Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution/Foreword
FOREWORD
I HAVE endeavoured in this little book to give a description of our mission to Russia, when Louis de Brouckère, Henri de Man and myself went to carry to the Russian Revolution the greeting of the Belgian Labour Party and to discuss with our comrades of Petrograd the question of the International Conference at Stockholm.
Leaving London on the 6th of May 1917, we reached Petrograd on the 18th of May, stopping three days on our way at Stockholm. We remained there until the 5th of June, except for a brief visit which two of us paid to Moscow. Afterwards, on the invitation of General Alexeieff, we spent a fortnight at the front, going thereafter to Roumania, returning to Petrograd on the 24th of June, and leaving for Le Havre, viâ Stockholm, on the 25th of June.
The five weeks that the Belgian Socialist Mission spent in Russia allowed of our seeing much and questioning many persons. We visited the Workmen's and Soldiers' Committees, as well as the Ministers, Socialists as well as "Cadets." We met the representatives of all the different political opinions from Polish nationalists to the anarchists installed in the Villa Dournovo. In Petrograd, as in Moscow and Kieff, we saw the Labour Organizations, interviewed members of the Belgian colony and the leaders of Employers Associations. We came into contact with the masses—we must have spoken to at least a hundred thousand persons—as well as their leaders. We listened to the pessimists as well as to the optimists. We had an opportunity of observing the enormous difficulties existing in Russia to-day. But we never lost sight of the many reasons that, in spite of everything, justified young democratic Russia's belief in her future.
We share this belief and we give our reasons hereafter.
My thanks are due to my two collaborators, Louis de Brouckère and Lieutenant de Man, who have permitted of my giving in this one volume three aspects of the Russian Revolution. I thank, too, my translator, Miss J. E. H. Findlay, whose co-operation permits of my offering this book to the British public.
EMILE VANDERVELDE.