Stalin, Volume 1
Page 36
In Petrograd the next day, the Bolshevik Central Committee argued over whether to summon a party conference to discuss a possible separate peace. “What party conference?” Lenin snapped. Sverdlov deemed it impossible to organize a full party conference quickly enough and proposed consulting with representatives of the provinces. Stalin lamented the lack of clarity in the party’s position, and, reversing himself somewhat, suggested that “the middle view—the position of Trotsky—had given us a way out of this difficult situation.” Stalin proposed to “give the spokesmen for different points of view more chance to be heard and call a meeting to reach a clear position.”161 Trotsky had a point: Russia’s war effort was not the only one disintegrating. The Central Powers, too, were under colossal strain: in Germany a strike wave was suppressed, but mass deprivation from a British blockade persisted; Austria was begging Germany, and even Bulgaria, for emergency food.162 In the meantime, however, the Germans turned up a trump card: a delegation from the Ukrainian government, known as the Central Rada—socialist but non-Bolshevik—had showed up at Brest-Litovsk. The lead German civilian politican called the group of people in their twenties “young ladies” (Burschchen), but on January 27 (February 9 in the West), Germany duly signed a treaty with them.163 Never mind that, by this point, Red Guards from Russia had deposed the Central Rada in Kiev.164 The Central Rada representatives promised Germany and Austria Ukrainian grain, manganese, and eggs in exchange for military assistance against Bolshevik forces and the establishment of a Ruthenian (Ukrainian) autonomous region in Austrian Galicia and the Bukovina. (Austria’s Czernin called it the Bread Peace.)165 Whatever the aspirations of Ukrainian intellectuals and political figures, independent Ukraine, for Germany, was a tool to subdue Russia and support the Reich’s war effort in the West.166
With Ukraine seemingly in their pocket, the German delegation felt triumphant. The next day (January 28, February 10 in the West), Trotsky arrived to deliver a long indictment of “imperialism,” which the German delegation took as a windy prelude to Bolshevik capitulation. It had been some fifty days since the Brest-Litovsk talks commenced; the Russian army had essentially evaporated. But instead of bowing before these realities, Trotsky ended his speech by proclaiming a policy of “neither war, nor peace.” That is, Russia was exiting the war while refusing to sign a treaty. After a silence, German Major-General Hoffmann, architect of the great victory at Tannenberg, muttered, “Unheard of.”167 The Bolshevik delegation exited to board a train. “On the return trip to Petrograd,” Trotsky recalled, “we were all under the impression that the Germans would not start an offensive.”168 An ambiguous telegram from Brest about “peace” to the Soviet capital had sparked telegrams from Petrograd to the front, where soldiers broke out in song and ceremonial firing of guns, to celebrate “the peace.”169 Trotsky arrived back at Smolny amid jubilation on January 31, 1918. (The next day in Russia would be February 14, thanks to the introduction of the Western Gregorian calendar.) A skeptical Lenin wondered if Trotsky might have pulled off a magician’s trick. A diplomatic cable from Brest-Litovsk to Vienna prompted preparations for a victory celebration in the exhausted Habsburg capital: huge crowds filled the streets and bunting started to go up.170
But the Germany brass insisted that they would never get the promised Ukrainian grain without a military occupation. At a German war council on February 13—the same day that Trotsky had arrived back at Smolny—Field Marshal Hindenburg pointed out that the armistice had failed to result in a peace treaty and therefore no longer held; he urged a policy to “smash the Russians [and] topple their government.” The kaiser agreed.171 Some 450,000 Central Power troops entered Ukraine, with the deposed Central Rada’s permission. (Angry riots erupted among Polish speakers over the promises to Ukraine in Galicia; Polish troops entering Ukraine under Habsburg command broke off into their own armed force.)172 A parallel German force (fifty-two divisions), beginning on February 18—eight days after Trotsky’s coup de theâtre—would waltz 125 miles through northern Russian territory in two weeks, capturing Minsk, Mogilyov, and Narva, putting the Germans on an unobstructed path to Petrograd. “This is the most comic war I have experienced,” Hoffmann noted of his operation (named Thunderbolt). “One puts on the train a few infantry with machine guns and one artillery piece, and proceeds to the next railroad station, seizes it, arrests the Bolsheviks, entrains another detachment, and moves on.”173
QOQAND MASSACRE
Events elsewhere on the former Russian imperial space followed a dynamic dictated neither by the geopolitics of Germany versus the Entente nor by the acrimonious duets of Trotsky and Lenin. The Soviet in Tashkent, comprising primarily Slavic colonists and garrison troops, had succeeded in seizing power on its second try on October 23, 1917, even before the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. In mid-November, a local Congress of Soviets gathered essentially without any indigeneous members.174 “The soldiers sent thither from the interior provinces of Russia, the peasants settled therein by the old regime on the lands confiscated from our people, and the workers accustomed to regard us haughtily from above—these were the people who were at this moment to decide the fate of Turkestan,” recalled Mustafa Choqai-Beg, a Muslim leader.175 The Tashkent Congress of Soviets voted 97 to 17 to deny Muslims governmental posts.176 Muslim scholars who composed the ulama and who took it for granted that they spoke for the mass, were gathering simultaneously in their own congress, in another part of Tashkent, and, being accustomed to petitioning the colonial authorities, voted overwhelmingly to petition the Tashkent Soviet to form a more representative local political body, given that “the Muslims of Turkestan . . . comprise 98 percent of the population.”177 At the same time, a different group of Muslims, self-styled modernists known as the Jadid, saw an opportunity to outflank the traditional ulama and, in early December 1917, assembled in Qoqand, a walled city that had been captured by the Russians only thirty-four years earlier. With nearly 200 representatives, including 150 from the nearby populous Ferghana valley, this congress resolved on December 11 to declare “Turkestan territorially autonomous in union with the Federal Democratic Russian Republic,” while vowing to protect local national minorities (Slavs) “in every possible way.”178 They constituted a Provisional Government and elected a delegation to the Constituent Assembly, reserving one third of the seats for non-Muslims. The congress also debated whether to seek an alliance with the anti-Bolshevik steppe Cossacks, a proposition that divided the delegates but seemed inescapable as the only path to continuing to import grain: local farmers had almost all been switched by the tsarist regime to growing cotton.
Qoqand Autonomy representatives went to Tashkent on December 13 to announce their existence on the Soviet’s territory. It was a Friday (the Muslim holy day) and, as it happened, Muhammad’s birthday. Tens of thousands of men, many wearing white turbans and carrying green or light blue flags, marched toward the Russian quarter of the city. Even many ulama joined, as did some moderate Russians. The marchers demanded an end to household searches and requisitions, and stormed the prison, freeing the inmates incarcerated by the Tashkent Soviet.179 Russian troops fired at the crowd, killing several; more died in a resulting stampede.180 The prisoners were recaptured and executed.
Dominated by Muslim intellectuals educated in imperial Russia, the Qoqand Autonomy’s leaders petitioned the Bolshevik authorities in the Russian capital “to recognize the Provisional Government of autonomous Turkestan as the only government of Turkestan” and to authorize the immediate dissolution of the Tashkent Soviet, “which relies on foreign elements hostile to the native population of the country, contrary to the principle of self-determination of peoples.”181 Stalin, as nationalities commissar, issued the reply. “The soviets are autonomous in their internal affairs and discharge their duties by relying on their actual forces,” he wrote. “Therefore, it will not behoove the native proletarians of Turkestan to appeal to the central Soviet authority with petitions to dissolve the Turkestan Council of People’s Commi
ssars.” He added that if the Qoqand Autonomy felt that the Tashkent Soviet had to go, “they should themselves dissolve it by force, if such force is available to the native proletarians and peasants.”182 Here was naked admission both of the central Bolsheviks’ powerlessness and of the role of force in determining revolutionary outcomes. But, of course, the Tashkent Soviet commanded the arms inherited from the tsarist-era colonial garrisons. The Qoqand Autonomy tried but failed to form a people’s militia (it managed three score volunteers). It lacked the wherewithal to levy taxes and its diplomatic missions to the steppe Qazaqs and the emirate of Bukhara yielded nothing. After the Bolsheviks’ dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, Qoqand tried to coax the Tashkent Soviet into convening a Turkestan Constituent Assembly—which, of course, would have returned an overwhelming Muslim majority. On February 14, the Tashkent Soviet mobilized local garrison troops, other soldiers from the Orenburg steppes, Armenian Dashnaks, and armed Slavic workers to crush the “counterfeit autonomy,” setting siege to Qoqand’s old city. Within four days they breached the walls and set about massacring the population. An estimated 14,000 Muslims were slaughtered, many of them machine-gunned; the city was looted, then burned.183 The Tashkent Soviet used the moment to step up requisitions of food stocks, unleashing a famine, in which perhaps 900,000 people would perish, as well as mass flight toward Chinese Turkestan.184 Stalin and the Bolsheviks would have their work cut out in marrying the revolution and the anti-colonial question in practice.
CAPITULATION
No reliable Bolshevik forces stood in the path of Major General Max Hoffmann’s eastward-marching German army. “For us, as well as from the international socialist point of view, the preservation of the [Soviet] republic stands above all else,” Lenin argued at a Central Committee meeting on February 18, the very day Hoffmann had renewed the German advance.185 For Lenin, ceding territories that the Bolsheviks did not rule anyway—and, in his mind, ceding them only temporarily, until the world revolution—constituted a price worth paying. Initially, however, Lenin again failed to muster a Central Committee majority. Stalin stood by Lenin once more. “We want to talk straight, go straight to the heart of the matter,” Stalin said at the Central Committee on February 18. “The Germans are attacking, we have no forces, the time has come to say that negotiations must be resumed.”186 This statement constituted an unambiguous repudiation of Trotsky’s position. Trotsky, throughout, had been the swing figure, and he remained so now. Sometime before he had returned to Brest-Litovsk in mid-January, Lenin had held a confidential tête-à-tête with him; each man evidently held to his arguments, but Lenin pointedly asked Trotsky what he would do if in fact the Germans did resume their offensive, and no revolutionary uprisings in Germany’s rear broke out. Would the capitulatory peace have to be signed? Trotsky had evidently agreed that if those circumstances were to come to pass, he would not oppose Lenin’s call for accepting a punitive peace on German terms.187 And now, Trotsky kept his word, rescinding his no vote. This gave Lenin a 7 to 5 majority (with one abstention) for immediate capitulation, against the advocates for “revolutionary war.”188
A radiogram under the signatures of Lenin and Trotsky agreeing to the original terms was dispatched to the Germans.189 But the Germans did not respond; and Major General Hoffmann continued his march. On February 21, German forces began intervening in the Finnish civil war, where the October coup had split officers of the imperial Russian army. (German troops would help nationalist Finns led by General Carl Gustav Mannerheim rout Red Guards and overthrow a Bolshevik-backed Finnish Socialist Workers Republic.)190 The failure to have accepted German terms immediately now looked like a far larger gamble. Aside from Ukraine and the southern Cossack lands (4.5 million people), “Soviet power” had everywhere seemed triumphant, but the silence out of Berlin made the February 18, 1918, resumption of a German military attack on the eastern front seem a potential turning point in the socialist revolution.191 This proved to be among the bloodiest single episodes of the war in per capita terms. More desperate than ever, Lenin had Trotsky put out feelers to the Entente, trying to appeal to French imperialists to save the socialist revolution from German imperialists.192 “We are turning the party into a dung hill,” Bukharin, in tears, exclaimed to Trotsky.193 “All of us, including Lenin,” Trotsky recalled, “were of the impression that the Germans had come to an agreement with the Allies about crushing the Soviets.”194 For that, both Trotsky and Bukharin would have borne the responsibility.
Finally, on the morning of February 23, the German response to the Bolshevik capitulation arrived by courier: It took the form of an ultimatum whose terms were far more onerous than before Trotsky’s posturing of neither war, nor peace. That same afternoon the Central Committee grimly assembled. Sverdlov detailed the German conditions: Soviet Russia would also have to recognize the independence—under German occupation—of the breadbasket of Ukraine, as well as the oil of the Caspian Sea and the strategic Baltic ports of Finland and Estonia, all to be dominated by Germany. Further, the Bolsheviks would have to disarm all Red Guards, decommission their navy, and pay a colossal indemnity. In other words, the Germans were continuing to place a large bet on Bolshevism, while at the same time containing it and extracting advantage. To accept, the Bolsheviks were given forty-eight hours, much of which had already passed while the German document was in transit. Lenin stated that “the terms must be accepted,” otherwise, he would resign, a threat he put in writing (in Pravda).195 Sverdlov backed Lenin. But Trotsky and Dzierzynski urged rejection. So did Bukharin. Another hard-line leftist called Lenin’s bluff, stating, “There is no reason to be frightened by Lenin’s threat to resign. We must take power without V.I. [Lenin].” Even Stalin—among Lenin’s staunchest allies throughout Brest-Litovsk—blinked. He suggested that “it’s possible not to sign, but to begin peace negotiations,” adding that “the Germans are provoking us into a refusal.” This could have been a breakthrough moment, when Stalin tipped the balance, breaking Lenin’s hold on power. But Lenin countered that “Stalin is mistaken,” and repeated his insistence on accepting the German diktat to save the Soviet regime. Stalin’s brief vacillation ended. Partly that was because Trotsky swung Lenin’s way. Trotsky pointed out that the terms “were best of all when Kamenev made the first trip [to Brest-Litovsk] and it would have been better if Kamenev and Joffe had signed the peace” back then. Anyway, “now things were quite clear.” Thanks to four abstentions—including, crucially, Trotsky—Lenin, supported by Sverdlov and Stalin, won the Central Committee vote: 7 to 4.196
Over at the Tauride Palace, where the central executive committee of the Soviet was in session and included non-Bolsheviks such as a large Left SR faction and some Mensheviks, the arguments resumed late at night and continued into the morning of February 24, when the German ultimatum would expire at 7:00 a.m. Jeers of “Traitor!” greeted Lenin when he mounted the dais. “Give me an army of 100,000 men, an army which will not tremble before the enemy, and I will not sign the peace,” he replied. “Can you raise an army?” At 4:30 a.m., capitulation to the German diktat passed 116 to 85, with 26 abstentions: the Left SRs provided much of the opposition.197 Lenin hurried to have a note dispatched to the Germans from the special radio transmitter at Tsarskoe Selo.198 Neither Trotsky nor anybody else in the inner circle wanted to return to Brest-Litovsk to sign the humiliating treaty. The task fell to Grigory Sokolnikov, who had evidently suggested Zinoviev and then was himself “volunteered.”199 The Bolshevik delegation arrived back in Brest-Litovsk, but had to cool their heels while the German army seized Kiev on March 1–2, 1918, reinstalling the Central Rada government, and presented new Turkish demands for still more Russian territorial concessions in the Caucasus. The signing took place on March 3. “It is your day now,” Radek snapped bitterly at Major General Hoffmann, “but in the end the Allies will put a Brest-Litovsk treaty upon you.”200 Radek was right: the Allies did become convinced, largely as a result of Brest-Litovsk, that imperial Germany was incapable of
moderation and a negotiated peace, and needed to be defeated.
Trotsky—too clever by half—had miscalculated, and he now resigned as foreign affairs commissar (Lenin would appoint him commissar of war instead). But Lenin had been the one who had maniacally pushed for the October coup, and he was the one now vilified for the captiulatory peace.201 Russia was compelled to renounce 1.3 million square miles of territory—lands more than twice the size of Germany, and lands imperial Russia had spilled blood and treasure to conquer over centuries from Sweden, Poland, the Ottoman empire, and others. The amputation removed a quarter of Russia’s population (some 50 million people), a third of its industry, and more than a third of its grain fields.202 Germany now sat in titular command of a vast eastward wedge, stretching from the Arctic to the Black Sea. Equally spectacular, subjects of imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary received exemptions from Bolshevik nationalization decrees, meaning they could own private property and engage in commercial activities on Soviet Russian soil, and German nationals who had lost property from tsarist confiscations were now owed compensation. The Bolsheviks became duty bound to demobilize their army and navy and cease international propaganda (the Germans considered Bolshevik propaganda far more dangerous than any Russian troops).203 No Russian government had ever surrendered so much territory or sovereignty.