The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  He then presented three cleverly worded resolutions: (1) that the latest German ultimatum be accepted, (2) that Russia make immediate preparations to unleash a revolutionary war, and (3) that the soviets in Moscow, Petrograd, and the other cities be polled on their views of the matter.

  Lenin’s threat to resign worked: everyone realized that without him there would be neither a Bolshevik Party nor a Soviet state. On the first and critical resolution, he failed to win a majority, but because four members abstained, the motion carried 7–4. The second and third resolutions presented no problem. The tally over, Bukharin and three other Left Communists once again went through the motions of resigning from all “responsible posts” in the party and government so as to be free to agitate against the treaty inside and outside party circles.

  Although the decision to accept the German ultimatum still required approval from the Central Executive Committee, Lenin felt sufficiently confident of the outcome to instruct the operators of the wireless transmitter at Tsarskoe Selo to keep one channel open for a message to the Germans.

  That night Lenin gave the CEC a report on the situation.68 In the voting that followed he won a technical victory for his resolution to accept the German ultimatum, but only because the Bolshevik members who opposed it had walked out and a number of the other opponents abstained. The final count was 116 for Lenin’s resolution, 85 opposed, and 26 abstaining. On the basis of this far from satisfactory, but formally binding outcome, Lenin drafted in the early hours of the morning, in the name of the Central Executive Committee, an unconditional acceptance of the German ultimatum. It was at once communicated by wireless to the Germans.

  In the morning of February 24, the Central Committee met to choose a delegation to go to Brest.69 Now numerous resignations from state and party posts were handed in. Trotsky, who had already quit as Commissar of Foreign Affairs, now gave up his other posts as well. He favored a closer relationship with the French and British on the grounds that they were anxious to collaborate with Soviet Russia and had no designs on her territory. Several Left Communists followed the example of Bukharin and turned in their resignations. They spelled out their motives in an open letter. Capitulation to German demands, they wrote, dealt a heavy blow to the revolutionary forces abroad and isolated the Russian Revolution. Furthermore, the concessions which the Russians were required to make to German capitalism would have a catastrophic effect on socialism in Russia: “Surrender of the proletariat’s position externally inevitably paves the way for an internal surrender.” The Bolsheviks should neither capitulate to the Central Powers nor collaborate with the Allies, but “initiate a civil war on an international scale.”70

  Lenin, who had gotten what he wanted, pleaded with Trotsky and the Left Communists not to act on their resignations until after the Soviet delegation had returned from Brest. Throughout these trying days he displayed brilliant leadership, alternately cajoling and persuading his followers, never losing either patience or determination. It was probably the hardest political struggle of his life.

  Who would go to Brest to sign the shameful Diktat? No one wanted his name associated with the most humiliating treaty in Russian history. Ioffe flatly refused, while Trotsky, having resigned, removed himself from the picture. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, an old Bolshevik and onetime editor of Pravda, nominated Zinoviev, whereupon Zinoviev reciprocated by nominating Sokolnikov.71 Sokolnikov responded that if appointed he would quit the Central Committee. Eventually, however, he let himself be talked into accepting the chairmanship of the Russian peace delegation, which included L. M. Petrovskii, G. V. Chicherin, and L. M. Karakhan. The delegation departed for Brest on February 24.

  How intense the opposition to the decision to capitulate to the Germans was even in Lenin’s own ranks is indicated by the fact that on February 24 the Moscow Regional Bureau of the Bolshevik Party rejected the Brest Treaty and unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in the Central Committee.72

  Notwithstanding the Russian capitulation, the German armies continued to move forward, toward a demarcation line drawn up by their command and intended as the permanent border between the two countries. On February 24 they occupied Dorpat (Iurev) and Pskov and positioned themselves some 250 kilometers from the Russian capital. The following day they took Revel and Borisov. They kept on advancing even after the Russian delegation had arrived in Brest: on February 28, the Austrians seized Berdichev, and on March 1, the Germans occupied Gomel, following which they went on to take Chernigov and Mogilev. On March 2, German planes dropped bombs on Petrograd.

  Lenin took no chances—“there was not a shadow of doubt” that the Germans intended to occupy Petrograd, he said on March 773—and ordered the evacuation of the government to Moscow. According to General Niessel, the removal of matériel from Petrograd was done with the help of specialists provided by the French military mission.74 Without an official decree to this effect being issued, at the beginning of March the commissariats began to transfer to the ancient capital. An article titled “Flight” in Novaia zhizn’ of March 9 depicted Petrograd in the grip of panic, its inhabitants jamming railway stations and, if unable to get on a train, escaping by cart or on foot. The city soon came to a standstill: there was no electric power, no fuel, no medical service; schools and city transport ceased functioning. Shootings and lynchings were a daily occurrence.75

  Given the exposed position of Petrograd and the uncertainty regarding the intentions of the Germans, the decision to transfer the capital of the Communist state to Moscow made good sense. But one cannot quite forget that when the Provisional Government, for the same reasons, contemplated evacuating Petrograd half a year earlier, no one accused it of treason more vehemently than the same Bolsheviks.

  The transfer was carried out under heavy security precautions. Top party and state officials were the first to go, including members of the Central Committee, Bolshevik trade union officials, and editors of Communist newspapers. In Moscow they moved into requisitioned private properties.

  Lenin sneaked out of Petrograd at night on March 10–11, accompanied by his wife and his secretary, Bonch-Bruevich.76 The journey was organized in the deepest secrecy. The party traveled by special train, guarded by Latvians. In the early hours of the morning, having run into a trainload of deserters whose intentions were not clear, it stopped while Bonch-Bruevich arranged to have them disarmed. The train then went on, arriving in Moscow late in the evening. No one had been told of the trip, and the self-styled leader of the world’s proletariat slunk into the capital as no tsar had ever done, welcomed only by a sister.

  Lenin established his residence as well as his office in the Kremlin. Here, behind the stone walls and heavy gates of the fortress constructed in the fifteenth century by Italian architects, was the new seat of the Bolshevik Government. The People’s Commissars with their families also sought safety behind the Kremlin walls. The security of this fortress was entrusted to the Latvians, who expelled from the Kremlin many residents, including a group of monks.

  Although it was taken out of considerations of security, Lenin’s decision to transfer Russia’s capital to Moscow and install himself in the Kremlin had deep significance. It symbolized, as it were, the rejection of the pro-Western course initiated by Peter I in favor of the older Muscovite tradition. Though declared “temporary,” it became permanent. It also reflected the new leaders’ morbid fear for their personal safety. To appreciate the significance of these actions one must imagine a British Prime Minister moving out of Downing Street and transferring his residence and office as well as those of his ministers to the Tower of London to govern from there under the protection of Sikhs.

  The Russians reached Brest on March 1 and two days later, without further discussion, signed the German treaty.

  The terms were exceedingly onerous. They give an idea of the kind of peace treaty that awaited the Allies had they lost the war, and demonstrate how baseless were German complaints about the Versailles Diktat, which was in every respect milder than
the treaty that they had forced on helpless Russia.

  Russia was required to make major territorial concessions which cost her most of the conquests made since the middle of the seventeenth century: in the west, northwest, and southwest her borders now shrank to those of the Muscovite state. She had to give up Poland and Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Transcaucasia, all of which either became sovereign states under a German protectorate or were incorporated into Germany. Moscow also had to recognize the Ukraine as an independent republic* These provisions called for the surrender of 750,000 square kilometers, an area nearly twice that of the German Empire: by virtue of Brest, Germany tripled in size.77

  The ceded territories, which Russia had conquered from Sweden and Poland, contained her richest and most populous lands. Here lived 26 percent of her inhabitants, including more than one-third of the urban population. By contemporary estimates,78 these areas accounted for 37 percent of Russia’s agricultural harvest. Here were located 28 percent of her industrial enterprises, 26 percent of her railway tracks, and three-quarters of her coal and iron deposits.

  But even more galling to most Russians were the economic clauses spelled out in the appendices which granted Germans exceptional status in Soviet Russia.79 Many Russians believed that the Germans intended to avail themselves of these rights not only to gain economic benefits but to strangle Russian socialism. In theory, these rights were reciprocal, but Russia was in no position to claim her share.

  Citizens and corporations of the Central Powers received de facto exemption from the nationalization decrees which the Bolshevik authorities had passed since coming to power, being allowed to hold in Soviet Russia movable and immovable property as well as to pursue on her territory commercial, industrial, and professional activities. They could repatriate assets from Soviet Russia without paying punitive taxes. The ruling was retroactive: the real estate and the rights to exploit land and mines requisitioned from citizens of the signatory powers during the war were to be restored to their owners; if nationalized, the owners were to be adequately compensated. The same rule applied to the holders of securities of the nationalized enterprises. Provisions were made for the free transit of commercial goods from one country to the other, each of which also granted the other most favored nation status. Setting aside the January 1918 decree which repudiated Russian public and private debts, the Soviet Government acknowledged the obligation to honor such debts in regard to the Central Powers and to resume payments of interest on them, the terms to be determined by separate accords.

  These provisions gave the Central Powers—in effect, Germany—unprecedented extraterritorial privileges in Soviet Russia, exempting them from her economic regime and allowing them to engage in private enterprise in what was increasingly becoming a socialized economy. The Germans, in effect, became co-proprietors of Russia; they were in a position to take over the private sector, while the Russian Government was left to manage the nationalized sector. Under the terms of the treaty it was possible for owners of Russian industrial enterprises, banks, and securities to sell their holdings to Germans, in this manner removing them from Communist control. As we shall see, to foreclose this possibility, in June 1918 the Bolsheviks nationalized all large Soviet industries.

  Elsewhere in the treaty the Russians committed themselves to demobilize their army and navy—in other words, to remain defenseless; to desist from agitation and propaganda against the governments, public institutions, and armed forces of the other signatories; and to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan and Persia.

  When the Soviet Government made the terms of the Brest Treaty known to its citizens—and it did that with some delay, so fearful was it of the public reaction—there was outrage from the entire political spectrum, from the extreme left to the extreme right. According to John Wheeler-Bennett, Lenin became the most vilified man in Europe.80 Count Mirbach, the first German Ambassador to Soviet Russia, cabled the Foreign Office in May that the Russians to a man rejected the treaty, finding it even more repugnant than the Bolshevik dictatorship:

  Although Bolshevik domination afflicts Russia with hunger, crimes, and silent executions in a horror for which there is no name, no Russian would even pretend to be willing to purchase German help against the Bolsheviks with the acceptance of the Brest Treaty.

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  No Russian government had ever surrendered so much land or allowed a foreign power such privileges. Russia had not only “sold out the international proletariat”: it had gone a long way toward turning herself into a German colony. It was widely expected—with glee in conservative circles and with rage in radical ones—that the Germans would use the rights given them in the treaty to restore free enterprise in Russia. Thus, in mid-March rumors circulated in Petrograd that the Germans were demanding the return to their owners of three nationalized banks and that before long all banks would be denationalized.

  The constitutional law of the new state called for the treaty to be ratified by the Congress of Soviets in two weeks. The congress which was to do this was scheduled to convene in Moscow on March 14.

  Although he had met all their conditions, Lenin still did not trust the Germans. He was well informed about the divisions within the German Government and knew that the generals insisted on his removal. He felt it prudent, therefore, to maintain contact with the Allies and to hold out the promise of a radical shift in his government’s foreign policy in their favor.

  After the Brest Treaty had been signed but before it was ratified, Trotsky handed Robins a note for transmittal to the U.S. Government:

  In case (a) the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets will refuse to ratify the peace treaty with Germany, or (b) if the German Government, breaking the peace treaty, will renew the offensive in order to continue its robbers’ raid, or (c) if the Soviet Government will be forced by the actions of Germany to renounce the peace treaty—before or after its ratification—and to renew hostilities—

  In all these cases, it is very important for the military and political plans of the Soviet power for replies to be given to the following questions:

  1. Can the Soviet Government rely on the support of the United States of North America, Great Britain, and France in its struggle against Germany?

  2. What kind of support could be furnished in the nearest future, and on what conditions—military equipment, transportation supplies, living necessities?

  3. What kind of support would be furnished particularly and especially by the United States?

  Should Japan—in consequence of an open or tacit understanding with Germany or without such an understanding—attempt to seize Vladivostok and the Eastern Siberian Railway, which would threaten to cut off Russia from the Pacific Ocean and would greatly impede the concentration of Soviet troops toward the east about the Urals—in such case what steps would be taken by the other allies, particularly and especially by the United States, to prevent a Japanese landing on our Far East and to insure uninterrupted communications with Russia through the Siberian route?

  In the opinion of the Government of the United States, to what extent—under the above-mentioned circumstances—would aid be assured from Great Britain through Murmansk and Archangel? What steps could the Government of Great Britain undertake in order to assure this aid and thereby to undermine the foundation of the rumors of the hostile plans against Russia on the part of Great Britain in the nearest future?

  All these questions are conditioned with the self-understood assumption that the internal and foreign policies of the Soviet Government will continue to be directed in accord with the principles of international socialism and that the Soviet Government retains its complete independence of all non-socialist governments.

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  The last paragraph of the note meant that the Bolsheviks reserved the right to work for the overthrow of the very governments from which they were soliciting help.

  On the day when he handed the above note to Robins, Trotsky talked with Bruce Lockhart.83 He told the
British agent that the forthcoming Congress of Soviets would probably refuse to ratify the Brest Treaty and would declare war on Germany. But for this to happen, the Allies had to offer Soviet Russia support. Then, alluding to proposals circulating in Allied capitals of massive landings of Japanese expeditionary forces in Siberia to engage the Germans, Trotsky said that such a violation of Russian sovereignty would destroy any possibility of a rapprochement with the Allies. Informing London of Trotsky’s remarks, Lockhart said that these proposals offered the best opportunity of reactivating the Eastern Front. U.S. Ambassador Francis concurred: he cabled Washington that if the Allies could prevail on the Japanese to give up their plans for landings in Siberia, the Congress of Soviets would probably turn down the Brest Treaty.84

  There was, of course, not the remotest possibility that the Congress of Soviets, packed with the customary Bolshevik majority, would dare to deprive Lenin of his hard-won victory. The Bolsheviks used the bait to prevent something they genuinely feared—namely, occupation of Siberia by the Japanese and their intervention in Russian affairs on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces. According to Noulens, the Bolsheviks had such confidence in Lockhart that they permitted him to communicate with London in code, which even official foreign missions were prohibited from doing.85

  The first concrete result of the rapprochement with the Allies was the landing on March 9 of a small Allied contingent at Murmansk. Since 1916, nearly 600,000 tons of war matériel sent to the Russian armies, much of it unpaid for, had accumulated here from lack of transport to move it inland. The Allies feared that this matériel might fall into German hands as a result of Brest-Litovsk or the capture of Murmansk by German-Finnish forces. They also worried about the Germans seizing nearby Pechenga (Petsamo) and constructing a submarine base there.