The bourgeoisie explained the February Revolution as a protest of the masses against the defeats suffered by the tsarist army in the war. It preached the doctrine that the principal purpose of the revolution was to fight the war to a victorious conclusion, to seize Constantinople and so forth. The bourgeois government had not the slightest intention of revising the imperialist programme. It now intended to carry out, now more successfully, the imperialist plans of conquest which the Russian bourgeoisie had supported before.
Under the pretext that the country was at war, the bourgeoisie appealed for national unity, and attempted to make this an excuse for evading a settlement of grave social problems.
It was obvious that the Provisional Government set up by the bourgeoisie had no serious intention of settling the national question, that it was in fact incapable of settling it. The bourgeoisie regarded the preservation of its rule over the non-Russian nationalities of the border regions and its own continued imperialist expansion as one of the foundations of its economic and political power and of its class domination. Supported by the petty-bourgeois parties—the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks—the bourgeoisie advocated the old tsarist slogan, “Russia, united and indivisible,” only adorned with the pink flag of “revolutionary democracy.”
Unable to suppress the movement for national emancipation in the border regions of Russia by reprisal, the Provisional Government hoped to weaken this movement by making unimportant concessions, such as the abolition of religious restrictions and the quota for Jews in educational institutions, the admission of “aliens” into the government services and so on. While renouncing the extreme measures of persecution of the oppressed nationalities practised by the tsarist government, the bourgeoisie allowed them no rights apart from the general civil liberties. Even the question of teaching in the native languages was not settled, although this was one of the minimum demands. The decree of the Provisional Government of March 20, 1917, permitted
“the use of languages and dialects other than Russian in the business affairs of private associations, in private educational institutions of all kinds and in the conduct of commercial books.”(1)
The fall of the autocracy and the transfer of power to the bourgeoisie did not put an end to national oppression. Only, as Stalin said:
“The old, crude form of national oppression was replaced by a new, refined, but all the more dangerous form of oppression.”(2)
As a result, the movement for national emancipation, far from diminishing after the February Revolution, became more intense. Stalin later characterised this movement in his article “The October Revolution and the National Question” as follows:
“In the period of bourgeois revolution in Russia (which began in February 1917) the national movement in the border regions bore the character of a bourgeois movement of emancipation. The nationalities of Russia, which had for ages been oppressed and exploited by the ‘old régime,’ now for the first time felt their strength and hurled themselves into combat with their oppressors. ‘Abolish national oppression’ was the slogan of the movement. In a trice, ‘national’ institutions sprang up all over the border regions of Russia. The movement was headed by the national, bourgeois-democratic intelligentsia. ‘National Councils’ in Latvia, the Esthonian Region, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, the Caucasian highlands, Kirghizstan and the Middle Volga Region; the ‘Rada,’ in the Ukraine and in White Russia; the ‘Sfatul Tarii’ in Bessarabia; the ‘Kurultai’ in the Crimea and in Bashkiria; the ‘Autonomous Government’ in Turkestan—such were the ‘national’ institutions around which the national bourgeoisie rallied its forces.”(3)
In the Ukraine, the bourgeois emancipation movement was headed by the Central Rada, which was formed in Kiev in the early months of the revolution. Its leaders were Vinnichenko, Petliura, Mazepa and Tkachenko of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and Grushevsky, Khristyuk, Zaliznyak, Kovalyov and others of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Rada enjoyed the support of a considerable number of the peasants, chiefly of the prosperous peasants.
In its “First Manifesto,” published at the beginning of June 1917, the Rada merely proclaimed the principle that the Ukrainian people must determine its own destiny, but did not insist on the immediate proclamation of Ukrainian autonomy. Moreover, the Manifesto contained the reservation that there could be no question of the political separation of the Ukraine from Russia. Lenin described these first national demands made by the Ukraine of the Provisional Government as “very modest.”
A few days after the appearance of the first Manifesto of the Central Rada, Lenin wrote:
“No single democrat can . . . deny the right of the Ukraine freely to secede from Russia: it is the unqualified recognition of this right that alone makes it possible to agitate for a free alliance of the Ukrainians and the Great Russians, for a voluntary union of the two peoples into one State. . . . Accursed tsarism transformed the Great Russians into butchers of the Ukrainian people and in every way bred in the latter a hatred of those who forbade even the Ukrainian children to speak and study in their native language.”(4)
But in the camp of the Provisional Government, which was led by the Cadets, with whose national policy the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were in agreement, the announcement of the Rada evoked a storm of fury. Ryech, the principal organ of the Cadets, described the manifesto of the Ukrainian Rada as “one more link in the German plan for the disintegration of Russia.” Ryech declared:
“The reservations in no wise alter the fundamental fact that the Rada has, in its own name and in the name of the Ukrainian people, refused . . . to submit to the Provisional Government and has proclaimed itself the government of the Ukraine. . . . It must be confessed that Messieurs the Ukrainians are playing dangerous jokes on Russia.”(5)
This is the way the bourgeoisie reacted to the slightest attempt directed against “Russia, united and indivisible.” It branded the Ukrainians as traitors and German agents and warned that the action of the Rada
“will be condemned by positively all public organisations, with the exception, perhaps, of the most irreconcilable supporters of ‘disannexation’—the Bolsheviks.”(6)
The hostile opinions of the Bolsheviks expressed by the bourgeois imperialists only served to increase the sympathy for the Bolsheviks of the democratic elements who were striving for national liberation. A comparison of the conduct of the bourgeoisie and the policy of the Bolsheviks towards the nationalities of former tsarist Russia was sufficient to show who the real friends of the oppressed nationalities were.
The fight over the Ukrainian question became more and more heated. Feeble and hypocritical attempts were made by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks to arrive at a decent “compromise” between the Rada and the Provisional Government. But nothing came of it. All the demands of the Ukrainians were rejected.
At this juncture Lenin wrote an article entitled “The Ukraine and the Defeat of the Ruling Parties of Russia,” in which he said:
“The Provisional Government’s rejection of these very modest and very legitimate demands was a piece of unexampled shamelessness, of savage insolence on the part of the counter-revolutionaries and a manifestation of the true policy of the Great Russian bullies; and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, scorning their own party programmes, tolerated it in the government and are now defending it in their newspapers. To what depths of shame the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have sunk! How pitiful to-day are the subterfuges of their papers—Dyelo Naroda and Rabochaya Gazeta.
“Chaos, confusion, ‘Leninism in the national question,’ anarchy—such are the expletives of the enraged landlords hurled by both newspapers at the Ukrainians.”(7)
At the beginning of July, three representatives of the government—Kerensky, Tsereteli and Tereshchenko—arrived in Kiev, and concluded a diplomatic truce with the Rada. This truce conferred no real rights on the Ukrainians and only hinted that such rights might be granted in future. But even this agreement evoked a hostile outburst in the bourgeois camp. The bourgeois Ministers used the negotiations with the Ukraine as a pretext to resign from the Provisional Government. The Cadets took this step at the time of the July events in Petrograd, and they declared that they were resigning owing to differences over the Ukrainian question.
When the Cadets rejoined the government in August 1917, relations with the Ukraine grew worse than ever. An order of the Provisional Government on August 4 annulled all the concessions to the Ukraine contained in the July agreement. The order confined the Ukraine to the five western agricultural provinces, and excluded the Donbas, the Ekaterinoslav Province and the Black Sea provinces. Moreover, the functions of the Rada were reduced to a minimum, only certain rights of local government being reserved to it.
The Central Rada adopted a position of hostility towards the Provincial Government. From that time on until the October Revolution, sympathy for the Bolsheviks steadily grew among the Ukrainians even among those who supported the petty-bourgeois nationalists, because of the Bolsheviks’ correct policy on the national question.
The Provisional Government did not solve the national question in Finland either. On March 7, 1917, it passed an act restoring the Constitution “conferred” on the Grand Duchy of Finland by Alexander I. The Russian bourgeoisie refused to go beyond this tsarist Constitution: Finland received no new rights and the Finnish Diet was not granted supreme powers.
The Finnish people demanded autonomy. Negotiations on this question were conducted between the Finnish Diet and the Provisional Government throughout April and May 1917. The autonomy proposed by the Diet provided for the preservation of Russian control over foreign relations and military affairs, and even for the retention of the post of Governor-General of Finland. But the Provisional Government would not agree even to this proposal. It insisted that the convocation and dissolution of the Diet should be a prerogative of the Russian government, whose sanction should also be necessary for decisions of the Diet affecting the interests of Russia. The right to decide which questions “affected the interests of Russia” was to be left to the Russian Governor-General. This would in fact deprive the Diet of the last vestige of independence.
In reply to the demands of the Provisional Government the Diet passed a law on July 5 establishing the supreme authority of the Seim in all questions except military and foreign affairs. The Provisional Government retorted with a decree dissolving the Diet. A Manifesto issued by the Provisional Government on July 18, 1917, declared that the Diet was arrogating to itself
“the arbitrary right of anticipating the will of the future Russian Constituent Assembly. . . . Let the Finnish people weigh its own destiny. It can be decided only with the consent of the Russian people.”(8)
Following on this, the building of the Diet was occupied by troops at the orders of the Menshevik Gegechkori, subsequently Minister of Foreign Affairs in Menshevik Georgia. Deputies refusing to submit to the orders of the Provisional Government were not admitted to the Diet building.
At the beginning of 1917 the majority of the members of the Finnish Diet belonged to the Social-Democratic Party, which was a fairly powerful organisation. While taking an active part in the leadership of the movement for Finnish emancipation, the Finnish Social-Democrats had no consistent policy on the national question and perpetually tended to take up a bourgeois position. The opportunism of the Finnish Social-Democrats was one of the factors responsible for Finland’s adopting a bourgeois form of state. This was in a large degree facilitated by the fact that for a long time the Bolsheviks in Finland, in their anxiety to avert a split in the Social-Democratic Party, refrained from breaking with the Mensheviks.
The attitude of the Bolshevik Party towards Finnish national independence was quite clearly expressed in the resolution adopted by the Bolshevik Conference of April 1917 in connection with Stalin’s report, as well as in a number of articles by Lenin and other Bolsheviks.
Lenin wrote:
“The tsars pursued a policy of annexation, callously exchanging one people for another by agreement with other monarchs (the partition of Poland, the deal with Napoleon over Finland, and so on), just as the landlords used to exchange peasant serfs. The bourgeoisie, having become republican, is carrying on this same policy of annexation, only more subtly, more covertly. . . . Comrades, workers and peasants, do not submit to the annexationist policy of the Russian capitalists, Guchkov, Milyukov and the Provisional Government, in relation to Finland, Courland, the Ukraine, etc.!”(9)
Towards the end of the summer of 1917, bourgeois armed detachments, on the one hand, and a workers’ Red Guard, on the other, began to be formed in Finland. The former established contact with the police, the latter with the Russian troops in Finland. The soldiers of the units quartered in Finland began to adopt the Bolshevik position.
The imperialist policy of the Provisional Government was even more marked in relation to the Eastern peoples than in relation to Finland.
Two fundamental trends were to be observed in the national movement among the Eastern peoples after the February Revolution: unitarism: and national federalism. Unitarism was supported by the Moslem merchant bourgeoisie, particularly the Tatar, and by the nationalistically-minded intelligentsia, who demanded nothing more than “national cultural autonomy.” The advocates of “the national territorial federal principle” represented the young native industrial bourgeoisie. The federalist movement among the Moslems was led by the bourgeoisie of Azerbaidjan. A decision in favour of federation and “national territorial autonomy” was also adopted in Turkestan at the First and Second Moslem Congresses. This decision, incidentally, reflected the fear of the Russian revolution entertained by the native bourgeoisie, the desire to set up a barrier against the revolution.
There were comparatively few Bolsheviks in Turkestan, and what is more, many of the local Bolsheviks distorted the policy of the Bolshevik Party on the national question and committed gross mistakes in their dealings with the native population. The nationalist parties—the Kazakh “Allash-Orda” and the Uzbek “Uleme”—therefore found it easy to gain a large following among the population.
The February bourgeois revolution did not improve the condition of the working population of the oppressed nationalities of Central Asia. The programme of the Revolutionary League of Kirghiz Youth, formed after the February Revolution, described the condition of Central Asia as follows:
“The February Revolution, having overthrown the monarchy, has once again placed the power in the hands of the Russian officials and the local Russian kulaks. The Local Committee of the Provisional Government, which is made up of such elements, sets itself the aim not of establishing equality of status for the Kirghiz population, but of oppressing and exterminating the Kirghiz population.”(10)
The first act of the Provisional Government in relation to Turkestan was to pass a decree on March 18, 1917, granting an amnesty to the Russian butchers in the Kirghiz rebellion of 1916. All the Russian pogromists guilty of murder and outrage against the native population were released from prison. This act of the Provisional Government evoked profound indignation among the native population.
The indignation of the oppressed nationalities of Central Asia was heightened by the appointment of N. N. Shchepkin—one of the leaders of the Cadet Party—Chairman of the Government Committee in Turkestan. This committee was invested with the rights of the Governor-General of pre-revolutionary days. It was empowered to decide the question of introducing local government in Turkestan and the steppe regions (Kazakhstan). Moreover, the Provisional Government considered that Zemstvo institutions would be quite sufficient, although the population demanded autonomy.
The Provisional Government did absolutely nothing to solve the national problem.
The centralised bureaucratic apparatus of the tsarist government in the national regions was left intact. Russian continued to be the official language for all the nationalities. The State schools likewise remained Russian. The demand of the oppressed nationalities for national rights was refused. Instead of immediately meeting the urgent needs and wishes of the nationalities, which had remained unsatisfied for centuries, the Provisional Government advised the oppressed nationalities to wait until their destinies were decided by the Constituent Assembly . . . which would be summoned nobody knew when.
If certain national demands were satisfied while the Provisional Government was in power, this was contrary to its will and counter to the wishes of the bourgeoisie. For instance, the Provisional Government made a magnanimous gesture of proclaiming the independence of Poland. But the independence of the Polish State had been proclaimed by the German imperial government a year before the February Revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie was obliged to reconcile itself to this because Polish territory was occupied by German troops, and there was no hope of recovering it by armed force anyhow. But in the case of territories occupied by Russian troops, the policy of the Provisional Government in no way differed from the tsarist policy.
The Provisional Government, which stood for the continuation of the imperialist war, naturally refused to satisfy the elementary demands of the oppressed nationalities of Russia, and in this it was supported by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.
[1] “Decision of the Provisional Government,” Vestnik Vremennovo of the Provisional Government, No. 15, March 22, 1917.
[2] J. Stalin, “The October Revolution and the National Question,” Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, (Eng. ed.) 1935, p. 69.
[3] Ibid., p. 68.
[4] Lenin, “The Ukraine,” Collected Works, (Russ. ed.), Vol. XX, p. 534.
[5] Editorial in Ryech, No. 137, June 14, 1917.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Lenin, “The Ukraine and the Defeat of the Ruling Parties of Russia,” Collected Works, (Russ. ed.), Vol. XX, pp. 539-40.
[8] “Manifesto of July 18, 1917, on the Dissolution of the Diet and the Holding of New Elections,” Vestnik of the Provisional Government, No. 110, July 21, 1917.
[9] Lenin, “Finland and Russia,” Collected Works, (Russ. ed.), Vol. XX, p. 324.
[10] T. Ryskulov, The Revolution and the Native Population of Turkestan, Part I, 1917-19, Tashkent, 1925, p. 4.
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