Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The disastrous result of the offensive gave the Bolsheviks a strong weapon against the government whose authority was now at a very low level, and in July of 1917 they made an attempt to seize power by force. A regiment still loyal to the regime repulsed the attack, and the government was saved for the time being. Lenin and his disciple and collaborator, Grigori Zinoviev, went into hiding in Finland disguised as farm hands. Trotsky was arrested. The Soviet was partly purged of the more radical elements. Kerensky was triumphant, and the conservatives proclaimed him the savior of the Fatherland.
However, in time of revolution, the scenery is subject to rapid change. There soon came the final blow to the regime in what was called the Kornilov affair. Kornilov, a brave and capable officer, a strict disciplinarian, and a staunch monarchist, was at that time the commander-in-chief of the Army. It is not entirely clear whether Kerensky hinted to him or whether he guessed that Kerensky would like to get rid of the Bolsheviks who threatened the regime. Be that as it may, shortly after the suppression of the Bolshevik uprising, an adjutant of Kornilov came to see Kerensky and handed him a personal letter signed by the chief. In it, he expressed his willingness to lead his troops to Petrograd to restore order and to stabilize the regime by getting rid of his adversaries. It was clear to Kerensky, who was by no means a fool, that such a step, if successful, would mean not only the suppression of the Bolsheviks but eventually also the overthrow of his regime, the restoration of the monarchy, and White terror. The adjutant was arrested and promptly committed suicide. Kornilov was recalled and arrested. Later he escaped, and under the Bolsheviks he became the leader of the Cossacks in their fierce revolt against the regime.
The Bolsheviks claimed that Kerensky was in the plot, and from then on he became known in their press as the “Kornilovetz.” His authority was now at the lowest point, and he was attacked from all sides including his own party. A plot of assassination headed by his former assistant, the adventurer Sarinkov, was discovered in time to save his life.
It was at this time that my wife's younger brother, David, then a delegate to the Soviet from his division, came to live with us. It was his opinion--and he was well informed--that a revolution was imminent and civil war inevitable, and he urged my wife to leave with the children for the Ukraine with him to escort them. His argument was the more valid, for food became so scarce that even bread became unattainable except on the black market for an exorbitant price. So far, we still had bread because the baker next door was a patient of mine. I was giving him medicine for his asthma, and he in exchange would deliver--under cover of darkness and with great precaution--a loaf of bread every day. It was a precarious and risky way to get bread in the face of a hungry mob besieging the bakery, and we had very little to eat besides this insufficient amount of bread.
In view of the double menace of war and hunger, it was finally decided that the family, accompanied by David, must go to Belaya Tserkov where my wife's parents and brothers lived and food was plentiful. It was with great difficulty and only through the influence David exerted that we got tickets for the long trip.
The railroad car in which my family was to travel was crowded beyond capacity--with no seats available and not too much room for standing. I was told later that while my wife was standing holding my three-year-old daughter in her arms, the little one sighed and said, “It is so hard to go to the Ukraine!” This remark issued by a beautiful child netted my wife a seat for the time being.
The trip in the main was very difficult and prolonged, and it undermined the health of my wife and was exhausting for the children. As for the safety factor, it was a bitter disillusionment. It put my family into the lion's mouth, and it was with unusual luck that they were not devoured by the counter-revolution in the Ukraine, of which more later. Nobody, however, can be blamed for this disastrous plan which looked beneficial at the time.
Meanwhile, David's forecast was justified by developments in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, now in full domination of the Soviet, were evidently preparing for the final attack on the government. They forced the release of Trotsky. Lenin came back secretly and was busy laying plans for the overthrow of the regime. They began to train workers for combat. Deserters with firearms and other weapons formed battalions. Sailors came from Kronstadt and spearheaded the revolution, which broke out on October 25, 1917. On the eve of that day, armed revolutionary bands took possession of all government establishments including the arsenal, which gave them all the arms they needed. The command of the Peter and Paul Fortress enabled them to bombard the Winter Palace, which was feebly defended by the cadets of the engineering school and a battalion of women formed under Kerensky's regime.
Most of the members of the government were arrested. Kerensky fled in disguise, was kept in hiding for some time, and managed to escape to France and safety. Two ailing members were killed in the hospital by an unruly mob. In the main, however, there was comparatively little bloodshed in Petrograd, but in Moscow the Bolsheviks met with great resistance, the uprising being recorded by John Reed in his Ten Days that Shook the World.
A new regime came into being under the presidency of the indomitable Lenin, with Trotsky as commissar of foreign affairs. Stalin, a man of different aliases, with the real name of Josef Djugashvili, became commissar of minority nationalities. Old Bolshevik comrades-in-arms of Lenin’s exile occupied all other posts.
The new regime was confronted with numerous difficult problems. Chief among them was the question of war and peace. Trotsky's first task was an appeal to the belligerent countries for immediate peace without annexations or indemnity. Failing in this, he effected an armistice with Germany in December, 1917, toward the concluding of peace. Trotsky headed a peace delegation that met with the Germans in the town of Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky's formula for peace was met by the German General Hoffman with contempt and derision. It was the old “Valvictus,” formulated by a remote ancestor of Hoffman, the ferocious Hun Attila who invaded the Roman Empire and left it bare.
Trotsky refused to accept the harsh terms, which included ceding the Baltic States, part of Poland, and the independence of the Ukraine as a sovereign state. He came back “empty handed,” declaring, “No peace, no war.” Lenin attacked Trotsky furiously. “Do you expect,” he asked caustically, “to fight the Germans with revolutionary slogans just as the Monarchy tried to beat them with crosses and portraits of the Tsar? Not having any fighting force, we have no alternative; we must sacrifice space for time, and we must preserve the present regime to live for the day when we can put up a real fight.”
A new delegation was sent, with the exception of Trotsky, and a peace treaty, which Lenin refused to read, was signed. It resulted in the loss of nearly all territory gained since Peter the Great. The greatest blow to the Russian economy was the loss of the Ukraine, the “bread basket” of Russia, which was declared a quasi-independent country but actually was under domination of Germany. Finland promptly declared its independence followed by a Communist uprising, which was suppressed with unheard-of atrocities by General Mannerheim with the aid of the Germans who were now in uneasy proximity to Petrograd (renamed Leningrad). Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania followed the example of Finland and became independent of Russia. Finland under the new regime became a menace, and it was decided to move the capital to centrally located Moscow.
While the uneasy peace gave the government a breathing space, it turned to the fight of inner inimical forces. The bourgeoisie and the moderate socialists did not recognize the new government and tried to hamper the regime first by passive resistance and later by armed force. The former functionaries in the most vital governmental institutions left their jobs, destroying records and important documents, creating chaos and slowing the complex work of administrative machinery. The regime, which instituted a ration system, declared, “One who does not work shall not eat,” and most of the former employees returned to work, now being closely watched.
The delegates to the Constituent Assembly were overwhelmingly of the Social Revolutionary Party and antagonistic to the new regime. When the session convened in November 1917, it was opened under the presidency of Victor Tzernov, the leader of the party, and Lenin demanded the recognition of the new regime as a prerequisite to its very existence. When the Assembly denied such recognition, it was declared an unlawful, counter-revolutionary institution. The Bolshevik deputies headed by Lenin left the Assembly, leaving behind a few obstructionists and a couple of sailors toying with hand grenades. The remaining deputies took the hint and dispersed. The Constituent Assembly lasted exactly eight hours.
This act, followed by the suppression of the opposition press, left no legal way of combating the regime, and the Social Revolutionaries resorted to terror, the old weapon, in their fight against the Tsarist regime. The first victim was the head of the “Cheka,” corresponding to the old Tsarist “Okhrana” which kept watch and fought political enemies. One of the most active and eloquent Bolsheviks, Volodarsky, was also killed. There was a mass uprising in the town of Jaroslav where most of the Social Revolutionaries, among them my old friend Leo Gerstein, took refuge. The onslaught on this town by the Bolshevik forces was repulsed, and they resorted to bombing the city from the air. As a matter of self-preservation, the inert, peaceful population turned against the revolutionaries. Some fled the city; others were taken prisoner. Among the latter was Gerstein who committed suicide in the prison cell while awaiting trial.
In Moscow, the anarchists killed the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, with the aim of bringing the wrath of Germany upon the regime. Luckily, the Germans were at that time on the verge of defeat, and an apology satisfied them. In August 1918, Lenin was shot and seriously wounded by a young girl revolutionary, Dora Kaplan.
It was at that time that a reign of terror was established. All the fury of the regime turned against the inimical elements and the bourgeoisie who, though inactive, were considered counter-revolutionaries. Hostages were taken en masse from bourgeois elements, and it was rumored that some 300 of them were put on a leaky ship and sent to the bottom of the sea. The prisons were filled with real and imaginary enemies. Periodic searches of houses and even of persons on the street were made. The population was paralyzed by the reign of terror, and no other terroristic acts were recorded for a long time to come. With the enemies from within reduced to impotence, the Bolsheviks turned to the fight with the armed White forces. The Whites were aided by the former allies who occupied the most important Russian ports: Odessa on the Black Sea, Archangel on the White Sea, and Vladivostok on the Baltic.
The first armed mass uprising against the regime was that of the Don Cossacks, the privileged watch dogs of the deposed monarchy. They were led by the former chief of the army, Kornilov, who was killed in battle. The Cossack “letman” (Chief) Kaledin committed suicide, and the uprising was suppressed without great difficulty. A much greater menace was the army of General Denikin consisting mainly of former army officers with an admixture of members of the deposed bourgeoisie and a riff-raff of adventurers and marauders who specialized in pogroms and in robbing the population. From the Ukraine, of which Denikin became master after the defeat of the Germans, he moved into central Russia. His aim was to join the rebel army of Admiral Kolcak who moved for the same goal from Siberia. However, his army was defeated by Trotsky, who was at that time minister of war and chief of the army. Kolcak was stopped at the town of Tzaritzin, now Stalingrad, which was defended by Stalin with Vorosklov in command. General Youdenich, moving from the Baltic and aided by the French, was stopped and defeated at the gates of Leningrad.
The Czechoslovaks played a special, dangerous role. During the war they were pressed in great numbers into service by Austria who dominated their country. And, because they were reluctant to serve their hated oppressors, they surrendered en masse to the Russians. They volunteered to serve in the Russian army and were responsible for the initial success of Kerensky's unfortunate offensive. With the disintegration of the Russian army, they proclaimed their willingness to join the allies in their fight against Germany. The Bolsheviks refused them permission because it would look like a breach of the peace treaty with Germany. They took up arms and fought the Bolsheviks successfully, moving from the Volga toward Siberia and to Vladivostok where they hoped to embark and reach the theatre of war.
They reached the town of Ekaterinenburg in the Urals just a few days too late to save Nicolas and his family. The Tsar, his wife, three daughters and son-heir-to-the-throne were killed in a cellar in the town. Other members of the Romanov family, including the would-be regent, Great Duke Michail, were thrown into a quarry in the nearby town of Allapayev. The Czechoslovaks never reached Vladivostok in great numbers, but they put up a very costly fight against the regime.
For nearly three years, the fate of the new regime hung in the balance. At times, it was triumphant and seemingly firmly established. At other times its power sank to the lowest depths and a collapse seemed imminent. At such times, the bourgeoisie would again come to life, and provisional governments would appear in different parts of the country only to disappear again. That the regime, fighting against terrific odds, eventually became victorious was due to differences in the construction and operation of the two fighting forces--the Red army as opposed to the forces of the Whites.
The nucleus of the Red army, created by the Bolsheviks, consisted of class-conscious propagandized workers who supported the regime unhesitatingly and courageously. The peasants, who formed the mass of the army and who may never have heard of Marx, clearly knew one thing: the triumph of the Whites would mean to them the loss of the land, which was now theirs. Because of this, they supported the new government and fought the invaders full-heartedly even though they might have been critical of the new regime.
The Red army as a whole was a compact, well knit force, with iron discipline instituted by Trotsky and severe punishment for laxity and disobedience. Even the death penalty, which had been abolished by what Lenin called the “chicken-hearted,” meek elements of the new regime, was reinstated for desertion and treason. On the other hand, the core of the White army consisted of former Tsarist officers and dispossessed nobles who indulged in orgies of drinking and dueling in the best tradition of the Tsarist army. Discipline was lax and desertions by rank and file common. The Whites worked in separate units spread over the vast lands of Russia, and there was no real coordination. There was rivalry for supremacy among generals and no real desire to help any unit hard-pressed by their common enemy, the Reds.
In the territories occupied by the Whites, the land was taken away from the peasants who were flogged, raped, and atrociously treated. Thus, a situation came into being somewhat similar to the one created two decades later by the Nazi invaders. Even the peaceful population opposed to the new regime turned against the Whites. They denied the Whites food, hampered their progress in every conceivable way, and often as not fought them and drove them back.
The year 1920 was marked by the successive collapse of all hostile forces directed against the new regime. However, peace did not yet come to the country. The now-independent Poland, ruled by Pilsudski, the extreme nationalist and former terrorist par excellence, claimed some more Russian territory. Failing in this, he declared war on Russia. At first the Polish army was victorious and drove the Red army back before it could reach the gates of Kiev. Then their widespread army lost momentum, and the Russian forces under Trotsky drove them back and soon reached Warsaw, with great losses to the Polish army. France came to the aid of Poland and sent them a token force under General Veygand. The Russians retreated, and a peace treaty was concluded with no great benefit to any of the combatants. By the end of 1920, all military operations ended. The Bolsheviks had established their authority over practically all of Russia, which was now called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.).
With the pressure on the regime withdrawn, the failure of the anti-Bolsheviks and their allies was followed by the failure of Communism itself.