Miliukov's Speech, 18/31 October 1917

[Note: Pavel Miliukov (1859 - 1943) was the most significant representative of Russian liberalism, and one of the leading lights of the Constitutional Democratic Party (known by their Russian acronym as Kadets). In 1916 he had made a speech in the Duma denouncing the government, its policies, and the Empress, with a famous refrain: "Is this stupidity, or is this treason?" This speech contributed to the political crisis preceding the fall of Tsarism. Miliukov was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government until April/May 1917. He precipitated the first major crisis of that government by insisting on adhering to the Tsarist war aims of taking the Dardanelles. In April he sent a note to the Allies to that effect. When this became known it caused vociferous protests in soviet circles, and Miliukov's removal as Foreign Minister. However, he remained influential in Russian politics as Kadet leader and as one of right-wing liberalism's most eloquent advocates. He made this speech, reported at length in John Reed's Ten Days That Shook The World, on 18/31 October 1917. Following the Bolshevik assumption of power, Miliukov worked with White forces in South Russia and Ukraine. He emigrated to Western Europe in November 1918. - Dr Francis King]

(Resumé)

"Every one admits, it seems, that the defence of the country is our principal task, and that, to assure it, we must have discipline in the Army and order in the rear. To achieve this, there must be a power capable of daring, not only by persuasion, but also by force…. The germ of all our evils comes from the point of view, original, truly Russian, concerning foreign policy, which passes for the Internationalist point of view.

"The noble Lenin only imitates the noble Keroyevsky when he holds that from Russia will come the New World which shall resuscitate the aged West, and which will replace the old banner of doctrinary Socialism by the new direct action of starving masses-and that will push humanity forward and force it to break in the doors of the social paradise....

"These men sincerely believed that the decomposition of Russia would bring about the decomposition of the whole capitalist régime. Starting from that point of view, they were able to commit the unconscious treason, in wartime, of calmly telling the soldiers to abandon the trenches, and instead of fighting the external enemy, creating internal civil war and attacking the proprietors and capitalists...."

Here Miliukov was interrupted by furious cries from the Left, demanding what Socialist had ever advised such action....

"Martov says that only the revolutionary pressure of the proletariat can condemn and conquer the evil will of imperialist cliques and break down the dictatorship of these cliques…. Not by an accord between Governments for a limitation of armaments, but by the disarming of these Governments and the radical democratisation of the military system...."

He attacked Martov viciously, and then turned on the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, whom he accused of entering the Government as Ministers with the avowed purpose of carrying on the class struggle!

"The Socialists of Germany and of the Allied countries contemplated these gentlemen with ill-concealed contempt, but they decided that it was for Russia, and sent us some apostles of the Universal Conflagration....

"The formula of our democracy is very simple; no foreign policy, no art of diplomacy, an immediate democratic peace, a declaration to the Allies, 'We want nothing, we haven't anything to fight with!' And then our adversaries will make the same declaration, and the brotherhood of peoples will be accomplished!"

Miliukov took a fling at the Zimmerwald Manifesto, and declared that even Kerensky has not been able to escape the influence of "that unhappy document which will forever be your indictment." He then attacked Skobeliev, whose position in foreign assemblies, where he would appear as a Russian delegate, yet opposed to the foreign policy of his Government, would be so strange that people would say, "What's that gentleman carrying, and what shall we talk to him about?" As for the nakaz, Miliukov said that he himself was a pacifist; that he believed in the creation of an International Arbitration Board, and the necessity for a limitation of armaments, and parliamentary control over secret diplomacy, which did not mean the abolition of secret diplomacy.

As for the Socialist ideas in the nakaz, which he called "Stockholm ideas"-peace without victory, the right of self-determination of peoples, and renunciation of the economic war-

"The German successes are directly proportionate to the successes of those who call themselves the revolutionary democracy. I do not wish to say, 'to the successes of the Revolution,' because I believe that the defeats of the revolutionary democracy are victories for the Revolution....

"The influence of the Soviet leaders abroad is not unimportant. One had only to listen to the speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to be convinced that, in this hall, the influence of the revolutionary democracy on foreign policy is so strong, that the Minister does not dare to speak face to face with it about the honour and dignity of Russia!

"We can see, in the nakaz of the Soviets, that the ideas of the Stockholm Manifesto have been elaborated in two direction-that of Utopianism, and that of German interests...."

Interrupted by the angry cries of the Left, and rebuked by the President, Miliukov insisted that the proposition of peace concluded by popular assemblies, not by diplomats, and the proposal to undertake peace negotiations as soon as the enemy had renounced annexations, were pro-German. Recently Kuehlmann said that a personal declaration bound only him who made it....

"Anyway, we will imitate the Germans before we will imitate the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies...."

The sections treating of the independence of Lithuania and Livonia were symptoms of nationalist agitation in different parts of Russia, supported, said Miliukov, by German money.... Amid bedlam from the Left, he contrasted the clauses of the nakaz concerning Alsace-Lorraine, Rumania, and Serbia, with those treating of the nationalities in Germany and Austria. The nakaz embraced the German and Austrian point of view, said Miliukov.

Passing to Terestchenko's speech, he contemptuously accused him of being afraid to speak the thought in his mind, and even afraid to think in terms of the greatness of Russia. The Dardanelles must belong to Russia....

"You are continually saying that the soldier does not know why he is fighting, and that when he does know, he'll fight.... It is true that the soldier doesn't know why he is fighting, but now you have told him that there is no reason for him to fight, that we have no national interests, and that we are fighting for alien ends...."

Paying tribute to the Allies, who, he said, with the assistance of America, "will yet save the cause of humanity," he ended:

"Long live the light of humanity, the advanced democracies of the West, who for a long time have been travelling the way we now only begin to enter, with ill-assured and hesitating steps! Long live our brave Allies!"