The Russian problem

If, in the not-too-distant future, social revolution breaks out in France and England, and perhaps also in the United States, the attitude of the Entente powers toward the Russian problem will play no small part in this.

The patience of peoples has limits, and for democratic populations, there is something particularly revolting about seeing their governments, secretly or openly, playing into the hands of Tsarism and the Russian nobility, — those who, in reference to the great French Revolution, were called the "People of Koblenz," People of Koblenz," all those grand dukes, diplomats, and officers of the old regime who, after retreating to Sweden and Crimea, organized themselves in recent months around General Denikin in Ekaterinodar or Admiral Kolchak in Omsk.

The Youdenitch and Esthonie

At one point, there was great hope in Europe when the Council of Four at the Peace Conference decided to convene all the governments of the former Russian Empire on the island of Prinkipo. But then something happened that could not have been foreseen: the Bolsheviks were the only ones to side with the Entente powers. And since the Entente did not want them, the meeting remained in limbo!

Since then, the Council of Four has skirted around the Russian problem like a cat around hot soup: sometimes stretching its paw into the Arkhangelsk region, the Gulf of Finland, or Odessa, but immediately turning back when "things started to heat up."

And yet, the Russian problem had to be resolved at all costs, because without a solution, no stable peace could reign in Europe, despite the fact that all the peoples there were exhausted and deeply weary of the continuing state of war.

The recognition of Admiral Kolchak

It was under these conditions that the Council of Four came to recognize Admiral Kolchak.

Not to frank and complete recognition, but to a contract whereby the Allies would support the Omsk Dictator financially and by sending food, arms, and ammunition... a kind of compromise allowing freedom of action to both parties, but which had the initial effect of pushing all those who are not reactionaries and who do not wish to see the return of absolutism in Russia.

This partial recognition of Kolchak's dictatorial government and his band of officers singing Boje Tzarija Khrani was, all things considered, the worst mistake that the governments of the democratic powers could have made.

In the class struggle that has been raging in Russia since March 1917, these governments have sided with the oppressors and against the oppressed, which is the surest way to unleash civil war in Western Europe as well.

Do these gentlemen of the Council of Four understand what this means: that beloved France, esteemed England, even the United States, glorified in Russia, are beginning to be hated by Russian democracy? And do they realize what will inevitably happen if the Entente powers continue to support the reaction in Russia: that this democracy will lean more and more toward Germany?

Where Japan appears

All those who lived through the events of the Great Revolution in Russia and who are not suspected of bias in favor of their personal interests are unanimous in declaring that there is no hope for Kolchak, Denikin, and their associates to restore the old regime, either on their own or with the dubious help of the Western powers. The peasants have divided up the land and will not give up what they have taken. All social life in Russia has been profoundly and definitively shaken.

The late trust magnate Pierpont Morgan is credited with a characteristic remark he is said to have made during the 1912 lawsuit against his trust, the United States Steel Corporation. "It is particularly difficult," Morgan is said to have remarked, "to unscramble an egg." This witty remark applies perfectly to the situation in Russia: many eggs have been beaten there, and all the Denikins and Kolchaks who remained in place, all the Gazonoffs and Maklakoffs who have come to Paris to complain, will not succeed in returning the Russian people to their pre-Revolutionary servitude.

But there is one circumstance that could significantly disrupt the normal and natural evolution of Russian society, and that is the intervention of Japan, the only nation with troops sufficiently servile and numerous to play the game of reaction in Russia with any success. Now we are hearing talk again of this intervention, the details of which seemed to have been settled a few weeks ago. It would add to the number of serious mistakes made in Russia, a new mistake whose consequences, from a European point of view, would be immeasurable.

Assuming that, with the help of Kolchak and Denikin, the Japanese government could succeed in subduing the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions and establishing a new tsarist rule over the Russian people, the mere fact of calling on an Asian army to quell a revolution in Europe would bring with it the immediate danger of a new international war. For the Japanese, "business is business," and the natural reward they would demand would be economic and political domination in Manchuria, Mongolia, and Eastern Siberia, and a privileged position in the European Russian market. However, the difficulties already created by the concessions that the Peace Conference felt it had to grant Japan with regard to the Chinese province of Shandong, and the popular anger that these concessions have provoked in China as well as in the United States, may be enough to convince the European powers that, in the event of Japanese intervention in Russia, the remedy would probably be worse than the disease.

The necessary remedy

We see only one remedy in the present circumstances, only one way out that may perhaps enable us to escape temporarily, and until difficulties arise in the West itself—from the Russian impasse. The Peace Conference calls, not on a remote island, but in Paris itself, the delegates of all the established governments and all the major political parties in Russia, together with representatives of the zemstvos, the labor unions, and the Russian peasants; that the great powers call on everyone to cease their internal struggles and that, if the vast majority of delegates arrive at a provisional solution to the Russian problem on a democratic basis, the Entente powers promise their effective assistance in its implementation.

We have all the more hope that a democratic solution can be found, as even the most intransigent Bolsheviks now seem ready to make certain concessions to the other socialist and peasant factions.

"Foreign" nations

A considerable difficulty in solving the Russian problem lies in the fate reserved for the so-called "allogeneic" nations, that is, all those peoples living on the borders of the former Russian Empire who, because they are of a different race, or at least because they have their own nationality, language, distinct customs and traditions, took advantage of the opportunity provided by the Great Russian Revolution to claim their complete independence within the framework of the League of Nations.

Their conduct was based strictly on the Wilsonian principle of the right of peoples to determine their own destiny, and ultimately, the League of Nations would have to recognize the validity of their claims.

But these nations find stubborn opponents among the great Russians, even socialists.

The vast majority of Russian socialists are social democrats who have been brought up in the school of extreme centralism and so-called "voluntary" discipline, which is in fact rigid and narrow-minded.

It is difficult for them to imagine peoples living in freedom, and as a result they bitterly criticize what they call, from their dogmatic point of view, the "separatism" of nations foreign to Russia. From a dogmatic point of view, the "separatism" of nations foreign to Russia.

For us communists and libertarians, the problem arises differently: we cannot form a clear conception of socialism and a true League of Nations only on the basis of the principles of the political and social independence of nationalities and the autonomy of regions and municipalities within each nationality.

As internationalists and communists, we have a special reason to defend with all our strength the tendencies toward independence of the nations alien to Russia. Just as it is desirable from a political point of view that there should be as many political parties and factions as possible in each country, in order to prevent the oppression of minorities by a compact majority of citizens, so too must we desire that the number of nationalities and autonomous regions be as diverse as possible on the old continent of Europe, in order to prevent one or two large nations from reducing the others to powerlessness and servitude.

With regard to Russia in particular, care must be taken to ensure that the old Russian empire is not reestablished, — this colossus of nearly two hundred million inhabitants whose existence could pose a real danger to the future of Europe.

Finns, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Cossacks, Tatars, etc., contribute to averting this danger, which is all the more perilous for us because German immigrants will play an essential role in the reorganization of Russia's economic and social life.