Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  The workers who had struck, especially in big centres like Petersburg and Moscow, created a new organization—the “Soviet”—in each such centre. This was at first just a committee to run the general strike. Trotsky became the leader of the Petersburg Soviet. The Tsar’s government was completely taken aback, and it surrendered to some extent, making promises about a constitutional assembly and a democratic franchise. The great citadel of autocracy seemed to have fallen. What the peasant revolts of the past had failed to do, what the terrorists with their bombs had not succeeded in doing, and what the moderate liberal constitutionalists with their cautious pleadings could not do, that the workers had done with their general strike. Tsardom, for the first time in its history, had to bow down to the common people. It turned out later to be an empty victory. But still the memory of it was a beacon of light for the workers.

  The Tsar had promised a constitutional assembly, a Duma, as it was called, which means a thinking-place and not a talking-shop like a parliament (from the French parler). This promise cooled the ardour of the moderate liberals, who were satisfied. They are always easily satisfied. The landlords, frightened by the revolution, agreed to some reforms which benefited the richer peasants. The Tsar’s government then faced the real revolutionaries and, realizing their weakness, played up to it. On the one side were the hungry workers, more interested in bread and higher wages than in political constitutions, and the poorer peasantry raising the dangerous slogan: “Give us land”; on the other were revolutionaries chiefly concerned with the political aspect and hoping to get a parliament after the western European model, and not thinking much of the real demands or feelings of the masses. Many of the better-class skilled workers who were organized in trade unions joined the revolution because they appreciated the political aspect. But the masses generally in the cities and the villages were apathetic. Thereupon the Tsarist government and police tried the time-honoured method of all despotisms: they created divisions and incited these hungry masses against some of the revolutionary groups. The unhappy Jews were massacred by the Russians, the Armenians by the Tartars, and there were even clashes between the revolutionary students and the poorer workers. Having broken the back of the revolution in this way in various parts of the country, the government attacked the two storm-centres—Petersburg and Moscow. The Petersburg Soviet was easily crushed. In Moscow the military helped the revolutionaries and there was a five-day battle before the Soviet was finally crushed. Then followed revenge. In Moscow it is said that the government put to death 1000 persons without trial and imprisoned 70,000. In the whole country about 14,000 died as a result of the various risings.

  So ended, in defeat and disaster, the Russian revolution of 1905. It has been called the prologue to the 1917 revolution, which succeeded. “The masses need the schooling of big events” before their consciousness can be roused and they can act on a big scale. The events of 1905 provided them, at a heavy cost, with this schooling.

  The Duma was elected, and met in May 1906. It was far from being a revolutionary body, but it was too liberal for the Tsar’s liking, and he sent it home after two and a half months. Having crushed the revolution, he cared little for the wrath of the Duma. The dismissed deputies of the Duma, who were middle-class liberal constitutionalists, took themselves to Finland (which was quite near Petersburg and which was then a semi-independent country under the Tsar’s suzerainty), and called upon the Russian people to refuse to pay taxes and to resist recruitment to the army and navy as a mark of protest against the dismissal of the Duma. The deputies were out of touch with the masses, and there was no response to their appeal.

  Next year, in 1907, a second Duma was elected. The police tried to prevent radical candidates from getting elected by putting all manner of difficulties in their way, and sometimes by the simple expedient of arresting them. Still the Duma was not to the Tsar’s liking, and he dismissed it after three months. The Tsar’s government now took steps to prevent all undesirables from getting elected by changing the electoral law. It succeeded, and the third Duma was a highly respectable and conservative body, and it had a long life.

  You may wonder why the Tsar took the trouble to have these feeble Dumas when he was strong enough to carry on as he liked, after having crushed the 1905 revolution. The reason was partly to satisfy some small groups in Russia, chiefly the rich landlords and merchants. The situation in the country was bad. The people had, no doubt, been crushed, but they were sullen and angry. So it was thought worthwhile to keep at least the rich people at the top in hand. But a more important reason was to impress upon European countries that the Tsar was a liberal monarch. Tsarist misgovernment and tyranny were becoming bywords in western Europe. When the first Duma was dismissed, a leader of the British Liberal Party shouted out, in the House of Commons, I think, “The Duma is dead! Long live the Duma!” This showed how much sympathy there was for the Duma. And then the Tsar wanted money, and a great deal of it. The thrifty French had been lending it to him; it was, indeed, with the help of a French loan that the Tsar crushed the 1905 revolution. It was a strange contrast—republican France helping autocratic Russia to crush her radicals and revolutionaries. But republican France meant French bankers. Anyhow, appearances had to be kept up, and the Duma helped in this.

  Meanwhile the European and the world situation was changing rapidly. After Russia’s defeat by Japan, England had ceased to fear Russia as she used to. A new fear had arisen for England, that of Germany, both in industry and on the sea, which for so long had been England’s preserve. It was fear of Germany also that had made France so generous with her loans to Russia. This German menace, as it was called, drove two ancient enemies to embrace each other. In 1907 an Anglo-Russian treaty was signed which settled all their outstanding points of dispute, in Afghanistan, Persia, and elsewhere. Later, a triple entente developed between England, France, and Russia. In the Balkans, Austria was Russia’s rival, and Austria was Germany’s ally, and so was Italy on paper. So the triple entente of England, France, and Russia faced the triple alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. And the hosts prepared for action while peaceful people slumbered, not knowing the terrors that were in store for them.

  These years in Russia, after 1905, were years of reaction. Bolshevism and the other revolutionary elements had been completely crushed. In foreign countries some of the Bolsheviks in exile, like Lenin, were carrying on patiently, writing books, and pamphlets, and trying to adapt the Marxist theory to changing conditions. The gulf between Menshevism (the more moderate minority party of the Marxists) and Bolshevism grew. Menshevism became more prominent during these years of reaction. Indeed, although it was called the minority party, it had far more people on its side then. From 1912 onwards again a change crept into the Russian world, and revolutionary activity grew, and with it grew Bolshevism. By the middle of 1914 the air of Petrograd was thick with talk of revolution and, as in 1905, large numbers of political strikes took place. And yet—such stuff are revolutions made of!—of the Petersburg Bolshevik Committee of seven, it was discovered later that three were in the Tsarist secret service! The Bolsheviks had a small group in the Duma, and the leader of this was Malinowsky. He also was found to be a police agent! And Lenin trusted him.

  The World War began in August 1914, and this suddenly turned attention to the warring fronts, and conscription took away the chief workers, and the revolutionary movement died down. The Bolsheviks who raised their voices against the war were few, and they became extremely unpopular.

  We have arrived at our appointed post—the World War—and we must stop here. But before I end this letter I should like to draw your attention to Russian art and literature. Tsarist Russia, with all its faults, managed to keep up, as most people know, wonderful dancing. It produced also a series of master-writers in the nineteenth century who built up a great literary tradition. In both the long novel and the short story they showed an amazing mastery. At the beginning of the century there lived Pushkin, the contemporary of Byron and
Shelley and Keats, who is said to be the greatest of Russian poets. Of the novelists the famous writers of the nineteenth century are Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoievsky, and Tchekhov. Then there is perhaps the greatest of them, Leo Tolstoy, who not only was a genius at writing novels, but became a religious and spiritual leader whose influence was far-reaching. Indeed, it reached Gandhiji, who was then in South Africa, and the two appreciated each other and corresponded with each other. The bond of union was the firm faith of both in non-resistance or non-violence. According to Tolstoy, this was the basic teaching of Christ, and Gandhiji drew the same conclusion from the old Hindu writings. While Tolstoy remained a prophet, living up to his convictions, but rather cut off from the world, Gandhiji applied this seemingly negative thing in an active way to mass problems in South Africa and India. One of the great nineteenth-century Russian writers is still living. He is Maxim Gorki.1

  145

  The End of an Epoch

  March 22, 1933

  The nineteenth century! What a long time we have been held up by these hundred years! For four months, off and on, I have written to you about this period, and I am a little weary of it, and so perhaps will you be when you read these letters. I began by telling you that it was a fascinating period, but even fascination palls after a while. We have really gone beyond the nineteenth century and are fairly well advanced into the twentieth. The year 1914 was our limit. It was in that year that the dogs of war, as the saying goes, were let loose on Europe and the world. That year forms a turning-point in history. It is the close of one epoch and the beginning of another.

  Nineteen hundred and fourteen! Even that year is before your time, and yet it was less than nineteen years ago, and that is not a long period even in human life, much less in history. But the world has changed so greatly during these years, and is changing still, that it seems that an age has passed since then; and 1914 and the years that preceded it go back into the history of long ago and become parts of a distant past of which we read in books, and which is so different from our own day. Of these great changes I shall have something to tell you later. One warning I shall give you now. You are learning geography at school and the geography you learn is very different from what I had to learn when I was at school in the years before 1914. And it may be that much of this geography that you are learning today, you may have to unlearn before long, even as I had to do. Old landmarks, old countries disappeared in the smoke of war, and new ones, with names difficult to remember, took their place. Hundreds of cities changed their names almost overnight; St. Petersburg became Petrograd and then Leningrad, Constantinople must now be called Istambul, Peking is known as Peiping and, Prague of Bohemia has become Praha of Czechoslovakia.

  In my letters about the nineteenth century, I have necessarily dealt separately with continents and countries; we have considered different aspects and different movements also separately. But of course you will remember that all this was more or less simultaneous, and history marched all over the world with its thousands of feet together. Science and industry, politics and economics, abundance and poverty, capitalism and imperialism, democracy and socialism, Darwin and Marx, freedom and bondage, famine and pestilence, war and peace, civilization and barbarism—they all had their place in this strange fabric, and each acted and reacted on the other. So if we are to form a picture in our mind of this period or any other period, it must be a complex and ever-moving and changing picture, like a kaleidoscope, although many parts of the picture will not be pleasant to contemplate.

  The dominant feature of this period was, as we have seen, the growth of capitalistic industry by large-scale power production—that is, production with the help of some mechanical power, like water, steam, or electricity (we have the name “power-house” for an electricity-generating plant). This had different effects in different parts of the world, and these effects were both direct and indirect. Thus the production of cloth by the power-loom in Lancashire upset conditions in remote Indian villages and put an end to many callings there. Capitalistic industry was dynamic; by its very nature it grew bigger and bigger and its hunger was never satisfied. Its distinguishing mark was acquisitiveness; it was always out to acquire and hold, and then acquire again. Individuals tried to do so, and so did nations. The society that grew up under this system is therefore called an acquisitive society. The aim was always to produce more and more, and to apply the surplus wealth thus produced to the building of more factories and railways and such-like undertakings, and also, of course, to enrich the owners. In the pursuit of this aim everything else was sacrificed. The workers who produced the wealth of industry benefited least from it, and they, including women and children, had to pass through a terrible time before their lot was improved a little. Colonies and dependencies were also sacrificed and exploited for the benefit of this capitalistic industry and the nations which possessed it.

  So capitalism went blindly and ruthlessly forward, leaving many victims in its trail. Nonetheless its march was a triumphant progress. Aided by science, it succeeded in many things, and this success dazzled the world, and seemed to atone for much of the misery it had caused. Incidentally, and without planning deliberately for them, it also produced many of the good things of life. But underneath the bright surface and the good there was plenty of bad. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about it was the contrasts it produced, and the more it grew the greater were these contrasts: extreme poverty and extreme wealth; slum and skyscraper; empire-state and dependent exploited colony. Europe was the dominant continent, and Asia and Africa the exploited ones. For the greater part of the century America was outside the currents of world events, but it was going ahead rapidly and building up vast resources. In Europe, England was the wealthy and proud and smugly satisfied leader of capitalism, and especially of its imperial aspect.

  The very pace and grasping nature of capitalistic industry brought matters to a head and produced opposition and agitation and ultimately some checks to protect workers. The early days of the factory system had meant terrible exploitation of the workers, and especially women and children. Women and children were employed in preference to men because they were cheaper, and they were made to work, sometimes eighteen hours a day, in the most unhealthy and abominable conditions. At last the State intervened and passed laws—factory legislation they are called—limiting hours of work per day and insisting on better conditions. Women and children were especially protected by these laws, but it was a long and a hard struggle to pass them in the face of strenuous opposition from the factory-owners.

  Capitalistic industry further led to socialistic and communistic ideas which, while they accepted the new industry, challenged the basis of capitalism. Working-men’s organizations and trade unions and internationals also developed.

  Capitalism led to imperialism, and the impact of Western capitalistic industry on long-established economic conditions in Eastern countries caused havoc there. Gradually even in these Eastern countries capitalistic industry took root and began to grow. Nationalism also grew there as a challenge to the imperialism of the West.

  So capitalism shook up the world, and in spite of the terrible human misery it caused, it was, on the whole, a beneficent movement, at any rate in the West. It brought in its train great material progress and raised tremendously the standards of human well-being. The common man became far more important than he had ever been. In practice he did not have much of a say in anything, in spite of an illusory vote, but in theory his status grew in the State, and with this his self-respect increased. This applies, of course, to the Western countries, where capitalistic industry had established itself. There was a vast accumulation of knowledge, and science did wonders, and its thousand applications to life made life easier for everybody. Medicine, especially in its preventive aspects, and sanitation, began to suppress and root out many diseases which had been a curse to man. To mention one instance: the origin and prevention of malaria were discovered, and there is no doubt now that it can be rooted out of an a
rea if the necessary steps are taken. The fact that malaria still continues and has millions of victims in India and elsewhere is not the fault of science, but of a careless government and an ignorant populace.

  Perhaps the most striking feature of the century was the progress in the methods of transportation and communication. The railway and the steamship and the electric telegraph and the motor-car changed the world completely, and made it for all human purposes a vastly different place from what it had always been. The world shrank, and its inhabitants grew nearer to each other, and could see much more of each other, and, with mutual knowledge, many barriers, born of ignorance, went down. Common ideas began to spread which produced some measure of uniformity all over the world. Right at the end of the period we are discussing came wireless telegraphy and flying. They are common enough now, and you have been up in an aeroplane several times, and journeyed by it, without thinking much of it. The development of wireless telegraphy and flying belongs to the twentieth century and our own times. People had often gone up in balloons, but no one, except in old myths and stories, the flying carpets of the Arabian Nights, and the urankhatola of our Indian stories, had gone up on anything which was heavier than air. The first persons to succeed in going up in a heavier-than-air machine, the parent of the present aeroplane, were two American brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright. They flew less than 300 yards in December 1903, but, even so, they had done something which had not been done before. After that there was continuous progress in flying, and I remember the excitement that was caused in 1909 when the Frenchman Blériot flew over the English Channel from France to England. Soon afterwards I saw the first aeroplane fly over the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And many years later, in May 1927, you and I were present in Paris when Charles Lindbergh came like a silver arrow flashing across the Atlantic and landed at Le Bourget, the aerodrome of Paris.