THE small and select circle of students of Russia in the United Kingdom and France—hardly any were then to be found in the United States—had been happily surprised that, after two and a half years of war and of appalling loss and suffering, she appeared unshaken politically. They knew how long was her record of unrest and repression. Revolutionary aims had appeared in three sections: the intelligentsia, the peasantry, and the proletariat of the cities. The war with Japan had brought a serious explosion in 1905, but defeat had been the detonator, not the charge. This was a compound of several elements, the chief being the land hunger of the peasants. In October grave naval mutinies broke out at Sevastopol on the Black Sea and Kronstadt on the Gulf of Finland. Had the Army gone the same way, as for a moment looked likely, the effects would have been terrific; but it was pacified. Next year the Russian Government took a step on the path to a more liberal system with the creation of a form of legislative parliament, the Duma. It was a short and perhaps timid step but promising. However, the Duma’s wings were soon clipped.
Nevertheless, things did move in the agrarian field, in education, and in the public services generally up to the outbreak of war. That brought widespread unity and freedom from party strife, which might have lasted but for the heavy reverses suffered, the inefficiency of the Government, the disastrous influence of the Tsarina, enslaved by the evil charlatan Rasputin—and one must add the Tsar’s fatal admixture of high-handedness and weakness. When the President of the Duma warned him that revolution and anarchy might be on the doorstep his comment was: ‘Again that fat-bellied Rodzianko has written me a lot of nonsense, which I don’t even bother to answer.’1
On 12 March, 1917, representatives of workers, soldiers, and both left-wing and moderate Socialists met in the Duma building and formed a council or ‘Soviet’, a term with which the world has become familiar. This is regarded as the day of revolution. It was that of the fraternization of the Petrograd garrison with the demonstrators in the street, the aim of nearly all revolutionaries. Between them the Duma and the Soviet set up a Provisional Government, in which a Socialist named Alexander Kerensky became Minister of Justice. So far, though it was a revolution, it had taken a more or less bourgeois form. Yet it ended the monarchy. On the 15th the Emperor Nicholas abdicated and on the 20th he was arrested.
The immediate effects were confusion, a drop in industrial output, and demoralization of the troops. The German Government hesitated, partly because it was fettered on the Western Front, partly because it toyed with the hope of a deal with the revolution. Who can doubt in the light of later knowledge that, had the Central Powers struck in the midst of the disorganization, the forces already available would have sufficed to crush resistance? If so, Germany might have been able to switch nearly all her strength westward before American help arrived. In her agony and upheaval Russia made yet another contribution to the cause of the Entente, perhaps the greatest of all.
In May the Soviet accepted an invitation to join a coalition cabinet. This time Kerensky became Minister of War and of the Navy, and his influence was decisive in what immediately followed. The Germans had sent into the country by stealth, like a plague microbe in a test tube, a certain Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He headed the extreme or Bolshevik party and opposed the military offensive advocated by Kerensky. However, Lenin’s time was not yet come. Kerensky had the majority. He appointed Brusilov Commander-in-Chief, and the offensive was launched on 1 July.
It was powerful numerically. The troops had been chosen as the least intoxicated by the revolution, and the Siberian element was high. The excellent plan was for the main blow to be struck against the South Army under Count Bothmer, near Brody, by two armies (thirty-one divisions) on a forty-mile front, and five days later Kornilov’s Eighth Army (thirteen divisions) to attack the Austrians farther south along the Dniester and in the foot-hills of the Carpathians. The main northern attack came as no surprise to O.H.L. In fact, a few days before it began Ludendorff telephoned to Hoffmann to ask whether it could be nullified by a counter-offensive. Yes, said Hoffmann without hesitation, provided four divisions came from the Western Front. He can hardly have believed his ears when told that they would come. They were the last troops in this war to be sent from west to east over Groener’s well-organized railways.
Bothmer’s army was composed of troops of three nations: four German divisions, three Austrian, and one Turkish in line. The Russians came at it in the old style, as though untouched by the revolution. They gained a promising success on the first day. But neither their burst of enthusiasm nor their discipline lasted. That weakness and the enemy’s reserves took the steam out of the offensive, which ended with no further progress. The same thing happened against Böhm-Ermolli’s little Second Austrian Army, on the left of the South Army. But Kornilov’s assault on 5 July from Stanislau in the direction of Halicz and Dolina was another matter altogether. Tersztyansky’s Third Austrian Army was taken by surprise and its defence was overwhelmed by the weight of the Russian thrust. Here the advance exceeded twenty miles in the centre of a front of about sixty. The situation was critical because the Russians were threatening the oil wells of Drohobicz. Once again, however, their chances were thrown away. They would advance no longer, and any slight effort they made was checked by German reserves. As Hoffmann put it later, if Russian morale had not been so bad the shave would have been still closer.1
It was touch and go whether the counter-offensive could be launched and only at the last moment could Hoffmann be sure that the Russian advance a little farther south had been brought to a standstill near Halicz. He had summoned to prepare and control the bombardment an inconspicuous colonel on the retired list named Bruchmüller whom he had employed in a successful minor operation in April. Later on this man was nick-named Durchbrach Müller (‘Break-through Miller’) from the astounding effects of his bombardments and barrages. He was one of the greatest artillerymen of the war. The infantry assault began on 19 July in bad weather which made the Galician clay holding. Bruchmüller’s tremendous fire completed the demoralization of the Russians, so that a penetration of nearly ten miles was made on the first day. The attackers then wheeled half right to roll up the front, and first the South Army, then the Austrian Third Army joined in, division by division. Resistance was trifling; the Russian troops were no longer fighting and were in many cases streaming towards their homes. The Russian gains in the Kerensky offensive were more than wiped out.
As already recorded, the Rumanians had been driven back in December 1916 to the Russian frontier and a front covering their last province of Moldavia. The army had since been reorganized with the aid of a French military mission. On 22 July, as a contribution to Kerensky’s offensive, the Rumanian Army and the Russian Fourth Army launched an attack between the fortress of Focsani on the Seret and the Carpathians, a front of some sixty miles. The Rumanians at least fought with spirit and won initial successes. However, on 6 August Mackensen counter-attacked and drove them back. The Central Powers could not spare the troops needed for a decisive success, so both sides went to ground again.
In the north the front ran for about a hundred miles along the lower Dvina, but for the last thirty miles to the sea the Russians held a large bridgehead covering the city of Riga. It had long been looked on by the Germans as a menace, though one would have thought that by this time nothing could have made a Russian army menacing. However, Ludendorff suggested its capture. Hoffmann ‘naturally said yes’, and, equally naturally, sent for Bruchmüller. Twice Ludendorff telephoned that he must have the divisions without which the offensive would have been impossible, and twice relented.1 He hoped that a victory at Riga would appear to threaten Petrograd, though the capital was three hundred miles away, and would thus unnerve the Russian Government.
On 1 September Bruchmüller’s massed batteries opened fire without registration, so as to secure surprise, but the five hours’ bombardment did its job. Three divisions of General von Hutier’s Eighth Army crossed the wide river by pontoon bridges and met no resistance to speak of. Again the Russian soldiers did not fight. However, they cleared out with such speed that only about nine thousand prisoners were left in German hands, a mere trifle by the standard of the moment. Riga was not much of a battle, but it has some interest as the last fought between the forces of the German and Russian Governments in the First World War.
After the failure of Kerensky’s offensive in July, Kornilov was appointed Commander-in-Chief in place of Brusilov. The new man, brave and vigorous but rattle-brained, was expected to be a popular choice because he had commanded the Petrograd garrison and been the agent for the arrest of the Tsar. He became swollen-headed, perhaps aping the young Bonaparte, and in September attempted a coup d’état; but his troops refused to follow him and his plot broke down ignominiously. The Bolsheviks profited and the situation of Kerensky, Prime Minister since July, was undermined. Yet the Bolsheviks were not ready and several weeks passed in the harangues, counter-harangues, and anarchy typical of the stage when a weak government is defending itself against fanatical foes on the eve of revolution.
It came in November. The Government found itself helpless to resist because it had no backing but a few battalions, a handful of officer cadets, and—rather touchingly—a recently-formed regiment of women. By 7 November all was over.1 The Bolsheviks seized power with no more difficulty than Hutier had found in capturing the Riga bridgehead, and the last semblance of constitutional government ended without any exhibition of heroism. Kerensky was lucky to escape with his life.
On 8 November the ‘Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’ was formed. At its head there was to be a Council of People’s Commissars, which might be called a Cabinet. Lenin assumed the chief office of President or Chairman, in effect Prime Minister; Leon Trotsky was given the charge of Foreign Affairs; and Joseph Stalin became Commissar of Affairs of the Nationalities. All opposition parties were outlawed, not merely because Russia was still in a state of war on the frontiers and threatened by civil war, but also because the Bolshevik party philosophy had no place for any of the trappings of democracy. Its conception of government was rule by a highly organized and highly privileged body, deliberately kept small and separated from the rest so that its zeal and purity should be maintained without tarnish.
In order to be free to impose its will on the country the Bolshevik Government needed peace. There its views and those of the German Government were similar. The sooner peace was signed, the earlier would the bulk of the German armies reach the Western Front for the decisive victory. It was all a matter of terms. A meeting was arranged at Brest-Litovsk and an armistice came into force on 16 December as a preparation for negotiations. Though the Foreign Ministers of the Central Powers arrived to take part in these, the master of the situation was Max Hoffmann. The Soviet delegation put forward the solution of peace without annexations. The answer it received was that it would be accepted on two conditions: first, the Entente Powers must agree to it also; secondly, it was not to apply to Poland or the Baltic states. The first proviso was reasonable from the point of view of Germany and Austria, since they were aware of their enemies’ intention to dismember their Empires. An ironical feature of the conference was the arrival of a youthful and ardent Ukrainean delegation to open separate negotiations with the Central Powers and obtain independence. Eager to feed their hungry people from this splendid granary, the Central Powers signed the so-called ‘bread peace’ with the Ukraine on 9 February, 1918.
Trotsky refused to accept the conditions of the Central Powers: autonomy for Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and the Ukraine, and the continued occupation of Russian territory. He tried every weapon from vituperation to bluff. The last took the form of a declaration for ‘no peace, no war’. The Soviet Government would simply withdraw from the war without making peace. He had chosen in Hoffmann an unpromising subject for a bluff. Trotsky was in fact playing into the hands of the opposition because Hoffmann welcomed an excuse to march into the Ukraine and organize the exploitation of its grain and flour. The Central Powers denounced the armistice on 18 February and moved forward. On 3 March the Bolsheviks had to sign a peace treaty stiffer than that originally projected in that Russia had to cede the region of Ardahan, Kars and Batum to Turkey. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was ratified on 29 March and, bereft of her ally, Rumania had to yield in May. The German and Austrian forces moved on to complete the occupation of the Ukraine. Hoffmann proposed to march on Moscow, which the Bolsheviks had made the capital, and was confident that he could do it, but he was overruled. Russia lay at the mercy of the Central Powers for the rest of the war. It was Foch and Haig who saved Bolshevik Russia.
In the War of the Spanish Succession (‘Marlborough’s Wars’) a virtually unrelated war had taken place, the campaigns of Charles XII of Sweden against the Russians. The same thing occurred on a smaller scale in the First World War. Returning to his own country after the collapse of the Russian armies, a brilliant Swedo-Finnish soldier, General Mannerheim, was appointed by the new independent Government of Finland to raise an army against the threatening Communist party, which was receiving arms and some active aid from the demoralized Russian troops. He began his campaign by gaining control of South Ostrobothnia—to ensure supplies from Sweden—in January 1918. Ostensibly to support the Whites against the Reds, a German force landed at Hangö, seventy-five miles west of Helsinki, on 4 April. Mannerheim did not want interference, but without this seasoned force, nine thousand strong, the civil war would probably have been long drawn out. With the aid of the reinforcement it was quickly ended. The Germans must, therefore, be considered benefactors to Finnish freedom.
In July 1918 Czech troops which had fought in the Russian ranks were trying to make their way out of Russia via Siberia and the port of Vladivostok, which some had already reached. One body approached the town of Ekaterinburg, the Red Ural capital, where the imperial family was imprisoned. Fearing that the Emperor would be liberated, the local Soviet ordered his execution. The soldiers did their job thoroughly. They shot the Emperor, the Empress, their children, their doctor, three servants, and even the family’s spaniel. Then they burnt the bodies thoroughly so that no ‘holy relics’ should be available to stir up reactionary sentiment. So passed Nicholas II. He was a notably ineffective ruler. One of his generals recalls watching him yawn throughout a vital conference. Yet he was honest, well-meaning, and extremely loyal to his allies. He is said to have died bravely.
The record must end there. The Russian Revolution was an event even more tremendous than the war in which it was born, but its ardours and miseries do not belong to the history of the war. From that point of view the results to be noted are: first, the elimination of a great partner in the Entente; secondly and consequently, the transfer of three-quarters of the German strength in Russia and Rumania and of four Austrian divisions to the Western Front; thirdly, grain and meat for the Central Powers from the Ukraine at a time when hunger was stalking the streets of their cities; fourthly, a new lease of life to Turkey, who reoccupied her frontier with Russia and beat the Germans in a race for the oil of Baku.
Though the Russian armies won some great victories, defeat was more often their lot. Their achievement was none the less gigantic. The German divisions on the Eastern Front numbered 99 on 1 May, 1917. At this date 141 German divisions stood on the Western Front as compared with 153 German, Austrian and Turkish in Russia and facing Russians in Caucasia. If it is argued that Caucasia should be omitted as an outer theatre—like Mesopotamia and Palestine, where the British were engaging the main Turkish strength—the dispositions of the Central Powers were: Western Front, 141 divisions (all German); Eastern Front, 141 divisions (99 German, 40 Austrian, 2 Turkish). Few, even of those who have studied this war, realize that Russia ever shouldered a burden as heavy as this. Had the Russian troops been better led and equipped, Germany must have cracked a year earlier than she did. Russia fought a great fight.