia. They were Slavs, related to the Russians, speaking a language very much like Russian, hating the Germans of Austria and anxious to free their country from the empire of the Hapsburgs. When General Brusiloff made his big attack in June, 1916, these men had deserted the Austrian army and re-enlisted as Russians. They could not get back to Austria for the Austrians would shoot them as deserters. Of course, the Austrian and the German generals would make no peace with them. Therefore, this army, 200,000 strong, kept their own officers and their order and their arms and refused to have anything to do with the cowardly peace made by the Bolsheviki. Several thousand of them made their way across Siberia, across the Pacific Ocean, across America, across the Atlantic to France and Italy, where they are fighting by the thousands in the armies of the Entente. The main body of them, however, are still in Russia (August 1, 1918), holding the great Siberian railway, fully ready to renew the war against the central powers at any time when the patriotic Russians will rise and help them. The problem of how to get aid to the Czechs without angering the Russian people is a big one for the allied statesmen.

The trouble with the Russians is that they are not educated; the result of this is that they readily believe the lies of spies and tricksters, that would never deceive an educated man.

Questions for Review

Was the Russian government as harsh as that of Germany?

Why was Russia a source of weakness to the Entente?

Why was Rasputin killed?

Why did the Czars prefer the Cossacks?

What classes fought after the Czar’s downfall?

How did the central powers take advantage of Russia’s troubles?

How did the peace with the Bolsheviki help Germany?

Explain where the Czecho-Slovak army came from.