In Petrograd the
Economic Council, established to rebuild the shattered economic life
of the country, came to a deadlock between the opposing forces of
capital and labour, and was dissolved by Kerensky. The old r?gime
military men, backed by Cadets, demanded that harsh measures be
adopted to restore discipline in the Army and the Navy. In vain
Admiral Verderevsky, the venerable Minister of Marine, and General
Verkhovsky, Minister of War, insisted that only a new, voluntary,
democratic discipline, based on cooperation with the soldiers' and
sailors' Committees, could save the army and navy. Their
recommendations were ignored.
The reactionaries seemed determined to provoke popular anger. The
trial of Kornilov was coming on. More and more openly the bourgeois
press defended him, speaking of him as "the great Russian patriot."
Burtzev's paper, _Obshtchee Dielo_ (Common Cause), called for a
dictatorship of Kornilov, Kaledin and Kerensky!
I had a talk with Burtzev one day in the press gallery of the
Council of the Republic. A small, stooped figure with a wrinkled
face, eyes near-sighted behind thick glasses, untidy hair and beard
streaked with grey.
"Mark my words, young man! What Russia needs is a Strong Man. We
should get our minds off the Revolution now and concentrate on the
Germans. Bunglers, bunglers, to defeat Kornilov; and back of the
bunglers are the German agents.
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