isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

320 THE PROPHET ARMED
Assembly, held after the revolution, nearly 10,000,000 votes
were cast for the Bolsheviks alone without their Left Social
Revolutionary associates. These 10,000,000 included the bulk of
the urban working class, proletarianized clements of the peasantry,
and a very large section of the army-at any rate the most
energetic elements in the nation, on whose continued active
support the revolution depended for its survival. But the electorate
represented by the Constituent Assembly was nearly twice
as large as that represented in the Soviets; and in the poll for the
Assembly the Bolsheviks obtained only a large minority of the
votes.
Rural Russia, vast, illiterate, boiling over with revolt and
revenge, had little grasp of the involved disputes between the
urban parties. It would be futile to try to put the attitude of that
Russia into a clear-cut formula: it was confused, changeable,
self-contradictory. Nothing characterizes that attitude better
than the following scene described by historians: In one rural
area a large body of peasants concluded a meeting with a religious
vow that they would no longer wait for any land reform;
that they would at once seize the land and smoke out the landlords;
and that they would consider as their mortal enemy
anybody trying to dissuade them. They would not rest, the
peasants proceeded to swear, until the government concluded
an immediate peace and released their sons from the army and
until 'that criminal and German spy' Lenin had received
exemplary punishment. In the election to the Constituent
Assembly, peasants like these undoubtedly cast their votes for a
Social Revolutionary. But they did so because they attributed
to the Social Revolutionaries, the party which had had its roots
in the country, the firm intention of carrying out the programme
to which the Bolsheviks alone were determint>d to give
effect. That is why each of these two parties, the only broad
movrments left after the debacle of the Cadets and the Menshcviks,
could claim, each with some reason, to enjoy the
prasantry's support. 'Do not the peasants abhor Lenin, the
German spy?' the Social Revolutionary said with self-confidence.
'But do they not declare those who, like you, delay the dispossession
of the landlords and prolong the war as their mortal
enemies?' the Bolshevik retorted triumphantly.
The abhorrence in which many peasants held the Bolsheviks