Empires Apart (48 page)

The year after invading Haiti, US marines yet again invaded the Spanish-speaking half of the island, the Dominican Republic, and again the main concern was to gain control of the nation's financial affairs. The paradoxes inherent in the American belief that it was possible to impose liberty were plainly demonstrated, as for eight years the local press was subject to rigorous censorship in the name of freedom.

America's continuing military interventions in the Caribbean and the proclamation of the Roosevelt Corollary were further signs that a mighty new empire had emerged, while at the same time, the end of the nineteenth century, two once-great empires were approaching collapse. The Spanish empire was hastened on its way by American military might, and Russia determined to do the same with the Turkish empire. Turkey had been subject to repeated Russian attacks but still held on to much of the Balkans, and Nicholas II turned his attention in that direction. Once more, however, the crucial difference between the geopolitical circumstances of America and Russia became apparent: while nobody else was likely to intervene if America seized Cuba or the Philippines, the Balkans were a fulcrum of European imperial intrigue and in particular were the back door of another soon-to-be-defunct empire, the Austro-Hungarian.

The end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an age when the imperial powers played board games with much of the globe. Diplomats, politicians, bankers and monarchs seized and ceded, deposed and disposed without any thought for the occupants of the territories concerned. Great chunks of Asia and Africa in particular were passed around between the great powers. In a typical example Russia mediated in a dispute between France and Germany about whether territory seized by Belgium in the centre of Africa might be taken over by Germany in return for France being given a free hand in Morocco. The European protagonists eventually settled into two camps: Russia, France and Britain in the Triple Entente and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy in the
Triple Alliance. America and Japan watched from the sidelines, happy to take advantage of whatever developed.

The various Balkan wars that preceded the First World War saw Turkey losing most of its European empire and Slavs and non-Slavs slugging it out to see who would gain most of the spoils. Russia cheered on the Serbs, Germany cheered on the Bulgarians, and the heir to the Habsburg throne made the mistake of leaving Vienna for Sarajevo and a fatal encounter with an anarchist's bomb. Germany blamed Russia's Slavic ally Serbia for the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination, and the stage was set for the cataclysmic First World War.

Looking back on the nineteenth century it is clear that America and Russia had started to develop increasing similarities. Particular events invite simple comparison: the emancipation of the Russian serfs and of the American slaves; the assassinations by anarchists of Tsar Alexander II and President McKinley; the violent labour unrest in both countries; pogroms of Jews and blacks. These superficial similarities reflect in part the reality that below the surface many of the same forces were at work, in particular those arising from increasing industrialisation, but the outcomes were fundamentally different. In America democracy proved unable to reconcile diametrically opposed positions on the issue of slavery and the nation collapsed into civil war – but its political institutions emerged from that war largely unchanged. In Russia on the other hand the autocracy was able, on the issue of serfdom, to simply impose its own view, but that postponed civil war rather than avoided it, and when war came centuries of tsarist dictatorship were swept away. By bringing very large groups of workers together for the first time, industrialisation and the factory system, often introduced like everything else in Russia on a massive scale, created breeding grounds for radical dissent. The only other place where the downtrodden could associate in such explosive numbers was within the armed forces, and when revolutionary groups gained footholds in the navy and army the days of Romanov rule were numbered.

Although dramatic change in Russia became inevitable, the form that such change would take was totally unpredictable. It is now clear
that Lenin and his followers were as amazed as anyone else when the Bolsheviks emerged on top. There were after all similar anarchist and revolutionary socialist groups elsewhere who achieved very little. The world seemed to be in turmoil. Not only did anarchist groups assassinate the tsar and other Russian leaders but their attacks spread across Europe. The King of Italy, the President of France, the Empress of Austria and the prime minister of Spain were killed. An anarchist tried to shoot the Prince and Princess of Wales as their train passed through Brussels, and in the United States President McKinley became the third president to be assassinated when he was struck down by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz. (Czolgosz was a loner regarded by his own family as crazy and refused admission by various anarchist groups who thought he was a spy; he hatched his assassination plan after reading newspaper accounts of the assassination of the Italian king.) Nicholas II had himself been subject to an anarchist assassination attempt when, as crown prince, he had visited Japan. He was saved by the quick action of his cousin, Prince George of Greece, and was left with a scar on his forehead and a bitter hatred of all things Japanese.

Mounting discontent in Russia over wages and living conditions in the new industrial suburbs of St Petersburg coincided with the news of the loss of Port Arthur to the Japanese, and protesters took to the streets. In January 1905 soldiers fired on demonstrators in St Petersburg, an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Reports of an enormous massacre swept across the Russian empire, and conspiracy theories abounded. It now seems certain that the protest leader, a priest named Georgi Gapon, had received funds from the tsar's secret police, the Okhranka (in the same way that front organisations were funded by both the KGB and CIA later in the twentieth century). Gapon fled abroad, and when he returned was murdered by socialists convinced he was an Okhrana
agent provocateur
.

It is quite possible that Nicholas II hoped that a short sharp shock would quell the developing unrest. If this was the case he had miscalculated. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out throughout the
empire, particularly in the more recently conquered territories like Poland and Finland. Closer to home the first workers' councils or soviets appeared in St Petersburg and called the whole city out on strike, thrusting to the fore the deputy chairman of the St Petersburg soviet, Leon Trotsky. Sailors on the battleship
Potemkin
famously mutinied, and unions were formed not only among the factory workers and peasants but also among groups as diverse as doctors and ballet dancers. Nicholas had undammed a torrent that looked as though it would sweep him away. Two million people were on strike by the end of the year. The tsar's first reaction to Bloody Sunday was to panic and then to issue a defiant declaration of the absolute primacy of autocracy. As the protests mounted, however, he was forced to issue what became known as the October Manifesto, agreeing to transform Russia into a constitutional monarchy with free elections. This won over the doctors and dancers, and further militancy by the St Petersburg and Moscow soviets fizzled out or was brutally crushed. But Nicholas at heart remained an autocrat, and when the protests had subsided he reiterated his commitment to the supremacy of the autocracy and reined back the reforms promised in the October Manifesto.

The tsar's prime minister, Peter Stolypin, tried to head off rural unrest by giving more land to the peasants and encouraging further settlement of Siberia. In stark contrast with American colonisation of the west, Siberia's bleak climate dissuaded mass migration even after the discovery of rich mineral reserves. The vast territory was only slowly populated, partly through voluntary migration, partly through convict labour but mainly through forced migration: between 1824 and 1899 around 720,000 settlers were simply told to uproot themselves and move to Siberia, many accompanied by their families. Slightly less draconian measures were introduced when the Siberian Resettlement Bureau was set up in 1896 and three-quarters of a million people settled along the route of the Trans-Siberian railway in the next four years. Stolypin's reforms were too little too late, and in 1911 he was assassinated at the opera in the presence of the tsar. His murder well illustrated the chaotic state of political life in the last days of the Romanov regime. His assassin
was a revolutionary socialist who doubled as an agent of the Okhrana secret police. At his trial before a military court it was alleged that his objective had been to incite a revolution against the monarchy, although had that been the case he would surely have shot the tsar. Rumours soon started to circulate that the murder had been arranged by Stolypin's rival at court – Rasputin (who was himself murdered by court opponents soon after). As Stolypin's assassin was promptly executed and Nicholas II personally ordered any further investigation to be stopped, the truth may never be known.

Nicholas had underestimated the forces ranged against him, but so had most people. Around the world dissidents were embracing the ideas of the socialist left and labour turmoil was rampant. As industrialisation had progressed so much faster in the west Russia was the last place most revolutionary socialists expected their revolution to start. On paper the conditions looked far more propitious in America. The United States had a revolutionary tradition, and within living memory had torn itself apart in the name of the downtrodden masses on the southern plantations. Socialist principles of equality and justice were inherently compatible with the prevailing ideology of democracy. The capitalist bosses were as rapacious as any in the world, and the working conditions in factories and mines as bad as anywhere else. In the Pennsylvania coalfields children as young as six were employed as ‘coal breakers' in conditions as bad or worse than anything endured by southern slaves or Russian peasants. Throughout America there were groups espousing anarchist or socialist ideologies remarkably similar to their Russian contemporaries, much of their literature confidently proclaiming that a socialist millennium was not far away. Violent confrontations between the authorities and striking workers were as common on the streets of Pittsburgh as St Petersburg.

Numerically the left at the turn of the century was probably stronger in America than in Russia. Political activity of all kinds was far more prevalent in the United States, and socialist and anarchist groups of varying hues sprang up and disappeared again. The Socialist party had members all over the country and not just in the big cities; it has been claimed, somewhat
improbably, that at one time nearly a third of the adult population of Oklahoma belonged to the party. A socialist textbook called
The Life and Deeds of Uncle Sam:A Little History for Big Children
sold half a million copies. In 1911 thirty-three American cities had socialist mayors. Milwaukee was notorious for its corruption until the socialists swept to power in 1910 and remained there for more than a quarter of a century.

In the 1900 presidential election the Social Democrat Eugene Debs received 0.6 per cent of the popular vote and the Socialist Labour candidate Joseph Maloney 0.3 per cent. Small votes to be sure (even added together they won far fewer votes than John Woolley the Prohibition candidate), but the social democratic parties in Europe were also small in their early days. Just two years earlier the grandly named First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party, the party that would eventually drive the Bolshevik revolution, had just nine delegates. As the First World War loomed many on the American left were convinced that revolution was on its way and victory over the oligarchs was within their grasp.

To the majority of Americans such expectations were pure fantasy. And it was not only their opponents that regarded American socialism as a lost cause. In early 1917 one dedicated revolutionary, sitting in his rented apartment on New York's 164
^th
Street, despaired of the American socialist movement. Its leaders, he complained, resembled less a working-class vanguard than an assembly of ‘successful dentists' who considered President Woodrow Wilson more authoritative than Karl Marx. When news arrived of the uprising in Petrograd that heralded the Bolshevik revolution he quickly gathered his family, rushed to the docks and bade farewell to America without regret. Like Lenin – himself hurriedly returning from exile – the other mastermind of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, was on his way home.

CHAPTER 11

COMMUNISM AND CORPORATISM

Until the beginning of the twentieth century the values of America and Russia could be easily described: democracy or autocracy at home and imperialism abroad. For centuries Russian autocrats had imposed their will on an ever-expanding empire and, although much younger, America too had ever-expanded its frontiers. The imperial values of both nations were remarkably similar but their domestic values could hardly be more different.