Leon
Trotsky: Miliukov and the February Revolution
February
25, 1931
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 13. Supplement (1929-1933), New York 1979, p.
65-67]
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.