It's now April, a month after the Russian Revolution overthrew the czar, and for the first time Lenin has returned to Russia to add his opinion to what should happen next. What had been mainly a peaceful transition of power, with the Executive Committee content with the Provisional Government, which meant the soldiers were content with the Provisional Government, is now turning turbulent again.
A portion of the soldiers have sided with Lenin and want an immediate toppling of the government in favor of a socialist dictatorship (of course headed by Lenin, but they aren't quite ready to say that out loud yet.) Joining with these soldiers are armed workers, Lenin's private army, that answer only to him. Lenin uses the pretext of a diplomatic message issued by the Provisional Government signaling Russia intends to continue the war until 'decisive victory,' i.e., not a negotiated peace with Germany, to start protesting the Provisional Government, which he hopes will eventually lead to its overthrow (sort of like the Maidan protests.) The executive committee also doesn't like the diplomatic message, but doesn't want to overthrow the government, and tries to rein in the civil unrest. Meanwhile the people of St. Petersburg side with the government and the continuation of the war in general, and take to the streets to show their support. Undisciplined armed workers of the Bolshevik party start firing on the demonstrators without orders from on high. Members of the Provisional Government see this as a chance to disband the entire Soviet apparatus, and order the troops to deploy to settle the unrest, but the troops refuse to deploy without an order from the Executive Committee. (Showing the Provisional Government where the real government lies.)
Out of this maelstrom the Executive Committee counsels peace and order, and the riots and coup attempts on all sides give way to the status quo. That's where the book ends -- everyone seeking violence to get their way, no one getting their way, and the embers continuing to await their moment for the true conflagration.
This is a very interesting moment in the Russian Revolution where Lenin doesn't have the upper hand, but the people who do have the upper hand, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' deputies, are too constrained by niceties to do anything with it. They don't want to offend their fellow socialists, the Bolsheviks, by being too harsh on Lenin. They don't want to weaken the Provisional Government's credibility when it's having a hard enough time fighting the war, securing the nation's grain supply, and getting enough money from the Allied powers to fund the government and the army. So in the end they don't want to do anything. And their moment in power comes and goes without them having done anything.
It's weird to think of it but actually the Executive Committee were the moderates during this time period, tilting neither left nor right, but mirroring the vast majority of the educated Russian public's opinion. It's a shame that the very essence of being a moderate is being lukewarm. A moderate is the last person who wishes to take up arms, and so they're forever doomed to being ignored in a clash of wills.
The next volume is the last volume of the Red Wheel, not because it describes the Bolshevik Revolution in October that puts an end to all hopes of freedom and democracy in Russia -- but because of Solzhenitsyn's untimely death. The most important historical event of the century doesn't get this historian's attention. All we'll get is a continuation of the bickering and half-measures that the weak government of the day was doing in April, and then nothing. The story will end without any of the most interesting questions being answered -- why did the Russian people fold to Lenin and the unpopular Bolsheviks? What was the spark that gave the Bolsheviks so much unmerited authority? We won't learn anything about that. I guess we'll never know. The Russian Civil War wasn't really a clash between Bolshevik dictatorship and democracy-loving freedom fighters. The only people who effectively opposed Lenin were a bunch of provinces attempting to secede from the Russian Empire -- they would have just as happily waged war with a parliamentary democracy to get out of the Russian fold. The Civil War would probably have happened even without the Bolsheviks. After all, the Provisional Government had no interest in granting the separatist notions of Ukraine, Georgia, Finland, etc. either. That means no one in Russia was willing to lift a hand in service of freedom. Even though the entire Russian Revolution, the February one, had been about getting freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to elect their rulers, freedom for Jews to become equal citizens with equal rights, etc. All their complaints about the czar were based around their lack of freedom. They get their freedom, the czar is gone -- and no one lifts a hand to defend it. Some people barrel immediately forward towards a socialist utopia where all the land is farmed in communes and all the property is expropriated -- apparently what they always really wanted. And their only opposition is a bunch of conquered territory over the past few centuries wishing to become ethno-states. People who never really felt Russian wishing to not be part of Russia anymore.
So what did the ordinary Russian get out of the Russian Revolution? They lost their empire and they lost their freedom and they lost their property and ultimately they lost their lives. And yet the whole time they cheered this chaos on, helped give it birth, deliriously welcomed its coming. It shows how mesmerizing, how absolutely powerful the press is. All the papers said this would be a good idea, and so everybody believed it without question. And then all the papers said it was a good thing and so the people doubted their own eyes and continued to celebrate their own enslavement and slaughter. There is no limit to the sheepdom of the masses.
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