The Reformer
Page 35
His deepest involvement in the formation of Provisional Government policy seems to have been related to war policy, where the government struggled with three fundamental issues. First was its position on peace terms. Miliukov, foreign minister at the start of the Provisional Government, took a line pursuing victory and the concomitant rewards promised by Russia’s Entente allies—above all, Russian control of Constantinople and the straits between the Black Sea and the Aegean (that is, direct Russian access to the Mediterranean). The liberal establishment was generally in accord. Resistance from the Soviet led rather quickly to Miliukov’s ouster and government adoption of a version of “Revolutionary Defensism,” a pursuit of peace without annexations or reparations but qualified by rejection of a “separate peace.” Given the lack of Allied readiness to jettison annexations and reparations, this strategy didn’t promise a quick exit. Finally, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had no objection to a separate peace and were ready to accept whatever they could work out with the Germans. As the war dragged on, the Leninist position grew ever more appealing.10
The second issue was military policy itself, with the government having at least some choice between an aggressive and a relatively quiescent stance. A possible model for the latter would have been the approach of the French government, which responded to soldiers’ mutinies in April through June 1917 by forbearing from offensive action while awaiting the arrival of American troops. The Provisional Government took an aggressive stance, launching the “June offensive.” This effort started well, but after a brief period of triumph the troops—other than the Eighth Army—stopped dead, exercising what they saw as their democratic right to decide on strategy unit by unit. Soon the Eighth Army was isolated and the retreat became universal. The Russian forces ended up far east of their starting position.11
Finally, and deeply entangled in Russia’s divisions over both foreign and domestic policy, was the “Kornilov affair” of August 1917. Lavr Kornilov was a Russian general who won the fervent loyalty of his troops and commanded them with success (thus the behavior of the Eighth Army in the June offensive); he was ultimately appointed the army’s commander in chief. The alternative label sometimes used, the “Kornilov plot,” assumes the existence of a plot by Kornilov, which is at best questionable. A neutral label would be the “Kornilov-Kerensky imbroglio,” as the core of the episode was the relationship between the two and the question of forming a dictatorship (of undefined character) to improve Russia’s chances in the war. More detailed discussion of the imbroglio will follow toward the end of this chapter, but for now it is enough to note that the events brought Kerensky’s fear of a challenge from the right to the flashpoint and likely sealed the fate of the Provisional Government. Overreacting to this supposed threat, the Provisional Government rescinded orders restricting Bolshevik activity, freed several leaders (including Trotsky), and distributed forty thousand rifles and revolvers to Bolsheviks and their sympathizers. The government thereby provided leaders and weapons for the Bolshevik coup in October, and it mobilized the extreme left psychologically.12 The episode revealed Kerensky, by then “minister-president” and the embodiment of the Provisional Government, as vacillating and dissembling, deserving the trust of neither left nor right.
Maklakov’s positions on these issues can be quickly summarized. Peace terms: Originally obdurate in support of those hoping to secure for Russia the spoils of victory, he ultimately began to show more flexibility than most of his Kadet colleagues. June offensive: He neither favored nor opposed it, but he used rumors of a military initiative as the occasion for a speech that attempted to view Russia’s foreign and domestic issues through a unifying perspective. Kornilov: He sought to dissuade Kornilov from action in defiance of the Provisional Government, but without success.
The June offensive was central to Russia’s effort to formulate a stance toward the war. Two weeks earlier, speaking to a private gathering of deputies to the now defunct Fourth Duma, Maklakov discussed the conduct of the war and the evidently imminent offensive. Noting his past clashes with Kerensky, he said that the attack and the conduct of the war would, if successful, show the current regime to be worthy of ruling Russia, and Russia worthy of freedom. In the event of victory, even the current regime’s most desperate opponents would have to salute it—“You have conquered, Galilean,” quoting the (probably apocryphal) deathbed words of the emperor Julian the Apostate acknowledging that Christianity had triumphed. But Maklakov also considered the possibility of failure. He framed Russia’s choice as lying between the obviously difficult path of pursuing the war, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, sliding toward Lenin’s foreign policy (“disgracing ourselves like cheats and cowards who cover their cowardice with pretty words” and ending in submission to the Kaiser) and foundering on his domestic political action (where force is above the law).13 Failure of the offensive would thus expose Russia’s lack of a working state, and the disastrous implications of that lack.
Maklakov’s effort to fuse foreign and domestic policy reflected his long-held conviction that liberty made sense—in fact, could meaningfully survive—only in conjunction with an effective state. The ongoing chaos throughout Russia, which was soon to be manifested in the troops’ insistence that each unit decide its strategy by democratic vote, was neither liberty nor the rule of law. Though the June speech is fair in its implied rebuke to the Provisional Government for failing to bring popular violence under control, it seems to mistakenly focus too much on Lenin as a cause of the violence. He was in part a cause, surely, but in part only a symptom. The seemingly endless bloodletting, the chaos, the delay in constitutional and policy reform—all were bound to breed discontent and a thirst for desperate solutions.
On the issue of broad strategy, the case for Lenin’s solution—accepting a German diktat—looks overwhelming in retrospect, as it enabled Lenin’s domestic victory. But at the time the outcome was not clear. Russian military, economic, and political exhaustion had their parallels in Germany and Austria. And the war aims of the tsarist regime and its liberal successors were not as frivolous as they may seem today, when we measure them against the ensuing disaster. They were grounded in the long-running imperial rivalries that had precipitated the war and could reasonably be expected to persist in one form or another (as indeed they have persisted). And the slogan “peace without annexations or reparations” carried the germ of an idea that made the Leninist position seem especially threatening to conventional patriotic Russians. While technically the slogan seemed to propose only that both sides call it quits and go back to the status quo ante, a suitable end to a military stalemate, it morphed into the idea that imperialism was itself reprehensible, so that peace should accommodate self-determination. The idea had obvious appeal to Finns, Poles, and Ukrainians, and enjoyed Lenin’s strong support.14 So for the liberals it seemed to spell the end of even a liberal Russian empire (assuming that’s not an oxymoron). And as it proved, Lenin’s position had an unspoken caveat: though enthusiastic about self-determination vis-à-vis the Russian empire, there was nothing to prevent him, once he controlled the Russian state, from reversing position and reacquiring Ukraine (as well as invading Poland all the way to Warsaw, albeit in response to Polish moves in Ukraine).
Even if serious national interests justified continuing the war, two points in the liberals’ reasoning seem weak. First, their rhetoric invoked the idea that a compromise peace would somehow betray those already killed or maimed, that persistence was necessary to redeem those losses. This argument is a classic case of the sunk-cost fallacy—invoking resources that can never be recovered to justify expending more. What had to be compared were the slaughter that persistence would entail against its possible gains. Russia of course was not alone in this; leaders in all the belligerent powers made the same error, obstructing chances for peace. Second, the Russian liberals’ apparent feeling that they owed it to the Entente to persist in the war seems ill founded and excessive. Could the liberals’ status as Westernizers a
nd their identification with the West have blinded them to the realpolitik guiding their allies?
In the end we have to judge statesmen primarily in terms of results, and by that measure the liberals’ approach was (as was said of a decision by Napoleon) “worse than a crime, it was a blunder.”
Maklakov’s positions seem to have belonged squarely in the broad run of liberal viewpoint—until September 1917. The evidence of his change of mind—disappointingly late in the game—comes from two sources, Alexander Ivanovich Verkhovskii, a general who became minister of war on August 30, and Vladimir Nabokov, who was cabinet secretary of the Provisional Government. In his wartime memoir, Verkhovskii notes his conviction that the Russians’ only hope for a successful outcome was to make an offer of peace “on democratic terms,” meaning in the parlance of the time a peace without annexations or reparations and, implicitly, a peace separate from the Allies. If the Germans accepted the offer, there would be peace; if they rejected it, then ordinary Russians would be willing to fight—otherwise they would not.15 Verkhovskii’s account appears consistent with (though not identical to) Vladimir Nabokov’s report of his stance at a meeting in Petrograd in early October.16
Verkhovskii’s memoir reports that Maklakov was present at a September 27 meeting at “Stavka,” Russian army headquarters in Mogilev, assembled to prepare the Russian side for a scheduled meeting in Paris with Russia’s allies. Maklakov was there, Verkhovskii says, because he was about to go to France as Russian ambassador (as he did, two weeks later). Verkhovskii misidentifies Maklakov as the minister of internal affairs, an astonishing mistake for the minister of war; brother Nikolai had been dismissed as minister of internal affairs back in June 1915 and at the time of the Stavka meeting was in the dock, under investigation by the Provisional Government’s extraordinary investigative commission. Vasily Maklakov was well acquainted with the high command; he had, for instance, visited General Brusilov at the front in July 1916 with Rodzianko and Tereshchenko, and in February 1917 Brusilov told Tereshchenko that he’d like a repeat visit, as he felt cut off from events in the capital.17
In any event, the Stavka meeting included a review of the numbers in Russia’s army. Stavka’s estimates had recently ranged from seven to twelve million—quite a range! But by the time of the meeting Verkhovskii was convinced that the right number was ten million, of whom only two million were actually at the front. Verkhovskii speaks of the remaining eight million as performing support tasks; it is not clear how he accounted for deserters, who were flooding Russia at the time.18 He proposed to reduce the support numbers to four million (still a ratio of support to frontline troops far exceeding that of France), thereby releasing four million for productive work on the home front. The Stavka group rejected his proposal. Despite Maklakov’s familiarity with and condemnation of the old regime’s conduct of the war, he must have found this evidence of disarray rather daunting.19 Verkhovskii’s impressions of the Stavka meeting, which he almost certainly shared with Maklakov, may have provoked some rethinking on Maklakov’s part.
Indeed, Nabokov’s account of meetings in late September and early October suggests that Maklakov engaged in just such a reevaluation. Though Nabokov is not absolutely clear, Verkhovskii was present at one and Maklakov at another. Verkhovskii took a thoroughly defeatist stance. By this time Baron Nolde had also concluded that the war was hopeless. In a Kadet central committee meeting he put forward that case, but instead of supporting Verkhovskii’s idea of a straightforward Russian proposal of a “democratic peace,” he argued that Russia should try to persuade its allies of the need to open peace negotiations, evidently sharing Nabokov’s assumption that “a separate peace was naturally out of the question.”20 In another meeting of liberals, at the home of Prince Grigorii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi, Nolde made a similar pitch. On this occasion Nabokov and the Progressive Konovalov supported Nolde. Nabokov had to leave the meeting early and thus missed speeches by Struve and Maklakov, but he notes that he was told later that “only the latter partly supported Nolde.”21 Though secondhand, Nabokov’s report provides reason to believe that Maklakov had by then begun to doubt the merits of a full-fledged war effort.
Nabokov’s account is somewhat confusing and is especially perplexing in his view of Verkhovskii. At one point Nabokov is quite venomous, speaking of Verkhovskii as “utterly bankrupt” and “a sort of psychopath undeserving of any trust.”22 Elsewhere, contrasting Verkhovskii’s position with the warlike stance of Tereshchenko, Miliukov’s successor as the Provisional Government’s foreign minister, he says, “Alas, we must acknowledge that Verkhovskii was essentially correct.”23 He makes no effort to explain how this (morally?) bankrupt psychopath could have stumbled into a sound position on an issue on which the liberal magnates of the day were almost uniformly wrong. Nabokov never seems puzzled by the paradox. He also is tantalizing about the exact nature of Maklakov’s “partly” supporting Nolde—which parts?
On October 20 Verkhovskii pressed his view of the necessity of immediate peace proposals before the defense and foreign policy committee of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic, a broadly representative consultative conference created by the Provisional Government in September, perhaps in belated and partial recognition of the gap left by its discard of the monarchy and the Duma. But the council failed to support Verkhovskii.24 Maklakov was a member of the council but had by this time left for Paris. October 20 was in any event extremely late in the scheme of things, five days before the Bolsheviks’ coup. It is tempting to fantasize a brilliant Maklakov speech endorsing Verkhovskii and persuading the liberals to score an end run on Lenin. But the lateness of the proceedings and Maklakov’s dedication to the Entente make the fantasy, even if he had been on hand, just that.
The Kornilov affair proved fatal to the Provisional Government and thus to any chance for liberalism in Russia. A liberal’s conduct in the matter raises at least two issues. The first is whether a true liberal could support any move to more extreme, or draconian, exercises of government power. Maklakov undoubtedly favored action to check the prevailing chaos, on grounds of both foreign and domestic policy, a judgment seemingly rooted in a combination of wartime necessity and a broader belief that bolstering the “ordered” part of “ordered liberty” was necessary to prevent anarchy or civil war. A second, more pragmatic, question concerns his judgment. Because the ensuing debacle was a natural result of the mere appearance of a Kornilov coup attempt, any liberal who had an opportunity to prevent the appearance or reality of a Kornilov coup and failed to do so seems to have exercised poor judgment. Maklakov acquitted himself well on this score, trying to avert both the appearance and the reality of a coup, only to be thwarted by Kerensky’s wiles and Kornilov’s rashness. Since the first question is heavily entangled in imponderables, this text will focus on the second.
Kornilov himself has had the fate of becoming the subject of a witty phrase that is at best three-quarters correct—that he had “the heart of a lion and the brains of a sheep.” No one questions his bravery, which was coupled with leadership skills and an ability to impart his courage to his troops. In the ill-fated June offensive only the Eighth Army—under Kornilov’s command—performed well, and no one claims that this was coincidence.25 His masterful leadership is hard to square with the brains of a sheep. His political judgment, however, was sketchy.
In part because of the Eighth Army’s success, Kerensky appointed Kornilov commander in chief in July. Kornilov accepted the post, subject to Kerensky’s meeting his demands for restoring military discipline, including making the death penalty applicable to troops in the rear. The demands became publicly known. On July 24, after various clarifications, Kerensky gave assurances that he would fulfill the demands, but he then embarked on a course of backing and filling, mixing deceit and irresolution.26 The conflict was still unresolved at the time of the Moscow State Conference, August 12–15, summoned by the Provisional Government to gather representatives of the whole spectrum of Russian opinion. Th
e conference did indeed bring disparate elements together in the same hall (the Bolshoi Theater), but it served mainly to display their mutual loathing. Speakers from the right received cheers from the like-minded and catcalls from the left, and vice versa.27 Maklakov’s talk pursued the theme he had developed in his speech to members of the Fourth Duma in June: success in the war depended on the discipline that only a strong state could provide, not a state in shambles, and military success therefore required an effort to strengthen the state.28 Kerensky’s speech closing the conference was true to form. Boris Savinkov, deputy minister of war (Kerensky being formally the minister), characterized it as “frenzied”; Miliukov pinpointed a special Kerensky stage affect, “a catch in his voice that fell from hysterical scream to stage whisper.”29