218 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE STATE IN RUSSIA 219 clusions of a profoundly revolutionary character. The only thing their structure lacks is the driving force of a revolutionary policy. The government, for the most part capitalistic, could not possibly give birth to a system that was diametrically opposed to the selfish interests of the propertied classes. If Skobeleff, the Minister of Labor, did not understand this, with his now proverbial hundred per cent talk, it was fully understood by the serious and efficient Konovalov, the representative of trade and industry.
His resignation was an irreparable blow to the coalition ministry. The whole bourgeois press gave unmistakable expression to this fact. Again began the exploitation of the panic terror of the present leaders of the Soviet: the bourgeoisie threatened to lay the babe of authority at their door. The leaders answered by making believe that nothing special had happened. If the responsible representative of capital has left us, let us invite Mr.
Buryshkin. But Buryshkin ostentatiously refused to have anything to do with surgical operations on private property. And then began the search for an independent minister of commerce and industry, a man behind whom there stood nothing and nobody, and who might serve as an inoffensive letter box, in which the opposing demands of labor and capital might meet.
Meanwhile the economic expenses continue on their course, and the government activity assumed the form chiefly, of the printing of assignats.
Having as his senior colleagues Messrs. Lvoff and Shingarov, it turned out that Chernov was prevented from revealing, in the domain of agarian matters, even the radicalism in words only, which is so characteristic of this typical representative of the petite bourgeoisie. Fully aware of the role that was assigned to him, Chernov introduced himself to society as the representative, not of the agrarian revolution, but of agrarian statistics! According to the liberal bourgeois interpretation, which the socialist ministers also made their own, revolution must be suspended among the masses in a passive waiting upon the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and as soon as the socialrevolutionists enter the ministry of the landholders and manufacturers, the attacks of the peasants against the feudal agricultural system are designated by the term anarchy.
In the field of international policy, the collaps of the peace programs proclaimed by the coalition government came about more siw and more catastrophically than could possibly have been expected. Ribot, the premier of France, not only categorically and unceremoniously rejected the Russian peace formula and pompously reiterated the absolute necessity of continuing the war until a complete victory should be gained, but also denied the patriotic French socialists their passports to the Stockholm Conference, which had been arranged with the cooperation of Ribot colleagues and allies, the Russian socialist ministers. The Italian Government, whose policy of colonial conquest has always been distinguished by exceptional shamelessness, by a Holy Egotism, replied to the formula of a peace without annexations with the separate annexation of Albania. Our government, and that includes the socialist ministers, held up for two weeks the publication of the answers of its allies, evidently trusting in the efficacy of such petty devices to stave off the bankruptcy of their policy. In short, the question as to the international situation of Russia, e. the question of what it is that the Russian soldier should be ready to fight and die for, is still just as acute as on the day when the portfolio of Minister for Foreign Affairs was dashed from the hands of Milyukov.
In the Army and Navy Department, which is still eating up the lion share of the national powers and of the national resources, the policy of prose and rhetoric holds undisputed sway.
The material and psychological causes for the parent condition of the army are too deep to be disposed of by ministerial poetry and prose. The substitution of General Brussilov for General Alekseyeff meant a change of these two officers, no doubt, but not a change in the army. The working up of the popular mind, and of the army, into an offensive, and then the sudden dropping of this catchword in favor of the less definite catchword of a preparation for an offensive, show that the Army and Navy ministry is as little capable of leading the nation to