A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

by Orlando Figes

  Kerensky, the Minister of War in the coalition government, was cast as the hero of this new civic patriotism. As a popular and above-party figure, he became the embodiment of the coalition's ideal of national unity. The cult of Kerensky, which had first emerged in the February Days, reached its climax with the June offensive, which indeed the cult had helped to bring about. All the nations hopes and expectations rested on the frail shoulders of Kerensky, 'the first people's minister of war'. Schoolboy poets like Leonid Kannegiser (later to assassinate the Bolshevik Uritsky) portrayed Kerensky as a Russian Bonaparte:

  And if, swirling with pain, I fall in the name of Mother Russia, And find myself in some deserted field, Shot through the chest on the ground, Then at the Gates of Heaven, In my dying and joyous dreams, I will remember — Russia, Liberty, Kerensky on a white horse.

  Marina Tsvetaeva, who was then herself barely out of school, also felt moved to compare Kerensky with Napoleon:

  And someone, falling on the map, Does not sleep in his dreams. There came a Bonaparte In my country.7

  Kerensky revelled in this role. He had always seen himself as the leader

  of the nation, above party or class interests. The adulation went to his head. He became obsessed with the idea of leading the army to glory and of covering himself in honour. He began to model himself on Napoleon. A bust of the French Emperor stood on his desk at the Ministry of War. Although he had never himself been in the army, Kerensky donned a finely tailored khaki tunic, officer's breeches and knee-high leather boots when he became the Minister of War (a semi-military style of dress that many future leaders, including Stalin, would later take from him). The Minister of War took great care over his personal appearance — and it was a huge source of pride for him. Even at the height of the fighting in October, when he appeared before the Cossacks during the battle for Gatchina against the Red Guards, he made sure to wear his 'finest tunic, the one to which the people and the troops had grown so accustomed', and to 'salute, as I always did, slightly casually and with a slight smile'. During his famous tours of the Fronts, Kerensky even wore his right arm in a sling, although there was no record that the arm had ever been hurt (some people joked that he had simply worn it out by too much hand-shaking). It was no doubt a deliberate attempt to suggest that he, like the ordinary soldiers, had been wounded too. Perhaps it was also an attempt to echo the image of Napoleon with his arm tucked into the front of his tunic.8

  On the eve of his appointment Kerensky had given a melodramatic performance at a Congress of Delegates from the Front. 'I am sorry that I did not die two months ago,' he pronounced with his hand placed solemnly on his heart, 'for then I would have died with the greatest of dreams: that henceforth and forever a new life had dawned for Russia, when we could mutually respect each other and govern our state without whips or clubs.' He appealed to the soldiers to place their 'civic duty' above their own narrow class interests and to strengthen their fighting resolve, since Russia's liberty could only be gained 'as a strong and organized state' and this meant that 'every citizen' had to make a sacrifice for the nation. Under 'the old and hated regime' the soldiery had known how to fulfil their obligations, so why could they not do the same in the name of Freedom? 'Or is it', he asked in a phrase charged with meaning and emotion for the soldiers, 'it it that the free Russian state is in fact a state of rebellious slaves?'9 There was uproar in the hall. For the soldiers, in their own self-image, had indeed been 'slaves' before Order Number One, and Kerensky now seemed to be asking whether they were worth their freedom, as 'citizens', if they were not prepared to go to war. The phrase 'rebellious slaves' echoed around the country for weeks. It did much to turn the soldiers against Kerensky. But for the patriotic and the propertied it was just the sort of appeal to discipline and duty that they had long been calling for, and they now rallied behind Kerensky and the idea of an offensive at the Front. It was almost as if they sensed that only a victory could save them now.

  The liberal press now joined the right in a national chorus of howling headlines calling on the army to 'Take the Offensive!' The Kadet Party took up the national flag. No doubt they hoped that posing as patriots might reverse their alarming electoral decline. In the city Duma elections during May the Kadets had gained less than 20 per cent of the vote. No longer able to compete with the socialists for mass support, they sought to appeal to the middle classes by calling for the defence of the Fatherland and the restoration of order. Patriotism became the basis of their claim to be a party 'above class'. The democratic intelligentsia, which had always been the main social base of the Kadets, largely followed them into the chauvinist camp. The League of Russian Culture, founded by a group of right-wing Kadets in the midst of this patriotic wave, called on all classes to unite behind the banner of Russia. Even Blok, who called himself a socialist, succumbed to the new mood of patriotism, while Gorky welcomed the offensive as a means of 'bringing some organization to the country'. There was a growing feeling that 'Russia' should be put before everything else, even the revolution itself. 'It is not Russia that exists for the revolution,' Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote, 'but the revolution that exists for Russia.' It was close to the notion of a national-bourgeois Russia advanced by Struve and the Vekhi group after 1905; and there was indeed a similar equation of the nation with its middle classes. Propertied patriots subscribed to the Liberty Loan, raised by the government to finance the offensive. N. V Chaikovsky, President of the Free Economic Society, declared it 'the duty of everyone to the Motherland, to his fellow citizens and the future of Russia, to give his savings for the great cause of freedom'.10

  This new civic patriotism did not extend beyond the urban middle classes, although the leaders of the Provisional Government deluded themselves that it did. The visit of the Allied socialists — Albert Thomas from France, Emile Vandervelde from Belgium and Arthur Henderson from Britain — was a typical case in point. They had come to Russia to plead with 'the people' not to leave the war; yet very few people bothered to listen to them. Konstantin Paustovsky recalls Thomas speaking in vain from the balcony of the building that was later to become the Moscow Soviet. Thomas spoke in French and the small crowd that had gathered could not understand what he said. 'But everything in his speech could be understood without words. Bobbing up and down on his bowed legs, Thomas showed us graphically what would happen to Russia if it left the war. He twirled his moustaches, like the Kaiser's, narrowed his eyes rapaciously, and jumped up and down choking the throat of an imaginary Russia.' For several minutes the Frenchman continued with this circus act, hurling the body of Russia to the ground and jumping up and down on it, until the crowd began to hiss and boo and laugh. Thomas mistook this for a sign of approval and saluted the crowd with his bowler hat. But the laughter and booing got

  louder: 'Get that clown off!' one worker cried. Then, at last, someone else appeared on the balcony and diplomatically led him inside.11

  Some middle-class civilians volunteered for the new shock battalions which were formed to revive the army's morale. Most of these were made up of frightened officers, eager to flee their mutinous regiments. Bernard Pares, who attended several patriotic rallies to encourage these volunteers, compared their hysterical atmosphere to that of a revival meeting. On one occasion he was introduced to the soldiers as 'our English comrade, the Professor', a great war hero, who had won the George Cross by beating the Germans single-handed. This was of course a total invention; but when Pares urged his host to shut up, he was told that such tales were needed to raise the morale of the troops.12

  One of the best-known volunteer units had been formed by women. The Women's Battalion of Death had been organized by Maria Bochkareva, a truly remarkable woman, who had worked before the war as a foreman on factory building sites. After 1914 she had campaigned to enlist in the army and, having petitioned the Tsar himself, had been allowed to fight under General Gurko. By February 1917, she had risen to the rank of sergeant, having spent two years in the trenches with several wounds and a number o
f medals to prove it. Concerned by the collapse of military discipline, she appealed to Brusilov to let her form a shock battalion of women in the hope that this would shame the rest of the soldiers into fighting. In fact it was to have the opposite effect: the soldiers viewed its formation as a sign of the government's desperate situation and this strengthened their resolve not to fight; while many soldiers, the Cossacks in particular, refused to fight alongside women. But Brusilov did not anticipate this and saw no reason to object. He was keen on the idea, much debated at that time, of establishing a new army based entirely on volunteer units. He saw it as a means of fighting the war on the basis of patriotic duty, and of breaking down the old divisions between the officers and the troops. Since his own wife was working in the medical services at the Front, he did not see why other women should not also go there to fight. The battalion was hastily formed and blessed by the Patriarch Nikon on Red Square in Moscow before their departure for the Front in June. The women shaved their heads and put on standard army trousers, although one was too fat to fit them and had to go into battle in a skirt.13

  The army commissars were the other great hope of this civic patriotism. Most of them were junior officers of democratic or socialist persuasion. They enjoyed the confidence of their troops yet also understood the need for military discipline. Linde, the young NCO who had led the mutiny of several regiments during the February Days, was a typical case in point: he became the Commissar of the Special Army during the summer offensive. Dmitry Os'kin, the peasant NCO whom we encountered in Chapter 7, also became a military commissar.

  The commissars were instituted by the Soviet on 19 March, and made responsible to the Provisional Government on 6 May. They were meant to smooth relations between the officers and the soldiers' committees and, as such, were seen as the basis for a new patriotic partnership between the democracy and the army.

  That, too, was the hope of the Declaration 'On the Rights of Servicemen' issued by Kerensky on II May. Kerensky claimed — and he was surely right — that the Russian armed forces were now the 'freest in the world'; and he called on the soldiers to prove 'that there is strength, not weakness, in freedom' in the coming offensive. The Declaration retained the rights of Order Number One, but it also restored the authority of the officers at the Front, including the use of corporal punishment. This was seen in the ruling circles as an essential concession to the military leaders in preparation for the coming offensive. Brusilov was adamant that he would not fight without it. Yet there is no doubt that many soldiers saw the Declaration as an attempt by the government to restore the old system of discipline and this played into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Pravda quipped that the Declaration should really be called a 'Declaration on the Rightlessness of Servicemen'.14

  To raise the morale of the troops Kerensky went on a tour of the Front during May. Here his hysterical oratory reached fever pitch. With his squeaky voice and waving arms, he appealed to the soldiers to make the supreme sacrifice for the glorious future of their Fatherland. At the end of these tirades he would collapse in a state of nervous exhaustion and have to be revived with the aid of valerian spirits. Though these fainting fits were not contrived, or at least not to begin with, they added an extra theatrical effect to Kerensky's performances. Everywhere he was hailed as a hero. Soldiers carried him shoulder-high, pelted him with flowers and threw themselves at his feet. An English nurse watched in amazement as they 'kissed him, his uniform, his car, and the ground on which he walked. Many of them were on their knees praying; others were weeping.'15 Nothing quite like it had been seen since the days of the Tsar.

  Yet all this adulation merely gave Kerensky the false impression that the soldiers were eager to fight. Fifty years later, in his memoirs, he still insisted that a 'healthy mood of patriotism at the Front had become a definite force'.* But this was far from the truth. Kerensky's visits brought him into contact with a very unrepresentative cross-section of the army. The soldiers' meetings which he addressed were mainly attended by the officers, the uniformed intelligentsia and the members of the soldiers' committees. At these meetings Kerensky's

  * The leaders of the Soviet and the Provisional Government were deceived by the fact that the soldiets, like the common people, expressed extreme hostility to everything 'German'. But the concept of 'German' was for the soldiers a general symbol of everything they hated — the Empress, the treasonable tsarist government, the war and all foreigners — rather than the German soldiers (for whom they often expressed sympathy) on the other side of the front line.

  speeches had a mesmerizing effect: they conjured up the sweet illusion of a victorious end to the war with one more heroic heave. Now a weary soldier might well be tempted to believe in this, even if deep down he knew it to be false, simply because he wanted to. But such illusions were soon dispelled once he returned to the trenches. Outside these meetings, moreover, among the vast majority of the rank and file, the mood of the soldiers was much more negative. Kerensky was frequently heckled by such troops during his trips to the Front, yet he never seemed to register the warning that this conveyed. On one occasion near Riga, a soldier was pushed forward by his mates to question the Minister. 'You tell us we must fight the Germans so that the peasants can have the land. But what's the use of us peasants getting land if I am killed and get no land?' Kerensky had no answer — and there was none — but ordered the officer in command of this unit to send the soldier home: 'Let his fellow villagers know that we don't need cowards in the Russian army.' The soldier could not believe his luck, and at once fainted; while the officer scratched his head in disbelief. How many more men would have been sent home on this basis? It was clear that Kerensky saw the soldier as an exception, of whom he could make an example. He did not seem to realize that there were millions of others just like him.16

  Brusilov, by contrast, was beginning to have second thoughts about the morale of the troops. 'The soldiers are tired,' he wrote to his wife at the end of April, 'and in many ways no longer fit to go on to the offensive.' On taking over the supreme command of the army, he set off on his own tour of the Northern and Western Fronts. In contrast to the soldiers of his own South-Western Front, far removed from the influence of the revolutionary cities, he found the troops in a state of complete demoralization. According to one of his senior aides, Brusilov had to avoid using the words 'offensive' or 'advance' in case the soldiers attacked him. Brusilov was not a natural orator. He would draw the soldiers round him and take off his cap and jacket, holding them — 'democratically' — over his left arm, to create an informal atmosphere. But his speeches failed to convince the soldiers that — as they might have said of Kerensky — 'he is one of us'. On one occasion, for example, whilst addressing a group of particularly Bolshev-ized soldiers near Dvinsk, Brusilov claimed that the Germans had destroyed 'one of the French people's finest properties, the beautiful vineyards that produce champagne'. This of course merely alienated and enraged the soldiers, who began to shout at their Commander-in-Chief: 'Shame on you! You want to spill our blood so that you can drink champagne!' Brusilov became afraid, put his cap back on his head, as if to reassert his old authority, and summoned his protectors to surround him. When the shouts had died down he called on one of the most vociferous soldiers to step forward and state his views. The soldier, a young red-bearded peasant, stood next to Brusilov, leant on his rifle with both arms, and,

  looking askance at the Commander, delivered a speech in which he claimed that the soldiers had 'had enough of fighting', that 'for three long years the Russian people had spilled their blood for the imperialist and capitalist classes', and that 'if the general wanted to go on fighting for champagne then let him go and spill his own blood'. The troops all cheered; Brusilov was lost for words, and began to leave; and as he did so the soldier, who was evidently a Bolshevik, read out the declaration of the soldiers' committee calling for the conclusion of an immediate peace. The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army had been upstaged by a simple soldier.17

 
; This was only one of many incidents to persuade Brusilov that a new offensive would be ill-advised. On the Northern Front he came across a whole division of men which had driven out its officers and threatened to go home en masse.

  When I arrived at their camp I demanded to speak to a delegation of the soldiers: it would have been dangerous to appear before the whole crowd. When these arrived I asked them which party they belonged to, and they replied that before they had been Socialist Revolutionaries, but that now they supported the Bolsheviks. 'What do you want?' I asked them. 'Land and Freedom,' they all cried. And what else?' The answer was simple: 'Nothing else!' When I asked them what they wanted now, they said they did not want to fight any more and pleaded to be allowed to go home in order to share out the land their fellow villagers had taken from the squires and live in freedom. And when I asked them: 'What will happen to Mother Russia, if no one wants to defend it, and everyone like you only thinks of themselves?' they replied that it was not their job to think about what should become of the state, and that they had firmly decided to go home.18

  As Brusilov saw it, the soldiers were so obsessed with the idea of peace that they would have been prepared to support the Tsar himself, so long as he promised to bring the war to an end. This alone, Brusilov claimed, rather than the belief in some abstract 'socialism', explained their attraction to the Bolsheviks. The mass of the soldiers were simple peasants, they wanted land and freedom, and they began to call this 'Bolshevism' because only that party promised peace. This 'trench Bolshevism', as Allan Wildman has called it in his magisterial study of the Russian army during 1917, was not necessarily organized through formal party channels, or even encouraged by the Bolshevik agents. Although both of these were apparent at the Front, neither was as well developed as most of the commanders were apt to assume when they blamed 'the Bolsheviks' or 'Bolshevik