Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

  Trotsky’s hope was that something might be done to elicit practical support from the Western Allies since Russia could no longer defend itself without external assistance. He and the British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart met frequently, and Trotsky railed against the United Kingdom’s schemes to assist the enemies of Sovnarkom. His passion seemed sincere to Lockhart, who implored London to ignore the wildness of Bolshevik policies and consider help for the Soviet military effort. Trotsky talked to him ceaselessly about resuming the war against Germany — and Lockhart was persuaded that this would happen sooner or later.17 When Trotsky requested help from the French, Lockhart saw this as ‘sufficient proof’ of his good intentions on the eastern front. Lockhart also passed on Trotsky’s promise to aid the Allied cause by fomenting revolution in Berlin.18

  Earlier in the month, Kamenev had been sent off to France on a diplomatic assignment to win favour among the Western Allies. Kamenev was the first leading Bolshevik to leave Russia since the October Revolution. A French reporter left this account of his appearance:

  An elongated oval head, myopic blue eyes which are generally soft under a gold-mounted pince-nez and become wilful and penetrative when the discussion is animated. A little goatee, a blazingly blond and strong moustache falling over a mouth which they half cover, long, bulky, straw-coloured eyebrows, light brown hair. From a distance, a surly air but, from close by, a man who is always amiable and smiling.19

  Kamenev left Petrograd accompanied by Zalkind, who was designated Soviet plenipotentiary to Switzerland. Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, confirmed in the House of Commons that they could come to London on their way to Paris.20 But, on setting foot in England, Kamenev immediately met with obstacles as the Foreign Office refused point-blank to talk to him and he was ignored by The Times in an attempt to deny him the oxygen of publicity. The Manchester Guardian interviewed him, however, and Kamenev displayed his ebullience by stating that if the Germans marched on Russia the workers would fight them in the streets of Petrograd. He claimed that, even if a separate peace was signed, the cause of the Western Allies would not suffer damage since it would take many months to send back POWs to Germany. He also predicted that Ukraine would never deliver grain to Germany unless promised industrial products in return.21

  Kamenev was talking nonsense but received support from the anti-war Labour MP Ramsay MacDonald, who protested against the way that customs officers in Aberdeen had treated him. The sum of £5,000 was removed from his possession until such time as he left British shores and there was a rumour that he was relieved of an Orthodox Russian Bible and a box of matches. Supposedly he was bringing the Bible for Litvinov.22 (This was unlikely since Kamenev and Litvinov were atheists by doctrine and Jews by birth, although possibly the Bible was going to be used for the purpose of encrypting messages to and from Russia.) MacDonald spoke up in the House of Commons for Sovnarkom’s democratic credentials and claimed that the Soviet form of government was the only form of authority with a chance of survival in Russia. Lord Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, replied that a personal search of Sovnarkom’s envoy was entirely appropriate in the current situation. Mac-Donald kept up his line of questioning. Why were police detectives hanging around Kamenev in London? Why did the authorities allow the allegation to go unchallenged that Litvinov had been mixed up in the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery? In all innocence MacDonald called this a ‘vile slander’. Kamenev wrote a letter to the Manchester Guardian denying that the Bolsheviks were apathetic about losing Ukraine. In due course, he asserted, the old multinational state and its peoples would be brought back together.

  The French gave a dusty reply to Kamenev’s and Zalkind’s request to cross the English Channel. The two Bolsheviks had no choice but to return to Russia. Yet nothing dampened their mood. Paul Vaucher, correspondent for L’Illustration magazine, travelled on the same boat and noted their complete confidence that the German workers were about to overthrow their rulers.23

  Lenin was still some way from victory in the Central Committee — and Kamenev’s absence did not help since he was one of the sturdiest advocates of a separate peace along with Stalin, Zinoviev and Sverdlov. The resistance led by Trotsky and Bukharin remained strong. On 18 February, albeit by the slim margin of seven against six, the Central Committee voted against resuming talks with the Germans.24 By the evening, news was coming through that the Germans had carried out their ultimatum and had advanced to occupy Dvinsk. Trotsky wanted to cable Berlin and Vienna and ask about the further intentions of the Central Powers. Sverdlov and Stalin objected that time was too short for the Bolsheviks to wait for an answer and that the Brest-Litovsk talks had to be resumed immediately.25 The Central Committee, after yet another discussion, overturned its entire previous policy and voted by seven to five for signing an immediate peace with Germany. The decision was to be cabled to the enemy without delay. Lenin and Trotsky were instructed to draft the text. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were to be informed of what the Bolshevik leaders were now planning.26 All this time the menace to Petrograd was growing as German forces moved onward unopposed. The cables received on 19 February were grim. Minsk, Polotsk, Lutsk, Dubno and Rovno fell to the Germans without resistance. Pskov had to be evacuated. The Austrians organized an offensive and took Kamenets-Podolsk; and Romanian armed forces crossed the River Dniester and cut into Ukraine. A Turkish army marched on Trebizond, which had been occupied by the Russians since 1916. Lenin’s dark predictions seemed about to be fulfilled. The Germans, now occupying Mogilëv where the Russians had kept their GHQ in 1917, were poised to seize Petrograd.

  Despite this, the Western Allies did not stop hoping to keep Russia in the war. They closely monitored the internal debate of Bolshevik leaders and knew who the main advocates of separate peace with Germany were. Stalin had always been sceptical about the prospects of imminent revolution in the West; and when Lenin began to argue for signing a treaty, Stalin put the case more unconditionally than Lenin felt comfortable with. Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Kamenev too favoured the signature of a separate peace. But it was Stalin who pushed the hardest and there is some evidence that officers of the British Secret Service Bureau decided that something should be done to get rid of him. One of their number, Stephen Alley, later claimed that he had been asked to find a pretext for an interview with Stalin. Once inside Stalin’s office, Alley was to assassinate him. Alley was a brave patriot but saw that any such exploit would end in his own death even if he succeeded in killing Stalin. He therefore rejected the proposal.27 (Only in retrospect was it possible for him to appreciate how much he would have benefited the world if he had snuffed out the life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest mass murderers.)

  Only Trotsky among Bolshevik leaders gave any heart to the Western Allies, and the French ambassador phoned him to say: ‘In your resistance against Germany you can count on France’s military and financial support.’28 Noulens was acting on information from Sadoul. Trotsky, though, was not so foolish as to expect a lot from the French. He knew that they could do next to nothing from the other end of Europe to prevent Russia from being overrun by the Germans. He pointedly asked Noulens what scale of support the French had in mind.29

  Lloyd George, ever resourceful, tried out a British initiative by striving to entice Sovnarkom with the offer to ship potatoes to Archangel. Lenin was minded to say yes, but for his own reasons. He always wanted to play off one ‘imperialist’ coalition against another. Even a slight rapprochement with the Allies might perhaps strengthen the Soviet bargaining hand at Brest-Litovsk. The ‘Left Communists’ in the Central Committee were appalled. They got their name from opposing the compromises that Lenin had advocated since taking power — and they criticized what they saw as his right-wing policies. It was bad enough for them that he wanted to sign a separate peace, and now he showed he also wished to wheel and deal with the British. For Lenin’s opponents, this was proof that he could no longer be trusted. They demanded the calling of a Central Commit
tee meeting. Lenin used the excuse that only Yakov Sverdlov as Central Committee Secretary could convoke such a meeting and he was nowhere to be found. Sverdlov’s elusiveness was probably a contrived one. Lenin too made himself unavailable. This meant that when the leftists assembled they could not designate it as a meeting of any authoritativeness.30 It was the kind of behaviour that would have thrown Lenin into a rage if anyone had tried it on him.

  Although no one now remained under any illusions about German power and aggressiveness, on 22 February Trotsky told the Central Committee that France and Britain were offering military assistance. Trotsky can hardly have pressed his case hard in the light of his earlier sarcasm towards Noulens. Lenin was not present but sent a memorandum in favour of taking ‘potatoes and weapons from the robbers of Anglo-French imperialism’. His words seem to have been ignored since the Central Committee rejected the French military mission’s note without debate. Bukharin said that France’s behaviour merely showed that the Western Allies hoped to turn Russia into one of their colonies. The discussion was mainly between Trotsky and Bukharin. Trotsky won the vote with his suggestion that Russia should not fight a revolutionary war until such time as it had built a decent new army.31 What happened to Lloyd George’s potatoes is lost to history. But Lenin and his supporters had already done what was needed to break up and destroy Bukharin’s opposition; and on 23 February Lenin returned and got the Central Committee to reconfirm its commitment to signing the peace treaty on Germany’s terms.32

  The disruption in the Bolshevik party was enormous. Bukharin resigned as editor of Pravda; Trotsky stepped down from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries abandoned the Sovnarkom coalition and became the main opposition to the Bolsheviks in the soviets. Every political party in Russia denounced Lenin as a traitor. And even among Bolshevik leaders there was a natural reluctance to volunteer to go out to Brest-Litovsk and sign the treaty on the government’s behalf. Lenin, the driving force behind the capitulation to Germany, refused to go. Instead Central Committee member Grigori Sokolnikov agreed to carry out the task.

  The signing ceremony was scheduled for 3 March 1918. On 28 February the American embassy took the precaution of sending its personnel by train to Vologda, 370 miles to the east in the direction of Vyatka on the Trans-Siberian line, and the Japanese did the same. Robins and Ransome went with them. Ambassador Francis told everyone he had no intention of getting caught ‘like a rat in a trap’; he planned to move further eastwards if conditions got worse. Vologda, a quiet town with little industry and a scrappy agricultural hinterland, was known mainly as a site of religious pilgrimage; it was far enough away from the big centres of population for the Imperial authorities to have used it as a dumping ground for convicted revolutionaries. European diplomats declined to join Francis there. Instead they took a train north to Finland, reaching Helsinki three days later. All the Allied embassies cut down their staff to a minimum and sent most of their people home.33 Yet Trotsky was still not entirely beaten. On 1 March, as the German high command continued to order its troops eastwards, he instructed the Murmansk Soviet to be ready to take any help from the Allies to halt the advance.34 But then the Germans abruptly halted and the treaty was signed on the day appointed. The Bolsheviks held a Party Congress from 6 March to discuss what had happened. The debates were angry. Despite this, Lenin knew he had internal party victory in his grasp.

  Known to the Russians as the ‘obscene peace’, this was a drastic defeat because it meant that the Bolsheviks were giving up the claim to Ukraine and most of the Baltic region. Abundant resources of coal, iron and wheat were handed to the Germans in return for peace, and a quarter of the Russian Empire’s population came under Germany’s sway. It was the most humiliating end to a war for Russians since the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century. The Bolsheviks had made the October Revolution with the expectation of expanding into Europe. Four months later they found themselves penned in a territory little bigger than old Muscovy.

  10. BREATHING DANGEROUSLY

  On 21 March 1918 Germany started its great military offensive on the western front after weeks of troop transfers from the east. The French and British were forced back to within forty miles of Paris; it looked as if Ludendorff and Hindenburg might pull off a decisive victory and finish the war.1 Lenin boasted of the ‘breathing space’ achieved by his policy at Brest-Litovsk, but he knew he could not trust the German high command. Soviet leaders understood that if Paris fell to the Germans, it would not be long before they invaded Russia. And were the Germans to tear up the treaty and march on Petrograd, the newly created Red Army could not stop them. Sovnarkom would have to evacuate to the Urals and appeal to the Western Allies for aid. The Bolsheviks could not therefore afford to break ties with Allied representatives in Russia. This meant that Lenin and Trotsky were by no means as hostile to each other as most people thought at the time. Ioffe got other party leaders to support his suggestion that Trotsky be made People’s Commissar for Military Affairs,2 and Lenin followed this up with a personal plea to Trotsky, who made a brief show of demurral before accepting the appointment — and Chicherin took his place at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, at first on a provisional basis.3

  Lenin and Trotsky now headed a one-party government. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had walked out of Sovnarkom in protest at the Brest-Litovsk treaty. They kept their seats in the soviets, and many of them continued to work in official capacities, even for the Cheka. But the tension between the two parties was acute.

  On 5 March, two days after the ink had dried on the treaty, Raymond Robins asked Trotsky about the consequences for Russia at home and abroad. Despite having handed over his post to Chicherin, Trotsky was happy to give him answers. He himself hoped for American assistance for the Red Army. But Robins asked why the communist leaders had signed the treaty unless they aimed to cease fighting. Trotsky explained that no treaty could involve a permanent commitment, and he did not discount the possibility of moving into active military co-operation with the Allies. Robins believed him but was reluctant to accept that Lenin shared this way of thinking. Trotsky escorted him to the Sovnarkom meeting chamber so that he could ask Lenin for himself, with Alexander Gumberg tagging along as interpreter. Lenin confirmed Trotsky’s words; he said he had an open mind about entering into a ‘military agreement with one of the imperialist coalitions against the other’ since he had no fundamental preference for the Central Powers or the Allies. The cardinal criterion for him was what benefited the Revolution in Russia.4 Lenin had questions of his own for the American authorities. What would the Western Allies do if the Bolsheviks ripped up the treaty? Would the US give military aid? Would Washington help Russia if the Japanese invaded Siberia? Would the United Kingdom send help to Murmansk and Archangel if Russia got into difficulties with Germany?5

  Robins asked Ambassador Francis to accept that Lenin and Trotsky were genuinely open to restarting hostilities against Germany. He discussed the matter with Lockhart, who enthusiastically wired London:

  Empower me to inform Lenin that the question of Japanese intervention has been shelved; that we will persuade the Chinese to remove the embargo on foodstuffs; that we are prepared to support the Bolsheviks in so far as they will oppose Germany, and that we will invite [Lenin’s] suggestions as to the best way in which this help can be given. In return for this there is every chance that war will be declared between the Bolsheviks and Germany.6

  Oliver Wardrop, the UK consul-general in Petrograd, was of similar mind and advised London that the Bolsheviks embodied the only hope that Russia might return to fighting Germany.7 Ambassador Francis too displayed flexibility by cabling the American Railway Mission across the Russo-Chinese frontier in Harbin to get a hundred experts ready for sending into Russia with a view to restoring the rail network — and he kept Washington informed of his action. Even the Times correspondent Harold Williams, a fierce critic of Bolshevism, rushed to alert Lloyd George to the o
pportunity for a diplomatic initiative on Russia and the Bolsheviks.8

  The Bolsheviks maintained a healthy distrust of Germany and decided to shift the Russian capital into the interior, to Moscow. Lenin and most of the other People’s Commissars left Petrograd on 10 March. On arrival, they found that the great clock on the Spasski Gate overlooking Red Square still played ‘God Save the Tsar’ on the hour.9 And if the Germans did invade, the monarchy’s restoration might not be wholly improbable.

  Power to ratify or reject the treaty lay with the Fourth Congress of Soviets, which opened in Moscow on 15 March. It was no longer feasible to wait for messages from Washington or London. Lenin grimly told Robins: ‘I shall now speak for the peace. It will be ratified.’10 He had arranged for the foreign missions to attend and hear his speech. In it he mentioned nothing of his recent approaches to the Western Allies and, seeking to keep his party’s spirits up, he asserted: ‘We know that [the German revolutionary] Liebknecht will be victorious one way or another; this is inevitable in the development of the workers’ movement.’11 But on 29 April he had to admit: ‘Yes, the peace we have arrived at is unstable to the highest degree; the breathing space obtained by us can be broken off any day both from the west and from the east.’12 He still could not afford to let the Germans conclude that he intended to challenge the terms of the treaty, but, provoked by criticisms in Russia, he came before the Central Committee to urge that the priority of Soviet diplomacy ought to be ‘to manoeuvre, retreat and wait’.13 This was as far as he could go without alarming Berlin. Many Russians thought that he was more interested in power for himself and his party than in spreading revolution westwards. But Lenin meant what he said: he remained committed to revolutionary expansion whenever the opportunity appeared.