In all critical moments the ma.s.ses intervene "spontaneously"-in other words, obeying only their own from political experience, and their as yet of.cially unrecognised leaders. a.s.similating this or that premise from the talk of agitators, the ma.s.ses on their own volition translate its conclusions alto the language of action. The Bolsheviks, as a party, were not yet leading the campaign for the eight-hour day. The Bolsheviks did not summon the ma.s.ses to the April demonstration. The Bolsheviks will not call the armed ma.s.ses into the street at the beginning of July. Only in October will the party .nally, fall in step and march out at the head of the ma.s.ses, not for a demonstration but for a revolution.
CHAPTER 18.
THE FIRST COALITION.
All of.cial theories, declarations and advertis.e.m.e.nts to the contrary notwithstanding, the power belonged to the Provisional government on paper only. The revolution, paying no attention to the resistance of the so-called democracy, was striding along, lifting up new ma.s.ses of the people, strengthening the workers. The Soviets, and to a limited extent even arming the local commissars of the government and the "social committees" created under them, in which representatives of bourgeois organisations usually predominated, were quite naturally and without effort crowded out by the soviets. In certain cases, when these agents of the central power tried to resist, sharp con.icts arose. The commissars accused the local soviets of refusing to recognise the central government. The bourgeois press began to cry out that Cronstadt, Schlusselburg or Czaritsyn had seceded from Russia and become independent republics. The local soviets protested against this nonsense. The ministers got excited. The governmental socialists hastened to these places, persuading, threatening, justifying themselves before the bourgeoisie. But all this did not change the correlation of forces. The fatefulness of the processes undermining the two power system could be seen in the fact that these processes were developing, although at different tempos, all over the country. From organs for controlling the government the soviets were becoming organs of administration. They would not accommodate themselves to any theory of the division of powers, but kept interfering in the administration of the army, in economic con.icts, questions of food and transport, even in the courts of justice. The soviets under pressure from the workers decreed the eight-hour day, removed reactionary executives, ousted the more intolerable commissars of the Provisional Government, conducted searches and arrests, suppressed hostile newspapers. Under the in.uence of continually increasing food dif.culties and a goods famine, the provincial soviets undertook to .x prices, forbid export from the provinces and requisition provisions. Nevertheless at the head of the soviets everywhere stood the Social Revolutionaries and Menshevik who rejected with indignation 255.
the Bolshevik slogan, "Power to the Soviets!"
Especially instructive in this connection is the activity of the soviet in Ti.is, the very heart of the Menshevik Gironde which gave the February revolution such leaders as Tseretelli and Cheidze, and sheltered them afterwards when they had hopelessly squandered them-selves in Petrograd. The Ti.is Soviet, led by Jordania-afterwards head of independent Georgia-found itself compelled at every step to trample on the principles of the Menshevik Party in control of it, and act as sovereign power. This soviet con.scated a private printing establishment for its own uses, made arrests, took charge of investigations and trials for po-litical offences, established a bread ration, and .xed the prices of food and the necessaries of life That contrast between of.cial doctrine and real life, manifest from the very .rst day, only continued to grow throughout March and April.
In Petrograd a certain decorum at least was observed-although not always, as we have seen. The April days, however had unequivocally lifted the curtain on the impotence of the (Provisional Government, showing that it had no serious support whatever in the capital. In the last ten days of April the government was .ickering and going out. "Kerensky stated with, anguish that the government was already non-existent, that it did not work but merely discussed its condition" (Stankevich). You might say in general about this government, that up to the days of October in hard moments it was always undergoing a crisis, and in the intervals between crises it was merely existing. Continually "discussing its condition," it found no time for business.
From the crisis created by the April rehearsal of future events, three outcomes were theoretically possible. The power might have gone over wholly to the bourgeoisie; that could have been achieved only through civil war; Miliukov made the attempt, but failed. The power should have gone over wholly to the soviets; this could have been accomplished without any civil war whatever, merely by raising of hands-merely by wishing it. But the Compromisers did not want to wish it, and the ma.s.ses still preserved their faith in the Compromisers, although it was badly cracked. Thus both of the fundamental clays out-the bourgeois and the proletarian-were closed. There remained a third possibility, the confused, weak-hearted, cowardly half-road of compromise. The name of that road was Coalition.
At the end of the April days the socialists had no thought of a coalition. In general those people never foresaw anything. By the resolution of April 21 the Executive Committee had of.cially converted the double sovereignty from a fact into a const.i.tutional principle. But here again the owl of wisdom made her .ight too late: this juridical consecration of the March form of double sovereignty-the kings and the prophets-was carried out just at the moment when this form had already been exploded by the action of the ma.s.ses. The socialists tried to close their eyes to this. Miliukov relates that when the question of a coalition was raised from the government side, Tseretelli said: "What good will it do you if we enter your cabinet? We will be compelled, in case you are stubborn, to withdraw from the ministry with a loud bang." Tseretelli was trying to frighten the liberals with his future "bang." As always in the fundamentals of their policies, the Mensheviks were appealing to the interests of the bourgeoisie themselves. But the water was up to their necks. Kerensky frightened the Executive Committee: "The government is at present in an impossibly dif.cult situation: the rumours of its resignation are no political by-play." At the same time there was pressure from the bourgeois circles. The Moscow city duma pa.s.sed a resolution in favour of coalition. On April 26, when the ground was suf.ciently prepared, the Provisional Government announced in a special appeal the necessity of bringing in to the governmental work "those active creative forces of the country which have not yet partic.i.p.ated in it." The question was thus presented point-blank.
The feeling against coalition was nevertheless pretty strong. At the end of April the following soviets declared themselves against the partic.i.p.ation of socialists in the govern-ment: Moscow, Ti.is, Odessa, Ekaterinburg, Nizhni-Novgorod, Tver, and others. Their motives were very clearly expressed by one of the Menshevik leaders in Moscow: If the socialists enter the government, there will be n.o.body to lead the movement of the ma.s.ses " in a de.nite channel." But it was dif.cult to convey this idea to the workers and soldiers against whom it was, directed. The ma.s.ses, in so far as they were not yet for the Bolshe-viks, stood solid for the entrance of socialists into the government. If it is a good thing to have Kerensky as a minister, then so much the better six Kerenskys. The ma.s.ses did not know that this was called coalition with the bourgeoisie, and that the bourgeoisie wanted to use these socialists as a cover for their activities against the people. A coalition looked different from the barracks and from the Mariinsky Palace. The ma.s.ses wanted to use the socialists to crowd out the bourgeoisie from the government. Thus two forces tending in opposite directions united for a moment in one.
In Petrograd a series of military units, among them an armoured car division friendly to the Bolsheviks, declared in favour of coalition government. The provinces voted for the coalition by an overwhelming majority. The coalition tendency prevailed among the Social Revolutionaries; they only feared to go into the government without the Mensheviks. And .nally, the army was in favour of coalition. One of its delegates later -at the June congress of the soviets expressed not at all badly the att.i.tude of the front toward the question of power: " We thought that the groan which arose from the army when it learned that the socialists would not enter the ministry to work with people whom they did not trust, while the whole army was compelled to go on dying with people whom it did not trust, must have been heard in Petrograd."
The war was the deciding factor in this question, as in others. "The socialists had at .rst intended to sit out the war, as also the sovereignty, and wait. But the war would not wait.
The Allies would not wait. The front did not want to wait any longer. Right in the middle of the governmental crisis came delegates from the front and put up to their leaders in the Executive Committee the question: Are we going to .ght or not? Which meant: Do you a.s.sume the responsibility for the, war or not ? There was no dodging that question. The Entente was posing the same question in the language of a half-threat.
The April offensive on the west European front cost the Allies heavily and gave no re-sults. A wavering was felt in the French army under the in.uence of the Russian revolution and of the failure of its own offensive from which so much had been hoped. The army, in the words of Marshal Petain, " was bending in our hands." To stop this threatening pro-cess the French Government had need of a Russian offensive-and until that at least a .rm promise of one. Aside from the material relief to be gained, it was necessary as quickly as possible to s.n.a.t.c.h the halo of peace from the Russian revolution, poison the hope in the hearts of the French soldiers, compromise the revolution by a.s.sociating it with the crimes of the Entente, trample the banner of the Russian workers" and soldiers" insurrection in the blood and mud of the imperialist slaughter.
In order to attain this high aim, all possible levers were brought into play. Among these levers not the last place was occupied by the patriotic socialists of the Entente. The most experienced of them were sent into revolutionary Russia. They arrived armed to the teeth with obsequious consciences and boneless talk. "The foreign social-patriots," writes Sukhanov, "were received with open arms in the Mariinsky Palace, Branting, Cachin, O"Grady, De Brouckere, and others felt at home there and formed a united front with our ministers against the Soviet." It must be conceded that even the Compromisers" Soviet was often ill at case with those gentlemen.
The Allied socialists made the rounds of the fronts. "General Alexeiev," wrote Van-dervelde, "did everything in his power in order that our efforts should be applied to the same end as were those undertaken a little earlier by delegations of sailors from the Black Sea, by Kerensky, Albert Thomas-that is to complete what he called the moral preparation of the offensive." The President of the Second International and the former chief of staff of Nicholas the Second thus found a common language in their struggle for the glorious ideals of democracy. Renaudel, one of the leaders of French socialism, was able to cry out with relief: "Now we can talk without blushing of the war of justice." It was three years before humanity learned that those people had something to blush about.
On the 1st of May the Executive Committee, having pa.s.sed through all the stages of vacillation known to nature, decided by a majority of 41 votes against 18, with 3 abstaining, to enter into a coalition government. Only the Bolsheviks and a small group of Menshevik-Internationalists voted against it.
It is not without interest that the victim of this closer rapprochement was the recognised leader of the bourgeoisie, Miliukov. "I did not go out, they put me out," said Miliukov later, Guchkov had withdrawn already on April 30, refusing to sign the "Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier." How dark it was in those days in the hearts of the liberals is evident from the fact that the Central Committee of the Kadet Party decided, in order to save the Coalition, not to insist upon Miliukov"s remaining in the government. "The party betrayed its leader," writes the right Kadet, Isgoyev. The party, however, had no great choice. The same Isgoyev remarks quite correctly At the end of April the Kadet Party was smashed to pieces; morally it had received a blow from which it would never recover."
But on the question of Miliukov the Entente was to have the last word. England was entirely willing that the Dardanelles patriot should be replaced by a more temperate "demo-crat." Henderson, who was in Petrograd with authorisation to replace Buchanan as ambas-sador in case of need, learning of the state of affairs, deemed this change unnecessary. As a fact, Buchanan was exactly in the right place, for he was a resolute opponent of annex-ations in so far as they did not coincide with the appet.i.tes of Great Britain. "If Russia has no need of Constantinople," he whispered tenderly to Tereshchenko, "the sooner she announces this, the better." France at .rst supported Miliukov, but here Thomas played his role, coming out. after Buchanan and the Soviet leaders against Miliukov. Thus that politi-cian, hated by the ma.s.ses, was abandoned by the Allies, by the democrats, and lastly by his own party.
Miliukov really did not deserve such cruel punishment-at least not from these hands. But the Coalition demanded a puri.cation sacri.ce. They pictured Miliukov to the ma.s.ses as that evil spirit who had been darkening the universal triumphant recession towards demo-cratic peace. In cutting off Miliukov, the Coalition puri.ed itself at one stroke from the sins of imperialism. The staff of the Coalition Government, and its programme, were approved by the Petrograd Soviet on May 5. The Bolsheviks mustered 100 votes against it. "The meeting warmly greeted the orator-ministers," Miliukov ironically tells of this meeting. "It greeted with the same stormy applause, however, "the old leader of the .rst revolution" Trotsky, who had arrived the day before from America, and who sharply condemned the entrance of socialists into the ministry, a.s.serting that the "double sovereignty" is not de-stroyed, but "merely transferred into the ministry," and that the real single power which will "save" Russia will arrive only when "the next step is taken, the transfer of power into the hands of the workers" and soldiers" deputies"; then will begin "a new epoch, an epoch of blood and iron, but not in a struggle of nation against nation, but of the suffering and op-pressed cla.s.s against the ruling cla.s.ses."" Such is Miliukov"s rendering. In his conclusion Trotsky formulated three rules for the policy of the ma.s.ses "three revolutionary articles of faith: do not trust the bourgeoisie; control the leaders; rely only on your own force." Speaking of this speech, Sukhanov remarks: " He evidently did not expect any sympathy for his words." And in truth the orator left the hall amid far less applause than had greeted his entrance. Sukhanov, very sensitive to what is going on in the couloirs of the intel-ligentsia, adds: "Although Trotsky did not belong to the Bolshevik Party, rumours were already going around to the effect that he was worse than Lenin."
The socialists appropriated six portfolios out of .fteen. They wanted to be in the mi-nority. Even after deciding openly to enter the government, they continued to play this game of give-away. Prince Lvov remained Premier; Kerensky became Minister of War and Marine; Chernov, Minister of Agriculture. Miliukov"s place as Minister of Foreign Affairs was taken by Tereshchenko, a connoisseur of the ballet who had become the con.dential man at one and the same time of Kerensky and Buchanan. They all three agreed in thinking that Russia could get along exceptionally well without Constantinople. At the head of the Department of Justice stood an insigni.cant lawyer, Pereverzev, who subsequently acquired a pa.s.sing glory in connection with the July in-cident of the Bolsheviks. Tseretelli limited himself to the portfolio of Posts and Telegraphs in order to keep his time for the Executive Committee. Skobeleyv, becoming Minister of Labour, promised in the heat of the excitement to cut down the pro.ts of the capitalists one hundred per cent. That phrase soon acquired wings. For the sake of symmetry the Ministry of Trade and Industry was given to a great Moscow industrialist, Konovalov. He brought along with him certain notables from the Moscow Stock Exchange who received important government posts. After two weeks, by the way, Konovalov resigned as a protest against the "anarchy" in public economy. Skobelev, even before two weeks, had renounced his attack on pro.ts, and was busying himself with the struggle against anarchy-quarrelling strikes, summoning the workers to self-restraint. The Declaration of the new government consisted, as is to be expected of all coalitions, of commonplaces. It referred to an active foreign policy in the cause of peace, a solution of the food question, and a getting ready to solve the land question. All this was mere talk. The single serious point-at least from the standpoint of intention-was the one about the preparation of the army "for defensive and offensive activity to prevent the possible defeat of Russia and her Allies." In this was essentially summed up the whole meaning of the Coalition, which was created as the last play of the Entente in Russia.
"The Coalition Government in Russia," wrote Buchanan, is for us the last, and almost the only, hope for salvation of the military situation on that front." Thus behind the plat-forms, speeches, compromises and votes of the liberal and democratic leaders of the Febru-ary revolution, stood an imperialist stage director in the person of the Entente. Being obliged hastily to enter the government in the name of the interests of the Entente front, which was hostile to the revolution, the socialists took upon themselves about a third of the power and the Whole war.
The new Minister of Foreign Affairs had to delay publishing for two weeks the answers of the Allied governments to the declaration of March 27, in order to work out certain stylistic changes which would disguise their polemic against the Declaration of the Coali-tion Cabinet. That "active foreign policy in the cause of peace " expressed itself thereafter in Tereshchenko"s zealously editing the texts of the diplomatic telegrams drawn up for him by old-rgime clerks. Crossing out "claims he would write "the demands of justice"; in place of "safeguarding the interests" he would write "for the good of the peoples." Mil-iukov, with a slight grinding of teeth, said of his successor: "The Allied diplomats knew that the "democratic" terminology of his despatches was a reluctant concession to the de-mands of the moment, and treated it with indulgence."
Thomas and the newly arrived Vandervelde did not sit with folded arms. They zealously interpreted the "good of the peoples" in correspondence with the needs of the Entente, and manipulated with a fair success the simpletons of the Executive Committee. "Skobelev and Chernov," reported Vandervelde , "are energetically protesting against all thoughts of premature peace." No wonder Ribot, relying on such a.s.sistants, felt able to announce to the French Parliament on May 9, that he intended to make a satisfactory reply to Tereshchenko "without giving up anything."
No, the real masters of the situation were not intending to give up anything that was lying around loose. It was just in those days that Italy announced the independence of Albania, and immediately placed her under Italy"s protectorate. That was not a bad object lesson. The Provisional Government had an idea of protesting-not so much in the name of democracy, as because of the destruction of "equilibrium in the Balkans." But impotence compelled it for the time to bite its tongue.
The only new thing in the foreign policy of the Coalition was its hasty rapproche-ment with America. This young friendship offered three not unimportant advantages: the United States was not so compromised with military depravities as France and England; the transatlantic republic opened before Russia broad prospects in the matter of loans and military supplies; .nally, the diplomacy of Wilson-a mixture of knavery with democratic piety-fell in admirably with the stylistic needs of the Provisional Government. In send-ing the Root mission to Russia, Wilson addressed the Provisional Government with one of his parish letters in which he declared: "No people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live." The aims of the war were de.ned by the American President not too de.nitely, but beguilingly: "..to secure the future peace of the world and the future welfare and happiness of its." What could be better? Tereshehenko people and Tseretelli needed only that: fresh credits and the commonplaces of paci.sm. With the help of the .rst, and under cover of the second, they could make ready for the offensive which the Shylock on the Seine was demanding with a furious shaking of all his promissory notes.
On the 11th of May, Kerensky went to the front to open his agitation in favour of an offensive. "A wave of enthusiasm is growing and spreading in the army," reported the new War Minister to the Provisional Government, choking with the enthusiasm of his own speeches. On May 14, Kerensky issued a command to the army: "You will go where your leaders conduct you," and in order to adorn this well-known and not very attractive prospect for the soldier, he added: "You will carry on the points of your bayonets-peace." On May 22, the cautious General Alexeiev, a man of no parts in any case, was removed, and replaced in the position of commander-in-chief by the more .exible and enterprising Brussilov. The democrats with all their power were preparing the offensive-the grand catastrophe, that is, of the February revolution.
The Soviet was the organ of the workers and soldiers-and soldiers here means peasants. The Provisional Government was the organ of the bourgeoisie. The Contact Commission was the organ of compromise. The Coalition simpli.ed this mechanism by converting the Provisional Government itself into a contact commission. But the double sovereignty was not in the least done away with. Whether Tseretelli was a member of the Contact Commission or Minister of Posts-that did not decide anything. There were in the country two incompatible state organisations: the hierarchy of old and new of.cials appointed from above crowned by the Provisional Government, and the system of elective soviets reaching down to the most remote companies at the front. These two state systems rested upon different cla.s.ses which as yet were only getting ready to settle their historic accounts. In entering the Coalition, the Compromisers counted on a peaceful and gradual dissolution of the power of the soviet system. They imagined that the power of the soviets, concentrated in their persons, would now .ow over into the of.cial government. Kerensky categorically a.s.sured Buchanan, that "the soviets will die a natural death . ." This hope soon became the of.cial doctrine of the Compromise leaders. According to their thought, the centre of gravity ought to be transferred to the new organs of self-government. The place of the Central Committee should be occupied by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The Coalition Government was in this way to become a bridge to the bourgeois parliamentary republic.
The trouble was that the revolution did not want to, and could not, travel along this road. The fate of the new city dumas had given unequivocal warning in this sense. These dumas had been elected upon the widest possible franchise basis. The soldiers voted equally with the civil population, women equally with men. Four parties took part in the strug-gle. Novoye Vremya, the old of.cial sheet of the czarist government, one of the most dishonest newspapers in the world and that is saying something-summoned the Rights, the nationalists, the Octobrists, to vote for the Kadets. But when the political impotence of the possessing cla.s.ses became fully evident, the majority of the bourgeois papers adopted the slogan: "Vote for anybody you please, only not the Bolsheviks" In all the dumas and zemstvos the Kadets were right wing, the Bolsheviks a growing left minority. The majority, immense as usual, belonged to the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
It would seem as if these new dumas, which differed from the soviets by a broader rep-resentation, ought to have enjoyed great authority. Moreover as socio-juridical inst.i.tutions, the dumas had the immense advantage of of.cial government support. The militia, the food supplies, the munic.i.p.al transport, popular education, all were of.cially in the hands of the duma. The soviet as a private "inst.i.tution" had neither budget nor rights. And nevertheless the power remained with the soviets. The dumas turned out to be in the essence of the matter munic.i.p.al commissions of the soviets. This rivalry of the soviet system with formal democracy was the more striking in its outcome, in that it took place under the leadership of those same parties, Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who, ruling in the dumas and the soviets alike, were profoundly convinced that the soviets ought to give way to the dumas, and themselves did their best to promote the process. The explanation of this re-markable phenomenon-about which there was, very little speculation in the whirlpool of the actual events is simple: munic.i.p.al governments, like any other inst.i.tutions of democ-racy, can function only on the basis of .rmly established social relations-that is, a de.nite property system. The essence of revolution, however, is that it calls in question this, the very basis of all bases. And its question can be answered only by an open revolutionary test of the correlation of forces. The soviets, in spite of the quality of their leadership, were the .ghting organisations of the oppressed cla.s.ses who had consciously or half-consciously united to transform the bases of the social structure. The munic.i.p.al governments gave equal representation to all cla.s.ses of the population, reduced to the abstraction of citizenship, and behaved in the revolutionary situation very much like a diplomatic conference expressing itself in quali.ed and hypocritical language while the hostile camps represented by it are feverishly preparing for battle. In the everyday of the revolution the munic.i.p.al governments dragged out a half-.ct.i.tious existence. But at critical moments, when the interference of the ma.s.ses was de.ning the further direction of events, these governments simply exploded in the air, their const.i.tuent elements appearing on different sides of a barricade. It was suf-.cient to contrast the parallel roles of the soviets and the munic.i.p.al governments from May to October, in order to foresee the fate of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly.
The Coalition Government was in no hurry to summon that const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The liberals being, notwithstanding the democratic arithmetic, a majority in the government, were in no haste to become in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly a feeble right wing such as they were in the new dumas. The special conference on the convocation of a Const.i.tuent As-sembly began work only at the end of May-three months after the revolution. The liberal jurists divided every hair into sixteen parts, shook up in their alembics all the different kinds of democratic sediment, bickered endlessly about the elective rights of the army, whether or not it would be necessary to give votes to the deserters, numbering millions, and to the members of the czar"s family, numbering tens. As to the date of the a.s.sembly, as little was said as possible. To raise this question was considered in the conference a breach of etiquette such as only Bolsheviks would commit.
Weeks pa.s.sed, but in spite of the hopes and prophecies of the Compromisers the soviets did not die out. At times, lulled and confused by their leaders, they did fall into semi-prostration, but the .rst signal of danger would bring them to their feet, and reveal to the eyes of all that they were the real masters of the situation. While attempting to sabotage the soviets, Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were obliged in every important incident to recognise their priority. This was expressed among other things by the fact that the best forces of both parties were concentrated in the soviets. To the munic.i.p.al governments and the zemstvos they appointed people of the second rank, technicians and administrators. The same thing was to be observed among the Bolsheviks. The Kadets alone, not having access to the soviets, concentrated their best forces in those inst.i.tutions of self-government. But that hopeless bourgeois minority was not able to convert them into a real support.
Thus n.o.body considered the munic.i.p.al governments their own inst.i.tutions. The sharp-ening antagonism between worker and boss, soldier and of.cer, peasant and landlord, could not be openly brought up for discussion in the munic.i.p.al bodies or zemstvos as was done in their own circles by the soviets on the one side, and by "private" meetings of the State Duma and all kinds of conferences of the "enfranchised" politicians on the other. One can talk over petty details with an enemy, but not matters of life and death.
If you accept the Marxian formula according to which a government is a committee of the ruling cla.s.s, then you must admit that the genuine "committees" of the cla.s.ses strug-gling for power were to be found outside the Coalition Government. As regards the soviets, represented in the government as a minority, that was perfectly obvious. But it was no less true of the bourgeois majority. The liberals were totally unable to discuss in a serious and businesslike way in the presence of socialists the questions of most moment to the bour-geoisie. The crowding out of Miliukov, the acknowledged and indubitable leader of the bourgeoisie, around whom a staff of property owners had united, had a symbolic character, completely revealing the fact that the government was in every sense of the word eccentric. Life revolved around two axes, one of which was to the left and one to the right of the Mariinsky Palace.
Not daring to say what they thought in the staff of the government, the ministers lived in an atmosphere of conventions created by themselves. The double sovereignty concealed by a coalition became a school of two-mindedness, two-heartedness and every possible kind of duplicity. The Coalition Government in the course of the next six months lived through a whole series of crises, reconstructions and reshuf.ings, but its fundamental features, im-potence and hypocrisy, survived to the day of its death.
CHAPTER 19.
THE OFFENSIVE.
In the army as in the country there was a continual political regrouping of forces, the lower ranks moving to the left, the upper to the right. Just as the Executive Committee was becoming an instrument of the Entente for taming the revolution, the soldiers" committees, having arisen to represent the soldiers against the commanding staff, were being converted into a.s.sistants of the commanding staff against the soldiers.
The membership of these committees was variegated. There were not a few patriots who sincerely identi.ed the war with the revolution, courageously joined an offensive imposed from above, and laid down their heads in an alien cause. Beside them stood the heroes of the phrase, regimental and divisional Kerenskys. Finally, there were not a few petty cheats and chair-warmers who got into the committees to keep out of the trenches, always on a hunt for privileges. Every ma.s.s movement, especially in its .rst stages, inevitably raises up on its crest all these human varieties. But the compromise period was especially rich in such loud talkers and chameleons. People form programmes but programmes also form people. The school of "contact" politics becomes in a revolution a school trickery and intrigue.
The two-power regime made it impossible to create a military force. The Kadets were hated by the ma.s.s of the people, and were compelled in the army to re-t.i.tle themselves Social Revolutionaries. The democracy could not resurrect the army for the same reason that it could not take over the power. The one was inseparable from the other. As a cu-riosity, which nevertheless very clearly illumines the situation, Sukhanov remarks that the Provisional Government did not organise a single parade for the soldiers in Petrograd. The liberals and generals did not want the soviets to partic.i.p.ate in their parade, at perfectly well understood that without the soviets a parade as impossible. The higher of.cers were cling-ing closer, and closer to the Kadets, biding the time when more reactionary parties might lift 265.
their heads. The petty bourgeois intelligentsia could give the army a considerable number of lower of.cers, as they had done under czarism, but they could not create, a commanding corps in their own image, for they had no image of their own. As the whole further course of the revolution showed, it was only possible either to take the commanding corps as it was from the n.o.bility and the bourgeoisie, as the Whites did, or bring forward and train up a new one on the basis of proletarian recruiting, as did the Bolsheviks. The petty bourgeois democracy could do neither one thing nor the other. All they could do was to persuade, plead and deceive every body and when nothing came of it, turn over the power in despair to the reactionary of.cers, and let them teach the people the correct revolutionary ideas.
One after the other the ulcers of the old society broke out and destroyed the organism of the army. The problem of nationality in all its forms-and Russia is rich in nationality-went deeper and deeper into the soldier ma.s.s, which was made up less than half of Great Russians. National antagonisms intercrossed and interwove in all directions with cla.s.s an-tagonisms. The policy of the government in the sphere of nationalities, as in all others, was vacillating, confused, and therefore seemed double treacherous. Certain generals .irted with national formations such as the "Mussulman Corps with French discipline" on the Rumanian front. These new national units did as a rule prove the most st.u.r.dy of the old army, for they were formed under a new idea and a new banner. This national cement how-ever did not last long. Cla.s.s struggles soon broke it. But the very process of these national formations, threatening to affect half the army, reduced it to a .uid condition, decomposing the old units before it succeeded in welding the new. Thus misfortune came from all sides.
Miliukov writes in his history that the army was ruined by "con.ict between "revolu-tionary" ideas and normal military discipline, between "democratisation of the army" and the "preservation of its .ghting power" "-in which statement, by "normal" discipline is to be understood that which existed under czarism. A historian ought to know, it would seem, that every great revolution brings ruin to the old army, a result of the clash, not of abstract disciplinary principles, but of living cla.s.ses. A revolution not only permits strict discipline in an army, but creates it. However, this discipline cannot be established by representatives of the cla.s.s which the revolution has overthrown.
"Surely, the fact is evident," wrote one wise German to another on September 26, 1851, "that a disorganised army and a complete breakdown of discipline has been the condition as well as the result of every victorious revolution." The whole history of humanity proves this simple and indubitable law. But along with the liberals, the Russian socialists-with the experience of 1905 behind them-did not understand this, although they called the two Germans, one of whom was Frederick Engels and the other Karl Marx, their teachers. The Mensheviks seriously believed that army after making a revolution would continue the war under the old command. And those people called the Bolsheviks Utopian!
General Brussilov at a conference at headquarters in the beginning of May succinctly characterised the condition of the commanding staff: 15 to 20 per cent had adapted them-selves to the new order through conviction; a part of the of.cers were beginning to .irt with the soldiers and incite them against the commanding staff; but the majority, about 75 per cent, could not adapt themselves, were offended, were hiding in their sh.e.l.ls, and did not know what to do. The overwhelming ma.s.s of the of.cers were, in addition, good-for-nothing from a purely military point of view.
At a conference with the generals, Kerensky and Skobelev zealously apologised for the revolution, which, alas, "was continuing" and must be taken into consideration. To this the Black Hundred general Gurko answered the ministers moralisingly: "You say the revolution is continuing. Listen to us. Stop the revolution, and let us, the military, do our duty to the end." Kerensky went to meet the generals with all his heart-until one of them, the valorous Kornilov, almost strangled him in his embraces.
Compromisism in a time of revolution is a policy of feverish scurrying back and forth be-tween cla.s.ses. Kerensky was the incarnation of scurrying back and forth. Placed at the head of an army, an inst.i.tution unthinkable without a clear and concise regime, Kerensky became the immediate instrument of its disintegration. Denikin publishes a curious list of changes of personnel in the high commanding staff-changes which missed the mark, although no-body really knew, and least of all Kerensky, where the mark was. Alexeiev dismissed the commander-in-chief at the front, Ruszky, and the army commander Radko-Dmitriev, for weakness and indulgence to the committees, Brussilov removed for the same reason the panic-stricken. Yudenaich. Kerensky dismissed Alexeiev himself and the commanders-in-chief at the front, Gurko and Dragomirov, for resisting democratisation of the army. On the same grounds Brussilov removed General Kaledin, and was himself subsequently relieved for excessive indulgence to the committees, Kornilov left the command of the Petrograd district through inability to get along with the democracy. This did not prevent his ap-pointment to the front, and subsequently to the supreme, command. Denikin was removed from the post of chief of staff under Alexeiev for his obviously feudal administration, but was soon after named commander-in-chief of the western front. This game of leap-frog, showing that the people at the top did not know what they wanted, gradually extending downward to the companies, hastened the breakdown of the army.
While demanding that soldiers obey the of.cers, the commissars themselves did not trust them. At the very height of the offensive, at a meeting of the soviet at headquarters in Moghilev, one of the members of the soviet declared in the presence of Kerensky and Brussilov: "Eighty-eight per cent of the of.cers of the staff are giving rise by their activities to a danger of counter-revolutionary manifestations." This was no secret to the soldiers. They had had plenty of time to get acquainted with their of.cers before the revolution.
Throughout May the reports of the commanding staff from top to bottom consist of variations on one single theme: "The att.i.tude to the offensive is in general adverse, and especially in the infantry." Sometimes they add: "A little better in the cavalry and hearty enough in the artillery."
At the end of May when the troops were already marshalled for the offensive, the com-missar with the 7th Army telegraphed to Kerensky: "In the 12th Division, the 48th Reg-iment has gone out in full force. The 45th and 46th Regiments, with only half of the front-line companies. The 47th refuses to go out. Of the regiments of the 13th Division, the 50th came out almost in full force. The 51st promises to come out to-morrow, the 49th did not come out as ordered, and the 52nd refused to come out and arrested all its of.cers." The same picture was to be observed almost everywhere. To the report of the commissar, the government answered: "Disband the 45th, 46th, 47th and 52nd regiments, court-martial those who incited the of.cers and soldiers to disobedience." That sounded terrible, but did not frighten anybody. The soldiers who did not want to .ght were not afraid either of dis-bandment or of court-martial. In deploying the soldiers it was often necessary to send one detachment against another. The instrument of repression would most often be the Cos-sacks, as under the czar. But they were now led by socialists: it was a question, you see, of defending the revolution.
On June 4, less than two weeks before the beginning of the offensive, the chief of the headquarters staff reported : " The northern front is still in a ferment, fraternisation con-tinues, the infantry is opposed to the offensive. . . . On the western front the situation is inde.nite. . . .On the south-western a certain improvement of mood is noticeable. . . . On the Rumanian no special improvement is observable, the infantry does not want to advance."
On June 11, 1917, the commander of the 61st Regiment writes: "The of.cers and I have nothing left to do but save ourselves, because there has arrived from Petrograd a soldier of the 5th Company, a Leninist.... Many of the best soldiers and of.cers have already .ed." The appearance in the regiment of one Leninist was enough to start the of.cers running away. It is clear that the arriving soldier played the part of the crystal in a saturate solution. However, we must not think that the talk here is necessarily of a Bolshevik. In those days the commanding staff called every soldier a Leninist who raised his voice more boldly than others against the offensive. Many of those "Leninists" still sincerely believed that Lenin had been sent by Wilhelm. The commander of the 61st Regiment tried to frighten his soldiers with punishment at the hands of the government. One of the soldiers answered: "We overthrew the former government, we"ll kick out Kerensky." That was new talk. They were nourished on Bolshevik agitation, but went far beyond it.
From the Black Sea .eet, which was under the leadership of Social Revolutionaries and was considered by contrast to the Kronstadt sailors a bulwark of patriotism, a special delegation of 800 men was sent out through the country at the end of April with a brisk student, Batkin, dressed up as a sailor, at the head. There was a good deal of the masquerade in that delegation but there was also a more sincere impulse. The delegation was selling to the country the idea of war to victory. But with every week the listeners became more hostile. And just as these Black Sea sailors were beginning to lower the tone of their pro-war sermons, a Baltic delegation arrived in Sebastopol to preach peace. The Northerners had more success in the south than the Southerners in the north. Under the in.uence of the Kronstadt sailors, the Sebastopol sailors undertook on June 8 to disarm the commanding staff and arrest their worst-hated of.cers.
At a meeting of the soviet Congress on June 9, Trotsky asked how it could happen that "in that model Black Sea .eet which had sent patriotic deputations throughout the country, in that nest of organised patriotism, an explosion of this nature could occur at such a critical moment? What does this prove?" He received no answer.
The headless and brainless condition of the army tortured everybody-soldiers, comman-ders and committee-men. To their all the need of some way out became unbearable. To the chiefs it seemed that the offensive would overcome this reign of bedlam and bring def-initeness. And to a certain extent this was true. While Tseretelli and Chernov expressed themselves in Petrograd in favour of the offensive with all the careful modulations of the democratic rhetoric, the committee-men at the front had to wage a campaign hand-in-hand with the of.cers against the new regime in the army-a regime incompatible with War, but without which the revolution was unthinkable. The results of the change were soon v h every day that pa.s.sed, the members of the committee were noticeably moving to the right," recounts one of the naval of.cers, "but at the same time there was an obvious decline in their authority among the soldiers and sailors." It happens, however, that soldiers and sailors are just what is needed for a war.
Brussilov, with Kerensky"s approval, undertook the formation of shock battalions of volunteers, thus frankly acknowledging the incapacity of the army to .ght. All sorts of elements immediately attached themselves to this enterprise-for the most part adventurers like Captain Muraviev, who subsequently, after the October revolution, swung round to the left Social Revolutionaries, and then after a stormy and in its way brilliant career, betrayed the Soviet power, and died of a bullet shot, either from a Bolshevik or from his own hand. It is needless to say that the counter-revolutionary of.cers greedily seized upon the shock battalion idea as a legal way of mustering their own forces. The idea got almost no response, however, in the soldier ma.s.s. Some women in search of adventure created a women"s battalion of "Black Death Hussars." One of these battalions became Kerensky"s last armed force in the defence of the Winter Palace in October. But all this gave very little help to the cause of crushing German militarism-as the task was described.
The offensive promised by the staff to the Allies for early spring had been postponed from week to week. But now the Entente .rmly refused to accept any further postpone-ments. In pressing for an immediate offensive the Allies did not mince methods. Along with the pathetic adjurations of Vandervelde, they employed the threat to stop sending mili-tary supplies. The Italian consul-general in Moscow announced to the press-not the Italian, but the Russian press-that in case of a separate peace on the part of Russia, the Allies would give j.a.pan a free hand in Siberia. The liberal papers-not the Rome, but the Moscow papers-printed these insolent threats with patriotic rapture, making them apply not to a separate peace, but to a delayed offensive. In other respects the Allies did not stand upon ceremony: for instance, they sent artillery that was known to he damaged. Thirty-.ve per cent of the weapons received from abroad did not survive two weeks of moderate shooting. England was shutting down on credits; but then America, the new benefactor, without the knowl-edge of England, offered the Provisional Government on the security of the new offensive a credit of $75,000,000. Although supporting the demands of the Allies by waging a frantic agitation for the offensive, the Russian bourgeoisie withheld its own con.dence from the offensive by refusing to subscribe the Liberty loan. The overthrown monarchy utilised this incident to remind the public of its existence. In a declaration in the name of the Provi-sional Government, Romanov expressed a desire to subscribe to the loan, but added: "The extent of the subscription will depend on the question whether the treasury supplies money to support the members of the czar"s family." All this was read by the army, which knew very well that the majority of the Provisional Government, as also a majority of the upper of.cers, were still hoping for a restoration. Justice demands the observation that in the Allied camp not all agreed with Vandervelde, Thomas and Cachin in pushing the Russian army over the precipice. There were warning voices. "The Russian army is nothing but facade," said General Petain, "it will fall to pieces if it makes move." The American mis-sion, for another example, expressed the view. But other considerations prevailed. It was necessary to take the heart out of the revolution. "The German fraternisation," explained Painleve later, "had caused such ravages that to leave the Russian army inactive would o risk its rapid disintegration." The political preparation for the offensive was at .rst carried on by Kerensky and Tseretelli, in secrecy even from their closest colleagues. In the days when these half-consecrated leaders were still continuing to spout about the defence of the revolution, Tseretelli was more and more .rmly insisting on the necessity that the army make ready for active service. The longest to resist-that is, the coyest-was Chernov. At a meeting of the Provisional Government on May 17, the "rural minister," as he called him-self, was asked with heat whether it was true that he had expressed himself at a certain meeting on the subject of the offensive without the necessary sympathy. It transpired that Chernov answered as follows: "The offensive does not concern me, a man of polities; that is a question for the strategists at the front." Those people were playing hide-and-seek with the war, as with the revolution. But only for the time being.
The preparation for the offensive was accompanied, of course, by a redoubled struggle against the Bolsheviks. They were being accused now of oftener and oftener of working for a separate peace. The possibility that a separate peace would be the only way out, was evident in the whole situation-the weakness and exhaustion of Russia in comparison with the other warring countries. But n.o.body had yet measured the strength of the new factor, revolution. The Bolsheviks believed that the prospect of a separate peace could be avoided only in case the force and authority of revolution were boldly and conclusively set against the war. For this was needed .rst of all a break with our own bourgeoisie. On June 9, Lenin announced at the congress of the soviets: "When they say that we are striving for a separate peace, that is not true. We say: No separate peace, not with any capitalists, and least of all with the Russian capitalists. But the Provisional Government has made a separate peace with the Russian capitalists. Down with that separate peace! " "Applause," remarks the report. That was the applause of a small minority at the congress, and for that reason especially fervent.
In the Executive Committee some still lacked decision, others wanted to hide behind the more authoritative inst.i.tutions. At the last moment it was resolved to bring to Kerensky"s attention the undesirability of giving the order for the offensive before the question had been decided upon by the soviet congress. A declaration introduced at the very .rst session of the congress by the Bolshevik faction had stated: "An offensive can only, utterly disorganise the army, bringing one part into antagonism with the other, and the Congress should either immediately oppose this counter-revolutionary onslaught, or else frankly a.s.sume the whole responsibility for this policy."
The decision of the soviet congress in favour of the, offensive was merely a democratic formality. Everything was already prepared. The artillery had for a long time been aimed at the enemys positions. On June 16, in an order to the army and the .eet, Kerensky, referring to the commander-in-chief as "our leader fanned by the wings of victory," demonstrated the necessity of "an immediate and decisive blow," and concluded with the words I com-mand you-forward! "In an article written on the eve of the offensive, commenting on the declaration of the Bolshevik faction at the soviet congress. Trotsky wrote: "The policy of the government completely undermines the possibility of successful military action ... The material premises for an offensive are extremely unfavorable. The organisation of supplies for the army re.ects the general economic collapse, against which a government consti-tuted like the present one cannot undertake a single radical measure. The spiritual premises of the offensive are still more unfavorable. The government ... has exposed before the army ... its incapacity to determine Russia"s policy independently of the will of the imperialist Allies. No result is possible but the progressive breakdown of the army.... The ma.s.s deser-tions ... are ceasing in the present conditions to be the result of depraved individual wills, and are becoming an expression of the complete incapacity of the government to weld the revolutionary army with inward unity of purpose. . ." Pointing out further that the govern-ment could not make up its mind" to an immediate annulment of landlordship-that is, to the sole measure which would convince the most backward peasant that this revolution is his revolution," the article concluded: "In such material and spiritual conditions an offensive must inevitably have the character of an adventure."
The commanding staff was almost unanimous in thinking that the offensive, hopeless from a military point of view, was dictated by political considerations. Denikin after mak-ing the rounds of his front reported to Brussilov: "I haven"t the slightest belief in the success of the offensive." A supplementary element of hopelessness was introduced by the good-for-nothingness of the commanding staff itself. Stankevich, an of.cer and a patriot, testi.es that the technical dispositions of things made victory impossible regardless of the morale of the troops: "The offensive was organised in a manner beneath criticism." A delegation of of.cers came to the leaders of the Kadet Party with the president of the of.cers" union, the Kadet Novosiltsev, at its head, and warned them that the offensive was doomed to fail-ure, and would mean only the extermination of the best units. The higher powers waved away these warnings with general phrases: "A last spark of hope remains," said the chief of the headquarters staff, the reactionary general Lukomsky, "that perhaps a beginning of successful battles will change the psychology of the ma.s.ses, and the of.cers will be able to seize the reins that have been torn from their hands." That was their main purpose to get hold of those reins.
The chief blow was to be delivered, according to a plan worked out long before, by the forces of the south-western front in the direction of Lvov; the work of the northern and western fronts was to help this operation. The advance was to have begun simultaneously on all fronts. It was soon evident that this plan was far beyond the powers of the command. They decided to start off one front after the other, beginning with those of secondary im-portance. But that too proved impossible. "Then the supreme command," says Denikin, "decided to give up all idea of planned strategy, and had to allow the fronts to begin opera-tions whenever they were ready." All was left to the will of Providence. Only the icons of the czarina were lacking. They tried to replace them with the icons of democracy. Kerensky travelled everywhere, appealing and p.r.o.nouncing benedictions. The offensive began: June 16 on the south western front, July 7 on the western, 9th on the Rumanian. The advance of the last three fronts was in reality .ct.i.tious, coinciding with the beginning of the collapse of the princ.i.p.al one, the south-western.
Kerensky reported to the Provisional Government: "To-day is the great triumph of the revolution. On June 18th the Russian revolutionary army with colossal enthusiasm a.s.sumed the offensive." "The long expected advance has arrived," wrote the Kadet organ Rech, "which has at one stroke restored the Russian revolution to its best days." On the 19th the old man Plekhanov acclaimed to a patriotic manifestation: "Citizens, if I ask you what day this is, you will say "Monday." But that is a mistake. To-day is the resurrection day." Resurrection of our country and of the whole world. Russia, having thrown off the yoke of czarism, has decided to throw off the yokes of the enemy." Tseretelli said on the same day at the soviet congress: "A new page is opening in the history of the great Russian revolution. The success of our revolutionary army ought to be welcomed not only by the Russian democracy, but . . . by all those who are really striving to .ght against imperialism." The patriotic democracy had opened all its taps. The newspapers meanwhile carried joyful news: "The Paris Bourse greets the Russian offensive with a rise in all Russian securities." Those socialists were trying to estimate the stability of the revolution by the stock-ticker. But history teaches that bourses feel better the worse it goes with revolutions.
The workers and the garrison of the capital were not for one minute infected by this wave of arti.cially warmed-over patriotism. Its sole arena was the Nevsky Prospect. "We went out on the Nevsky," relates the soldier Chinenov in his memoirs, "and tried to agitate against the offensive. Some of the bourgeois took after us with their umbrellas... We grabbed them and dragged them into the barracks... and told them that to-morrow they would be sent to the front." That was a preliminary symptom of the advancing explosion of civil war. The July days were drawing near.
On the 21st of June a machine gun regiment in Petrograd resolved in general meeting: "In the future we will send forces to the front only when the war shall have a revolutionary character." In answer to the threat of disbandment, the regiment answered that it would not hesitate to disband "the Provisional Government and the other organisations which support it." Here again a threatening note far in advance of the Bolshevik agitation. The Chronicle of the Revolution remarks under date of June 23: "Detachments of the 2nd Army have occupied the .rst and second line trenches of the enemy. . . ." And right beside this: "At the Baranovsky factory (6,000 men) there were re-elections to the Petrograd Soviet. In place of three Social Revolutionaries, three Bolsheviks were elected."
By the end of the month the physiognomy of the Petrograd Soviet had already consid-erably changed. It is true that on June 20 the Soviet adopted a resolution of greeting to the advancing army. But with what majority ?-472 votes against 271, with 39 abstaining. That is a totally new correlation of forces, something we have not seen before. The Bolsheviks, together with the left groups of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, const.i.tute already two-.fths of the Soviet. This means that in the factories and barracks the opponents of the offensive are already an indubitable majority.
The Vyborg district soviet adopted a resolution on June 24 every word of which strikes like a heavy hammer: "We . . . protest against the adventure of the Provisional Govern-ment, which is conducting an offensive for the old robber treaties ... and we lay the whole responsibility for this policy on the Provisional Government and the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties supporting it." Having been pushed out after the February insurrec-tion into the back-yard, the Vyborg district was now con.dently advancing to the leading position. The Bolsheviks already completely dominated the Vyborg Soviet.
Everything now on the fate of the offensive-that is that is upon the trench soldiers. What changes had the offensive made in the consciousness of those who were supposed to carry it through? They had been irrepressibly longing for peace. But the rulers had succeeded to a certain degree-at least among a part of the soldiers and for a short time-in converting this very longing into a readiness to advance.
After the revolution the soldiers had expected from the new power a swift conclusion of peace, and had been ready until then to defend the front. The peace did not come. The soldiers resorted to attempts at fraternisation with the Germans and Austrians, partly under the in.uence of Bolshevik agitation, but chie.y seeking their own road to peace. But a drive had been opened against fraternisation from all sides. And moreover it was discov-ered that the German soldiers were still far from casting off obedience to their of.cers. Fraternisation, not having led to peace, dwindled rapidly.
There was on the front at that time a de facto armistice. The Germans availed themselves of it for a wholesale transfer of troops to the western front. The Russian soldiers noticed how the enemy trenches were emptied, machine guns removed, cannon carted away. Upon this rested the plan of the "moral preparation for the offensive." It was systematically suggested to the soldiers that the enemy was completely weakened, that he had no force left, that America was pressing upon him from the west, and that we had only to give a small push on our side, and the enemy front would crumple and we would have peace. The authorities did not believe this for a single minute, but they calculated that once having put its hand to the war machine, the army would not be able to let go.
Having failed of their goal, both through the diplomacy of the Provisional Government and through fraternisation, a part of the soldiers undoubtedly inclined to this third scheme: to give that push which would make the war crumble into dust. One of the front delegates to the congress reported exactly in this way the mood of the soldiers: "At present we have before us a thinned out German front; there are at present no cannon; and if we advance and overthrow the enemy then we will be close to the wished-for peace."
The enemy at .rst actually did seem extremely weak, and retired without accepting the battle, which incidentally the attackers were not able to give. But instead of crumbling. the enemy regrouped and concentrated his forces. Penetrating a few score kilometers inland, the Russian soldiers discovered a picture suf.ciently familiar to them in the experience of the preceding years: the enemy was waiting for them in new and reinforced positions. Here it became evident that although the soldiers had agreed to give a push in the direction of peace, they were not in the least desirous of war. Having been dragged into it by a combi-nation of force, moral pressure, and most of all deceit, they so much the more indignantly turned back.
"After an artillery .re unprecedented on the Russian side in its intensity and power," says the Russian historian of the World War, General Zayonchkovsky, "the troops occu-pied the enemy positions almost without loss and did not wish to go any farther. There began a steady desertion and withdrawal of whole units from their positions." A Ukrainian leader, Doroshenko, former commissar of the Provisional Government in Galicia, tells how after the seizure of the cities Calich and Kalush: "In Kalush there immediately occurred a frightful pogrom of the local population-but only of Ukrainians and Jews, they did not touch Poles. Some experienced hand guided the pogrom, pointing out with special care the local Ukrainian cultural and educational inst.i.tutions." The pogrom was partic.i.p.ated in by "the better cla.s.s of troops, the least depraved by the revolution"-those carefully picked for the offensive. But what still more clearly shows its face in this affair is the leadership of the offensive-the old czarist commanders, experienced organisers of pogroms.
On July 9 the committees and commissars of the 11th Army telegraphed the govern-ment: "A German attack begun on July 6 against the 11th Army front is developing into an overwhelming catastrophe. . . In the morale of the troops, only recently induced to move by the heroic efforts of a minority, a sharp and ruinous break has occurred. The ag-gressive .are-up is rapidly exhausting itself. The majority of the troops are now in a state of increasing disintegration. There is nothing left of authority or obedience. Persuasions and arguments have lost their force. They are answered with threats and sometimes with death."
The commander-in-chief of the south-western front, with the agreement of the com-missars and committees, gave an order to shoot those running away. On June 12 the commander-in-chief of the western front, Denikin, returned to his headquarters, as he says, "with despair in my heart, and with a clear consciousness of the complete collapse of the last .ickering hope for ... a miracle."
The soldiers did not want to .ght. The rear