The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav MovementPetrunkevitch, Alexander
History
The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement
Petrunkevitch, Alexander
Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921; Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1917-1936; Yugoslavs
It suffices a very casual examination of the programs and resolutions of
various political parties to see the truth of this statement. They
are expressive of the opinions of the leaders, not of the masses; are
couched in the language of the educated Russian, not in that of the
workman or peasant and, except for the concluding slogans like "Peace,
Bread, and Land," are alien to the very spirit of the masses. In this
respect all parties are confronted with the same difficulty since all
strive to get the support of the masses, yet have to express principles
evolved through careful and extensive study of national, political, and
economic problems, strange to the uneducated mind. For the same reason
the methods of surmounting the difficulty differ in many respects and
are characteristic of each party.
The Conservative Intellectuals of Russia early realized the necessity of
meeting the peasant on his own ground and the advantage of appealing
to him in his own language. The idea of a benevolent ruler, an
all-suffering motherland, and an all-unifying church exercised a
powerful appeal upon the imagination, for a long time superseding and
forcing into the background the growing, elemental, and unfulfilled
longing for more land. The ideology of a perfect monarchy is so simple
and its shortcomings so easily attributable to dishonesty of officials,
that it answered the peasant's thoughts as long as he was not able to
see the folly of distinguishing between the system and its realization,
but separated in his mind the image of his loving monarch from the cruel
reality of everyday life as he still distinguishes between the faith and
the priest. The great mistake of all conservatives is that they seek to
bring about a state of perfect justice by improving only the quality
of the ruling body without changing the conditions of life of the ruled
mass. Yet even so the Conservatives had quite a following among the
peasants up to the time of the revolution of 1917 and in a way may still
have a future before them.
The Octoberists find no support in the masses and do not make any
serious attempt to gain it. They frankly acknowledged themselves as the
party of industry and trade, having no wider interests at heart than the
maintenance of order and law throughout the country. Their leaders were
forced into a revolutionary attitude only at the time when there was
danger of a universal collapse of Russia if the tsar's government
persisted, and they may be forced to join in a counter-revolution,
if their interests are again endangered. Their ideology is that of
a capitalistic class and their power depends entirely on the future
development of industry and trade in Russia. For the present they are
nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their activity in place of
class interest, they lack unity of purpose and are deserted by their
own former supporters among their employees. Trade and industry are
disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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