This volume covers March 23 to March 31 in the year of 1917. Russia is done throwing out the old powers and running things how they like, only to find that nothing works anymore. The soldiers don't want to fight, the workers don't want to work, the farmers don't want to farm. Everyone wants more money for less labor. When discipline is lost at the top -- when the government ceases to exist -- discipline is lost at the bottom. The peasants are demanding free land that should be seized from the nobility, but as the minister of agriculture points out all this would amount to is 2 acres per farmer. Meanwhile it would disrupt the grain supply in the middle of the war, where half the population is at the front and relying on the people in the rear to supply them their necessities.
The police have all been dismissed as agents of the old government, and the prisoners let loose from the prisons. What we are looking at is less revolution and more anarchy. The ministers of the various branches of government can make various edicts but none of them are enforceable. The generals can make war plans but nobody is going to follow them. Though the revolution was meant to bring Russia into the fold of liberal democracy like England, France and the USA, already they've banned freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But it's an anarchy, you say? No, like all anarchies, it's an anarcho-tyranny. When it's easy to oppress you you're fully oppressed, but when it's difficult to oppress you you're let go to do whatever you like. That's how every anarchy goes.
Hilariously, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which is the driving force behind the undermining of the new government's authority, is itself bedlam. With an overflow of over 3,000 legislators all debating what should be done on every minor issue and more people entering from exile and abroad continuously, there's no hierarchy and no way to settle disputes. To make matters worse there's no money paying for all these deputies as they're not a formal body of any nature, just a group of people who got together and started making pronouncements, which means no taxes are going to pay their nonexistent salaries. The only power the Soviet has is the newspapers. Whoever they denounce in the newspapers the soldiers will gladly arrest (not that there are any prisons or even laws, so who knows what happens to these arrested people afterward). And if the Soviet chose to denounce the government as a whole the soldiers would go arrest the whole government. Why do the soldiers put so much faith in Soviet leadership? Probably because the Soviets are the only ones calling for the war to end -- and they're right on this question. The war was always senseless, absolute insanity, from the beginning. The sooner Russia leaves World War 1 the better, and in fact the sooner all nations of Europe leave World War 1 the better. Soldiers understand this best as they're the ones suffering.
It doesn't do you any good if you're the formal, legitimate government if you still don't answer to the people's wishes and common sense. The reality is the old government, and the new one, were driving Russia into a ditch, and only the Soviets were saying 'stop!' The revolution emerged spontaneously, from the people and the soldiers, it wasn't so that the parliament could wage the war instead of the Tsar, it was so the war could end. If one revolution isn't enough to end a war, then naturally a second is required.
The economy is cracking under the requirements of the war. The workers are tired, the farmers are tired, the soldiers are tired. You can't whip any more out of them. If the war ended the common man would no longer be required to maintain heroic levels of effort just to stay alive. Then it wouldn't matter how disorganized or inefficient or lazy people were. There would be plenty for everyone if only the war didn't suck everything up into a black hole. So far Russia hasn't lost a single inch of ground, the Germans have only taken Poland, which Russia has already agreed to let go after the war, and advanced a bit into the baltics, Belarus and Ukraine. They haven't even reached Odessa. Russia could end the war now and lose nothing.
If there's anything this book imparts, it's that war is senseless and the people who refuse to negotiate a peace are brainless butchers, who treat their country like a toy and war a game to be won for the sake of self-satisfaction, personal pride, rather than any noble overarching goal. It would do Israel and Ukraine a lot of good to read this book and realize they're pissing away their country for nothing and can't possibly improve their situation no matter how long they delay the war's ending.
No comments:
Post a Comment