When the government was urged to call a convention of national leaders to deal with the food situation it stubbornly refused.  More than that, it made war upon the only organizations which were staving off famine and making it possible for the nation to endure.  Every conceivable obstacle was placed in the way of the National Union of Zemstvos and the Union of Cities; the co-operative associations, which were rendering valuable service in meeting the distress of working-men’s families, were obstructed and restricted in every possible way, their national offices being closed by the police.  The officials of the labor-unions who were co-operating with employers in substituting arbitration in place of strikes, establishing soup-kitchens and relief funds, and doing other similar work to keep the nation alive, were singled out for arrest and imprisonment.  The Black Hundreds were perniciously active in all this oppression and in the treacherous advocacy of a separate peace with Germany.

In October, 1916, a conference of chairmen of province zemstvos adopted and published a resolution which declared: 

The tormenting and horrifying suspicion, the sinister rumors of perfidy and treason, of dark forces working in favor of Germany to destroy the unity of the nation, to sow discord and thus prepare conditions for an ignominious peace, have now reached the clear certainty that the hand of the enemy secretly influences the affairs of our state.

VI

An adequate comprehension of the things set forth in this terrible summary is of the highest importance to every one who would attempt the task of reaching an intelligent understanding of the mighty upheaval in Russia and its far-reaching consequences.  The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not responsible for the disastrous separate peace with Germany.  The foundations for that were laid by the reactionaries of the old regime.  It was the logical outcome of their long-continued efforts.  Lenine, Trotzky, and their Bolshevist associates were mere puppets, simple tools whose visions, ambitions, and schemes became the channels through which the conspiracy of the worst reactionaries in Russia realized one part of an iniquitous program.

The Revolution itself was a genuine and sincere effort on the part of the Russian people to avert the disaster and shame of a separate peace; to serve the Allied cause with all the fidelity of which they were capable.  There would have been a separate peace if the old regime had remained in power a few weeks longer and the Revolution been averted.  It is most likely that it would have been a more shameful peace than was concluded at Brest-Litovsk, and that it would have resulted in an actual and active alliance of the Romanov dynasty with the dynasties of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs.  The Russian Revolution of 1917 had this great merit:  it so delayed the separate peace between Russia and Germany that the Allies were able to prepare for it.  It had the merit, also, that it forced the attainment of the separate peace to come in such a manner as to reduce Germany’s military gain on the western front to a minimum.