Miliukov and the February Revolution

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The February revolution is regarded as a democratic revolution in the true sense of the word. Politically, it unfolded under the leadership of two democratic parties: the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. A return to the “sacred principles,” or “legacy,” of the February revolution is even now the official dogma of so-called democracy. All this gives us reason to expect that the democratic ideologists would rush to draw up a balance sheet on the historical and theoretical lessons of the February experience, to reveal the reasons for its downfall, to define exactly what its “legacy” consists of, and how that legacy is to be realized. Moreover, both democratic parties have enjoyed considerable leisure for more than thirteen years now, and each of them is staffed with men of letters, whose proficiency, in any case, cannot be denied. Nevertheless, we do not have one work by the democrats about the democratic revolution that is worthy of attention. The leaders of the compromiser parties evidently cannot bring themselves to restate the course of development taken by the February revolution, events in which they had occasion to play such a prominent role. Is this not astonishing? No, it is quite in the order of things. The more cautiously the leaders of vulgar democracy regard the actual February revolution, the more boldly they swear by its incorporeal “legacy.” The fact that they themselves held the leading posts for a number of months in 1917, more than anything else, forces them to avert their gaze from the events of that time. For the sorry role of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (with how much irony this name now rings!) reflected not only the personal weakness of these leaders, but the historical degeneracy of vulgar democracy and the foredoomed character of the February revolution as a democratic revolution.

The whole point — and this is the main conclusion of the present book — is that the February revolution was only the shell in which the kernel of the October Revolution was hidden. The history of the February revolution is the history of how the October kernel was freed from its compromiser coverings. If the vulgar democrats only dared to give an objective account of the course of events, they could no more call for a return to February than for the ripened grain to return to the seed from which it sprang. That is why the inspirers of the half-hearted February regime are forced now to close their eyes to their own historical culmination, which was the culmination of their bankruptcy.

One can argue, it is true, that liberalism, in the person of the history professor Miliukov, has indeed attempted to come to grips with the “second Russian revolution.” But Miliukov does not hide at all the fact that he only tolerated the February revolution. If there is any justification for listing a national-liberal monarchist among the democrats — even the vulgar democrats — is it not in fact on the same basis that he reconciled himself to the republic only because nothing else remained? But even leaving political considerations aside, Miliukov’s work on the February revolution cannot in any sense be considered a scientific labor. In his History the leader of liberalism speaks as a victim and as a plaintiff, but not as a historian. His three books read like one long editorial from Rech at the time of the crushing of the Kornilov revolt. Miliukov blames all classes and all parties for not helping his class and his party to concentrate power in their hands. Miliukov attacks the democrats for not wanting or for not being able, to be consistent national-liberals. At the same time, he himself is compelled to testify to the fact that the closer the democrats drew to national-liberalism, the more they lost support among the masses. Finally, nothing else remains for him but to accuse the Russian people of committing a crime — which bears the name “revolution.” Miliukov, when he was writing his three-volume editorial, was still looking for the instigators of the Russian troubles in Ludendorffs chancellory. It is well known that Cadet patriotism consists, on the one hand, in explaining the greatest events in the history of the Russian people as a production staged by the German secret service, while, on the other hand, seeking to take Constantinople from the Turks for the benefit of the “Russian people.” This historical work of Miliukov appropriately completes the political orbit of Russian national-liberalism.

One can understand the revolution, and history as a whole, only as an objectively determined process. Peoples and nations develop in a way that brings to the fore tasks which cannot be solved by any other means that revolution. In certain epochs, these methods impose themselves with such force that the entire nation is drawn into this tragic whirlpool. There is nothing more pitiful than to moralize over great social catastrophes! Here the maxim of Spinoza is especially appropriate: “Neither to weep nor to laugh, but to understand.”

The problems of economy, the state, politics, law, and along with them the problems of the family, the personality, and artistic creation are raised anew by the revolution, and are reexamined from top to bottom. There is not one sphere of human creation in which genuinely national revolutions do not make major milestones. This alone, we mention in passing, gives a most convincing expression to the monism of historical progress. Laying bare all the tissues of society, revolution throws a bright light on the fundamental problems of sociology, that most unfortunate of the sciences, which academic thought feeds with vinegar and kicks. The problems of economics and the state, of the class and the nation, of the party and the class, of the individual and society are all raised during periods of great social overturn with the maximum amount of tension. If the revolution does not immediately solve any of the questions that gave rise to it, only establishing new preconditions for their solution, in return it uncovers all the problems of social life completely. For in sociology, more than anywhere else, the art of cognition is the art of removing the coverings.

There is no need to say that our work does not pretend to be exhaustive. The reader is here presented with primarily a political history of the revolution. Questions of economics are brought in only so far as is necessary for the understanding of the political process. Problems of culture remain entirely outside the scope of this study. It cannot be forgotten, however, that the process of revolution, that is, of the spontaneous struggle of classes for power, is in its very essence a political process.

The author hopes to publish the second volume of the History, devoted to the October Revolution, in the autumn of this year.