1917

by Arthur Herman, PhD

  Lenin was not even in Petrograd. On July 2, he had taken the train across the border; his friend Vladimir D. Bonch-Bruevich was astonished when the now notorious Bolshevik suddenly appeared outside the door of his villa near the Finnish town of Vyborg. Why had Lenin left town? According to historian Richard Pipes, it is “virtually certain” that he had been tipped off that the Provisional Government had found evidence of his covert dealings with German agents and was about to have him arrested. The issue of the German connection would rear its ugly head in just a few days, and Lenin was careful to be out of town and out of reach as the events Trotsky was setting in motion took place.27

  That evening, Trotsky gave a blistering speech to an audience of at least five thousand soldiers and civilians, ripping into the government and demanding the transfer of all power to the Petrograd Soviet. That would be the battle cry—“All power to the Soviets!”—over the next several days. It was actually Lenin’s, but Trotsky made it his own, a rallying slogan for revolution but also a bludgeon against the government.

  What drove Trotsky was not just Marxist revolutionary fervor but also a deeply romantic fascination with the purging power of violence and bloodshed. In June, he had told a crowd from the Kronstadt naval garrison (another highly disaffected, pro-Bolshevik military unit), “I tell you heads must roll, blood must flow. The strength of the French Revolution was in the machine that made the enemies of the people shorter by a head. This is a fine device. We must have one in every city.”28 What another Bolshevik orator might have meant as a metaphor, Trotsky meant literally. Of all Lenin’s associates, it was Leon Trotsky who, if they really were going to start a full-scale revolution, was most eager to fire the first shot.*

  As it happened, a willingness to unleash the forces of violence was about the only political asset the Bolsheviks possessed. They were incredibly underpowered in their political support and at the polls; in elections in May and June, they ran a dismal third to the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Mensheviks, with only 105 delegates, compared with 285 for Kerensky’s party and 248 for Chkheidze’s.29 What sustained them was, first, Lenin’s tireless energy and fervor; second, support from provincial labor union groups susceptible to Bolshevik propaganda and promises of “Down with the War” and “All Power to the Soviets”; and, finally, the continuing flow of money from Germany.

  The records from the German Foreign Office Archives leave no room for doubt. The money assigned to support Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917–18 came to between six million and ten million dollars. Most of that was sent as cash via neutral Sweden, and most was spent on party organization and propaganda in Russia. But some was deposited for Lenin at the Disconto-Gesellschaft in Berlin; the bank then forwarded the sums on to the Nye Bank in Stockholm. That money would be regularly withdrawn by a confidant of Lenin’s living in Stockholm, Jacob Ganetskii (aka Fürstenberg), and deposited in the bank account of Lenin’s relative Eugenia Sumenson, who co-owned a pharmaceutical business that served as a cover for passing money on to Lenin.

  Nor is there any doubt that Lenin knew that the money he was receiving was from the Germans. In fact, in a letter of April 12, he complained to Fürstenberg-Ganetskii that he was not getting it. At least one other document shows him acknowledging receiving subventions from Sumenson’s partner, a Pole named M. Iu. Kozlovskii.30 Certainly, the leading members of his inner circle, including Kamenev and Radek, knew their political fortunes depended on German gold—and by the end of June, the Provisional Government was starting to learn this, too. That is certainly why Lenin felt it necessary to run to Finland, to avoid arrest as a German agent. That is also why the events of July 16 and 17 seemed the best shot at toppling the government before all of them were rounded up and arrested.

  After Trotsky’s rousing speech on July 15, the men of the First Machine Gun Regiment were too agitated to sleep. An all-night discussion (or bull session), reinforced by plenty of vodka and shouts of “Beat the bourgeoisie!” ended the next morning with a vote on the resolution to take to the streets, fully armed, and march on the Tauride. That evening, some of them boarded machine-gun-equipped automobiles and headed for the Troitskii Bridge, followed by several thousand soldiers marching and shooting off their rifles.

  The shooting, plus some looting, continued all night and into the morning. Nonetheless, it was not until midday on July 16 that Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev decided they needed to catch up with the Machine Gun Regiment and put the Bolshevik banner at its head. They decided they would convince the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet to proclaim full governmental power in the name of the entire Soviet—a pre-coup, as it were, to prepare the way for the real thing.

  Two days later, July 18, Pravda ran an article by Lenin, “All Power to the Soviets,” which was supposed to be the signal for a general uprising in support of Bolsheviks in the Workers’ Section of the Soviet and the soldiers of the Machine Gun Regiment.31

  The government had no way of stopping them. It had figured out as early as July 15 what was in fact happening,32 but there were very few loyal troops left to suppress a serious armed revolt. In the absence of any force to maintain law and order, power belonged to whoever was strong enough to seize it. On the morning of July 17, that looked like Lenin, Trotsky, and their armed supporters. Those consisted of the Machine Gun Regiment and the five thousand to six thousand armed sailors from the Kronstadt naval base who had landed in the city and were marching down to the Kschessinska Mansion. There Lenin, freshly back from his brief diversion to Finland, was waiting for them.

  “I am delighted to see what is happening!” he shouted to the cheering sailors. “The transfer of all power to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies is finally becoming a reality!”

  From there, the sailors started their march toward the Tauride, where Lenin now headed. His plan was to have the Bolsheviks in the Workers’ Section proclaim him, Trotsky, and a colleague, Anatoly V. Lunacharsky, heads of the new government. By 4:00 p.m., after opening fire on some members of the crowd and killing several, the sailors and contingents of workers, whom the Bolsheviks had arranged to be released from their jobs in order to join the march, reached the Tauride. Sailors and soldiers were soon swarming in and around the building, demanding action and shouting, “All power to the soviets!” They nearly lynched Socialist Revolutionary minister of agriculture Viktor Chernov—he was saved by Trotsky, who had just arrived and pulled the minister bodily back into the hall.33 Kamenev, Trotsky, and the others turned to one another in triumph. The Soviet was theirs; the city was theirs; rule over Russia was theirs. All they needed was for their fearless leader to give the order, and they could proclaim that the Soviet was now the official government of Russia and assume formal power—but Lenin did not. Sitting nervously next to Zinoviev in the Ispolkom conference room, with the entire building in a state of pandemonium, he turned to his fellow exile from Zurich and muttered, “I wonder if this is the time to try, but I don’t think it is.”34

  The rest of the evening, the Bolsheviks and supporters milled around the Tauride, waiting for orders that never came from a leader who seemed to have lost his nerve. That was all the breathing space the government needed. That same evening, Kerensky, who was at the front, urged his colleagues to release whatever information they had on Lenin’s German connections. They did so the next day, in the mass-circulation daily Zhivoe slovo, whose July 18 issue carried the splashy headline “LENIN, GANETSKII & CO SPIES.” The effect on the soldiers who had supported the would-be Bolshevik coup the previous day was, according to historian Richard Pipes, electric.35

  The average Russian soldier may have despised the sitting government; he certainly hated the war and the deprivations it had caused for himself and his family. He was therefore inclined to listen to anyone such as Lenin, whose slogan had become “Peace, Land, Bread”—one that resonated with every average Russian, not just the men in the army. Yet cold, deliberate treason was another matter. News of Lenin’s possible complicity with th
e German government aroused suspicions many had always had, but had buried, about Lenin’s unexplained safe passage through enemy territory to Russia. Now soldiers and sailors who twenty-four hours earlier were prepared to carry Lenin on their shoulders into power were so hostile that Lenin had to ask for bodyguards in order to leave the Ispolkom. “Now they are going to shoot us,” a flustered Lenin told Trotsky; “it is the most advantageous time for them.” That night, he slipped out the back of the building. It would be more than four months before anyone saw him again in public.36

  After the headline hit, the rioters began to melt away, confused and embarrassed at the revelation that the man they were supposed to be supporting might be a German agent. At the same time, over the course of the day, one loyal regiment after another marched into Palace Square to show its support for the government—and its opposition to the would-be Bolshevik coup.

  By July 19, the government had regained its nerve and was ready to take decisive action. It ordered the arrests of Lenin and eleven colleagues on charges of “high treason and organizing a mass uprising.” That same day, loyal soldiers from the front took over the garrisoning of the city, and Alexander Kerensky was made prime minister. A new minister of justice began collecting evidence on the Bolshevik-German collaboration for a possible future trial. And over the next several days, the coup conspirators, including Trotsky, were rounded up one by one—all, that is, except Lenin.

  Lenin and Zinoviev had managed to elude the dragnet around the city (which, given the fact that the gendarmerie and police had been abolished, was not terribly difficult) and slip into the countryside. There Zinoviev decided he would take his chances with the police and turn himself in; Lenin prepared to flee to Finland. (He had to shave his beard.) He and his companions were nearly nabbed twice before they finally found refuge across the border, where friends and ideological comrades once again provided shelter for the man who was now the defeated and humiliated leader, branded a traitor from one end of Russia to the other.37

  As he began, once again, the dreary process of trying to start a revolution from exile, Lenin published a couple of short articles denying the story that had appeared in Zhivoe slovo, and denouncing as “lies” the stories of his links to Ganetskii and other German agents. This denunciation was actually his biggest lie.

  He also began working on a new book, one that would (as he told anyone willing to listen) prove once and for all that his interpretation of Marx was right and the others were wrong. The truth, however, was that even he sensed he was finished. In his mind, the book, later published as State and Revolution, was his intellectual last will and testament. He even issued instructions for its posthumous publication, in case he was killed or assassinated.

  In August, still hiding from the police, Lenin started planning to move the entire Bolshevik base to Finland, or possibly Sweden. This episode in the sorry history of Marxist revolution in Russia was done; all that was left, it seemed, was to turn out the lights as the door closed behind him.38

  As for the government, with the July Days, it had survived the most serious crisis since the fall of the czar, and had emerged looking stronger and more popular than it had been in months. It was true that the front was still in turmoil, and the Germans were advancing on Riga, but now the revolution’s brightest hope, Kerensky, was fully in charge, serving as prime minister and as minister of war and of the navy. Kerensky swiftly ordered the rebellious army and navy units disbanded and the troops sent to the front. Some semblance of order returned to the capital.

  Pravda was shut down. The Bolshevik movement now silenced and broken, with its leaders arrested and Lenin in hiding. After a very near escape, Russia seemed at last safe for democracy.

  YPRES, JULY 17–AUGUST 4

  THE SAME DAY Lenin made his abortive bid for power, July 17, British forces began their first attack along the Passchendaele front. More than three thousand guns were pouring four million artillery shells on German lines. It was a one-hundred-million-dollar offensive, all paid for by Wilson and his son-in-law Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo—proof that the transatlantic alliance was more formidable than ever, and that Britain was shutting the door on any negotiated peace.39

  The real battle got under way two weeks later, on July 31. As the bombardment reached its climax, just before four o’clock in the morning, nine British infantry divisions backed by 136 tanks started creeping their way toward the German lines. Very soon, they were swept over by mist and driving rain. Once again, bad weather, the wettest summer in seventy-five years, would make it difficult for the offensive’s officers to figure out what was happening as the battle unfolded.40

  Then, at two in the afternoon, the British lines were also inundated—by waves of German shells, as the Germans counterattacked. The battlefield soon turned into a great lake of mud and rain-filled shell holes, as one tank after another became bogged down and the British advance slowed to a crawl. Communication with command in the rear had all but broken down. “Some pigeons got through,” wrote one observer, “but the only news from the assault was by runners, who sometimes took hours to get back, if indeed they ever did.”41

  The rain poured down for three days straight as the British attack sputtered out and died. “The ground is churned up to a depth of ten feet and is the consistency of porridge,” a British brigadier reported. “[T]he middle[s] of the shell craters are so soft that one might sink out of sight.” Some men did, as others struggled through mud up to their waists—and all the while, the artillery shells continued to rain down, taking a frightening toll on British attacker and German defender alike.

  On August 4, Haig finally had to call a halt to the attack. The farthest gain was less than half a mile—not even half of what Haig had promised in the opening days. The British and French had suffered more than 23,000 casualties, while some of the units commanded by British general Sir Hubert Gough had lost 30 to 60 percent of their effectives.42

  Nonetheless, Haig persisted in renewing the attack all through the rest of the month. Twenty-eight of all forty-two available Allied divisions were committed in one way or another to the offensive, as the rain continued to pour and pour. Each day brought the same dismal news: limited progress in some areas, none at all in others. And the names on the casualty lists kept mounting. The British army suffered 68,000 killed and wounded for an advance that, at its farthest, extended less than four thousand yards.

  On August 25, even Haig realized the attacks weren’t working, and he called a halt to the proceedings. On September 4, he was summoned to London to explain what had gone wrong.43 Like France’s Nivelle Offensive, Haig’s Passchendaele offensive had proved a bloody failure.

  It really was up to the Americans now.

  10

  AMERICAN LEVIATHAN

  War is the health of the state.

  —AMERICAN SOCIALIST RANDOLPH BOURNE, 1917

  WASHINGTON

  ON JULY 7, 1914, three weeks before Germany began to mobilize, Bethmann-Hollweg told an aide that “a war, whatever its outcome, will result in the uprooting of everything that exists.” In fact, the German chancellor was wrong. By 1917, much had indeed been uprooted. The global balance of power that had kept Europe at general peace since 1815 lay in permanent ruins. Three great empires, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Russia, were teetering on the brink of collapse. Millions of lives had been lost, billions of dollars in property destroyed, and assumptions about the nature of war and humanity overturned forever.

  Moreover, the European Great Powers no longer played the central role; they had been upstaged with America’s entry into the Great War.

  One thing that had not been destroyed—on the contrary, it was being immeasurably strengthened—was the power of government. Among the Great Powers before 1914, government’s share of GNP had averaged between 5 and 10 percent. In America, the share of total income accounted for by federal and local government came to just 9 percent.1 Three years later, those numbers had been transformed. In many ways, the int
rusion of national governments into their nations’ economies was necessary; there was no way private initiative or industry, no matter how large or organized, could have built the mighty land, sea, and now air forces needed to fight a war on this mammoth scale. At the same time, government’s ability to intervene in, and even run, the lives of private citizens had expanded beyond anyone’s imagining. This, too, marked the start of something new then but all too familiar now. Emerging from the forge of war in 1917 was the active role of government in every aspect of daily life, and the rising expectation that government can fix every problem and deal with every crisis from economic depression to childcare and climate change.

  Certainly, no world leader was more eager for the chance to fulfill the promise of government at war than Woodrow Wilson. The idea that “war is the health of the state,” although uttered with bitter sarcasm by his countryman, the pacifist Randolph Bourne, fitted perfectly with Wilson’s Progressive agenda and his vision of an America transformed for the better by the power of federal government, even in wartime. Yet six months after dragging the country into the world conflict, Wilson was finding the job a lot harder than he had thought.

  It’s true he had set his expectations high. For him, the arsenal of new wartime bureaus and agencies he had created since April was not going to be enough. In his mind, an America at war demanded a unity of hearts and minds as well as material resources. “Variety of opinion among ourselves there may be—discussion, free counsel as to what we ought to do—but, so far as every other nation is concerned, we must be absolutely a unit.” Those words were spoken at a luncheon in Buffalo, New York, in November 1916, well before Wilson even contemplated entering the war.2 He returned to the same theme in his second inaugural address the following March, still before he was thinking of intervention.