“You wouldn’t find the non-Russians much help in this war. They won’t join infantry regiments if they can help it, they’re cavalrymen, and in a war like this one you need to cut down on the cavalry, as you well know. Besides, nobody is as staunch in battle as Russians are.”
“So it’s flog the willing horse, eh? Just think what we’re doing! Sending militia into the thick of it, defenseless old graybeards. Driving Russia to her death with our own hands. If we spare other people, why can’t we spare our own? We’re losing more than the war—we’re losing the Russian people! It sounds unbelievable, but we’ve drained the country of how many millions? Thirteen? And we go on pumping. It’s boys of nineteen now. Yet there aren’t even three million in the trenches—where are all the rest? And we round up the horses, we ruin the civilian population. Why? The Germans had an interval of forty-three years between wars, we had a mere nine. But which side is fighting more skillfully?”
“For all their skill they’re now feeding their horses on ersatz fodder, a mixture of straw and sawdust. They’re well organized, of course, but they’re suffocating for lack of men, provisions, and munitions, whereas in their eyes our army in the field is a most formidable force.”
“Really? But what about the home front? We in the front line still don’t have a very clear view.”
He said “we” out of politeness, knowing full well that Svechin at GHQ had too exalted and detached a viewpoint.
“We in the field can only look straight ahead, at the enemy. And if you travel around all you hear is ‘We need to beat the German within first,’ and ‘If you don’t know how to fight, give it up!’ Workers are already rebelling and drawing in reserve troops.”
“Come on now! Those are just scare stories.”
“It’s true, I tell you! Just the other day in Petrograd, there were very serious disturbances on the Vyborg side. The police were there … And the 181st Reserve Regiment was involved … If fighting had crossed the bridges there’d have been trouble all over Petrograd …”
“Oh, come on!”
It was always “Oh, come on” when something had not quite happened. And when it did happen it would be “What else would you expect?”
The highway robbers at the other end of the hall were noisily enjoying themselves, laughing explosively. And they were all, of course, legally entitled to squander money and live it up in Cubat’s even on ordinary weekdays.
Svechin was disinclined to believe him, but Vorotyntsev had felt the same himself ten days ago. How could anyone coming straight from the army in the field believe such things?
“Even flour is getting short in some places. This is perhaps a more dangerous time than the summer of 1915. Last year, however far we retreated, the home front was always well fed and steady.”
“What do you mean, however far we retreated?” Svechin said angrily. “It wasn’t beyond Moscow, like in the Fatherland War, was it? Or all the way to Poltava, like Peter? It wasn’t even to the Dnieper—we retreated that far from the Poles on more than one occasion. No, we are just stationary on the edge of Poland. All right, we’ve lost Poland, Galicia, part of the Baltic provinces …” (Poland, Galicia, the Baltic provinces … but Olda was still there. With Olda you didn’t feel that you were in such a soundly defeated army.)
“I would have liked to see you retreating backward up the Carpathians to escape from the Hungarian plain.”
“In 1915 the situation looked frightening because we had no shells. So we drew back five hundred versts, but we didn’t let them surround a single Army Group or corps. Now we have all the shells we need, and then some, and it gets better every month. The army is steady and strong and doing its duty—I know of no cases of insubordination. Without realizing it you’re letting your impressions of Romania get you down. Besides, Germany and Austria are no longer capable of a major offensive at any point, they’re going over to the defensive. And they’re doomed to exhaustion, because they have no reinforcements coming from anywhere. The morale of Germans taken prisoner lately is low.”
Svechin’s too large head, always close-cropped because his hair was so sparse, was not a rounded oval like other people’s but had prominent, asymmetrical bumps, which you could think of as marks of stubbornness. His hair was scanty, but his head was rock hard.
“We, on the contrary, have already won the war.” He rammed it home with his bumpy head. “It doesn’t matter whether those valiant little allies of ours—damn them—win the odd battle or not, the war is ours in any case. Don’t forget, the Central Powers produce six hundred thousand shells a day, the Entente eight hundred thousand, that’s bound to tip the scale sooner or later.”
But it only takes one such shell—right in the middle of one of our trenches …
Vorotyntsev crouched over the table, eyeball to eyeball with Svechin. As soldiers crouch poised to attack.
“Our root is destroyed, Andreich!” he said, his voice muted but firm. “In these twenty-seven months our root has been destroyed. Don’t bother counting the Allies’ shells. Go and look at our regiments. They’re not the regiments they were when they marched through Prussia in Samsonov’s day. We’re left with a substitute army, Andreich! No victory will compensate for the Russia killed in battle! And now we’re beating the last spark of life out of the people’s body. Don’t bother counting the Allies’ shells, or our own. The people were promised a three-month war, the people are at the end of their tether, all the people want is an armistice! The soldiers’ attitude is: the gentlefolk started this war, but it’s peasants they’re killing! If Russia is utterly changed and we’re left with a substitute—what good is victory?”
It had some slight effect on Svechin.
But he was not persuaded. Startled rather.
“You mean you no longer even want victory?”
“I simply see things as they are,” Vorotyntsev said, recovering his breath after his tirade. “We both remember that splendid bit of logic: ‘He who endures to the end shall be saved’—don’t we? If we’re not annihilated that will obviously be victory, after all our stupidities. Victory in Europe does nothing for us. Well, what does it do for us? Allow us to seize more land? Or are we talking about Constantinople again?”
By now Svechin was looking at him in amazement. No, he couldn’t accept this.
“So what do you propose? To hoof it out of the war right now, or what? A separate peace? But if Russia parts company with the Allies now she’ll end up among the defeated. A premature peace would bring Russia to disaster. To revolution even.”
“Quite the contrary!” Vorotyntsev calmly asserted.
But a separate peace—just like that—was not what he wanted, or at least he was not yet ready to say so.
“Listen,” Svechin said, “I can agree with you that it might have been cleverer not to get involved in this war. But once in we have to finish it, not keep changing direction. An aborted war, a war brought to an untimely end, threatens us with worse consequences than the present tension. How, I ask you, could we possibly withdraw from the war without damage to Russia?”
“But don’t you see that continuing it, dragging it out, will do even more damage? We can discuss the practicalities. One possibility, as I see it, is to shut our eyes and take it easy.”
“And what will the Allies say to that?”
“It isn’t the Allies we should be thinking about, but the salvation of our own people. That’s the sort of talk we hear from Kadet intellectuals —that Russia will bear an indelible mark of shame if she wrecks her union with the Allies. But the Allies have ridden on our backs too long, we’ve had enough of it. All their wars have been waged solely for their own advantage, and only we are such blockheads as to stick our necks out for no good reason. I sometimes think, to tell you the truth, that when we got involved in this war we fell into a cunning trap of theirs: the Allies needed to put Germany in her place, and thought it would be a good idea to do it with Russian hands, because—remembering her inability to hold out against Japan
—Russia would crack up internally at the same time. So they would be the winners, they would usurp the victory—with Russia as their cat’s-paw. So let them have their victory—all we need is to escape destruction, to stop losing people. There is, after all, a stage of sickness, or of tiredness, at which you cannot go a single step farther.”
From similar facts they had drawn different conclusions. Such passionate disagreements between people so much alike may be vexatious at first, but are always fruitful in the end.
“No, you’re wrong, it’s quite the other way around,” Svechin insisted, “1917 will in fact be the most important year of the war, and it’s precisely because of all our sacrifices that we cannot relax our efforts now. In fact, we must enlarge the army now that the front extends to the Black Sea. People previously exempt are being brought before the draft boards again. We expect an extra six hundred thousand from that. Add another hundred and fifty thousand category 2 militia. And add to that the normal annual intake. With these resources …”
Resources! God help us!
“We just can’t tax the people’s patience any further, I’m telling you!”
“You’ve started talking like a Narodnik, instead of an officer on the General Staff!” Svechin said, with a smile in his lustrous black eyes.
“No, like a doctor. Like a doctor who puts his ear to someone’s chest and hears the creaking of mortality. Believe me! I’m not speaking idly. I know.”
Till that minute Vorotyntsev had been saying all that he meant to say, without toning it down, and however much Svechin disagreed, there it was, for both of them to contemplate, out in the open. But to go on from there, to suggest solutions, ways out, was beyond him. He knew, he felt, only that action was necessary. And meeting somebody like Svechin—what could be more natural? He was clever, strong, quick, completely trustworthy, and now a prominent figure, a general at the heart of GHQ. Not much less grand than Guchkov. He had met, and would meet, no one of equal importance on his present travels.
But Svechin was all soldier. However understanding he was, he would not cooperate.
“Here in Petersburg everybody has this crazy idea that we’re losing. Where do they get it from? And they all get each other worked up. Guchkov, of course, is at it too, right out in front. That shitty letter he wrote to Alekseev, have you read it? He latched on to things of no real substance, for the sake of abusing the government and creating as much of an uproar as he could. Exaggerating, distorting, spreading his fictions far and wide—a womanish trick, the sort of hysterical behavior you can expect from everybody here. And what does the letter prove? Nothing. Just another literary exercise in the Petersburg manner.”
The conversation had taken a strange turn: Svechin himself had homed in on the central figure, and Vorotyntsev was at a loss how to defend him. Back there in Romania that letter had been the drop that filled his cup, the spark that fired his impatience. Perhaps, he thought, we sometimes make up our minds too hastily. Now it did seem a peculiar way of doing things.
Svechin was continuing with his demolition. “Guchkov, of all people, ought to be ashamed to miss the point as he has. He thinks of himself as a military man, he’s made flying visits to the front, he supposedly knows the supply situation, and indeed is personally concerned with it. Although it’s difficult to know whether those War Industry Committees do more to help or to hinder supplies—it’s no good having so many masters, all of them dashing off to the front so that they can give the generals pep talks and distribute cyclostyled speeches to the officers.”
At this point the fish soup was served, momentarily distracting them and calming them down. Their vodka was running out. They attacked the soup without waiting for it to cool.
Somewhat fortified, the beardless, black-browed bashi-bazouk could smile again.
“I wish you could see the effect it’s had on Alekseev. He’s been ill ever since, he can’t get over it. He’s a true Russian if ever there was one. What he fears more than anything in the world is his superiors. What if the Emperor started thinking that Alekseev really is corresponding with Guchkov!”
Vorotyntsev immediately asked himself whether Svechin too was not afraid of his superiors, and if you got right down to it, how did he now feel about the Emperor? That was the key to everything.
“Anyway, if you worked like he does you too would fall sick. That one head has to hold everything that affects the civilian population, as well as all army business: stockpiling foodstuffs and fodder, the metal shortage, fuel, even the militarization of factories. He carries on just as before: doesn’t look for assistants and will never find himself a good staff. Half of those at GHQ are little better than drones. His one and only adviser was Borisov, an unkempt, unwashed éminence grise, who was just as idle as the rest. Alekseev wants only robots like that fool Pustovoitenko, people who keep the papers in good order and don’t interfere. The old boy doesn’t even want to look at the operational plans of our department: his view is that if decisions have to be taken by one man, that man ought also to draw up the plans by himself. Unaided! If you suggest something to him—raids, say—he just waves you away, says spare me these newfangled notions!”
“Well, even if he does make his decisions all by himself, from what I’ve seen of them they’re not too bad. If, as you say, he’s in favor of peace with Turkey. And if what I’ve heard is correct, he didn’t want to get tied up with Romania, but to give priority to the northern sector of the front. And then, I suppose, the Emperor is still putting spokes in his wheel?”
Svechin, hovering over his soup, answered calmly. “What about the Allied diplomats? And the Empress? Even that swine Rasputin advises Alekseev through intermediaries.”
Although his eyes added nothing to what he had said, he had taken the point, of course. But he brought the conversation back to his old theme.
“You can’t channel all the concerns of the army and the country as a whole through a single head. To try to do so is the distinctive characteristic of a man of meager talent. With us it’s the accepted thing to grumble at the Tsar, and abuse the government unsparingly, but not to say a word against our old man, who has become one of Russia’s recognized assets. Just between ourselves, though, is he really fit to be the commander in chief of a great army?”
That’s just it: he isn’t commander in chief. The Supreme Commander is right beside him—sleeping, strolling, dining with the generals and the diplomats, listening to hunting stories, going to the cinema.
“Of course, it’s easy to idolize Alekseev, after Yanushkevich and Danilov. But he is the proverbial shovel set up instead of an icon.”
Vorotyntsev felt bound to acquiesce here: “That, Andreich, is the depressing result of decades of ineptitude. Even when they genuinely want to appoint a man of talent they are no longer able to find one. So they appoint people on the hereditary principle, people bearing the same stamp of mediocrity as themselves. If we wanted to stick our noses into this war we needed to be a strong power, otherwise it would have been better to keep out. The home front too would have stood up to four times as much, just as it does in Germany, if it was under a strong hand.”
Svechin might not have been listening. “I don’t really want to speak ill of him. He isn’t greedy, isn’t ambitious, he has a sensible view of things, he won’t reject the correct solution, if it’s on the plane he’s accustomed to, and within the bounds of moderation, and he won’t go to bed at night until he’s given all the instructions he has in mind. Only he’s begun to loom over Russia like a monument of priceless experience. Anyway, what I’ve been meaning to say is that the old man is now seriously ill. It’s obviously going to be a lengthy business and he’ll obviously have to take sick leave.”
“I had no idea! What’s wrong with him?”
“Something with his kidneys. And he has a high temperature all the time. When we’re feeling spiteful we say it’s caused by the fright Guchkov’s letter gave him. Anyway, the old man has gone into a steep decline. But what I’m getting a
t is this: previously you couldn’t so much as hint that so-and-so knew his business and ought to be taken on by GHQ. The old man would say, ‘If we spent less time sleeping we could manage ourselves.’ But now, if he’s absent for a long time, they’re bound to take on new people at GHQ. Are you on leave at present? Or are you here on business?”
Vorotyntsev’s heart beat faster. “I plan to be back with my regiment in five days’ time.”
“And you’ll rot there for a bowl of Romanian gruel.” Svechin laid a fine hand on Vorotyntsev’s and spoke in a matter-of-fact way, as though anxious to forestall his friend’s gratitude.
“Don’t think I’ve been forgetting you these past two years. It’s just that circumstances were unfavorable. You couldn’t possibly return to the Grand Duke’s staff, you know that yourself.”
It would be marvelous! If he wanted to have a hand in crucial changes at the center, GHQ was the best place to be.
“Two new armies are presently being deployed to your left, all the way to the Danube estuary.”
“When did this happen? I saw nothing.”
“Starting on 30 October. And you’ll be pulled out of the 9th Army and stationed down there, where you’ll be further off the map than ever, and so deep in the mud you won’t be able to lift your feet. They’ve started the redeployment already. How long do you intend to hang around on the frozen fringe?”
That was indeed one of Vorotyntsev’s grievances: being a regimental commander was fine, but why in such a godforsaken place? Toward the Danube? That must mean against Bulgaria? And that meant chasing the old Byzantine dream again. He would resent dying for Constantinople when the main battle line was drawn along the Dvina.
November 1916 Page 79