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

by Orlando Figes

  Lenin and Trotsky soon moved into the Tsar's former quarters in the Kremlin. The musical clock on the Spassky Tower, through which their motorcars entered the Kremlin, was rebuilt so that its bells rang out the tune of the Internationale instead of 'God Save the Tsar'. Most of the Tsar's former servants were kept on at first. One of them, the aged Stupishin, had served several emperors in his time, and he soon became firmly attached to both Lenin and Trotsky in turn, no doubt having observed, as Trotsky later wrote, 'that we appreciated order and valued his care'. During meals, the neat little manciple would move 'like a shadow behind the chairs' and silently turn the plates this way or that so that the double-headed eagle on the rim was the right side up. Trotsky thought the Kremlin, 'with its medieval wall and its countless gilded cupolas, was an utter paradox as a fortress for the revolutionary dictatorship'.98 But in fact it was a highly fitting building, even a symbolic one, and not just because the Bolsheviks behaved like the new 'tsars' of Russia. For the civil war regime on which they now embarked was set in many ways to take Russia back to the customs of its Muscovite past.

  Part Four

  THE CIVIL WAR AND

  THE MAKING OF

  THE SOVIET SYSTEM

  (1918-24)

  12 Last Dreams of the Old World

  i St Petersburg on the Steppe

  In his wonderful novel, The White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov describes the surreal life of Kiev during the spring of 1918, when the city became filled with refugees from the Bolshevik north.

  Among the refugees came grey-haired bankers and their wives, skilful businessmen who had left behind their faithful deputies in Moscow with instructions to them not to lose contact with the new world which was coming into existence in the Muscovite kingdom; landlords who had secretly left their property in the hands of trusted managers; industrialists, merchants, lawyers, politicians. There came journalists from Moscow and Petersburg, corrupt, grasping and cowardly. Prostitutes. Respectable ladies from aristocratic families and their delicate daughters, pale depraved women from Petersburg with carmine-painted lips; secretaries of civil service department chiefs; inert young homosexuals. Princes and junk-dealers, poets and pawnbrokers, gendarmes and actresses from the Imperial theatres.1

  Kiev was not the only city to be overrun in this way. Bulgakov's description could have been applied to almost any major city in the south. But the presence of the Germans and their puppet Ukrainian government headed by the Hetman Paulo Skoropadsky, which pledged to protect the property of the refugees and gave them employment, certainly made Kiev the place to go. Every house was filled to bursting point. Russian princes slept on floors and divans. The city had an atmosphere of frenzied excitement, with everyone living as if there was no tomorrow. People dined in vast numbers at expensive restaurants, gambled away fortunes at clubs and casinos, and indulged in wild affairs. Cafes did a brisk business selling cocktails and women. Cabarets and theatres were packed out every night, as people laughed away their fears. Shop windows were crammed with French perfumes and silks, great slabs of sturgeon and caviar, and vintage bottles of Abrau champagne with the double-headed eagle on their labels.

  These refugees hated the Bolsheviks with a passion. But very few were inclined to fight them. 'Their hatred', wrote Bulgakov, 'was not the kind of aggressive hatred that spurs the hater to fight and kill, but a passive and cowardly type of hatred.'2 They muttered words of outrage as they sat in their restaurants over lunch and read about the latest horrors in the north. But they had no intention of giving up these comforts to go off to war. This was a bourgeoisie on the run.

  Only the officers — the landowners' sons and students whose studies had been broken off by the war — hated the Reds with the sort of hatred that made them want to fight. These young men had fled their shattered regiments at the Front and risked their lives crossing the country to reach the cities of the south. By day, they roamed the streets penniless and unshaven; at night they slept on people's chairs and floors, using their greatcoats as blankets. This was a dispossessed generation who had nothing to lose in a civil war. Many of them had already seen their families lose their landed estates to the peasantry, or had had their own careers, their hopes and expectations, ruined as a result of the revolution. They drank too much, seethed with anger and thought only of revenge.

  One of these student officers, Roman Gul', was passing through Kiev on his way to join the White Guards on the Don during the winter of 1917. In October he had received a telegram from his father: 'The estate is destroyed, ask for leave.' Since then he had been on the run from the Bolsheviks. Travelling through Russia in a third-class railway carriage, Gul' was disgusted by the malice and mistrust on the faces of the peasant troops around him. 'These are the people who smashed our old mahogany chairs,' he wrote to a friend from the train; 'these are the people who tore up my favourite books, the ones I bought as a student on the Sukharevka;* these are the people who cut down our orchard and cut down the roses that mama planted; these are the people who burnt down our home.' It was partly in order to avenge this loss that Gul', like so many young men of his class, had resolved to join the Whites. 'I saw that underneath the red hat of what we had thought of as the beautiful woman of the Revolution there was in fact the ugly snout of a pig. My heart was full of doubts and hesitations, but I convinced myself that in the end, to put all this right, one had to take responsibility, one even had to be prepared to commit the sin of murder.'3

  Gul's destination, Novocherkassk, was the headquarters of the fledgling Volunteer Army led by Alexeev and Kornilov. After the Bolshevik seizure of power, and Kornilov's release from the Bykhov Monastery, both men had fled to the sleepy town on the steppe, where the Don Cossacks, thought by the

  * A large flea-market in Moscow.

  Whites to be stalwart supporters of the old order, had recently elected General Kaledin as the Ataman of their traditional assembly, the Krug. Taciturn and gloomy, Kaledin was a typical Cossack general of the old school. During 1917 he had sided with Kornilov against the Soviet and at the Moscow Conference in August had called forthrightly for the abolition of all the democratic army organizations.

  The Don Krug had declared its independence on 20 November. The basic concern of the Don Cossack leaders was to defend this, but the Volunteers had persuaded them that this could only be achieved by joining forces with them against the Bolsheviks. The latter had mobilized the support of much of the non-Cossack population in the Don — among the Russian peasants (inogorvdnye), the industrial workers and the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet — for an offensive against Rostov, the major city of the Don. Hence, to begin with, Kaledin welcomed the arrival of the Volunteers — a mere forty officers, calling themselves Alexeev's Organization — on 17 November. His own forces had been fast disintegrating, as the younger and more radical Cossacks, who were in no mood to fight the Reds, returned from the Front and began to campaign against his leadership. Many local Cossacks were afraid that the presence of the Volunteers might make Novocherkassk, the Don capital, a target for the Bolsheviks. Because of this Cossack mistrust of the Whites, Alexeev's officers had had to be hidden in a hospital at first. But as the Reds approached, and it became clear that the Don could not be defended without their support, Kaledin was able to deploy them without serious Cossack objections. At the beginning of December the Red Guards finally captured Rostov. Kaledin imposed martial law and called on the Volunteers to retake the city (his own Cossacks had refused to fight). Alexeev's army, which by this stage had grown to a force of some 500 officers, was quite sufficient to defeat the more numerous but hopelessly indisciplined Red Guards. The six-day battle began on 9 December — St George's Day, the patron saint of Russia. It was the first major battle of the civil war.4

  The battle for Rostov was typical of the fighting that characterized the first twelve months of the war (October 1917 to September 1918). There were no fixed 'fronts', as such, since neither side had enough men or channels of supply, and the movement of the fighting was extremely fl
uid. Large towns could be captured by tiny armies hardly worthy of the name. Most troop movements were by rail, and for this reason these early confrontations have become known as 'the railway war'. It became a question of loading a handful of men and some machine-guns on to a train and moving off to the next station — which would then be 'captured' along with the town. The 'fighting' in these battles was often farcical, since many of the rank-and-file soldiers, especially on the Red side, were reluctant to fight at all (many of them had only joined up in order to get an

  army coat and a daily ration of food). It often happened that the opposing sides would unexpectedly run across each other in a village or some small town and, after a meeting, would agree to retreat rather than engage. The Red soldiers, in particular, would often run away in panic as soon as the first shots were fired; and although the Whites, as 'volunteers', had many fewer problems of this sort, there were many occasions when their officers were also forced to use terror against their own troops. On both sides, officers played down the failures of their men, whilst exaggerating their 'successes', in their operational reports. As Trotsky once complained, every town was captured, or so it was claimed, 'after a fierce battle'; while every retreat was 'only as a result of the onslaught of superior forces'. These absurd aspects of the civil war were best captured by Jaroslav Hasek in his comic novella The Red Commissar. Its Schweikian hero orders his troops to retreat to the left when his lines are broken on the right. He then sends a telegram to headquarters announcing a 'great victory' and the encirclement of the Whites.5

  The growth of the Volunteer Army was largely due to the charismatic presence of General Kornilov. He and his followers had fled from the open jail at the Bykhov Monastery after Dukhonin had lost control of Stavka to the Bolsheviks in November. Since this ruled out the possibility of bringing down the Bolsheviks from inside Soviet Russia, and indeed put themselves at risk of execution, the Bykhov generals resolved to flee to the Don. Most disguised themselves and travelled by train through Bolshevik Russia. Lukomsky shaved off his beard and spoke in a German accent; Romanovsky masqueraded as an ensign; Markov as a common soldier. Denikin pretended to be a Polish nobleman and travelled third class: it was here that he witnessed for the first time the 'boundless hatred' of the common people for 'everything that was socially or intellectually higher than the crowd'. Proud as ever, Kornilov, however, refused to hide his identity and instead led his loyal Tekinsky Regiment on a forced march through hostile Bolshevik terrain. They were finally stopped and engaged in battle by a Red armoured train. Kornilov's white horse was shot from underneath him. He managed to escape, and reassembled most of his troops, but they were already too demoralized to go on, and Kornilov, realizing that he could make it only without them, decided to abandon them and complete his journey alone disguised as a peasant. Ironically, he travelled to the Don in a Red Guards' train.6

  Novocherkassk, which Gul' reached on New Year's Eve, was a microcosm of the old Russia in exile. St Petersburg on the steppe. The fallen high and mighty thronged its muddy streets. 'Here were generals, with their stripes and epaulettes, dashing cavalry officers in their colourful tunics, the white kerchiefs of nurses, and the huge Caucasian fur hats of the Turkomen warriors,' recalled Gul'. Numerous Duma politicians had come to try and direct the White

  movement: Miliukov, Rodzianko, Struve, Zavoiko, G. N. Trubetskoi, N. N. Lvov, even the SR, Boris Savinkov. Leading intellectuals also made the Don their home, both in the physical and in the spiritual sense. Marina Tsvetaeva, whose husband, Sergei Efron, was one of the first to join the Volunteers, wrote a series of poems, The Swan's Encampment, from her Moscow garret, in which she idealized the rebels on the Don as the 'youth and glory' of Russia:

  White Guards: Gordian knot Of Russian valour. White Guards: white mushrooms Of the Russian folksong White Guards: white stars, Not to be crossed from the sky. White guards: black nails In the ribs of the Antichrist.

  'White Guards', 27 July 19187

  For Tsvetaeva, as for so many of her class and background, the Don represented the last hope of saving Russian civilization. It was, as she expressed it, the last dream of the old world'.

  In Novocherkassk the official clock ran on St Petersburg time — an hour behind local Don time — as if in readiness to resume the work of government in the tsarist capital. Nothing better symbolized the nostalgic attitudes of the Whites. They were, quite literally, trying to put back the clock. Everything about them, from their tsarist uniforms to their formal morning dress, signalled a longing to restore the old regime. In later years, looking back on the civil war, all the most intelligent people on the White side, whether in south Russia or Siberia, acknowledged that this identification with the past was a major reason for their defeat. For however much the leaders of the Whites might have pledged their belief in democratic principles, they were much too rooted in the old regime to be accepted as a real alternative to the Bolsheviks; and this was even more true of the White officers and the local officials who came into contact with the ordinary people and formed their image of the White regime. Astrov, the Kadet who joined the Volunteers, wrote in 1920: 'We, with our dated ploys, our dated mentality and the dated vices of our bureaucracy, complete with Peter the Great's Table of Ranks, could not keep up with the Reds.' Shulgin, the Nationalist, wrote in 1919: 'The counter-revolution did not put forward a single new name ... That was the main reason for our tragedy.' Struve, writing in 1921, stressed how this 'old regime psychology' had

  prevented the Whites from adopting the sort of revolutionary methods essential to win a civil war:

  Psychologically, the Whites conducted themselves as if nothing had happened, whereas in reality the whole world around them had collapsed, and in order to vanquish the enemy they themselves had to undergo, in a certain sense, a rebirth . . . Nothing so harmed the 'White' movement as this very condition of psychologically staying put in previous circumstances, circumstances which had ceased to exist. . . Men with this 'old regime' psychology were immersed in the raging sea of revolutionary anarchy, and psychologically could not find their bearings in it... In the revolutionary storm that struck Russia in 1917, even out-and-out restorationists had to turn revolutionaries in the psychological sense: because in a revolution only revolutionaries can find their way.8

  It was his dislike of this restorationism — and his wounded leg — which prevented Brusilov from coming to the Don, despite several appeals by his old friend Alexeev. While Brusilov was clearly sympathetic to the Whites, he was convinced that their cause 'was doomed to fail because the Russian people, for better or worse, have chosen the Reds'. There was no point, as he explained to a friend in early April, in trying to put the clock back. 'I consider the old regime as having been abolished for a very long time.' Kornilov's war against the Bolsheviks might have been, as he put it, 'brave and noble', but it was also a 'stupid act' that was 'bound to waste a lot of young men's lives'. No doubt there was a hint of his own dislike for Kornilov in this. But there was also a sense of resignation that made Brusilov reject a civil war — as if, in his mind, the revolution had been planned by God and was part of a divine comedy whose end was not yet clear. As a patriot, Brusilov thought that it was his 'duty to remain on the people's side' — which meant taking no side in the civil war, even if this also meant betraying his own social class and ideology. Meinecke's dictum of 1919 — 'I remain, facing the past, a monarchist of the heart, and will become, facing the future, a republican of the mind' — might just as well have been Brusilov's.9

  The Volunteer Army was an officers' army. That was its major problem: it never succeeded in attracting the support of the civilian population, not even of private soldiers. When Kornilov was first shown the list of volunteers, he exclaimed in anger: 'These are all officers, but where are the soldiers?' Of the first 3,000 volunteers, no more than a dozen were rank-and-file troops. There has never been such a top-heavy army in the history of warfare. Captains and colonels were forced to serve as privates. Major-generals had to make d
o with the command of a squadron. Constant squabbling over the command posts

  caused terrible headaches for the General Staff. Senior generals refused to serve under younger officers promoted strictly on merit; monarchists refused to obey commanders opposed to the Tsar. Some refused to serve below the rank they had held in the imperial army, thinking it beneath their dignity. The cafes were full of these idle officers. They dubbed the Volunteers 'toy soldiers'. Pride in their previous rank and status overcame their desire to fight.10

  Even the two men at the head of the movement could not stop themselves from petty bickering. Kornilov had been given the command of the Volunteer Army, while Alexeev was placed in charge of political and financial matters. But the division never really worked and both men got in each other's way. Relations became so bad that routine communications between them had to be made through messengers, even though their offices were next door to each other. The atmosphere was poisoned by their continuous squabbles, as Roman Gul' discovered when he tried to enlist at the army's offices in Novocherkassk. Unaware that the enlistment bureau was run by Alexeev's supporters, he named a relative of Kornilov as one of his referees. 'The ensign made a grimace, shrugged his shoulders and said through his teeth: "Look, he doesn't really belong to our organization." ' It was only later that Gul' learned of the 'covert struggle and the secret war between the two leaders'. The split had less to do with ideology than with tactics, style and personal rivalry. Both men had accepted the February Revolution and had pledged to restore the Constituent Assembly. But Kornilov was hostile to the Kadet politicians — and indeed to all politicians — whom Alexeev courted. He also favoured bolder tactics — including terrorism inside Soviet Russia — than the conservative Alexeev. 'Even if we have to burn half of Russia and shed the blood of three-quarters of the population, we shall do it if that is needed to save Russia,' Kornilov once said. Alexeev and the senior generals looked upon Kornilov as a rabble-rouser and a demagogue, who had only risen to the rank of general after the February Revolution. Yet it was precisely this image of the 'self-made man' — an image which Kornilov had cultivated — that made him the idol of the junior officers. It was a clash between the old tsarist principles of seniority and the mass politics of 1917.11