Vorotyntsev felt all those blood-soaked bandages cutting into his own flesh, telling him that “we cannot go on fighting this war!”
Which, he asked himself, did he love most: did he really put the soldiers’ trade before his fatherland? He was a soldier, yes, and owed a duty to war—but for Russia’s sake, not for the sake of war.
And so, Vorotyntsev, who had dedicated himself to war, began feeling out of place in it.
What idle pens called from time to time the Great War or the Patriotic War, or the European War no longer seemed to have been unpreventable.
And he knew now that no war should be fought unless it was unpreventable. Why did we fight the Japanese war? Why did we encroach on the Chinese? Come to that, why the Turkish war? Or the Central Asian campaign? The Crimean war, yes—it had to be fought, and should have been fought properly. So we couldn’t wait to give in.
Vorotyntsev would not have been able to fight at all if he had raised barriers between himself and his men. He had always disliked “officers only” activities—billiards playing, “a bit of a dance …” He had never held either a billiards cue or a pack of cards. He had no time for fast-living officers.
For centuries, with no thought for anything but ourselves, we denied our serfs all rights, neglected the moral and cultural education of our people, left that for the revolutionaries to take care of. But this war has brought us a measure of unity with the common people such as I have never known in my life. Unless, perhaps, as a child in Kostroma, with the boys at Zastruzhe. It has brought this unselfconscious oneness: we are “we”—all of us—sitting here in holes in the ground, and the others, those shifting and slithering around and shooting at us, are all “they,” and what we have to do is stop them.
An officer’s duty, first and foremost, was to look after his men, keep them out of trouble. A common soldier knows nothing about war, he trusts his superior to look after him. And the better we look after him, the more surely we shall win: he shows his gratitude by fighting better, and all is right with the regiment. Vorotyntsev had no equal when it came to keeping his subordinates alive.
But when soldiers look up to us as though we were their fathers, what does it feel like to be deceiving them, leading them down the wrong road?
The guilt feelings which had tormented the Russian intelligentsia for a whole century had found a voice—and what it said was: “We cannot justify this war to our people.” That we are equally in danger makes us no less guilty.
After living for those two years cheek by jowl with his men, much closer to them in and out of action than a regimental commander is expected to be, Vorotyntsev could not help realizing that the peasants were not enthusiastic about this war and could see nothing in it except futile deaths and waste of working time. The minds of the people were unprepared for this war, unripe for it. It had burst upon their lives like a natural disaster. Hardly one in a hundred soldiers felt any hostility toward Austrians or Germans, they were only angry, rightly angry, about the poison gas. (After the first gas attacks, against Russians with no defense, enemy soldiers who surrendered were bayoneted—something that had never happened before.) Apart from that, nobody had any grievance, any hard feelings against the enemy, nobody clearly saw the object of all those wounds and deaths, nobody knew what Russia had to fear so much from the Germans.
Vorotyntsev himself could not see that Germany had the muscle and the weight to conquer Russia.
But if the soldier’s heart is not in this war, and we are incapable of inspiring him, how long and to what limits and with what conscience can we continue urging him on to his death, urging him into head-on attacks, over exposed marshes and wooded cliffs?
They will stand anything, of course. But have I the right to stand it for them?
For all those soldiers’ lives, what have we given in return? Surely we can’t call Constantinople compensation for all the men killed? And Constantinople is the most we shall get.
These thoughts were not mutinous. Vorotyntsev was not the first to have them. Aleksandr III had told Bismarck, long ago, that he would not give a single Russian soldier for the whole of the Balkans.
And he was right!
This war has exceeded all limits, gone beyond the dimensions of war as previously understood. It has become a calamity for the whole nation—not a natural calamity, but one caused by those in charge of it, by us.
And there lies the danger: that the people will not forgive us for this war, as it has not forgiven us for serfdom. Though it nurses its grudge secretly.
It also makes a big difference which land you are called on to die for. For the aching beauty of Belorussia, for the song-filled Ukraine, for the humble plains of central Russia I’m ready to die at any time—and so are my men. If the Germans had advanced deep into Russia, it would be a different war, and we would all feel differently about it. But fight for the Carpathians? Fight for Romanian mud, for a foreign quagmire that means nothing to us?
Vorotyntsev felt that, day in and day out, he was committing a crime, burying Russian soldiers in this place.
The whole war, the greatest war ever known, made no sense for any other country either. It had happened because Europe had grown too fat. But he was tied to Russia, and his heart ached for her first. We don’t need this war. And the end is only dimly discernible in the distance. The Germans may be still worse off—they are caught in a mousetrap. But, more to the point, the war has so often gone beyond what seemed to be the limits of destructiveness that the victor will have little more cause to rejoice than the vanquished.
The people never spoke of “victory” or “defeat": “making peace” was their usual expression. As long as it came to an end, win, lose, or draw was a matter of indifference to them.
Vorotyntsev, after two years in the ground at the front, after dispatching more than one full complement of his regiment to death or disablement, after listening to the soldiers in their dugouts, had reached in his heart the same conclusion: to save Russia, to save our roots, our race, our seed, so that it will not perish, will not disappear from the face of the earth—we must “make peace,” make peace at any cost, no Constantinople as a reward, and such an outcome now would even be preferable to victory in a year or two’s time.
He had dozed off once in a dugout where nobody knew him, and woke to hear the soldiers talking.
“It’s time for a change at the top. What is our little father the Tsar thinking of? It’s time they were all thrown out.”
They! They were a clearly defined concept in the soldier’s mind. And the terrible thing was that they were not imaginary but really existed—that bloated, torpid, somnolent, exalted ruling stratum. They contrived to float comfortably somewhere above the war, oblivious of their fearsome responsibility.
They had been presented with the army reform program after the Japanese war, and thrown it out. They had been given Stolypin, a man capable of great exertions and great deeds, and they had rejected him, brought him down, given him to the assassin. (If everything was still in Stolypin’s firm hands, either this war would never have happened or it would have been fought differently.) It had been in their power not to fight the war with enfeebled incompetents in command, but to let fresh air blow through the ranks of the generals. The German army, long before the war, had fearlessly observed the “blue envelope” procedure at New Year’s: the enforced retirement of any senior officer judged inefficient. Whereas Russia had no inefficient senior officers! And all the most irredeemably obtuse, irresponsible, complacent, and utterly selfish of them latched on to the Supreme Commander, his misdirected favors and his ill-considered kindnesses.
But inevitably your thoughts always moved upward from “them.” Him. What did he feel about all these casualties? He had been given even bigger opportunities: not to meddle at all in Europe’s insane brouhaha, not to dive headfirst into this war, but to let Russia remain an immovable mass looming over the war-torn continent! Instead, he had plunged millions of gasping Ivans into the war.
Then this business of taking over the supreme command, knowing that he himself controlled nothing, leaving the ministers in Petrograd at sixes and sevens, helplessly plying between GHQ and Tsarskoye Selo or, worse still, dashing from one parade to another? Could anything be more exasperating than these military reviews in wartime? Vorotyntsev felt ashamed for the Tsar, as though he himself had dreamt up these reviews, dragging fighting men away from their rest behind the lines, herding several regiments together, even hauling grimy and exhausted soldiers out of the trenches, hastily washing them, and brushing them down, drilling them through the night—all just to goose-step them past the eyes of the All-Highest, hear them call out the standard replies to orders, and have a few photographs taken—and every time He would be wearing a different regimental uniform (never, needless to say, ordinary service dress). He would ride around the ranks and say a few words that touched no one. His addresses to the army contained no eloquent phrases, lacked the ring of authority, they were what he might say on any regimental anniversary. The newspapers invariably said that “interminable, thunderous cheers accompanied the beloved monarch as he left.” But at the front a superstitious belief had grown up that the Tsar’s incursions brought bad luck.
Vorotyntsev himself had seen the Emperor that spring reviewing troops at Kamenets-Podolski. True, it was impossible not to feel a thrill of anticipation, while he was still unseen, but imminent, your heart pounded, you were conscious of his symbolic greatness, you felt the approach of all Russia concentrated in one man! You could not help expecting something extraordinary! But when what appeared was a rather short colonel, with a mild unmilitary manner, and obviously ill at ease, your enthusiasm flagged at once, and you were conscious, in your heart and in your eyes, only of intense curiosity. The unfortunate ranks drew themselves up, threw back their heads, shouted “Hurrah!”—and the Tsar’s face merely looked tired (from previous reviews?), apathetic, lifeless, and even rather sullen.
Vorotyntsev fastened his eyes on him, asking himself whether this monarch had given himself heart and soul to Russia, as was his duty. There were so many parades in his life! When did he find time to think about the state? And what were his feelings when he signed yet another order calling up category 2 militia? Did he ever reflect that he was ruining the countryside? Or wonder whether they would be any good as soldiers? Or how many months it would take to make them so?
Vorotyntsev dearly wished that he could love the Tsar. But he could not even force himself to respect the cult. He suffered, because the Tsar was what he was. In those fateful years—to have a Tsar with so little power over his country, mentally so limited, and so weak-willed. So inarticulate. And so inactive. Did he have any inkling of all this himself?
On top of it all he was Supreme Commander of an army twelve million strong. There was no way out of the mess. All you could do was wait for the war to end, or for the next reign. (But why should that little boy be any better when he grew up?)
Then again, what worse punishment could have been inflicted on the Tsar than the present string of useless ministers? One after another they were replaced. Everyone saw how sorry a procession it was, and not even the most zealous subject had a word to offer in excuse. At every army headquarters the uselessness of the government and the squalor of the court were quite openly discussed, so, indeed, was the Tsar himself—pityingly, and contemptuously.
Discontent was focused above all on the Tsaritsa. She was vilified uninhibitedly and unmercifully. Officers accused her of encouraging “Rasputin’s filthy goings-on” so openly that the men in the ranks heard. Vorotyntsev didn’t believe for a minute that she slept with Rasputin or was engaged in treasonable activities. (Some insisted that she had helped the German submarine to locate the ship carrying Kitchener and that she regularly disclosed Russia’s plans for offensives to the Germans.) He suspected that this was an example of ordinary human readiness to make farfetched accusations against remote and enigmatic personages. People would always paw over and peddle the crudest and nastiest interpretation. But suppose just one-eighth of what was said was true! Rasputinism determining policy? Some witch doctor taking the helm and having a say in ministerial appointments? That matters of state should be decided at the level of Rasputin was outrageous.
It could not all be absolutely false, suppose just one-eighth of it …
And then those photographs of the Empress—the stony face of the wicked witch who wasn’t invited to the wedding …
As if the disease of war was not enough—must he catch the sickness raging on the home front? As if what they saw every day was not harrowing enough—rumors that things were worse and more distressing back there drifted in like clouds of poison gas. Vorotyntsev tried not to breathe in this choking stuff, but there was no protection against it, everybody who came from outside carried it, in the form of rumors and gossip—and anyway, it emanated almost unhindered from the pages of the press. Columns of print in authoritative newspapers were not just gossip, and they too hinted, or croaked in so many words, that the trouble was not the war but a bad government, hostile to its own country. You there, marooned at the front, don’t know what to think: it’s two years since you were in Russia, how can you possibly judge what’s happening?
Still, the opinions of those same newspapers on what was happening at the front were usually wide of the mark, so maybe they were wrong about other things too. Vorotyntsev had nothing but contempt for newspapers.
But there was something else. Among all the dirty rumors the Empress was said to be secretly negotiating with the Germans for a separate peace!
The story was told with extreme disapproval, but it took Vorotyntsev’s breath away: how clever of her, if it was true! It was probable enough: she, a Russian Empress of German blood, must feel more divided, more excruciatingly torn by this war than anyone. Looking at the possibilities, it was obvious from afar, and everybody agreed, that of the royal couple she was the stronger, the leader. Whatever she took it into her head to do—she would bend the Tsar to her will. So there might be grounds for hope?
Vorotyntsev studied the Empress’s portrait with new feelings. No doubt about it—she was strong-willed, resolute, perhaps even intelligent. She knew exactly what she wanted. If only … how clever it would be of her! How clear-cut the problem was, and how clearly it could be seen from above: if there was no indication that total victory was imminent (and there was none! If there were it would make itself felt even where he was!), it was the duty of those with power in the state not to tax people’s patience with new ordeals and further sacrifices.
Yes, in return for peace, here and now, Vorotyntsev would forgive his Emperor everything!
He grew more and more restless: he seethed, he was dizzy with a feeling that events could not simply be allowed to run on downhill to exhaustion and ruin. He could not simply endure it all and wait. The urge to act hammered in his breast. And the time had come to act—everything pointed to it: the incessant wrangling back home, the hopeless plunge deeper and deeper into the Romanian wilderness, the setbacks and the muddle of the two-month Romanian campaign, all those fresh graves in another land …
To act—but how, and where? The answer eluded him. Only one thing was clear—that action could not mean leading his regiment over wooded mountains, deeper and deeper into Transylvania.
He was so far ahead in his thinking that he could see nobody around who would share his thoughts. They all grumbled about the home front, and some of them about the government, but with whom could he, as one officer to another, share his belief that the war itself was intolerable and unnecessary?
No, if he was to act it would obviously have to be somewhere in the rear. In one of the capitals, perhaps. With whom, though? And how? What did an officer know about civilian life?
Nothing. We’re all ignoramuses.
But surely an energetic man would find allies
, and channels through which to act? There would certainly be such people there, in the rear.
In any case, idle moping was useless. That was Russia’s curse—from top to bottom: indecision.
Svechin had written to him once, inviting him to drop in at GHQ when he had an opportunity. Perhaps he should take soundings there?
So that autumn Vorotyntsev had ceased to feel the fatalistic indifference to all around him that had been with him for two years of war, and a dizzying anxiety bored into him. He vaguely discerned some new application for his not altogether exhausted powers. For two years now he had turned his back on the home front in disgust, but now he needed it and would consider going there. Before long he was ready to go even though the situation at the front was rather unsettled. Just to size up the situation. See one or two people. If there was nothing for him to do, he could at least learn something. See how his state of mind compared with that of thinking people in the capitals. He was obviously very much out of touch. He could have no influence stuck where he was. In his muddy hole beyond Kimpolung, Vorotyntsev felt like a compressed spring unable to release its tension.
Then, one day, he happened to be at Corps HQ and was shown Guchkov’s letter to General Alekseev. Quite openly, not in confidence, just between friends. It had obviously been written to be shown around—but was dated 28 August, and it was early October when Vorotyntsev read it. Ostensibly, the letter asked one specific question, about the failure to take delivery of half a million rifles from England (an obsolete question, since Russian factories were now turning out 100,000 rifles a month, and the army had enough and to spare), but, in Guchkov’s usual manner, it was laced with bold generalities: “the regime is rotting where it stands,” “the rotting rear is a menace to the front,” “a conflagration, the dimensions of which cannot be foreseen,” was at hand.
Maybe it’s all true? Guchkov must surely know more than I do. But however much he knows about what goes on in Petersburg he can’t know what a quagmire we’re stuck in here. He can’t know the whole story! He should be told! I must see him.
November 1916 Page 21