Chapter Five
Lenin had not wanted war with Germany in February 1918. Since his Christmas retreat in Finland his eyes had been focused on a renewed Red versus Green civil war, a civil war against the SR victors in the Constituent Assembly elections. The revival of hostilities completely changed the political agenda: for three months, from mid-February 1918 until mid-May 1918, civil war was shelved and a patriotic war in defence of the socialist fatherland began. Although within ten days of the resumption of hostilities, talks with the Imperial German government had resumed and a peace of sorts agreed, this did little to change the climate of war fever. The peace imposed at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 was so outrageous in its terms, and the Germans so unwilling even to limit their ambitions in Russia to its terms, that few people, other than Lenin, saw the treaty as offering anything other than the briefest of breathing spaces. The Russian Army were at once preparing to reopen the Eastern Front, and in that endeavour they were to be offered military support by the Allies.
This mood only changed in the first week of May 1918, when the Germans overthrew the democratic government in the Ukraine, installing in its place an aristocratic dictatorship, and advanced well beyond the originally agreed demarcation line with Russia. To many in Lenin’s government this presented the Bolshevik Party with the casus belli on which to end the breathing space peace achieved at Brest-Litovsk. For Lenin, who again got his way after a series of Central Committee meetings, it was the occasion to end talk of a patriotic war to defend the socialist fatherland and resume the Red versus Green civil war, reverting to the strategy of an assault on the SRs and the peasantry which he had been advocating since his Christmas retreat.
The Anti-German Mood
Several factors showed the strength of anti-German feeling after 18 February 1918 and the possibility of shelving the nascent civil war in the democratic front. After appealing to the people to defend the socialist fatherland – in the last days of February 10,000 volunteers joined the Red Army - the Bolsheviks released many of their political prisoners, including the editorial board of the right-wing SR daily Volya naroda, the spiritual home of the likes of Sorokin and the Navy Minister in the Second Coalition Government V.I. Lebedev. There was even renewed talk of political reconciliation; the military commission of the SR Party, dominated by right-wing SRs and for so long the focal point for those socialists keen to overthrow the Bolsheviks by force, even drew up plans to join the Red Guard in its defence of Petrograd. Chernov was even optimistic that joint action against Germany, backed by the Allies, might lead to the restoration of the Constituent Assembly. In local soviets throughout the country the Mensheviks and SRs made clear their willingness to co-operate with any Bolsheviks willing to continue the war.1
Even more important than the reaction of the SRs was the reaction of the Bolshevik Party itself. In the country at large, before the German advance started, a majority of local party organizations opposed the idea of a separate peace. The Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party was no exception to this mood: on 18 January it endorsed a resolution opposing the idea of a separate peace; it was only the renewal of the German offensive on 18 February that persuaded the Bolshevik group in the Petrograd Soviet to come out in favour of peace, although many of the district soviets and the factory committees were still even then in favour of a revolutionary war. On 26 February 1918 the Soviet Executive began a survey of 200 local soviets; by 10 March 1918 a majority (105–95) had come out in favour of a revolutionary war, although the soviets in the two capitals voted (Moscow on 3–5 March 1918 and Petrograd on 5 March 1918) to accept a separate peace. In the debates in the Moscow Soviet, the Mensheviks and Left SRs co-operated with pro-war Bolsheviks in trying to reject the peace.2
Little of this pro-war feeling was seen in public after Lenin’s government’s decision on 23 February 1918 to accept German peace terms and the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on 3 March 1918. At the Seventh Congress of the Bolshevik Party on 6–7 March 1918, the pro-war communists found themselves in a minority of the hurriedly assembled 70 delegates, only 46 of whom had voting rights. Nor was it in evidence at the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets called to ratify the treaty: when the communist group met prior to the Fourth Congress of Soviets, it voted 453–38 against a revolutionary war and in favour of a separate peace; at the Congress of Soviets itself, which met on 14–16 March 1918 and was attended by 1,232 delegates - 795 Bolsheviks, 283 Left SRs, 25 SRs, 21 Mensheviks and various other groups – the crucial peace vote saw 784 voting for, 261 against with 115 abstentions and 84 delegates not taking part.3 However, both assemblies witnessed extensive gerrymandering. Delegates’ reports in fact revealed strong pockets of resistance to Lenin’s peace policy from within his own party: on the Volga - in Saratov, Simbirsk and Samara – there were strong pro-war communist groups both in the party and soviet organization; the same was true in the Urals, where support for revolutionary war was particularly strong in Perm; and in the Ukraine and on the Don, where a German advance would spell the end of all the social achievements of the revolution. In all these regions, support for continuing partisan resistance was considerable.4
Even after the ratification of the treaty, pro-war communists continued to control important party organizations. Most significantly they retained control of the Moscow regional party committee until mid-May 1918, with other late pockets of support in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where the city party conference voted to support them on 28 April 1918, and in Yaroslavl where on 13 May 1918 the city conference did the same. The Urals, however, was the heartland of the pro-war communists. The Urals regional bureau and the Ekaterinburg party organization remained in their hands, endorsing calls for a revolutionary war well into April 1918, while a conference in Perm endorsed the idea of a revolutionary war as late as 12 May 1918. Significantly here they found themselves co-operating in opposing the treaty with any pro-war groups, including the SR and Menshevik contingents in the soviets. Such alliances were formed in Ufa, Perm and Vyatka, where the soviets firmly rejected the treaty; in Zlatoust, co-operation with the Mensheviks and SRs was particularly marked.5
The anti-German mood was also fostered by developments in the Ukraine. As Muraviev’s action had made clear, there at first seemed at least a chance that the Ukrainian Soviet Government might be able to retain control of some Ukrainian territory. The retreating government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was solidly pro-war in outlook and on the day Lenin sued for peace, 23 February 1918, resolved to adopt a scorched earth policy of partisan-based revolutionary war. Nearly two weeks later, on 6 March 1918, after the treaty had been signed, the official Ukrainian Soviet Government newspaper reaffirmed the opposition of both government and soviet to the peace and bitterly condemned as spurious all Lenin’s arguments in its favour; the same day the government of the self-proclaimed Donets Soviet Republic called for a continuing revolutionary war. Although on 8 March 1918, from its temporary base in Poltava, the Ukrainian Soviet Government was persuaded to recognize the peace signed between the Rada and the Central Powers on 9 February 1918, it did so only with the proviso that the Germans should not intervene in internal Ukrainian affairs by trying to overthrow the soviet government; since this was already happening, the recognition of the peace treaty was meaningless.
The remnants of the Ukrainian Red Army, still led by Antonov-Ovseenko, implemented the decision on partisan warfare. The army was broken up into small detachments which could operate behind the lines, and although this opened the way to German advance, it was an advance constantly harried by partisan units supported by the local population. As the Germans marched forward, so what remained of soviet power in the area went over to partisan warfare. On 28 March 1918 the Donets Soviet endorsed the strategy of revolutionary war; on 30 March 1918 the Bolsheviks in Sebastopol formed armed partisan detachments; and on 10 April 1918 the military revolutionary committee of the so-called Taurida Republic declared for revolutionary war. As the Bolsheviks fled before the German advance, their organization remained in pro-war hands. The Ukrainian Communist Party, at its foundation congress in Taganrog on 19–20 April 1918 was dominated by the pro-war group, and even after its leadership’s flight to Moscow on 21 April 1918 calls for revolutionary war continued to be heard.6
Unlike the Bolshevik Party, which was split on the issue of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Left SRs were totally behind the policy of revolutionary war. After the vote for peace at the Fourth Congress of Soviets, the Left SRs left Lenin’s government and established an Uprising Committee to run party operations in occupied areas. Their opposition to the peace was endorsed by the Second Left SR Party Congress held in Moscow on 17–25 March 1918. Well into May 1918 the Guardian correspondent Philips-Price noted how the Left SR delegates he had met at the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 would disappear ‘for weeks at a time’ on raiding parties into the Ukraine, where they would attack German troop positions at the head of bands of Ukrainian peasants. These raids had the tacit support of the Russian soldiers who guarded the demarcation line between Russia and the Ukraine, helping the participants slip across the line under cover of darkness.7
A key person in the reorganization of the Ukrainian armed forces for guerrilla warfare was the British military representative George Hill. It was in mid-February 1918 that he persuaded the Red Army commander in the Ukraine, Antonov-Ovseenko, to transfer to his command a cavalry division to be used as the core of a guerrilla unit. Thereafter the army took guerrilla operations against the Germans very seriously indeed, despite the formal existence of the peace treaty between the two states. On 18 March 1918 the Moscow Military District published a long report on how to organize and operate partisan brigades against the Germans. Long into April 1918, once Hill had retreated to Moscow, the authorities did nothing to prevent him continuing to organize groups of partisans fighting in the Ukraine. This ‘splendid band of irregular troops composed of ex-Russian officers’ would slip into the Ukraine, dress up in peasant clothes, spray German encampments with machine-gun fire and melt into the night; they would also deliver arms to those Ukrainian peasants prepared to resist German grain requisitioning brigades. It was only at the end of April 1918 that the Ukrainian communists were prevented from operating across the border from safe havens in Russia.8
Opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was tempered by the near universal belief that the treaty would not last long, and that very soon action against the German imperialists could resume. This was the clear tenor of a circular letter which the Bolshevik Central Committee sent to all party organizations on 22 March 1918. It urged them to take the initiative in forming the new Red Army, since ‘the peace that has been signed gives in fact only a breathing space after which we must prepare for the most bitter war with the imperialists of the whole world; the Germans are already showing their true colours, restoring the landowners in the regions they occupy’.9 Indeed, Lenin had been careful in the keen debates about whether or not to accept the peace treaty to sow the idea of an early resumption of military activity. At the crucial Central Committee meeting on 23 February 1918, when the decision to sign a separate peace was finally taken, Lenin got his way by the twin strategy of threatening to resign and proposing a resolution calling for the party to begin immediate preparations for a revolutionary war.10 By so doing he was encouraging the formation of the Red Army and the notion that the breathing space won by the treaty need not be a long one. This ambiguity enabled many unhappy with the decision, Trotsky in particular, to busy themselves with military preparations for the moment the breathing space was over.
This notion was reinforced by events at the Seventh Party Congress and the Fourth Congress of Soviets. As well as endorsing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Seventh Party Congress empowered the Central Committee to break any treaty and declare war on any imperialist power whenever the Central Committee thought a suitable moment had come. Then, at the Fourth Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik Foreign Affairs Commissar G.V. Chicherin made clear that the army was to be demobilized, not disbanded, and that the Germans had implicitly recognized that, for the Bolsheviks to retain order and enforce the treaty effectively, a large army would be needed. And, according to George Hill, who attended the congress, as Lenin told delegates ‘we have signed this treaty and we will keep it’, he winked; Hill may have imagined this, but he left the hall, as many other delegates apparently did, convinced that all was not lost and the anti-German campaign would resume once the army had been restored.11
The Allies and the Red Army
From the moment of the armistice with Germany in December 1917, Jacques Sadoul, a Bolshevik sympathiser on the French military mission, had reported that Trotsky and Lenin were interested in seeking Allied support in reorganizing the Russian Army, just in case the peace talks led nowhere. Nothing came of this original suggestion, although Sadoul repeated the idea when the announcement was made early in January 1918 establishing the Red Army. In the days immediately prior to the German resumption of hostilities, the French ambassador Joseph Noulens, the British consul Francis Lindley and the US ambassador David Francis repeatedly informed Trotsky that they would support Russia should the need arise, and in an interview for the newspaper Novaya zhizn’ Noulens looked forward to the prospect of improved relations with the government. It was, of course, precisely with this sort of development in mind that the British government had sent its diplomatic agent to Russia, Bruce Lockhart.12 On 18 February 1918, as the German advance began, Trotsky was full of bravado and told Lockhart that ‘even if Russia cannot resist she will indulge in partisan warfare to the best of her ability’. At that stage he clearly believed the Central Committee would decide to fight. As things turned out the Central Committee met twice on the 18th and on the second occasion Trotsky sided with Lenin in asking the Germans to resume negotiations. However, although this was communicated to the Germans on the morning of 19 February 1918, the Germans did not respond, and so Sadoul was eagerly received by Lenin and Trotsky on the 19th. He urged upon them a partisan war to the bitter end, retreating if necessary from Petrograd and Moscow; Trotsky appeared to have been convinced, but not Lenin.13
As it became clear that the Germans would continue to advance until they had occupied all the territory they claimed, the government resolved to resist. On 20 February 1918 a meeting took place in the War Ministry attended by the War Commissar N.I. Podvoiskii, the Navy Commissar P.E. Dybenko, the Commander-in-Chief Krylenko, and representatives of the General Staff. Krylenko reported on the catastrophic position at the front and the difficulties being experienced in mobilizing the population for the defence of Pskov; he bitterly noted the betrayal of the Polish Corps and the consequent fall of Minsk. Podvoiskii then raised the issue of tactics: should they, he asked, fight a partisan or positional war. Dybenko supported the idea of a partisan war enthusiastically, but the military advisors present pointed out that there was little evidence that this was developing spontaneously, and even if it were to develop it could never stop a modern army in full advance; the only thing to do was to retreat to a defensible line, and behind that try to build up reserves. The meeting decided to adopt a conventional positional war and as part of this defensive strategy GHQ was pulled back to Orel.14
Given this bleak scenario, it was hardly surprising that Trotsky turned to the Allies. Sadoul was much more up-beat than the Russian generals had been, and when he met Trotsky on 20 February 1918 immediately offered Allied help in the form of 40 staff officers, 40 field officers and 300 men, plus the Allied mission to Romania headed by General Berthelot which was in the process of being evacuated from that country after its surrender to the Germans. Trotsky asked for this proposal to be put in writing by ambassador Noulens, who duly obliged on the 21st. When Trotsky asked on 22 February 1918 for a detailed written explanation of what the Allies could do to help stem the German advance, this was rushed to him the same day.15 But the proposal for co-operation with the Allies caused dissension within Lenin’s government. When the proposal was discussed on 21 February 1918, the Left SR commissars objected to the principle of a socialist government receiving aid from the imperialist Allies; the issue was referred to the central committees of both parties. The Left SRs rejected the proposal, but the Bolsheviks were less dogmatic. On 22 February 1918 Trotsky put the idea to the Bolshevik Central Committee; it led to a bitter debate, with Bukharin leading the opposition and Trotsky finding support from Sokolnikov, and after the meeting, from Lenin. By just six votes to five Trotsky got his way; the Central Committee would accept Allied aid. With some justification Lockhart could report to London that the Bolsheviks were preparing to fight ‘the most bitter partisan war’, retreating if necessary to the Urals.16
On 23 February 1918 Trotsky and General Niessel, the French military attaché, duly drew up plans for a harrying retreat; but on the same day the Germans presented new terms to the Bolshevik government. As well as further territorial concessions, the Russians were called upon to demobilize the Russian Army and Red Guard, disarm all warships, restore the 1904 trade treaty and pay an indemnity. Lenin, Trotsky, Krylenko and the leading generals immediately held an emergency meeting: the generals argued that Petrograd would fall if the German advance continued, and the Petrograd–Moscow railway would soon be cut. After some recrimination about the deployment of artillery in the fighting so far – Krylenko said not enough was available, while the generals argued that it had been poorly used – Lenin concluded that further resistance was impossible. The Central Committee voted to accept what amounted to a German ultimatum; the proposal was put to the Soviet Executive on the night of 23 February 1918 and endorsed at 5 a.m. on the 24th. Sokolnikov then set off for Brest-Litovsk to finalize the Russian surrender.17
However, the Germans were determined to keep up their offensive until Sokolnikov actually arrived in Brest-Litovsk and signed the revised treaty. Thus, even after the decision had been taken in principle to accept the German ultimatum, there was a danger that the Germans would reject the Russian acceptance. Indeed, for a moment the military situation improved, with the Red Army retaking Pskov on 25 February 1918 and holding it for a couple of days. There was a certain irony about the reconquest of Pskov, given the hostility of GHQ to partisan operations. This was the area where the First Partisan Brigade had been formed; indeed on 26 February 1918 soviets were called upon to form partisan brigades and on 27 February 1918 successful partisan operations were being reported from behind enemy lines not only in Pskov but particularly in Minsk, operations which reached their peak on 2 March 1918. The downing by a partisan group of a German airplane caused particular excitement.18
During these continuing hostilities, while the peace treaty was far from secure, Lenin’s government remained in constant contact with the Allies. Lockhart visited Lenin on 29 February 1918, while Sokolnikov was still en route to Brest-Litovsk having been trapped by the bitter fighting in Pskov. Lenin made it clear the Bolsheviks could only co-operate with the Allies if they were not treated as a ‘cat’s paw’. He went on:
So long, therefore, as the German danger exists, I am prepared to risk a co-operation with the Allies, which should be temporarily advantageous to both of us … As a result of this robber peace Germany will have to maintain larger not fewer forces on the East. As to her being able to obtain supplies in large quantities from Russia, you may set your fears at rest. Passive resistance - and the expression comes from your country - is a more potent weapon than an army that cannot fight.19
On 1 March 1918, during the final days before the signing of the treaty on 3 March 1918, the Bolshevik government suddenly received a message requesting a train to bring its negotiators back to Petrograd. Fearing the collapse of talks and a renewed invasion Lenin issued a call for general resistance; as part of this he authorized the soviet in Murmansk, where the Allies had large quantities of stores, to co-ordinate its operations with the Allied military mission there. The same day he had further talks with Lockhart, who reported back: ‘there are still considerable possibilities of organizing resistance to Germany’. On 2 March 1918 Lockhart told London that, whatever happened, peace would only hold for ‘a few weeks’.20
No sooner had the peace been signed, than the Bolshevik government began constructing a new army. On 4 March 1918 the Petrograd Defence Staff was converted into the Supreme Military Council, chaired by Trotsky, whose membership was expanded on 30 March 1918 to include a representative of the Left SRs. It approved a campaign plan for 1918 which envisaged a fighting retreat behind the Volkhov river, should there be a new German advance, and the establishment of ‘screens’ to protect the two capitals. The plan envisaged a conventional army of 1,500,000 men, formed by conscription with no elected officers and military specialists brought in from the old army. Many in the Bolshevik government were unhappy with such a conventional approach, and were more in favour of a militia army; in the end the generals had to settle for a conventional army of 1,000,000 men, with the question of military specialists from the old army left open. Trotsky’s support for a conventional army put him at loggerheads with his natural allies in the anti-German camp, since most pro-war communists favoured partisan brigades and militia units, and were consistently hostile to the idea of a traditional conscripted army. For all the hostility to military specialists, they were used extensively; on 31 March 1918 Admiral D.V. Verderevskii, the Navy Minister in the Third Coalition Government, was appointed to the Supreme Military Council.21
The Allies continued to offer help in this process. Talks between Lockhart and Trotsky continued throughout March 1918. On the 7th the British suggested that Commander Locker-Lampson, who in August 1917 had tried to put his armoured car detachments at Kornilov’s disposal, should be asked to return to Russia; on the 13th Lockhart attached Captain Hicks, a member of his mission, to the Supreme Military Council;22 on the 16th Trotsky and Lockhart travelled to Moscow together, and thereafter these ad hoc decisions began to be systematized. Lockhart held daily meetings with General J.G. Lavergne of the French military mission and representatives of the Italian and American military; at these sessions Allied aid to the Red Army constantly topped the agenda. Trotsky was only too willing to respond. On 20 March 1918 Sadoul persuaded Trotsky to ask Lavergne formally to collaborate in organizing the Red Army and request that 40 Allied officers be attached to it; by 26 March 1918 these officers had been selected.23
One of these was George Hill who found himself appointed to the post of Inspector of Aviation, Trotsky’s personal advisor on aviation matters. This was a wide-ranging brief: because of the need to evacuate air planes and spare parts, Hill served on the army’s evacuation committee, charged with moving crucial military equipment well to the rear of enemy lines. But he also helped the army establish an Intelligence Section, charged with identifying German units on the Russian front and keeping all German troop movements under observation; this invaluable information was reported straight back to the War Office in London, as was the other success of the Intelligence Section, breaking German codes and establishing a counter-espionage system to spy on German secret service operations in Petrograd and Moscow.24
The first success of these Allied efforts was to persuade Trotsky to turn Lockhart’s informal liaison group into a proper committee of Allied military personnel to advise him. At the first meeting of this advisory committee, Trotsky duly made a formal request for help, Lavergne accepted the request, and it was agreed that General Berthelot’s former Romanian mission should remain in Moscow.25 This was a period of almost unbounded optimism for the small team of military advisors surrounding Lockhart. On 21 March 1918 he reported to London that war with Germany was ‘unavoidable’. On 25 March 1918 the Bolshevik Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin told Lockhart that when war with Germany resumed, the Bolsheviks would even welcome Allied support from Japan, something Lockhart confirmed to London on 28 March 1918 with the news that Trotsky himself had stated he had no objection to Japanese troops being part of an Allied force supporting the Red Army in a renewed conflict with Germany.26 The attachment of Berthelot’s mission to Trotsky was part of an ever more grandiose scheme, drawn up at Trotsky’s request, which would have involved 500 French officers being used to re-establish order in the army, and 300 British officers performing the same function in the navy.27
Lockhart, as the diplomatic agent of the British government, was fully empowered to engage in such politically sensitive matters. The others involved in the Berthelot scheme were military men, and the involvement of so many French officers in such an unusual venture needed the endorsement of French diplomats and politicians. The French ambassador Noulens had left Petrograd for Finland at the end of February 1918 and only got to know about the activities of Lavergne when stories circulating among the French community in Moscow began to be reported to Paris and then forwarded to him in Finland. He was determined to reassert his political authority over the military mission as soon as he returned to Russia on 29 March 1918, basing himself with the majority of the diplomatic corps in Vologda, a town whose strategic position was ideal – with railway connections to both Archangel in the North and Vladivostok in the East – should a German advance lead to the fall of Moscow.
Noulens put an immediate freeze on the talks with Trotsky. He felt Lavergne had acted without awaiting proper authorization, particularly in assigning three French officers to Trotsky as technical advisors. These officers were withdrawn, the Berthelot scheme stopped, and Berthelot instructed to return to France; but Noulens did not want a complete break in this potentially fruitful relationship with Trotsky. He called a high level meeting with the military representatives in Vologda on 3 April 1918 to discuss under what conditions military aid to Trotsky might continue. Some of these, like the willingness to accept Japanese help, the Bolsheviks had already accepted; the real stumbling block was the question of discipline in the restored army. Noulens wanted to link aid to discipline, in particular he wanted to see the end of the commissar system and the reimposition of officers’ insignia. The Guardian’s Philips-Price soon got wind of the fact that discipline was the stumbling block in these talks.28
Noulens held further talks in Vologda on 9 April 1918. Those present accepted that Trotsky was prepared to envisage Japanese intervention, and that he could hardly be expected to make a public statement in favour of the Allies until the very moment the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was repudiated; however, Trotsky’s assurances about discipline were still considered too vague. Noulens wanted to stop the talks with Trotsky at this point and called for the closure of the French military mission, but he was persuaded to back down. Clarifications were sought from Trotsky and discussed further on 11 April 1918, but Trotsky’s views were still not acceptable to Noulens and the French military mission was disbanded on 16 April 1918.29 For Noulens it was all very simple: the Germans were themselves violating the Brest-Litovsk Treaty by advancing well beyond the originally agreed demarcation line in the region of Kursk and Voronezh; this gave the Russians a casus belli and they should respond by forming a disciplined army which would fight. He said almost as much at a rather undiplomatic press conference in Vologda on 18 April 1918 when he talked publicly of the sort of joint anti-German action with the Allies which he and his military advisors had been discussing with Trotsky in private for several weeks.
Noulens did not see his press conference as breaking off relations with the Bolsheviks, but simply as raising the stakes. Indeed, the statement caused little stir in Moscow until after the arrival of the German ambassador Count Wilhelm Mirbach on 26 April 1918; it was Mirbach who insisted that the Bolshevik Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin request Noulens recall on the 29th. The press conference was given chiefly to opposition papers, and the SRs probably understood the message correctly when they concluded that it was a message to them, to warn them that their suspicions were correct and that the Allies were preparing to do a deal with the Bolsheviks.30 For, from mid-April 1918 onwards relations between Trotsky and Lockhart became particularly close. Despite the intense debate about the future of the French military mission, on 13 April 1918 Trotsky asked Lockhart if another member of his staff, Colonel Boyle, could be assigned to administer the railway system; he had already distinguished himself by sorting out the Moscow railway network in the days before the armistice in December 1917. Then, on 22 April 1918, the British Foreign Minister Balfour instructed Lockhart to make one last effort to win Trotsky round.31
The Allied Mission to the Bolsheviks
Both at the time, and in his memoirs, Lockhart was concerned that the British government was not taking the prospect of collaboration with the Bolsheviks seriously. This was not in fact the case, but communications between Moscow and London were at times so haphazard that telegrams could often take five days or more to arrive. The British government had at first been deeply divided about the status of Lockhart’s mission: the cabinet was at loggerheads from 21 January 1918 to 7 February 1918 over whether to allow Lockhart to make serious contact with the Bolsheviks, or whether he should concentrate his efforts on the cossacks in the Don. After strong intervention from the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Balfour was victorious and thereafter the cabinet backed Lockhart.32 British policy was clear: it was working towards a Bolshevik invitation to land an Allied force in Russia to resuscitate the Eastern Front.
At first the British Cabinet was obsessed with the idea of Japanese intervention, something that had been mooted even before the Bolshevik seizure of power. This was at once put to Lockhart, who expressed his reservations on 4 March 1918, and continued to be seen as an essential element in any mission for a further fortnight until on 21 March 1918 the cabinet recognized that the real question was not so much the Japanese as ‘whether there was any prospect of the Bolsheviks really making good their intentions of renewing the contest’; and Lockhart’s telegrams on this seemed encouraging.33 From early April 1918, the British government worked on the assumption that some sort of deal with Trotsky could be done. The ambassador in Peking was told firmly on 7 April 1918 to do nothing to encourage the anti-Bolshevik movement of the cossack commander G.M. Semenov, then operating in Siberia. Semenov’s force, the ambassador was told, was only small and could easily cause unnecessary complications since ‘at the present moment we are endeavouring, with some appearance of success, to induce the Bolshevik government at Moscow not only to renew fighting against the Germans but even to accept Allied, including Japanese co-operation and assistance’.34 On 9 April 1918 the message to the ambassador in Tokyo was the same, there was ‘real hope’ that Trotsky would co-operate. Thus on 10 April 1918 Lockhart was told ‘we are quite ready to discuss Allied intervention on the basis agreed between the military representatives and Trotsky’.35 At the cabinet meeting of 12 April 1918 it was agreed that the only thing to do was to seek agreement with Trotsky via Lockhart, and on 15 April 1918 Lockhart was told that Trotsky had until the end of the month to show himself to be serious.36
Trotsky was indeed serious. In response to the message of 10 April 1918, Lockhart forwarded to London on 13 April 1918 an invitation to the Allies from Trotsky asking them to put in writing what military help and what guarantees the British could give.37 On 14 April Captain Garstin, the senior British officer in Moscow, assembled the Allied military representatives and proposed the following terms:
1. renewal of the alliance with Russia;
2. guarantee not to interfere with Russian internal affairs;
3. loyal collaboration with government of soviets;
4. guarantee of integrity of Russian territory;
5. allies shall declare that operating forces will cross Siberia solely in order to reach war zone;
6. troops shall be Allied and not only Japanese;
7. Russia shall be helped on Murman and Archangel railways;
8. co-operation shall be given to Armenia against Turks if desirable.
This proposal was forwarded by Lockhart on 15 April 1918, received in London on 20 April 1918 and discussed in cabinet on 22 April 1918. After some debate that paragraph four might tie Britain to the impossible task of recovering all the territory Russia had lost, it was agreed to send Lockhart the following reply:
I think suggestions of military representatives may well serve as a basis for discussion. As far as HMG are concerned, two, four, and six can be accepted as they stand. We have always considered Russia as our ally, and word ‘re-affirmation’ should therefore be substituted for ‘renewal’ in one. As three stands at present, it might in certain conceivable circumstances conflict with two. I therefore prefer ‘loyal co-operation with Russian authorities against common enemy’. In order to give requisite military latitude, five should be amended as follows: ‘Allies should declare that operating forces will cross Siberia solely for the purpose of carrying out military operations against the enemy.’ If by help on Murman and Archangel railways aid given by ships and by marines landed from them is meant, seven can remain unchanged; but employment of troops must necessarily be subject to military exigencies, as must also acceptance of eight. We are, however, most anxious to help in both cases.38
While this exchange of telegrams was underway, Trotsky was keen to get the talks going and clarify their parameters. In a conversation with Lockhart, summarized to London on 19 April 1918, Trotsky wanted to know if he would be talking to the British alone or the Allies as a whole, and where they would be held. He felt Noulens’ attitude was unhelpful, and therefore suggested that the talks should not be held in Vologda; since Mirbach was about to arrive in Moscow, time was pressing and he needed to know when the Allies could act.39
Lockhart was not starry-eyed about the chances of the talks resulting in the Allies being formally invited to send a force to Russia. On 21 April 1918 he telegraphed that there was a ‘fair chance’ of such an invitation from Trotsky being received, ‘although I am not so optimistic as the French or Italian generals on this point’. The enthusiasm of the French military representative Lavergne was tempered by the continuing caution of Noulens, who felt that the sending of a mission should not be dependent on a formal invitation from the Bolsheviks; the Allies should force the issue by landing anyway. A visit by Lavergne to Vologda did nothing to soften Noulens’ position, but when Lockhart, Lavergne and the Italian and American representatives met on 29 April 1918, they re-affirmed their support for the pro-Trotsky policy despite Noulens’ views. Lockhart had reassured London the previous day that Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin was ‘as anxious as ever’ to reach an agreement, despite the arrival in Moscow on 26 April 1918 of the German ambassador Mirbach.40
British enthusiasm for the enterprise soon brought Noulens into line. On 5 May 1918 Lockhart reported ‘much improved’ relations with Vologda; Lavergne had told him that Noulens had come round to support the views of the Allied military representatives. Ironically this happened just when Balfour himself was having last minute doubts about the enterprise: he asked Lockhart on 6 May 1918 if he was sure of Trotsky’s attitude; could not more have been done to organize guerrilla warfare, destroy railways and the like, if the Bolsheviks really were in earnest. But the British decision had been made. Thus the British cabinet minister Lord Milner could write to the ambassador in Paris on 9 May 1918: ‘it is desirable to work as well as we can with the Bolshevik government now in power’. A week later, on 15 May 1918, he informed the ambassador in Washington:
The whole recent progress of events tends to show that the Bolshevik government are prepared to accept our intervention, though they cannot give a formal invitation, while if the Allies hesitate much longer the position of Germany will be so strong that not only will intervention be useless but will be opposed.41
The Czechoslovak Legion
The problem for the British was this: what practical support could the British give the Bolsheviks, given the situation on the Western Front. It was the shortage of available troops that had prompted Allied planners to premise all schemes for a strengthened Eastern Front on the idea that Japanese troops could be used. Although Japan was an ally of Russia, Britain and France, the experience of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5 was not easily forgotten, and the Allies’ new ally in the First World War, the United States, was very wary of involving their Pacific rivals in any Russian venture. All the talk of using Japanese troops as the basis for an intervention force foundered on the rocks of the US President’s refusal to countenance the idea; Japanese imperial ambitions in the region were all too clear. In the absence, then, of a Japanese intervention force, where were sufficient troops to be found to send to Russia? On 17 April 1918 the outline of a plan began to emerge in London. Balfour pointed out in cabinet that it might be possible to persuade Trotsky to allow the Czechoslovak Legion to be moved from Kursk, where it had retreated after the fall of the Ukraine, to a new deployment in the Archangel and Murmansk regions: the idea was favourably received, partly because such approval on Trotsky’s part would go some way to persuade those cabinet members who still doubted his ‘honesty of purpose with regard to the Allies’. The same cabinet meeting welcomed a report that the British naval attaché had been asked by Trotsky to secure British help with the Black Sea Fleet. Thus on 20 April 1918 Lockhart was informed that the Czechoslovak Legion was to be used in Archangel, Murmansk and the ‘railways leading to those parts’, and Trotsky’s agreement to this should be sought.42
Balfour’s proposal concerning the Czechoslovak Legion did not come out of the blue, and Trotsky’s acceptance of it was almost certain; the fate of the Czechoslovak Legion had been on the agenda in London, Paris and Moscow for over a month. Back on 15 March 1918 the Czechoslovak National Council in Moscow informed the Bolshevik Commissar of Nationalities responsible for such matters, Stalin, that they planned to recruit a second legion from prisoners of war in Siberia; Stalin endorsed the idea and pointed out that it was important to strengthen Red Army forces behind the Urals since conflict with the Central Powers was inevitable. Stalin’s sympathy for the Czechoslovaks was shared by Trotsky. On 19 March 1918 he informed the Russian Supreme Military Council that he was disappointed to hear the news that the Czechoslovak Legion had decided to leave Russia – after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Leaving Russia seemed the only way to fight the Central Powers, and the Czechoslovak Legion was resolved to depart via the same route taken in March 1918 by Masaryk, across the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok. On 20 March 1918 Trotsky informed Sadoul that he hoped the Czechoslovaks would change their minds and not only stay in Russia but become the nucleus of a reorganized Red Army; on this issue he clashed with Lenin who wanted the Czechoslovaks to leave since the presence of this Allied force on Russian soil might put the peace treaty with Germany in jeopardy. In this clash with Lenin, Trotsky emerged victorious: on 20 March 1918 he stopped all Czechoslovak train movements in a move designed to keep the legion in Russia to serve alongside the Red Army and prevent a precipitate departure for France.43
At the same time in Britain and in France pressure was put on the Czechoslovaks to stay put. On 21 March 1918 Marshall F. Foch, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, suggested the Czechoslovak Legion should stay in Russia if they so wished, and the same day the British Foreign Office prepared a memorandum for the War Office on the role and usefulness of the Czechoslovak Legion. The problem was not the attitude of the Allies but the unwillingness of the Czechoslovaks themselves to stay in Russia. When on 22 March 1918 General Lavergne had talks with the Czechoslovak National Council, its leaders made clear their refusal to allow the Legion to stay and insisted on returning to France as soon as possible. Rebuffed in Moscow, the Allies turned to the Moscow Czechoslovaks’ superiors in Paris. On 1 April 1918 the British and the French asked the Paris-based Edward Benes, Masaryk’s deputy within the Czechoslovak nationalist movement, if he would agree to the Czechoslovak Legion staying in Russia to help Trotsky; but the following day he too refused, conceding only that those Czechoslovak soldiers stationed to the west of the Urals could be evacuated to France via Archangel if this proved more convenient.44
Thus when the cabinet took its decision on 17 April 1918 to make the Czechoslovak Legion the core of any intervention force sent to support Trotsky - a decision communicated to Lockhart on 20 April 1918 – it had only secured an agreement for some Czechoslovak soldiers to leave the country via Archangel, not an agreement that they would secure those railway lines against the Germans in renewed fighting. Pressure on the Czechoslovaks therefore continued and the editor of the Times, Henry Wickham Steed, a long-time supporter of the Czechoslovak cause, was sent to Paris for private talks with Benes; as a result on 22 April 1918, the same day the cabinet endorsed formal contacts with Trotsky, it was agreed that orders would be sent to those Czechoslovaks west of the Urals, some 45,000 men, instructing them to move to Archangel in order to resist any attempts by the Germans to advance into Russia. This order was immediately sent to Lavergne, who the following day informed the French liaison officer with the Czechoslovak Legion,’ Arsene Verge, that the British and the Bolsheviks wanted the legion moved north.45
However, the Czechoslovak soldiers in Russia were still unwilling to co-operate. On 30 April 1918 the cabinet was informed that both divisions of the Czechoslovak Legion were refusing to move to the northern ports; the following day it was told that while one Czechoslovak division was determined to leave Russia via Siberia, the other could still be persuaded to move to the locations originally planned for them on the Murmansk and Archangel railways. The reality, however, was slightly different. When on 6 May 1918 the cabinet asked Balfour to approach Trotsky via Lockhart with a view to concentrating one of the Czechoslovak divisions in Archangel and Murmansk, it was unaware that agreement with the Czechoslovak soldiers on the ground had still not been reached. It was only on 7 May 1918 that Noulens held talks in Vologda with the leaders of the Czechoslovak National Council and informed them of the plan, mentioning only the ‘possibility’ that they would be stationed to defend Archangel.46
Believing the support of the Czechoslovak Legion to be secured, the cabinet finally felt able on 11 May 1918 to endorse the proposal that Trotsky should be supported by sending a British military mission to Archangel to be led by General F.C. Poole.47 Poole had only just returned from Russia where he had served as head of the British military equipment section in Petrograd. He was keen to return to Russia to take charge of the many stores still in northern ports and on 1 May 1918 wrote to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff asking to be sent on the next sailing to Archangel. Within the week he had been appointed head of a mission to Russia, to return with Francis Lindley, the former British consul in Petrograd; the two men were soon discussing the demarcation fine between political and military authority while lesser officials planned the details. The services of Hill and Garstin, both well connected with the Bolsheviks, were allocated to Poole, as was Boyle with whom Poole was on good terms and who had established excellent relations with the Bolsheviks. In essence the plan was this: Poole would take command of the 20,000 Czechoslovaks and 3,000 Serbs believed to be making their way to Archangel and Murmansk. The precise deployment of these troops would depend on Poole’s own judgement after he had had talks in Moscow with Lockhart; however, the cabinet had a very clear outline of what was wanted. On 13 May 1918 it suggested that, having secured Archangel, Poole should ‘consider how far he could work up from Archangel towards Vologda with the forces at his disposal’.48
The Czechoslovaks were absolutely central to the operation. After Poole had set sail on 17 May 1918, his final instructions dated 18 May 1918 stressed this. They made clear he would:
carry out the organization, training and operations of all fighting men of whatever nationality in Russia who are allotted to Great Britain or who volunteer for this purpose … [but his immediate duty was] the organization and operations of the Czechoslovaks and other contingents now en route to Archangel for the defence of the northern ports.49
And yet, even as he weighed anchor, the cabinet was suddenly made aware of the uncertainty as to whether it really had persuaded the Czechoslovaks to deploy to the north. On 17 May 1918 Lord Milner told the cabinet that he doubted whether the scheme would work because of the Czechoslovaks’ unwillingness to co-operate; the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, no doubt informed by Noulens of his talks with the Czechoslovak National Council which had started on 7 May 1918, had contacted Lord Milner before the cabinet meeting to warn him. Another cabinet minister, Lord Cecil, was deputed to hold further talks with Benes, and a week later, on 23 May 1918, the cabinet was reassured to learn that Clemenceau would publicly endorse the agreement that Czechoslovak troops would be used at Murmansk and Archangel. By then, however, the situation in Russia had totally changed.50
A Government of Democratic Concentration
The endorsement of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty at the Fourth Congress of Soviets in mid-March 1918 had left the Bolsheviks in government alone. During the next six weeks their isolation began to be increasingly felt. This was seen most obviously in the reaction of the Left SRs, for although the Left SRs left the government, they did not leave the Soviet Executive and its constituent bodies. In particular they still controlled the peasant section of the soviet; from this power base the Left SRs were soon mounting an electoral challenge to the Bolsheviks, for the Fourth Congress of Soviets had agreed to hold fresh soviet elections during the spring and early summer in preparation for the next ordinary Congress of Soviets due to be held in July. Immediately after the Fourth Congress an election campaign began for all provincial, district and town soviets; but the Left SRs were not the only beneficiaries of this. The fluidity of the political situation convinced both the Mensheviks and the SRs that the time had come when political activity in the soviets could force Lenin from power; with the Left SRs and even pro-war communists as potential allies, nothing seemed impossible. So in March 1918 both the Menshevik and SR parties resolved to work within the soviets to defeat the Bolsheviks and recall the Constituent Assembly. A period of what might be termed semi-pluralism began in Russia’s political life.51
As soviet elections were held in April and May 1918 throughout provincial Russia, the Bolsheviks triumphed only in Moscow. Elsewhere they suffered electoral reverse after electoral reverse, making their grasp on power shaky in the extreme. In the central industrial region – such towns as Kaluga, Orekhovo Zuevo, Kostroma, Tver, Tula, and Yaroslavl – the Bolsheviks were defeated by the Mensheviks; and in the Volga, Urals and North - such towns as Vologda, Archangel, Saratov, Nyzhnyi-Novgorod, Samara, Izhevsk, Syzran, and Ufa – the Mensheviks and SRs acted in coalition and won the elections. Singly or in alliance they were victorious in all recorded provincial and town elections.52 This weakening of popular support for the Bolshevik Party in the provinces was bad enough, but their popular support was also ebbing away in Petrograd, the cradle of the revolution. There, as the factories closed in spring 1918, all the Bolshevik administration could offer was six weeks severance pay and soup kitchens; labour exchanges simply gave out rail passes to enable workers to leave Petrograd. Between January and April 1918 nearly 60 per cent of Petrograd’s once swollen workforce found themselves on the streets, and in the key war industries of metallurgy and chemicals the figure was as high as 75 per cent. Even for those in work life was hard since supplies of basic foods had sunk dramatically. In such conditions workers’ factory councils were practically powerless and the Bolsheviks, in the face of repeated demands for the re-election of soviet deputies, could hardly be confident of victory.53
During the spring of 1918 the Mensheviks and SRs were able to construct a powerful workers’ organization of their own in Petrograd, to both rival the Petrograd Soviet and pressurize it into calling early elections. Their Assembly of Petrograd Factory Delegates was first formed during the chaotic attempts to evacuate Petrograd’s key industries as the German advance on the city began on 18 February 1918; by 13 March 1918 the assembly had held its first conference, followed by five more meetings and a second conference on 3 April 1918. Founded by metal workers, it was always dominated by representatives from the 26 big metal-working plants of the capital, formerly engaged in defence work which by spring 1918 were under the greatest threat of redundancy since the number employed in these plants was only half the January 1917 level. Throughout March and April 1918 the assembly built up a power base in the Putilov plant, the Obukhov factory, the Old Lessner factory, in short the factories famed in 1917 for their revolutionary activism. The Bolsheviks, uncertain how to respond, allowed the assembly and the Petrograd Soviet to coexist; by the end of April, the Petrograd Mensheviks could be satisfied with the results of their efforts for, together with the SRs, they had the potential to challenge the Bolsheviks for the leadership of the working class. By mid-May 1918 the assembly comprised 200 delegates representing 100,000 workers or two-thirds of employed workers. One of its leaders was Likhach, an SR who had played a leading role in the various committees preparing for the opening of the Constituent Assembly.54
If workers’ support for the Bolsheviks was evaporating by the spring of 1918, the same was true of the Baltic sailors, so long a source of radicalism in 1917. Since the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty put a huge question mark over the future of the Baltic Fleet, it was not long before the sailors began to renew contacts with the Mensheviks, SRs and their assembly. In Kronstadt the Bolshevik share of the seats in the newly elected soviet shrank from 131 to 53; in mid-April 1918, at a Congress of Sailors in Moscow, speeches critical of the Bolsheviks were heard; and at a conference of sailors in Petrograd held at the same time the denunciations of Lenin and Trotsky were even more vociferous. Simultaneously the SRs were developing close links between their members in the Obukhov factory and the sailors stationed at the nearby mining unit of the Baltic Fleet; these became the base for an effective SR armed militia run by the party’s military commission. On 9 May 1918 the Baltic Fleet’s mining unit made a public call for the abolition of the Petrograd Soviet, the resignation of the Bolshevik government, and the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly; this call was the main agenda item when the Baltic Fleet held its conference in Petrograd on 11 May 1918 and invited a delegation from the assembly to attend. When the Red Army held a conference in Petrograd at precisely the same time, the Bolsheviks suffered further embarrassment. A Left SR was elected chairman, and the conference voted that its decisions would be binding on the soviet authorities. Angry soldiers demanded: ‘why is there so much hubbub against reconvening of the Constituent Assembly?’. It was not the Constituent Assembly people should be afraid of, they added, but the threat of a German sponsored counter-revolution.55 The very social classes that had supported the Bolsheviks in October 1917 were turning against them in May 1918.
The steady erosion of the Bolshevik power base clearly put a question mark over how much longer the Bolshevik Party could remain in power. But civil war was not on the agenda in the first week of May, far from it. The Mensheviks, SRs and Left SRs, separately but sometimes together, were not engaging the Bolsheviks in armed struggle but destroying them through democratic struggle in the soviets. Nor was their purpose necessarily to supplant the Bolsheviks; what the opposition parties all had in common was a rejection of the Brest-Litovsk peace. The most likely outcome of the growing opposition strength was the overthrow of Lenin and the formation of a coalition socialist government committed to war. That certainly was what Allied representatives were working for.
Far from encouraging opposition parties to take up arms against the Bolsheviks during April and May 1918, Lockhart and his team were trying to ensure that the opposition would support a Bolshevik government committed to the war, and should the logic be followed through, join a coalition administration. It was at the end of March 1918, on the 28th and 30th, that Lockhart first reported he had made contact with opposition groups to see how they would respond to Allied support for the Bolsheviks. He felt he had persuaded them to co-operate since their main worry about the proposal seemed to be not the Bolsheviks but the possible involvement of too many Japanese troops in any Allied force. Lockhart continued his talks with all opposition parties between 7 and 21 April 1918,56 while from London ambassadors were contacted with the same message. The British had least luck with Semenov in Siberia. When asked to co-operate with the Bolsheviks in resisting Germany, Semenov point blank refused. On 13 April 1918 the Foreign Office was informed by the local British consul that Semenov had made clear ‘that in no case will he or his organization co-operate with any Bolshevik-controlled military movement whatever its ostensible purpose’. They had more luck with Kornilov. On 15 April 1918 Lockhart was approached by an officer in ‘General K’s Army in South Russia’ who explained that his sole aim was to fight the Germans and he therefore was willing to operate jointly with the Bolsheviks, providing that they did not try to take over the Volunteer Army.
The first hint of possible rapprochement between the Bolsheviks and the other socialist parties was reported on 11 April 1918 by Major Fitzwilliams, who, after leaving the Ukraine in February 1918, had just returned from a tour of Siberia. He warned against any precipitate intervention in Siberia via counter-revolutionaries such as Semenov arguing that this would ‘tend to upset the highly desirable and probable rapprochement of moderate Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries’.57 The idea of just such a coalition socialist government was taken up with even greater enthusiasm by Sadoul, the Bolshevik sympathizer on the French military mission. On 17 April 1918 he met the Bolshevik Commissar for Social Welfare and former Menshevik Alexandra Kollontai and told her that he hoped that the Bolsheviks’ current course would end in the formation of a coalition socialist government, to include the Mensheviks and the SRs. Ten days later he wrote of the talks he had had with the SR and Menshevik leaders in recent days and how hopeful he was that if the Allies supported ‘the Bolsheviks for the sake of Russia’ the Mensheviks and the SRs would call a truce and come to an understanding with the Bolsheviks; this would result in the formation of what he called a ‘government of democratic concentration’, a development he saw not so much as a dream but as a reality. On 8 May 1918 he was surer than ever that democratic reconciliation was the order of the day. With some exaggeration but more than an element of truth, a German embassy report published somewhat later characterized Trotsky as ‘almost an SR working for the Allies’ and complained of the willingness of the Bolsheviks to co-operate with the SRs.58
Peace for Civil War
The emerging political crisis in Russia was brought to a head by the military coup staged by the Germans in the Ukraine on 29 April 1918; this overthrew the democratic Rada government and brought to power the right-wing dictator General P. Skoropadskii, whose clear mandate from the land-owners who greeted his action with enthusiasm was to deal firmly with agrarian disturbances and secure the grain deliveries demanded by the Germans by annulling the 1917 land reform. Since the German ambassador Mirbach had arrived in Moscow on 26 April 1918, he had at once begun to throw his weight around, and speculation was rife that Mirbach intended to treat Russia in the same way as his compatriots had treated the government in the Ukraine and stage a coup against the Bolsheviks. Many Bolsheviks argued that if their government wanted to avoid this, a break with Germany was essential and should be carried out at once; Skoropadskii’s coup showed the true face of German imperialism and indicated that the time for a breathing space was over. It was with this eventuality in mind that on 4 May 1918 Russian border troops were told to resist any further incursions by German forces. Lockhart was quite right when he reported on 7 May 1918 that the government was in crisis over the news from the Ukraine and ‘a rupture with Germany was possible at any moment’.59
It was to debate the implications of the German action in the Ukraine that the Bolshevik Central Committee began a series of crisis meetings which lasted from 6 May until 13 May 1918. The international situation was first discussed at a late night session on 6 May: that meeting adopted a resolution proposed by Lenin which spoke of ‘rejecting the English ultimatum’ and accepting the German one, even though he recognized that this would mean agreeing to peace treaties with Finland and the Ukraine which would involve accepting further territorial losses for Russia. However, that was not the end of the matter. The Central Committee met again on 10 May 1918 and debated a resolution proposed by Sokolnikov, which stated that, in view of the coup in the Ukraine, war with Germany was inevitable and the ‘breathing space given by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was over’; war preparations should begin at once and an agreement signed with the Allies. This resolution was again defeated, but not even that ended the crisis: the Central Committee met once more on 13 May 1918 and this time fully supported Lenin’s Theses on the Present Situation and rejected once and for all a military alliance with the Allies after having heard a report from A.A. Ioffe, the recently arrived Russian ambassador in Berlin, which stated that the threat of German intervention had passed; only Sokolnikov and Stalin did not support Lenin on this occasion.60
The defection of Sokolnikov and Stalin, two politicians who had stood by Lenin in the previous crises concerning the Railway Workers’ Union talks and the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace, showed just how severe the situation was, and rumours of a split in the Central Committee and the emergence of a ‘Sokolnikov group’ were soon strong enough to be picked up by the Guardian’s Philips-Price. As debate raged, Allied observers were convinced that it would be resolved in their favour: thus on 7 May 1918 Sadoul wrote that the Bolsheviks’ willingness to collaborate with the Allies could no longer be denied, and the same day Lockhart reported that Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin had told him that a break with Germany was possible at any moment because of developments in the Ukraine; even as late as 15 May 1918 Trotsky told Lockhart war with Germany was inevitable.61
Of course, Allied observers could be accused of naivety, but the enormity of what Lenin was proposing went beyond ordinary logic. Lenin planned to buy off the threat of a German coup by offering a trade deal to the voracious German imperialists. On 15 May 1918 the German ambassador was presented with Lenin’s ‘bribe’: he proposed the resumption of economic relations with Germany, a large loan from German banks to the Soviet government, the payment of interest on this loan with Russian raw materials, large soviet purchases in Germany, concessions to German companies for the exploitation of Russian natural resources and German assistance in constructing railways and modernizing agriculture. In return Germany would have to refrain from interfering in Russia’s internal economic affairs and its economic relations with the former states of the Russian Empire, recognize the nationalization of the banks and foreign trade, guarantee the delivery to Russia of half the total iron ore production of the Krivoi Rog region of the Ukraine, and agree a border with the Ukraine which ceded the Donets Basin to Russia.62
When the Germans took the bait, Lenin was free to build what he termed socialism in the rump state of Soviet Russia. Lenin had first drafted his ideas on socialist construction at the end of April 1918 and, with the agreement of the Bolshevik Central Committee, presented them to the Soviet Executive on 29 April. The Theses on the Tasks of the Soviet Government at the Present Moment introduced into Russia’s economic policy many ideas associated with capitalism: out went workers’ control and in came one-man management and the employment of bourgeois specialists. The programme met sustained criticism while being debated in the Soviet Executive, from both left and right: to the Left SRs and many of the pro-war communists it was capitulation to the capitalists, to the right it was proof that Russia was not ready for socialism. Although the scheme was endorsed by the Bolshevik Central Committee on 3 May 1918 as Six Theses on the Current Tasks of Soviet Power and issued to all local soviets on 4 May 1918, there was little practical chance of the programme being implemented. The proposals were denounced in the opposition press and the Bolsheviks’ poor position in the provincial soviets meant that in many parts of the country they would simply be ignored.63
Negotiating a German economic treaty meant German protection could be used to ‘build socialism’ according to this programme. But what Lenin termed ‘building socialism’ in May 1918 in fact meant the same thing which in December 1917 he had termed ‘first defeating the bourgeoisie at home’; the reality behind this rhetoric was the launching of a Red versus Green civil war against the SR victors in the Constituent Assembly elections. The German alliance meant the Mensheviks and SRs could be expelled from the soviets and the Assembly of Factory Delegates dissolved. It made possible a complete break with the Left SRs, for it created the possibility of breaking the influence the party still had on the peasantry. When the Left SRs tried to use their control over peasant soviets to resist the Bolsheviks’ new economic policy, Lenin launched a policy of ‘class war’ in the countryside and established committees of poor peasants to replace the ‘kulak [rich peasant] dominated’ peasant soviets. In short, accepting the economic treaty with Imperial Germany meant ending the brief spell of semi-pluralism in political life, when the Mensheviks and SRs had felt able to use democratic methods to dislodge the Bolsheviks, and restarting the civil war within democracy.
Notes
1. For Chernov, see H. Niessel, Le Triomphe des Bolcheviques et la Paix de Brest Litovsk (Paris 1940), p. 221; for the SR military commission, see M.S. Bernshtam (ed.), Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie v 1918 godu (Paris 1981), p. 43; otherwise R.I. Kowalski, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict (Basingstoke 1991), pp. 13, 152, 159.
2. Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, pp. 12, 15.
3. Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, p. 17; T.A. Sivokhina, Krakh melkoburzhuaznoi oppozitsii (Moscow 1973), p. 136.
4. Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, p. 145 et seq.
5. Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, pp. 157, 167.
6. Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, pp. 171–6.
7. Sivokhina, Krakh, p. 138; K. Gusev, Krakh partii levykh eserov (Leningrad 1963), p. 156; M. Philips-Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (London 1921), p. 277.
8. G. Hill, Go Spy the Land (London 1932), pp. 177, 203; G.D. Kostomarov and R.I. Golubeva (eds) Organizatsiya Krasnoi Armii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow 1943), pp. 134–6.
9. ‘Deyatel’nost’ TsK partii v dokumentakh’ Izvestiya TsK KPSS (1989) no. 3, p. 105.
10. R. Debo, Revolution and Survival (Liverpool 1979), p. 144.
11. Debo, Revolution, p. 190; Hill, Go Spy, p. 183.
12. J. Sadoul, Notes sur la Révolution Bolchevique (Paris 1920), pp. 153–5, 210; J. Noulens, Mon Ambassade en Russie Soviétique, 1917–1919 (Paris 1933) vol. 1, p. 218.
13. K. Young (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (London 1973), vol 1, p. 33; Sadoul, Notes, p. 240.
14. Z.A. Vertsinskii, God revolyutsii (Tallin 1929), pp. 50–5.
15. Sadoul, Notes, pp. 241–4.
16. Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes of the RSDLP(b) (London 1974), pp. 213–15; Milner Papers, 364.53.
17. For the meeting with the generals, see Vertsinskii, God revolyutsii, p. 57; otherwise, Debo, Revolution, pp. 142–6.
18. S. Naida, ‘Pochemu den’ sovetskoi armii prazdnuetsya 23 fevralya’ Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal no. 5 (1964), p. 115; Kostomarov and Golubeva, Organizatsiya, pp. 46, 111, 118, 123, 128.
19. R.H.B. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (London 1946), pp. 235–40.
20. Debo, Revolution, pp. 154, 232; Milner Papers, 364.67.
21. ‘Deyatel’nost’ TsK’, p. 107; J. Erikson, ‘The origins of the Red Army’, in R. Pipes (ed.), Revolutionary Russia (Harvard 1968), p. 241; Kowalski, Bolshevik Party, p. 138.
22. Milner Papers, 364.83, 364.103.
23. Lockhart, Memoirs, pp. 242, 274.
24. Hill, Go Spy, p. 190 et seq.
25. Lockhart, Memoirs, p. 150.
26. For Chicherin, see Debo, Revolution, p. 245; for Lockhart’s reports to London, see Milner Papers, 364.149, 364.156.
27. Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, pp. 28, 53–6.
28. Lockhart, Memoirs, p. 250; Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, pp. 28, 53–6; Philips-Price, Reminiscences, p. 252.
29. Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, pp. 51, 55, 66; see also M.J. Carley, Revolution and Intervention: the French Government and the Russian Civil War (Montreal 1983), p. 426.
30. Noulens, Ambassade, pp. 69–71.
31. For Boyle, see Hill, Go Spy, p. 107 and Milner Papers 141, copy of telegram date 15 May 1918; for Balfour, see Debo, Revolution, p. 254.
32. Minutes of War Cabinets, 327, 330, 340 and 341.
33. Minutes of War Cabinets, 358, 359 and 369.
34. When Semenov refused to co-operate with this plan, London was furious, see Milner Papers, 367.158, 367.175 and 367.188–190.
35. Milner Papers, 364.196.
36. Minutes of War Cabinet, 390; Milner Papers, 364.221.
37. Milner Papers, 364.208.
38. Minutes of War Cabinet, 396.
39. Milner Papers, 364.225.
40. For the meeting of 29 April, see Lockhart, Memoirs, p. 271; otherwise Milner Papers, 364.230 and 141, report of 28 April 1918.
41. For Noulens, see Milner Papers, 364.268; for Balfour’s hesitation, see Milner Papers, 364.272; otherwise Milner Papers, 141, reports of 9 and 15 May 1918.
42. Minutes of War Cabinet, 393; Milner Papers, 364.228.
43. V.M. Fie, The Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak Legion (New Delhi 1978), pp. 8–14.
44. For Foch and the British Foreign Office, see J. Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia, (Columbia 1986), p. 273 and J.F.N. Bradley, Allied Intervention in Russia (London 1968), p. 72; for the refusal of the Czechoslovak National Council and the talks with Benes, see Fic, Bolsheviks, p. 14; Kalvoda, Genesis, p. 279.
45. For the message to Lockhart, see Milner Papers, 364.228; for Wickham Steed, see Milner Papers, 357.45; for Lavergne, see Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, p. 82; for Verge, see A. Vergé, Avec les Tchécoslovaques (Paris 1926), p. 107.
46. Minutes of War Cabinets, 401, 402, 405; Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, p. 82.
47. B.M. Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (University of North Carolina Press 1989), p. 165.
48. For the military details, see Public Records Office, WO32.5643.4a, 5643.4c and 5643.5a; Minutes of War Cabinet, 410.
49. Public Records Office, WO32.5643.19a.
50. Minutes of War Cabinets, 413 and 415.
51. Sivokhina, Krakh, p. 141.
52. V. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October (Cornell 1987), p. 159.
53. M. McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd 1917–22 (Oxford 1992), p. 89; see also W.G. Rosenberg, ‘Russian labour and Bolshevik power after October’ Slavic Review (1985).
54. Rosenberg, ‘Russian Labour’; Brovkin, Mensheviks, p. 162 et seq.
55. Brovkin, Mensheviks, pp. 181–4; G. Semenov, Voennaya i boevaya rabota Partii Sotsialistov-Revolyutsionerov za 1917–18 (Moscow 1922), p. 22.
56. Milner Papers, 364.157, 364.233.
57. Milner Papers, 367.173–5, 364.222.
58. Sadoul, Notes, pp. 316, 323, 344; V.L. Israelyan, ‘Neopravdivshiisya prognoz Grafa Mirbacha’ Novaya i noveishaya istoriya no. 6 (1967), p. 63.
59. For the Russian border troops, see V.K. Koblyakov, ‘Bor’ba sovetskogo gosudarstva za sokhranenie mira s Germaniei v period deistviya Brestskogo dogovora’ Istoriya SSSR no. 4 (1958), p. 9; for Lockhart, see Milner Papers, 264.276.
60. ‘Iz arkhivov partii’ Izvestiya TsK KPSS no, 4 (1989), p. 141 et seq.
61. Philips-Price, Reminiscences, p. 276; Sadoul, Notes, p. 338; Milner Papers, 364.276; Young, Lockhart, p. 36.
62. Debo, Revolution, pp. 218–22.
63. Sivokhina, Krakh, pp. 150–2.