The Deluge

by Adam Tooze

  In Petrograd and Moscow the Bolsheviks were able to retain control. But across the far-flung territory of Russia the Soviet regime was openly challenged. By the spring of 1918 the global linkage of politics and strategy from the Baltic to the Pacific had become almost commonplace. Even so, it must have come as a surprise to find the fate of Siberia hanging on the decision of a Czech professor, who from exile in Washington found himself in command of armies operating on battlefronts stretching from Flanders to Vladivostok. The professor in question was the sociologist and philosopher Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. The forces at his command were several divisions of patriotic Czech prisoners of war who had been mobilized in 1917 by Alexander Kerensky to bolster the fragile Russian front line against their hated national enemy, the Austrians. Following the Brest peace talks, the Czechs had reaffirmed their loyalty to the cause of the Entente and whilst still deep inside Russia had placed themselves under the command of Marshal Foch in France. This disciplined and highly motivated force, 50,000 strong, determined to continue the fight against the Central Powers even a thousand miles from their homes, now menaced both the Bolsheviks and the German forces stretched thinly across southern Russia. When Trotsky issued the order for the Czechs to be disarmed, it was assumed, not surprisingly, that he was acting on German instructions. Armed clashes between the Czechs and Red Guards broke out at railway junctions across Siberia. By the end of May virtually the entire transcontinental artery was in the hands of Masaryk’s legion.

  To advocates of intervention in Britain and France, the Czechs seemed like an army parachuted from heaven. However, with an eye to the post-war peace, Masaryk would not act without approval from President Wilson, whose position on the question of Czech independence was notoriously ambiguous.4 In the 14 Points, in the hope of keeping open the door to a separate peace with Vienna, Wilson had abstained from any mention of the Czech cause. It was not until the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and the even more draconian peace imposed on Romania in May 1918, that Wilson was willing openly to endorse national autonomy for the Czechs and their South Slav brethren. Even then, this did not translate into any eagerness to see the Czechs in Siberia used against the Bolsheviks. Wilson was seconded in this reluctance by Masaryk, who continued to profess his sympathy for the ‘revolutionary democracy’ in Russia. It was not until early June, with the drastic British strategic appreciations in hand, that Secretary of State Lansing managed to persuade Masaryk that the Czech Army, rather than withdrawing towards Vladivostok, could do a vital service to the Allies by establishing a blocking position along the Trans-Siberian railway.5 Coached by Lansing, Masaryk demanded as his quid pro quo a Wilsonian death sentence on the Habsburg Empire.

  The stakes of the intervention in Siberia were growing ever higher. Just as Lansing and Masaryk were bartering the end of the Habsburg dynasty against Czech assistance in Siberia, William Bullitt, Wilson’s radical advisor, was making one last effort to stop the intervention. ‘We are about to make one of the most tragic blunders in the history of mankind,’ Bullitt wrote to Colonel House. The advocates of intervention were typical exponents of imperialism. Following a violent counter-revolutionary intervention, ‘how many years and how many American lives’ would it ‘take to re-establish democracy in Russia?’6 There was no question that Bullitt was closer to Wilson in spirit than was Lansing. But whereas less than six weeks earlier, with regard to Japanese intervention, Wilson had boasted of his grip over the Japanese, Lenin’s abrupt embrace of Germany had robbed him of his grip. He could not hold back the momentum for intervention if its principal rationale was anti-German rather than anti-Soviet.

  On 30 June 1918 Britain and France publicly proclaimed their support for Czech national aspirations, citing as their justification the ‘sentiments and high ideals expressed by President Wilson’. Once more, Wilson was entangled in the logic of his own ideological programme and the experience drove him to the point of distraction. Speaking to his cabinet in June 1918 he remarked that the Allied war advocacy of intervention in Russia left him lost for words. ‘They propose such impractical things to be done immediately that he often wondered whether he was crazy or whether they were.’7 When a US Treasury official reported after a visit to Europe that the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, was openly mocking the idea of a peace based on the League of Nations, the President replied: ‘Yes I know that Europe is still governed by the same reactionary forces which controlled this country until a few years ago. But I am satisfied that if necessary I can reach the peoples of Europe over the heads of their rulers.’8 Once more, Wilson’s reluctance to intervene was bringing to the fore the politics of ‘peace without victory’. But with Germany apparently about to establish control over all of western Russia, Wilson could not uphold the position of moral equivalence that this stance implied. On 6 July he took the initiative. Without prior consultation with either Japan or Britain, Wilson announced that the Allied intervention would be directed through Siberia and would take the form of two contingents of 7,000 men, supplied by the US and Japan. Their mission was neither to take the offensive against Germany nor to overthrow the Bolsheviks, but simply to screen a Czech withdrawal to Vladivistok.

  In London, Lloyd George was incensed. After months of dangerous vacillation, Wilson had taken it upon himself unilaterally to fix the terms of the intervention and to do so in a manner which, though bound to provoke the Bolsheviks, was quite insufficient to overthrow them. The inadequate intervention amounted, as Bruce Lockhart would later comment, to a ‘paralytic half-measure, which in the circumstances amounted to a crime’.9 Certainly, Lloyd George was in no mood to take lessons from Wilson on democracy. In a furious telegram to the British Embassy in Washington the British Prime Minister rejected the supposition that Britain’s intentions were reactionary. Lenin’s recent move toward the Germans had shifted the terms of the debate entirely. Whereas it might once have been possible to oppose intervention on the grounds that it gave encouragement to reactionary forces, now Lloyd George insisted ‘I am interventionist just as much because I am a democrat as because I want to win the war.’ The ‘last thing’ Lloyd George ‘would stand for, would be the encouragement of any kind of repressive regime’ in Russia ‘under whatever guise’.10 Only a democratic Russia would provide a real buffer against the German threat. As Britain’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff had put it, ‘unless by the end of the war democratic Russia can be reconstituted as an independent military power, it is only a question of time before most of Asia becomes a German colony, and nothing can impede the enemy’s progress towards India, in defence of which the British empire will have to fight at every disadvantage’. As Lloyd George insisted, Russia’s political complexion would define the post-war order. ‘Unless by the end of the war Russia is settled on liberal, progressive and democratic lines’, neither the ‘peace of the world’ nor more specifically ‘the peace and security of the Indian frontier’ could be assured.11 But, as he admitted regretfully, ‘we can do nothing without the US’.12 In light of that inconvenient truth, the British war cabinet agreed to swallow its objections and give its support to Wilson’s half-hearted Siberian mission, hoping that force of circumstance would lead, in due course, to a more adequate scale of operation.

  II

  If the British had been able to see inside Ludendorff’s staff offices in the summer of 1918, they would have found ample fuel to feed their fears. Up to the end of June, Chancellor Hertling was able to hold the line established in mid-May, blocking military advances in the East. This position was communicated to the Bolsheviks, enabling them to concentrate their trusty Latvian regiments, fighting as they believed for their independence, against the Czechs, who were fighting for theirs.13 But the equilibrium in Germany was precarious. In late June a memo prepared by Ludendorff’s staff, on ‘The Aims of German Policy’ (Ziele der deutschen Politik), made clear the extent to which German military policy had radicalized since Brest. Ludendorff’s aim was no longer merely to exercise hegem
ony over the periphery of the former Tsarist Empire, leaving the Bolsheviks in the rump of Russia to their own ruinous devices. In a mirror image of Lloyd George’s vision of a democratic bastion in Russia, Ludendorff aimed to reconstruct an integral Russian state that thanks to its conservative political make-up could be counted on as a ‘reliable friend and ally . . . that not only poses no danger for Germany’s political future, but which, as far as possible, is politically, militarily and economically dependent on Germany, and provides Germany with a source of economic strength’.14 The peripheral states of Finland, the Baltic, Poland and Georgia would remain under German protection. The return of Ukraine to Moscow would be bartered against German economic control over Russia as a whole. Harnessed to the Reich, Russia would provide the means for Germany to exert its domination throughout Eurasia. It would provide the hinterland for an economically self-sufficient, politically authoritarian ‘world state structure’ (Weltstaatengebilde), capable of competing head on with the ‘pan-American bloc’ (panamerikanischen Block) and the British Empire.15

  This new strategic vision was formally adopted during the last great strategic discussion at the Kaiser’s headquarters at Spa in early July 1918.16 But as Kühlmann had pointed out to the Reichstag, the idea of reconstructing a conservative Russian nation state under German auspices was fraught with contradictions.17 Early contacts with suitable figures amongst the anti-Bolshevik Russians, most notably the Kadet Pavel Miliukov, ousted as Russian Foreign Minister by the Petrograd Soviet in May 1917, led to the conclusion that no self-respecting Russian patriot would ever accept the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, let alone Ludendorff’s even more expansive vision.18 Furthermore, as Kühlmann and the Reichstag anxiously pointed out, the German military were alarmingly unclear about how their expansive visions of hegemony in the East were to be reconciled with the demands of the war in the West. Though wave upon wave of attacks had stretched the Allied lines in France near to breaking point, it was obvious that Germany was nearing the end of its strength. Ominously, the Kaiser had greeted the thirtieth year of his rule on 15 June with an apocalyptic speech. In the war everything was at stake. There was no room for compromise in the West any more than there was in the East. ‘Either the Prusso-German Germanic Weltanschauung – justice, freedom, honour, and morals – be respected, or the Anglo-Saxon Weltanschauung will triumph and that means sinking into the worship of mammon. In this struggle one Weltanschauung will be destroyed.’19

  Such language is of course irresistibly reminiscent of Hitler’s infamous ‘Table Talk’ tirades of the 1940s. But tempting as such comparisons are, they obscure the radical difference in political circumstance between 1918 and 1941. Even at the height of World War I, the safeguards of nineteenth-century constitutionalism continued to function. Less than ten days after the Kaiser had made his apocalyptic address, he was directly contradicted in front of the Reichstag by his Foreign Secretary.20 Germany must realize, Kühlmann insisted, that in light of the ‘incredible magnitude’ to which the war had expanded, it was unrealistic to expect that the country could impose in the West the kind of one-sided peace (Diktatfrieden) that had been possible at Brest. Final and ultimate military victory, as Ludendorff seemed to envision it, was out of the question. How could Germany ever hope to achieve a complete defeat of the United States or the British Empire? The Reich would have to negotiate. Indeed, as the battle in the West turned against Germany, a negotiated peace was the very best that Germany could hope for. Speaking for the SPD, Eduard David, once amongst the most prominent advocates of a liberal peace in the East, drove the point home. The forces demanding a further escalation of the war were ‘the remnants of the feudal order’ in Europe, of which ‘the strongest and most influential remnant’ was no longer in Russia, but in ‘East Elbia’.21 The following day, compounding the mounting sense of confusion, Hindenburg and Ludendorff held a press conference at which Germany’s military leadership publicly disowned the position of the Reich’s Foreign Secretary. The war, the military leadership insisted, could still be won by a crushing victory in the West. The issue of the SPD’s daily newspaper, Vorwärts, which had dared to publish Kühlmann’s words, was impounded.

  Kühlmann’s political career was over. On 9 July 1918, despite having the backing of the Reichstag majority, he was replaced by Paul von Hintze, an unswerving follower of the Kaiser.22 But the domestic opposition to Ludendorff’s imperial fantasies in the East remained solid. Chancellor Hertling promised the Reichstag that whatever the new Foreign Secretary’s personal proclivities, his government would not turn Belgium into an insuperable obstacle to peace. Germany required only that it should be properly neutralized. Furthermore, he remained committed to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Both Hertling and Vice-Chancellor Payer would resign if any steps were taken beyond the treaty. But this was no longer enough for the SPD, which despite voting for another round of war credits withdrew its support from the Hertling government. The Social Democrats had entered into a coalition with the Centre Party and Liberals in the summer of 1917 on the basis of a common peace platform. But not only had the Hertling government taken the collapse of the strike wave in January 1918 as the signal for a punitive programme of wage and ration cuts, it had also completely failed to deliver a foreign policy in conformity with the demands of that platform. When, a year earlier, the SPD had thrown its weight behind the Reichstag’s peace resolution, American troops had only been trickling into France. Now hundreds of thousands were pouring in every month.23 At a moment of such national emergency, how could the SPD be expected to tolerate the scandalous situation in which Germany had no coherent foreign policy and warmongers were permitted to dictate the nation’s course according to their irresponsible whims?

  III

  Though neither Ludendorff nor Lenin attributed any inherent significance to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, its formal legality provided Germany’s politicians with the crucial check they needed to restrain the escalating radicalization of the Kaiser’s regime.24 As Foreign Secretary Hintze put it to an eager group of nationalist deputies, ‘The Brest peace is . . . not to be budged.’25 But in insisting on adherence to the legal frame of the treaty, it was the civilians in Germany who were begging the question. How long could advocates of legality uphold a treaty with a regime like that of Lenin? The Bolsheviks themselves had not hidden their contempt for the treaty. When Lenin attempted to fill the agreement with more meaning he did so by adding economic inducements for German business. But to what lengths would he have to go to sustain his embrace of German imperialism against the violent domestic opposition it aroused in Russia?

  On 4 July 1918 the body that was still recognized as the supreme authority in revolutionary Russia, the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, met in Moscow for the first time since the inauguration of Lenin’s new foreign policy. An unprecedentedly overt campaign of intimidation and election rigging had ensured a solid Bolshevik majority. But it had not silenced the opposition. Over-confident in his command, Lenin entrusted the task of presenting the new phase of rapprochement with Germany to the urbane Georgy Chicherin, a direct descendant of one of the Tsar’s ambassadors at the Congress of Vienna. With Count Mirbach the German ambassador seated in the royal box as a guest of honour of Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars), Chicherin began a bland overview of the new pro-German, Leninist orthodoxy. But as the audience reacted to his speech, the Congress threatened to descend into chaos. A representative of the Ukrainian peasant resistance sprang onto the stage to make an impassioned oration against the violence of the German occupation. Hurling threatening gestures in the direction of the German guests, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries broke into an anti-Leninist chorus of ‘Down with Brest! Down with Mirbach! Down with the lackeys of Germany!’26 Trotsky from the chair did his best to calm the embarrassing scene. But, in the end, he was forced to resort to naked threats. Delegates who engaged in acts of provocation, he warned, would be subject to immediate arrest. The following day Lenin appeared befor
e the Congress to defend his policy in person. But the rebellious Left Socialist Revolutionaries were not cowed. Rather than promoting Soviet power, Lenin’s policy of ever closer accommodation with Berlin was leading to a ‘dictatorship of German imperialism’. Count Mirbach’s presence at the Congress of Soviets, the hallowed assembly of the Russian revolution, was a flagrant admission of this subservience. Undaunted by the howling Leninist majority, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries demanded the renunciation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

  The next day they made good on their threats. Assassins posing as Cheka agents entered the German Embassy and shot dead Count Mirbach. The intention was clearly to drive a wedge between Russia and Germany. After some hesitation the Latvian Red Guards put down the feeble attempt at an uprising by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The Germans reacted as the Russian opposition had hoped. They demanded further humiliating concessions, including the deployment to Petrograd of a full battalion of 650 German infantry as embassy guards. This threw even Lenin into a rare bout of depression. To agree to such demands would confirm the accusations that the Bolsheviks were reducing Russia to the status of a ‘little oriental state’, where Western embassies could demand the protection of their own legation guards.27 As a concession, the Germans agreed to send the troops to Moscow unarmed and in plain clothes. Meanwhile the Bolsheviks responded with brutal repression. Though the Cheka never arrested the individuals responsible for the killing, it was in the summer of 1918, as the struggle over Lenin’s policy toward Germany reached its height, that the terror apparatus of the Soviet state began to take institutional shape. In early July, as White forces drove westwards from their bases in Siberia flanked by the Czechs, the Cheka carried out its first mass executions.28 On the night of 16–17 July all members of the Romanov imperial family were murdered: Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their four daughters and son. By early August, Lenin was calling for ‘merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests and White guards’ and the establishment of a more permanent apparatus of ‘concentration camps’ to deal with ‘unreliable elements’. In the ‘life and death struggle’ for the survival of the revolution, Izvestia declaimed, there were ‘no courts of law’ to appeal to, merely the injunction to kill or be killed.29 With British forces in the north and Japanese and American forces in the Pacific readying themselves to attack, the civil war that the Bolsheviks had deliberately provoked was threatening to merge with the wider global struggle.