most circumspect, careful, cautious, skillful exploitation of every, even the smallest “crack” among one’s enemies, of every conflict of interest among the bourgeoisie of the various countries, among the various groups or various species of the bourgeoisie within individual countries …
106
*The earliest Soviet polpredy were stationed in neutral countries: V. V. Vorovskii in Stockholm, and Ia. A. Berzin in Berne. After the Brest Treaty had been ratified, A. A. Ioffe took over the Berlin mission. The Bolsheviks tried to appoint first Litvinov and then Kamenev to the Court of St. James’s, but both were rejected. France also would not accept a Soviet representative until after the Civil War.
*George Kennan, Russia Leaves the War (Princeton, N.J., 1956), 75–76. In early November, the Bolsheviks began to publish the secret treaties between Russia and the Allies from the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With their appeals, the Bolsheviks emulated the French revolutionaries who in November 1792 pledged “brotherhood and assistance” to any nation desirous of “regaining” its freedom.
*J. Buchan, A History of the Great War, IV (Boston, 1922), 135. The Armistice Agreement forbade “major” transferals of troops from or to the Russian front while it was in force.
†According to the French general Henri A. Niessel, the Allies intercepted German cables from Petrograd to Brest and from them learned how desperately the Germans desired peace: General [Henri A.] Niessel, Le Triomphe des Bolchéviks et la Paix de Brest-Litovsk: Souvenirs, 1917–1918 (Paris, 1940), 187–88.
*The Soviet Government’s default on all state obligations, domestic as well as foreign, was announced on January 28, 1918. The sum of foreign debts annulled by this measure has been estimated at 13 billion rubles or $6.5 billion: G. G. Shvittau, Revoliutsiia i Narodnoe Khoziaistvo v Rossii (1917–1921) (Leipzig, 1922), 337.
*Text: J. Degras, ed., Documents on Russian Foreign Policy, I (London, 1951), 22. The money was placed at the disposal of Vorovskii.
*Lenin, PSS, XXXV, 478; LS, XI, 41; Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918 (Vienna-Munich, 1966), 22. Stalin, who supported Lenin, said that a revolution in the West was not in sight. The protocols of this conference are said to have disappeared. Isaac Steinberg says that the Left SRs liked the “neither war nor peace” formula and had a hand in its formulation: Als ich Volkskommissar war (Munich, 1929), 190–92.
* Sovetsko-Germanskie Otnosheniia ot peregovorov v Brest-Litovske do podpisaniia Rapall’skogo dogovora, I (Moscow, 1968), 328. Although inspired by Kaiserlingk’s dispatches from Petrograd, this anti-Semitic remark echoed the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was soon to become favorite reading fare of the simpleminded in quest of an “explanation” for the World War and Communism.
*Each of the three Allied ambassadors left memoirs: George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, 2 vols. (London, 1923); David Francis, Russia from the American Embassy (New York, 1921); and Joseph Noulens, Mon Ambassade en Russie Soviétique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1933).
†The sentence was not carried out after Sadoul had returned home and joined the French Communist Party. His revolutionary experiences are recorded in an interesting book, first published in Moscow, in the form of letters to Albert Thoma: Notes sur la Révolution Bolchevique (Paris, 1920), supplemented by Quarante Lettres de Jacques Sadoul (Paris, 1922).
*Letter dated April 25, 1918, in the Raymond Robins Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. In responding, Lenin expressed confidence that “proletarian democracy … will crush … the imperialist-capitalist system in the New and Old Worlds”: Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del SSSR, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR, I (Moscow, 1957), 276.
†George F. Kennan, The Decision to Intervene (Princeton, N.J., 1958), 237–38. In light of the above evidence it is difficult to agree with Kennan that Robins’s “feelings with respect to the Soviet government did not rest on any partiality to socialism as a doctrine” or that he entertained no “predilection for communist ideology”: Ibid, 240–41. Robins later eulogized Stalin and was received by him in 1933. See Anne Vincent Meiburger, Efforts of Raymond Robins Toward the Recognition of Soviet Russia and the Outlawry of War, 1917–1933 (Washington, D.C., 1958), 193–99.
‡See his Memoirs of a British Agent (London, 1935) and The Two Revolutions: An Eyewitness Account (London, 1967).
§A. Hogenhuis-Seliverstoff, Les Relations Franco-Soviétiques, 1917–1924 (Paris, 1981), 53. Niessel does not mention these facts in his memoirs, Le Triomphe des Bolcheviks.
*In fulfillment of the peace terms, in mid-April Moscow proposed to the Ukrainian Government the opening of negotiations leading to mutual recognition. For various reasons having to do with internal Ukrainian politics, these negotiations got underway only on May 23. On June 14, 1918, the governments of Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian Republic signed a provisional peace treaty, which was to be followed by final peace negotiations, but these never took place: The New York Times, June 16, 1918, 3.
14
The Revolution Internationalized
To obtain an armistice now means to
conquer the whole world
.
—Lenin, September 19171
Although in time the Russian Revolution would exert an even greater influence on world history than the French, initially it attracted much less attention. This can be explained by two factors: the greater prominence of France and the different timing of the two events.
In the late eighteenth century, France was politically and culturally the leading power in Europe: the Bourbons were the premier dynasty on the Continent, the embodiment of royal absolutism, and French was the language of cultured society. At first, the great powers were delighted with the way the Revolution destabilized France, but they soon came to realize that it posed a threat also to their own stability. The arrest of the King, the September 1792 massacres, and the appeals of the Girondins to foreign nations to overthrow their tyrants left no doubt that the Revolution was more than a mere change of government. There followed a cycle of wars which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, ending in a Bourbon restoration. The concern of European monarchs for the fate of the imprisoned French king is understandable given that their authority rested on the principle of legitimacy and that once this principle was abandoned in favor of popular sovereignty none of them could feel safe. True, the American colonies had proclaimed democracy earlier, but the United States was an overseas territory, not the leading continental power.
Since Russia lay on its periphery, half in Asia, and was overwhelmingly agrarian, Europe never considered her internal developments relevant to its own concerns. The turmoil of 1917 was generally interpreted to mark Russia’s belated entry into the modern age rather than a threat to the established order.
This indifference was enhanced by the fact that the Russian Revolution, having occurred in the midst of the greatest, most destructive war in history, struck contemporaries as an episode in that war rather than as an event in its own right. Such excitement as the Russian Revolution generated in the West had to do almost exclusively with its potential effect on military operations. The Allies and the Central Powers both welcomed the February Revolution, although for different reasons: the former hoped that the removal of an unpopular tsar would make it possible to reinvigorate Russia’s war effort, while the latter hoped it would take Russia out of the war. The October coup was, of course, jubilantly welcomed in Germany. Among the Allies it had a mixed reception, but it certainly caused no alarm. Lenin and his party were unknown quantities whose Utopian plans and declarations no one took seriously. The tendency, especially after Brest-Litovsk, was to view Bolshevism as a creation of Germany which would vanish from the scene with the termination of hostilities. All European cabinets without exception vastly underestimated both the viability of the Bolshevik regime and the threat it posed to the European order.
For these reasons, neither in the closing year of World War I nor following the Armistice, were attempts made t
o rid Russia of the Bolsheviks. Until November 1918 the great powers were too busy fighting each other to worry about developments in remote Russia. Here and there, voices were raised that Bolshevism represented a mortal threat to Western civilization: these were especially loud in the German army, which had the most direct experience with Bolshevik propaganda and agitation. But even the Germans in the end subordinated concern with the possible long-term threat to considerations of immediate interest. Lenin was absolutely convinced that after making peace the belligerents would join forces and launch an international crusade against his regime. His fears proved groundless. Only the British intervened actively on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces, and they did so in a halfhearted manner, largely at the initiative of one man, Winston Churchill. The effort was never seriously pursued, because the forces of accommodation in the West were stronger than those calling for intervention, and by the early 1920s the European powers made their peace with Communist Russia.
But even if the West was not much interested in Bolshevism, the Bolsheviks had a vital interest in the West. The Russian Revolution would not remain confined to the country of origin: from the instant the Bolsheviks seized power, it acquired an international dimension. Its geopolitical position alone ensured that Russia could not isolate herself from the World War. Much of Russia was under German occupation. Soon the British, French, Japanese, and Americans landed token contingents on Russian soil in a vain attempt to reactivate the Eastern Front. More important still was the conviction of the Bolsheviks that their revolution should not and could not be confined to Russia, that unless it spread to the industrial countries of the West it was doomed. On the very first day of their rule in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks issued their Peace Decree, which exhorted workers abroad to rise and help the Soviet Government “bring to a successful resolution … the task of liberating the laboring and exploited masses from all slavery and all exploitation.”2
Although couched in the novel language of class conflict, this was a declaration of war on all the existing governments, an intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign countries that would be often repeated then and later. Lenin did not deny that such was his intent: “We have thrown down a challenge to the imperialist plunderers of all countries.”3 Every Bolshevik attempt to promote civil war abroad—with appeals, subsidies, subversion, and military assistance—internationalized the Russian Revolution.
Such incitement of their citizens to rebellion and civil war by a foreign government gave the “imperialist plunderers” every right to retaliate in kind. The Bolshevik Government could not promote revolution outside its borders in disregard of international law and appeal to the same international law to keep foreign powers from intervening in its own internal affairs. In fact, however, for reasons stated, the great powers did not avail themselves of this right: no Western government, either during World War I or after it, appealed to the people of Russia to overthrow its Communist regime. Such limited intervention as occurred in the first year of Bolshevism was motivated exclusively by the desire to have Russia serve their particular military interests.
On March 23, 1918, the Germans launched their long-awaited offensive on the Western Front. Since the armistice with Russia, Ludendorff had transferred half a million men from the East to the West: he was prepared to sacrifice twice that many lives to gain victory. The Germans employed a variety of tactical innovations, such as attacking without preparatory artillery barrages and throwing into critical engagements specially trained “shock troops.” They concentrated the brunt of the attack on the British sector, which came under immense pressure. Pessimists in the Allied command, among them General John J. Pershing, feared that the front would not withstand the force of the assault.
The German offensive worried the Bolsheviks as well. Although in official statements they pronounced plague on both “imperialist blocs” and demanded an immediate suspension of hostilities, in fact they wanted the war to go on. As long as the great powers were busy fighting one another, the Bolsheviks could consolidate their gains and build up the armed force they needed to meet the anticipated imperialist crusade, as well as to crush domestic opposition.
Even after they had signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, the Bolsheviks wanted to maintain good relations with the Allies because they had no certainty that the “war party” would not ultimately prevail in Berlin, causing the Germans to march into Russia and remove them from power. The German occupation in March of the Ukraine and the Crimea increased such apprehensions.
We have noted previously Trotsky’s requests to the Allies for economic aid. In mid-March 1918, the Bolsheviks made urgent appeals for assistance in forming a Red Army and possibly intervening in Russia to stop a potential German invasion. Lenin entrusted the task of dealing with the Allies to Trotsky, the newly appointed Commissar of War, while he concentrated on Soviet-German relations. All of Trotsky’s initiatives, of course, were sanctioned by the Bolshevik Central Committee.
The Bolsheviks decided early in March to proceed in earnest with the formation of an armed force. But like all Russian socialists, they saw the professional army as a breeding ground of counterrevolution. To create a standing army staffed with officers of the ancien régime meant courting self-destruction. Their preferred solution was a “nation in arms,” or a people’s militia.
Even after taking power, the Bolsheviks continued to dismantle what was left of the old army, depriving the officers of the little authority they still retained. Initially, they ordered that officers be elected, and then abolished military ranks, vesting the power to make command appointments in soldiers’ soviets.4 Under the incitement of Bolshevik agitators, soldiers and sailors lynched many officers: in the Black Sea Fleet such lynchings turned into wholesale massacres.
At the same time, Lenin and his lieutenants turned their attention to creating their own armed force. As his first Commissar of War, Lenin chose N. V. Krylenko, a thirty-two-year-old Bolshevik lawyer, who had served in the Imperial Army as a lieutenant in the reserves. In November, Krylenko went to Army Headquarters at Mogilev to replace the Commander in Chief, General N. N. Dukhonin, who had refused to negotiate with the Germans and was barbarously murdered by his troops. He appointed as the new Commander in Chief General M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, a brother of Lenin’s secretary.
Professional officers actually proved to be much more willing to cooperate with the Bolsheviks than the intelligentsia. Brought up in a tradition of strict apoliticism and obedience to those in power, most of them dutifully carried out orders of the new government.5 Even though the Soviet authorities have long been reluctant to make known their names, those who promptly recognized Bolshevik authority included some of the highest officers of the Imperial General Staff: A. A. Svechin, V. N. Egorev, S. I. Odintsov, A. A. Samoilo, P. P. Sytin, D. P. Parskii, A. E. Gutov, A. A. Neznamov, A. A. Baltiiskii, P. P. Lebedev, A. M. Zaionchkovskii, and S. S. Kamenev.6 Later on, two tsarist ministers of war, Aleksis Polivanov and Dmitrii Shuvaev, also donned uniforms of the Red Army. At the end of November 1917, Lenin’s military adviser, N. I. Podvoiskii, requested the General Staffs opinion whether elements of the old army could serve as the nucleus of a new armed force. The generals recommended that healthy units of the old army be used in this manner and that the army be reduced to its traditional peacetime strength of 1.3 million men. The Bolsheviks rejected this proposal in favor of an entirely new, revolutionary force, modeled on that fielded by France in 1791—that is, a levée en masse, but composed entirely of urban inhabitants, without peasants.7
Events, however, would not wait: the front continued to crumble and now it was Lenin’s front—as he liked to say, after October the Bolsheviks had become “defensists.” There was talk of creating an armed force of 300,000 to serve as the foundation of the new Bolshevik army.8 Lenin demanded that this force be assembled and made combat-ready in a month and a half to meet the expected German assault. This order was reconfirmed on January 16 in the so-called Declaration of Rights, whi
ch provided for the creation of a Red Army to “ensure the full power of the toiling masses and prevent the restoration of exploiters.”9 The new Worker-Peasant Red Army (Raboche-Krest’ianskaia Krasnaia Armiia) was to be an all-volunteer force, made up of “tried revolutionaries,” who were to be paid fifty rubles a month and be bound by “mutual guarantees” (krugovaia poruka) by virtue of which every soldier would be personally responsible for the loyalty of his comrades. To command this projected army, the Sovnarkom created on February 3 an All-Russian Collegium of the Red Army, chaired by Krylenko and Podvoiskii.10
Official government announcements justified the creation of a new, socialist army with the need of Soviet Russia to repulse the assault of the “international bourgeoisie.” But this was only one of its stated missions, and not necessarily the most important. Like the Imperial Army, the Red Army had a dual function: to fight foreign enemies and to preserve internal security. In an address to the Soldiers’ Section of the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918, Krylenko declared that the foremost task of the Red Army was to wage “internal war” and ensure “the defense of Soviet authority.”11 In other words, it was primarily to serve the purpose of civil war, which Lenin was determined to unleash.
The Bolsheviks also charged their armies with the mission of spreading civil wars abroad. Lenin believed that the final triumph of socialism required a series of major wars between “socialist” and “bourgeois” countries. In a moment of uncharacteristic candor he said:
The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either the one or the other will triumph. And until that end will have arrived, a series of the most terrible conflicts between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois governments is unavoidable. This means that the ruling class, the proletariat, if it only wishes to rule and is to rule, must demonstrate this also with its military organization.
The Russian Revolution Page 94