The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  * Ocherki istorii Leningradskoi organizatsii KPSS, I (Leningrad, 1962), 481. Bagdaev had in fact been charged by the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party with organizing the May 1 demonstration, which fell on April 18, the day the government’s declaration and note on war aims were delivered to Allied governments: Kudelli, Pervyi, 82.

  *The American historian Alexander Rabinowitch, who adopts the Bolshevik thesis that the April demonstrations were a peaceful demonstration, avoids the problem by omitting in his citation of the above passage Lenin’s reference to “violent means”: Prelude to Revolution (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 45.

  *W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, I (New York, 1935), 159. The First Peasants’ Congress, attended by over a thousand delegates, had in it twenty Bolsheviks: VI, No. 4 (1957), 26.

  *The rivalry between trade unions and Factory Committees would recur twenty years later in the United States when plant-based unions, affiliated with the CIO, challenged the craft-oriented unions of the AFL. Here, as in Russia, the Communists favored the former.

  *A set of documents, purporting to demonstrate direct German involvement in Russian events, 1914–1917, and known as the “Sisson Papers,” had surfaced in early 1918. They were published in the United States by the Committee on Public Information, War Information Series, No. 20 (October 1918), The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy. The German Government had at once proclaimed them a complete forgery (Z. A. B. Zeman, Germany, and the Revolution in Russia, 1915–1918, London, 1958, p. X.) See further George Kennan in The Journal of Modern History, XXVIII, No. 2, June 1956, 130–54. Their effect has been to discredit for many years the very notion of German financial and political support of Lenin’s party.

  *Bernstein’s figure was confirmed by postwar researches in German Foreign Ministry Archives. Documents found there indicate that until January 31, 1918, the German government had allocated for “propaganda” in Russia 40 million deutsche marks. This sum was exhausted by June 1918, following which (July 1918) an additional 40 million marks were assigned for this purpose, although apparently only 10 million were spent, not all of them on the Bolsheviks. A German mark at the time bought four-fifths of a tsarist ruble and approximately two post-1917 rubles (so-called “Kerenki”). Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik, 1918 (Vienna-Munich, 1966) 213–14, Note 19.

  *B. Nikitin, Rokovye gody (Paris, 1937), 109–10. According to the author (107–8), Kollontai also served as an intermediary delivering German money to Lenin. Despite overwhelming evidence of German subsidies to Lenin from German sources, some scholars still find the notion unacceptable. Among them is as well-informed a specialist as Boris Souvarine: see his article in Est & Ouest, No. 641 (June 1980), 1–5.

  *In his memoirs Brusilov claims to have known even as he assumed supreme command that Russian troops had no fighting spirit left in them and that the offensive would fail: A. B. Brusilov, Moi vospominaniia (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), 216.

  *N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, IV (Berlin, 1922), 319. Sukhanov did not provide the source of this information, but Boris Nikolaevskii, the Menshevik historian, deduced that it had to come from Nevskii: SV, No. 9–10 (1962), 135n. Tsereteli notes that although in 1922, when Sukhanov published his memoirs, all the principals were still alive and could have denied his account, none of them did so: I. G. Tsereteli, Vospominaniia o Fevral’skoi Revoliutsii, II (Paris-The Hague, 1963),185.

  * Pravda, No. 80 (June 13, 1917), 2. This was a closed meeting and no other accounts exist. Tsereteli, however, affirms that the above citation from Pravda correctly renders his speech, with some minor, though not insignificant omissions: Tsereteli, Vospominaniia, II, 229–30.

  *Lenin was aware as early as mid-May that the government intercepted his communications with Stockholm. On May 16 in the pages of Pravda he taunted the “servants of the Kadets” who, although “lording it over the Russo-Swedish frontier,” failed to catch all the letters and telegrams: Lenin, PSS, XXXII, 103–4. Cf. Zinoviev in PR, No. 8–9 (1927), 57.

  *The best account of the role of the regiment in July, based on archival documents, is by P. M. Stulov in KL, No. 3/36 (1930), 64–125. Cf. Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, II (New York, 1937), 17.

  *Raskolnikov in PR, No. 5/17 (1923), 60. Roshal was shot in December 1917 by anti-Communists. Raskolnikov, a party member since 1910 and in 1917 deputy chairman of the Kronshtadt Soviet, in the 1920s and 1930s held various Soviet diplomatic posts abroad. Recalled to Moscow in 1939, he refused to return and assailed Stalin in an open letter, following which he was declared “an enemy of the people.” He died later that year in southern France under highly suspicious circumstances.

  *Vladimirova in PR, No. 5/17 (1923), 11–13; Ia. M. Sverdlov in ISSSR, No. 2 (1957), 126. The report of the government commission appointed to investigate the July riots, reprinted in D. A. Chugaev, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v iiule g. (Moscow, 1959), 95–96, describes the Bolshevik speeches as much more militant.

  *M. Kalinin in Krasnaia gazeta, July 16, 1920, 2. Since Lenin was not on the scene, Kalinin presumably refers to what he said the next day. Cf. a similar assessment by Raskolnikov in PR, No. 5/17 (1923), 59. The Bolshevik tactic was not lost on the Mensheviks. Tsereteli describes an incident that occurred in the afternoon of July 3 after Stalin had appeared before the Ispolkom to inform it that the Bolsheviks were doing all they could to stop the workers and soldiers from taking to the streets. Smiling, Chkheidze turned to Tsereteli, “Now the situation is clear.” “I asked him,” Tsereteli continues, “in what sense he considered the situation clear.” “In the sense,” Chkheidze responded, “that peaceful people have no need to enter into a protocol a statement of their peaceful intentions. It appears that we will have to deal with a so-called spontaneous demonstration which the Bolsheviks will join, saying that the masses cannot be left without leadership.” Tsereteli, Vospominaniia, I, 267.

  *Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV, 511–12. After Sukhanov had published these recollections in 1920, Trotsky vehemently repudiated them and so did, at Trotsky’s prodding, Lunacharskii. Lunacharskii wrote Sukhanov a letter denouncing his statement as utterly baseless and warning that its publication could have for Sukhanov, “as a historian, an unpleasant consequence” (ibid., 51411.-51511.). Sukhanov, however, refused to recant, insisting that he accurately recalled what Lunacharskii had told him. Yet that same year Trotsky himself admitted in a French Communist publication that the July affair had been intended as a power seizure—that is, the establishment of a Bolshevik government: “We never doubted for a moment that those July days were a prelude to victory”: Bulletin Communiste (Paris) No. 10 (May 20, 1920), 6, cited in Milorad M. Drachkovitch and Branko Lazitch, Lenin and the Comintern, I (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 95.

  †fNikitin, Rokovye gody, 133, gives the lower figure, Istoriia Putilovskogo Zavoda, 1801–1917 (Moscow, 1961), 626, the higher. Trotsky’s estimate of 80,000 (History, II, 29) is sheer fantasy.

  ‡The Bolshevik estimates of 500,000 or more demonstrators (V. Vladimirova in PR, No. 5/17, 1923,40) are vastly inflated: the crowd which took part in the demonstration probably did not exceed one-tenth that number. An analysis of the garrison units known to have participated indicates that at most 15–20 percent of the troops were involved, and very likely considerably fewer: see B. I. Kochakov in Uchënye Zapiski Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, No. 205 (1956), 65–66, and G. L. Sobolev in IZ, No. 88 (1971), 77. It was Bolshevik policy then and later greatly to exaggerate the number of demonstrators in order to justify the claim that they were not leading the “masses” but responding to their pressures: see the account by an eyewitness, A. Sobolev, in Rech,’ No. 155/3,897 (July 5, 1917), 1.

  *Miliukov, Istoriia Vtoroi Russkoi Revoliutsii, I, Pt. 1 (Sofia, 1921), 243–44. Other versions of the Chernov incident are in Vladimirova, PR, No. 5/17 (1923), 34–35, and Raskolnikov, ibid, 69–71.

  *Nikitin, Rokovye gody, 148. Nevskii says that the Military Organization, in anticipation of possible defeat, de
liberately kept half its forces in reserve: Krasnoarmeets, No. 10/15 (October 1919), 40.

  * NZh, No. 68 (July 7, 1917), 3. Pereverzev’s account of these events can be found in a letter to the editor, NoV, No. 14, 822 (July 9, 1917), 4. He is said also to have published recollections in PN, October 31, 1930, but this issue of the paper was unavailable to me.

  * Zhivoe slovo, No. 54/407 (July 8, 1917), 1. Cf. Lenin, PSS, XXXII, 413. Lvov told the editors that premature revelation would allow the guilty to escape.

  * A. Kerensky, The Crucifixion of Liberty (New York, 1934), 324. They were: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai, Kozlovskii, Sumenson, Parvus, Ganetskii, Raskolnikov, Roshal, Semashko, and Lunacharskii. Trotsky was not on the list, presumably because he was not yet a member of the Bolshevik Party, which he joined only at the end of July. He was taken into custody later.

  *Zarudnyi in NZh, No. 101 (August 15, 1917), 2. Nikitin, Rokovye gody, 158, says more than 2,000.

  *On August 4, Tsereteli presented and the Ispolkom adopted a motion protesting the persecution of persons involved in the July events on the grounds that such persecution marked the beginning of the “counterrevolution”: NZh, No. 94 (August 6, 1917), 3.

  *Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky (New York, 1987), 223–24. Pereverzev was fired in the early hours of July 5 on the initiative of Nekrasov and Tereshchenko, but stayed in his post two days longer.

  11

  The October Coup

  It is the law of nature that predators must be more intelligent than the animals on which they prey.

  —Manual of Natural History

  It was only from that quarter [the right] that we faced any real danger at that time.

  —Alexander Kerensky1

  In September 1917, with Lenin in his hideaway, the command of Bolshevik forces passed to Trotsky, who had joined the party two months earlier. Defying Lenin’s pressures for an immediate power seizure, Trotsky adopted a more circumspect strategy, disguising Bolshevik designs as an effort to transfer power to the soviets. With supreme mastery of the technique of the modern coup d’état, of which he was arguably the inventor, he led the Bolsheviks to victory.

  Trotsky was an ideal complement to Lenin. Brighter and more flamboyant, a much better speaker and writer, he could galvanize crowds: Lenin’s charisma was limited to his followers. But Trotsky was unpopular with the Bolshevik cadres, in part because he had joined their party late, after years of acerbic attacks on it, and in part because he was unbearably arrogant. In any event, being Jewish, Trotsky could hardly aspire to national leadership in a country in which, Revolution or no, Jews were regarded as outsiders. During the Revolution and Civil War he was Lenin’s alter ego, an indispensable companion in arms: after victory had been won, he became an embarrassment.

  The event which made it possible for the Bolsheviks to recover from the July debacle was one of the more bizarre episodes in the Russian Revolution, known as the Kornilov Affair.*

  57. Leon Trotsky.

  General Lavr Kornilov was born in 1870 into a family of Siberian Cossacks. His father was a peasant and soldier; his mother, a housekeeper. Kornilov’s plebeian background contrasted with that of Kerensky and Lenin, whose fathers belonged to the uppermost strata of the service nobility. He had spent his early years among the Kazakh-Kirghiz and retained a lifelong affection for Asia and Asians. Upon graduating from military school, he enrolled in the General Staff Academy, which he completed with honors. He began active service in Turkestan, leading expeditions into Afghanistan and Persia. Kornilov, who mastered the Turkic dialects of Central Asia and became an expert on Russia’s Asiatic frontier, liked to surround himself with a bodyguard of Tekke Turkomans, dressed in red robes, with whom he spoke in their native language and to whom he was known as “Ulu Boiar,” or “Great Boyar.” He took part in the war with Japan, following which he was posted to China as military attaché. In April 1915, while in command of a division, he suffered serious wounds and was taken prisoner by the Austrians, but escaped and made his way back to Russia. In March 1917, the Provisional Committee of the Duma asked Nicholas II to appoint Kornilov commander of the Petrograd Military District. This post he held until the Bolshevik riots in April, when he resigned and left for the front.

  Unlike most Russian generals, who were first and foremost politicians, Kornilov was a fighting man, a field officer of legendary courage. He had a reputation for obtuseness: Alekseev is reputed to have said that he had “a lion’s heart and a sheep’s brain,” but this is not a fair assessment. Kornilov had a great deal of practical intelligence and common sense, although like other soldiers of this type he was scornful of politics or politicians. He was said to hold “progressive” opinions, and there is no reason to doubt him that he despised the tsarist regime.2

  Early in his military career Kornilov displayed a tendency to insubordination, which became more pronounced after February 1917 as he observed the disintegration of Russia’s armed forces and the impotence of the Provisional Government. His opponents later would accuse him of dictatorial ambitions. The charge can be made only with qualifications. Kornilov was a patriot, ready to serve any government that advanced Russia’s national interests, especially in time of war, by maintaining internal order and doing whatever was necessary to win victory. In the late summer of 1917 he concluded that the Provisional Government was no longer a free agent but a captive of socialist internationalists and enemy agents ensconced in the Soviet. It is this belief that made him receptive to suggestions that he assume dictatorial powers.

  Kerensky turned to Kornilov after the July putsch in the hope that he would restore discipline in the armed forces and stop the German counter-offensive. On the night of July 7–8 he put him in charge of the Southwestern Front, which bore the brunt of the fighting, and three days later, on the advice of his aide, Boris Savinkov, offered him the post of Commander in Chief. Kornilov was in no hurry to accept. He thought it pointless to assume responsibility for the conduct of military operations until and unless the government tackled in earnest the problems hampering Russia’s entire war effort. These were of two kinds: narrowly military and more broadly political and economic. Having consulted other generals, he found wide agreement on what needed to be done to restore the fighting capacity of the armed forces: the army committees, authorized by Order No. 1, had to be disbanded or at least greatly reduced in power; military commanders had to regain disciplinary authority; measures had to be taken to restore order to the rear garrisons. Kornilov demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty for military personnel guilty of desertion and mutiny at the front as well as in the rear. But he did not stop there. He knew of the war mobilization plans of other belligerent countries and wanted something similar for Russia. It seemed to him essential that employees of defense industries and transport—the sectors of the economy most critical to the war effort—be subjected to military discipline. To the extent that he wanted greater authority than his predecessors, it was in emulation of General Ludendorff, who in December 1916 had received virtually dictatorial powers over the German economy: it was to enable the country to wage total war. This program, which Kornilov worked out jointly with the chief of staff, General A. S. Lukomskii, became the main source of conflict between himself, representing the officer corps and non-socialist opinion, and Kerensky, who had to act under the watchful eye of the Soviet. The conflict was irreconcilable because it pitted irreconcilables: the interests of Russia against those of international socialism. As Savinkov, who knew both men well, put it: Kornilov “loves freedom.… But Russia for him comes first, and freedom second, while for Kerensky … freedom and revolution come first, and Russia second.”3

  On July 19, Kornilov communicated to Kerensky the terms on which he was prepared to accept command: (1) he would owe responsibility only to his conscience and the nation; (2) no one would interfere with either his operational orders or command appointments; (3) the disciplinary measures which he was discussing with the government, including the death penalty, would apply
to the troops in the rear; and (4) the government would accept his previous suggestions.4 Kerensky was so angered by these demands that he considered withdrawing his offer to Kornilov, but on reflection decided to treat them as expressions of the general’s political “naïveté.”5 In fact, he was heavily dependent on Kornilcv’s help because without the army he was powerless. To be sure, the first of Kornilov’s four conditions verged on the impertinent: it can be explained, however, by the general’s desire to be rid of interference by the Soviet, which in its Order No. 1 had claimed the authority to countermand military instructions. When Kerensky’s commissar at headquarters, the SR M. M. Filonenko, told Kornilov that this demand could arouse the “most serious apprehensions” unless he meant by it “responsibility” to the Provisional Government, Kornilov replied that this was exactly what he had in mind.6 Then, as later, until his final break with Kerensky, Kornilov’s “insubordination” was directed against the Soviet and not against the government.

  The terms under which Kornilov was willing to assume command of the armed forces were leaked to the press; probably by V. S. Zavoiko, Kornilov’s public relations official. Their publication in Russkoe slovo on July 21 caused a sensation, earning Kornilov instant popularity in non-socialist circles and commensurate hostility on the left.7

  The negotiations between the Prime Minister and the general dragged on for two weeks. Kornilov assumed his new duties only on July 24, after receiving assurances that his conditions would be met.

  In fact, however, Kerensky neither could nor would keep his promises. He could not because he was not a free agent but the executor of the will of the Ispolkom, which viewed all measures to restore military discipline, especially in the rear, as “counterrevolutionary” and vetoed them. To have carried out the reforms, therefore, would have compelled Kerensky to break with the socialists, his main political supporters. And he would not honor his promises because he soon came to see in Kornilov a dangerous rival. It is always perilous for a historian to try to penetrate an individual’s mind, but observing Kerensky’s actions in July and August it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he deliberately provoked a conflict with his military chief, rejecting every opportunity at reconciliation, because he wanted to bring down the one man who threatened his status as leader of Russia and custodian of the Revolution.*