Under such conditions, what practical meaning could the crowd find in such ideas as duty, honour, interests of the State, on the one hand; annexations, indemnities, the self-determination of peoples, conscious discipline, and other dim conceptions on the other.

The whole regiment had turned out; the soldiers were attracted by the meeting, as by any other spectacle. Delegates had been sent by the Second Battalion, which was in the trenches—about one-third of the battalion. In the middle of the square stood a platform for the speakers; it was decorated with red flags, faded with time and rain; they have been there since the platform was erected for a review by the Commander of the Army. Reviews are now held not among the ranks, but from a tribune. To-day the agenda of the meeting contain two questions: “(1) The Report of the Commissariat Committee on the anomalies in the supply of Officers’ rations; and (2) the report of Comrade Sklianka, an orator specially invited from the Moscow Soviet to speak about the formation of a Coalition Ministry.”

During the preceding week a stormy meeting, which nearly ended in a riot, had been held in connection with the complaint of one of the companies that the soldiers had to eat lentils, which they hated, and thin soup, simply because all the groats and butter were taken for the officers’ mess. This was clearly nonsense. Nevertheless, it was resolved to appoint a Committee for investigation, which would report to a general meeting of the regiment. The Report was drawn up by a member of the Committee, Lieutenant-Colonel Petrov, who had been removed the year before from the post of Chief of the Commissariat and was now settling accounts with his successor. In a petty, cavilling way, with a sort of mean irony, he enumerated slight, irrelevant, inaccuracies in the Commissariat Department of the regiment—there were no serious ones—and dragged out his Report endlessly in his creaking, monotonous voice. The crowd, which at first had kept quiet, now hummed again, having ceased to listen. From different sides voices were heard:

“Enough!”

“That will do!”

The Chairman of the Commission ceased reading and suggested that “those comrades who wished” should express their opinions. A tall, stout soldier ascended the platform, and began speaking in a loud, hysterical voice:

“Comrades, you have heard? That is where the soldiers’ property goes. We suffer, our clothes are worn out, we are covered with lice, we go hungry, while they pull the last piece of food out of our mouths.”

As he spoke a spirit of nervous excitement kept growing in the crowd, muffled murmurs ran through it, and shouts of approval burst from it here and there.

“When will there be an end to all this? We are worn out, weary to death.”

Suddenly 2nd Lieut. Yassny’s deep voice was heard from the rear ranks, drowning the voices both of the speaker and of the crowd.

“What is your Company?”

Some confusion took place. The orator was dumb. Shouts of indignation were flung at Yassny.

“What is your Company, I ask you?”

“The Seventh!”

Voices were heard in the ranks:

“We have no such man in the Seventh Company.”

“Wait a bit, my friend,” boomed Yassny, “was it not you that came in to-day with the new lot ... you were carrying a large placard? When have you had time to get worn out, poor fellow?”

The spirit of the crowd changed in an instant. It began to hiss, laugh, shout, and crack jokes. The unsuccessful orator disappeared in the crowd. Someone shouted:

“Pass a resolution!”

Lieutenant-Colonel Petrov mounted the platform again, and began to read out a ready resolution for transferring the officers’ mess to privates’ rations. But no one listened to him now. Two or three voices shouted “That’s right!” Petrov hesitated a little, then put the paper in his pocket and left the platform. The second question, concerning the removal of the Chief of the Commissariat and the immediate election of his successor (the author of the report was the candidate proposed) remained unread. The Chairman of the Committee then announced:

“Comrade Sklianka, member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, will now address the meeting.”

They were tired of their own speakers—it was always one and the same thing—and the arrival of a new man, somewhat advertised by the Committee, aroused general interest. The crowd closed up round the platform and was still. A small, black-haired man, nervous and short-sighted, who constantly adjusted the eyeglasses which kept slipping off his nose, mounted the platform, or rather quickly ran up on to it. He began speaking rapidly, with much spirit and much gesticulation.

“Soldier comrades! Three months have passed already since the Petrograd workers and Revolutionary soldiers threw off the yoke of the Czar and of all his Generals. The Bourgeoisie, in the person of Tereshtchenko, the well-known sugar refiner; Konovalov, the factory owner; the landowners, Gutchkov, Rodzianko, Miliukov, and other traitors to the interests of the people, having seized the supreme power, have tried to deceive the popular masses.

“The demand of the people that negotiations be commenced at once for that peace which we are offered by our German worker and soldier brethren—who are just as much bereft of all that makes life worth living as we are—has ended in a fraud—a telegram from Miliukov to England and France to say that the Russian people are ready to fight until victory is attained.

“The unfortunate people understood that the supreme power had fallen into even worse hands, i.e., into those of the sworn foes of the workman and the peasant. Therefore the people shouted mightily: ‘Down with you, hands off!’

“And the accursed Bourgeoisie shook at the mighty cry of the workers and hypocritically invited to a share in their power the so-called Democracy—the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who always associated with the Bourgeoisie for the betrayal of the interests of the working people.”

Having thus outlined the process of the formation of the Coalition Ministry, Comrade Sklianka passed in greater detail to the fascinating prospects of rural and factory anarchy, where “the wrath of the people sweeps away the yoke of capital” and where “Bourgeois property gradually passes into the hands of its real masters—the workmen and the poorer peasants.”

“The soldiers and the workmen still have enemies,” he continued. “These are the friends of the overthrown Czarist Government, the hardened admirers of shooting, the knout, and blows. The most bitter foes of freedom, they have now donned crimson rosettes, call you ‘comrades’ and pretend to be friends, but cherish the blackest intentions in their hearts, preparing to restore the rule of the Romanovs.

“Soldiers, do not trust these wolves in sheep’s clothing! They call you to fresh slaughter. Well, follow them if you like! Let them pave the path for the return of the bloody Czar with your corpses. Let your orphans, your widows and children, deserted by all, pass again into slavery, hunger, beggary, and disease!”

The speech undoubtedly had a great success. The atmosphere grew red-hot, the excitement increased—that excitement of the “molten mass,” in the presence of which it is impossible to foresee either the limits or the tension, or the tracks along which the torrent will pour. The crowd was noisy and agitated, accompanying with shouts of approval or curses against “the enemies of the people” those parts of the speech which especially touched its instincts, its naked, cruel egotism.

Albov, pale, with burning eyes, made his appearance on the platform. He spoke excitedly of something or other to the chairman, who then addressed the crowd. The chairman’s words were inaudible amidst the noise; for a long time he waved his hands and the flag which he had pulled down, until at last the noise had subsided somewhat.

“Comrades, Lieutenant Albov wishes to address you!”

Shouts and hisses were heard.

“Down with him! We do not want him!”

But Albov was already on the platform, gripping hard, bending downwards towards the sea of heads. And he said:

“No, I will speak, and you dare not refuse to listen to one of those officers whom this man has been abusing and dishonouring here before you. Who he may be, whence he has come, who pays him for his speeches, so profitable to the Germans, not one of you knows. He has come here, befogged you, and will go on his way to sow evil and treason. And you have believed him. And we, who along with you have now carried our heavy cross into the fourth year of the War—we are now to be regarded as your enemies? Why? Is it because we never sent you into action, but led you, bestrewing with officers’ corpses the whole of the path covered by the regiment? Is it because that, of the officers who led you in the beginning, there is not one left in the regiment who is not maimed?”

He spoke with deep sincerity and pain in his voice. There were moments when it seemed as if his words were breaking through the withered crust of those hardened hearts, as if a break would again take place in the attitude of the crowd.

“He, your ‘new friend,’ is calling you to mutiny, to violence, to robbery. Do you understand who will benefit when, in Russia, brother rises against brother, so as to turn to ashes, in sack and fire, the last property left not only to the ‘capitalists,’ but to the poverty-stricken workers and peasants? No, it is not by violence, but by law and right, that you will acquire land and liberty and a tolerable existence. Your enemies are not here, among the officers, but there—beyond the barbed wire. And we shall not attain either to freedom or to peace by a dishonourable, cowardly standing in one and the same place, but in the general mighty rush of an advance.”

Was it that the impression of Sklianka’s speech was still too vivid or that the regiment took offence at the word “cowardly”—for the most arrant coward will never forgive such a reminder—or, finally, was it the fault of the magic word “advance,” which for some time past had ceased to be tolerated in the Army? But anyhow Albov was not allowed to continue his speech.

The crowd bellowed, belched forth curses, pressed forward more and more, advancing toward the platform, and broke down the railing. An ominous roar, faces distorted with fury, and hands stretched forth towards the platform. The situation was becoming critical. 2nd Lieut. Yassny pushed his way through to Albov, took him by the arm, and forcibly led him to the exit. The soldiers of the First Company had already rushed up to it from all sides, and with their aid Albov, with great difficulty, made his way out of the crowd, amidst a shower of choice abuse. Someone shouted out after him:

“Wait a bit, you ——; we will settle accounts with you!”

Night. The bivouac had grown quiet. Clouds had covered the sky. It was dark. Albov, sitting on his bed in his narrow tent, illuminated by the stump of a candle, was writing a report to the Commander of the Regiment:

“The officers—powerless, insulted, meeting with distrust and disobedience from their subordinates—can be of no further use. I beg of you to apply for my reduction to the ranks, so that there I might fulfil my duty honestly and to the end.”

He lay down on his bed. He gripped his head in his hands. A kind of uncanny, incomprehensible emptiness seized him, just as if some unseen hand had drawn out of his head all thought, out of his heart all pain. What was that? A noise was heard, the tent-pole fell down, the light went out. A number of men on the tent. Hard, cruel blows were showered on the whole of his body. A sharp, intolerable pain shot through his head and his chest. Then his whole face seemed covered with a warm, sticky veil, and soon everything became still and calm again, as if all that was terrible and hard to bear had torn itself away, had remained here, on earth, while his soul was flying away somewhere and was feeling light and joyous.

Albov awoke to feel something cold touching him: a private of his company, Goulkin, an elderly man, was sitting at the foot of his bed and wiping away the blood from his head with a wet towel. He noticed that Albov had regained consciousness.

“Look how they have mangled the man, the scum! It can have been no other than the Fifth Company—I recognised one of them. Does it hurt you much? Perhaps you would like me to go for the doctor?”

“No, my friend, it does not matter. Thank you!” and Albov pressed his hand.

“And their Commander, too, Captain Bouravin, has met with a misfortune. During the night they carried him past us on a stretcher, wounded in the abdomen; the sanitar said that he would not live. He was returning from reconnoitring, and the bullet took just at our very barbed wire. Whether it was a German one or whether our own people did not recognise him—who knows?”

He was silent for a while.

“What has come to the people one simply can’t understand. And all this is just put on. It is not true—that which they say against the officers—we understand that ourselves. Of course, there are all sorts among you. But we know them very well. Don’t we see for ourselves that you, now, are for us with all your heart. Or let us say 2nd Lieut. Yassny. Could such a one sell himself? And yet, try to say a word, to take your part—there would be no living for us. There is a great deal of hooliganism now. It is only hooligans that men listen to. My idea is that all this is taking place because men have forgotten God. Men have nothing to be afraid of.”

Albov closed his eyes from weakness. Goulkin hastily arranged the blanket, which had slipped to the floor, made the sign of the cross over him, and quietly slipped out of the tent.

But sleep would not come. His heart was full of an inexhaustible sadness and an oppressive feeling of loneliness. He yearned so much to have some living being at hand, so that he might silently, wordlessly feel its proximity, and not remain alone with his dreadful thoughts. He regretted that he had not detained Goulkin.

All was quiet. The whole camp was sleeping. Albov leaped from his bed and lit the candle again. He was seized with a dull, hopeless despair. He had no more faith in anything. Impenetrable darkness lay before him. To make his exit from life? No, that would be surrender. He must go on, with clenched teeth and hardened heart, until some stray bullet—Russian or German—broke the thread of his wearisome days.

Dawn was coming on. A new day was beginning, new Army week-days, horribly like their predecessors.

Afterwards?

Afterwards the “molten element” overflowed its banks completely. Officers were killed, burnt, drowned, torn asunder and had their heads broken through with hammers, slowly, with inexpressible cruelty.

Afterwards—millions of deserters. Like an avalanche the soldiery moved along the railways, water-ways and country roads, trampling down, breaking and destroying the last nerves of poor, roadless Russia.

Afterwards—Tarnopol, Kalush, Kazan. Like a whirlwind robbery, murder, violence, incendiarism swept over Galicia, Volynia, the Podolsk and other provinces, leaving behind it everywhere a trail of blood and arousing in the minds of the Russian people, crazed with grief and weak in spirit, the monstrous thought:

“O Lord! if only the Germans would come quickly.”

This was done by the soldier.

That soldier of whom a great Russian writer, with intuitive conscience and a bold heart, has said:[27]

“... How many hast thou killed during these days, oh soldier? How many orphans hast thou made? How many inconsolable mothers hast thou left? Dost thou hear the whisper on their lips, from which thou hast driven the smile of joy for evermore?

“Murderer! Murderer!

“But why speak of mothers, of orphaned children? A more terrible moment came, which none had expected—and thou didst betray Russia, thou didst cast the whole of the Motherland, which had bred thee, under the feet of the foe!

“Thou, oh soldier, whom we loved so—and whom we still love.”

CHAPTER XXIII.
Officers’ Organisations.

In the early days of April the idea arose among the Headquarters’ officers of organising a “Union of the Officers of the Army and the Navy.” The initiators of the Union[28] started with the view that it was necessary “to think alike, so as to understand alike the events that were taking place, to work in the same direction,” for up to the present time “the voice of the officers—of all the officers—has been heard by none. As yet we have said nothing about the great events amidst which we are living. Everyone who chooses says for us whatever he chooses. Military questions, and even the questions of our daily life and internal order, are settled for us by anyone who likes and in any way he likes.” There were two objections made in principle, one being the objection to the introduction by the officers themselves into their ranks of those principles of collective self-government with which the Army had been inoculated from outside, in the form of Soviets, Committees and Congresses, and had brought disintegration into it. The second objection was the fear lest the appearance of an independent Officers’ Organisation should deepen still more those differences which had arisen between the soldiers and the officers. On the basis of these views we, along with the Commander-in-Chief, at first took up an altogether negative attitude towards this proposal. But life had already broken out of its bounds and laughed at our motives. A draft declaration was published, granting the Army full freedom for forming Unions and meetings, and it would now have been an injustice to the officers to deprive them of the right of professional organisation, if only as a means of self-preservation. In practice, officers’ societies had sprung up in many of the Armies, and in Kiev, Moscow, Petrograd and other towns they had done so from the earlier days of the Revolution. They all wandered in different directions, groping their way, while some Unions in the large centres, under the influence of the disintegrating conditions of the rear, displayed a strong leaning towards the policy of the Soviets.

The officers of the rear frequently lived a completely different spiritual life from those of the Front. Thus, for instance, the Moscow Soviet of officers’ delegates passed, in the beginning of April, a resolution to the effect that “the work of the Provisional Government should proceed ... in the spirit of the Socialistic and political demands of the Democracy, represented by the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates,” and expressed a wish that there should be more representatives of the Socialist parties in the Provisional Government. An adulteration of the officers’ views was also developing on a larger scale; the Petrograd officers’ Council summoned an “All-Russia Congress of officers’ delegates, Army surgeons and officers” in Petrograd for May 8th. This circumstance was the more undesirable in that the initiator of the Congress—the Executive Committee, with Lieutenant-Colonel Goushchin, of the General Staff, at its head—had already disclosed to the full its negative policy by its participation in the drafting of the declaration of soldiers’ rights, by its active co-operation in the Polivanov Commission and its servility before the Council of Workmen’s and Soldier’s Delegates, and by its endeavours to unite with it. A proposal in this sense being made, the Council, however, replied that such a union was “as yet impossible on technical grounds.”

Having discounted all these circumstances, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief gave his approval to the summoning of a Congress of officers, on condition that no pressure should be exercised either in his name or in that of the Chief-of-Staff. This scrupulous attitude somewhat complicated matters. Some of the Staffs, being out of sympathy with the idea, prevented the circulation of the appeal, while some of the High Commanders, as, for example, the Commander of the troops of the Omsk district, forbade the delegation of officers altogether. In some places also this question roused the suspicion of the soldiers and caused some complications, in consequence of which the initiators of the Congress invited the units to delegate soldiers as well as officers to be present at the sessions.

Despite all obstacles, over 300 officer delegates gathered in Moghilev, 76 per cent. being from the Front, 17 per cent. from fighting units in the rear, and 7 per cent. from the rear. On May 7th the Congress was opened with a speech by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. On that day, for the first time, the High Command said, not in a secret meeting, not in a confidential letter, but openly, before the whole country: “Russia is perishing.” General Alexeiev said: “In appeals, in general orders, in the columns of the Daily Press, we often meet with the short sentence: ‘Our country is in danger.’

“We have grown too well accustomed to this phrase. We feel as if we were reading an old chronicle of bygone days, and do not ponder over the grim meaning of this curt sentence. But, gentlemen, this is, I regret to say, a serious fact. Russia is perishing. She stands on the brink of an abyss. A few more shocks, and she will crash with all her weight into it. The enemy has occupied one-eighth part of her territory. He cannot be bribed by the Utopian phrase: ‘Peace without annexations or indemnities.’ He says frankly that he will not leave our soil. He is stretching forth his greedy grip to lands where no enemy soldier has ever set foot—to the rich lands of Volynia, Podolia and Kiev—i.e., to the whole right bank of our Dnieper.

“And what are we going to do? Will the Russian Army allow this to happen? Will we not thrust this insolent foe out of our country and let the diplomatists conclude peace afterwards, with annexations or without them?

“Let us be frank. The fighting spirit of the Russian Army has fallen; but yesterday strong and terrible, it now stands in fatal impotence before the foe. Its former traditional loyalty to the Motherland has been replaced by a yearning for peace and rest. Instead of fortitude, the baser instincts and a thirst for self-preservation are rampant.

“At home, where is that strong authority for which the whole country is craving? Where is that powerful authority which would force every citizen to do his duty honestly by the Motherland?

“We are told that it will soon appear, but as yet it does not exist.

“Where is the love of country, where is patriotism?

“The great word ‘brotherhood’ has been inscribed on our banners, but it has not been inscribed in our hearts and minds. Class enmity rages amongst us. Whole classes which have honestly fulfilled their duty to their country have fallen under suspicion, and on this foundation a deep gulf has been created between two parts of the Army—the officers and the soldiers.

“And it is at this very moment that the first Congress of officers of the Russian Army has been summoned. I am of the opinion that a more convenient, a more timely moment, could not have been chosen to attain unity in our family, to form a general united family of the corps of Russian officers, to discuss the means of breathing ardour into our hearts, for without ardour there is no victory, without victory there is no salvation, no Russia.

“May your work therefore be inspired with love for your Motherland and with heartfelt regard for the soldier; mark the ways for raising the moral and intellectual calibre of the soldiers, so that they may become your sincere and hearty comrades. Do away with that estrangement which has been artificially sown in our family.

“At the present moment—this is a disease common to all—people would like to set all the citizens of Russia on platforms or pedestals and scrutinise how many stand behind each of them. What does it matter that the masses of the Army accepted the new order and the new Constitution sincerely, honestly and with enthusiasm?

“We must all unite on one great object: Russia is in danger. As members of the great Army, we must save her. Let this object unite us and give us strength to work.”

This speech, in which the leader of the Army expressed “the anxiety of his heart,” served as the prologue to his retirement. The Revolutionary Democracy had already passed its sentence on General Alexeiev at its memorable session with the Commanders-in-Chief on May 4th; now, after May 7th, a bitter campaign was begun against him in the Radical Press, in which the Soviet semi-official organ Isvestia competed with Lenin’s papers in the triviality and impropriety of its remarks. This campaign was the more significant in that the Minister of War, Kerensky, was clearly on the side of the Soviet in this matter.

As if to supplement the words of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, I said in my speech, when touching on the internal situation in the country:

“... Under pressure of the unavoidable laws of history, autocracy has fallen, and our country has passed under the rule of the people. We stand on the threshold of a new life, long and passionately awaited, for which many thousand Idealists have gone to the block, languished in the mines and pined in the tundras.

“But we look to the future with anxiety and perplexity.

“For there is no liberty in the Revolutionary torture-chamber.

“There is no righteousness in misrepresenting the voice of the people.

“There is no equality in the hounding down of classes.

“And there is no strength in that insane rout where all around seek to grasp all that they possibly can, at the expense of their suffering country, where thousands of greedy hands are stretched out towards power, breaking down the foundations of that country....”

Then the sessions of the Congress began. Whoever was present has carried away, probably for the rest of his life, an indelible impression produced by the story of the sufferings of the officers. It could never be written, as it was told with chilling restraint by these, Captain Bouravin and Lieutenant Albov, who touched upon their most intimate and painful experiences. They had suffered till they could suffer no more; in their hearts there were neither tears nor complaints.

I looked at the boxes, where the “younger comrades” sat who had been sent to watch for “counter-Revolution.” I wanted to read in their faces the impression produced by all that they had heard. And it seemed to me that I saw the blush of shame. Probably it only seemed so to me, for they soon made a stormy protest, demanded the right of voting at the Congress, and—five roubles per day “officer’s allowance.”

At thirteen general meetings the Congress passed a series of resolutions.

Among all the classes, castes, professions and trades which exhibited a general elemental desire to get from the weak Government all that was possible, in their own private interests, the officers were the only Corporation which never asked anything for itself personally.

The officers requested and demanded authority—over themselves and over the Army. A firm, single, national authority—“commanding, not appealing.” The authority of a Government leaning on the trust of the nation, not on irresponsible organisations. Such an authority the officers were prepared wholeheartedly and unreservedly to obey, quite irrespective of differences of political opinions. I affirm, moreover, that all the inner social class conflict which was blazing up more and more throughout the country did not affect the officers at the Front, who were immersed in their work and in their sorrows; it did not touch them deeply; the conflict attracted the attention of the officers only when its results obviously endangered the very existence of the country, and of the Army in particular. Of course, I am speaking of the mass of the officers; individual leanings towards reaction undoubtedly existed, but they were in no respect characteristic of the Officers’ Corps in 1917.

One of the finest representatives of the Officers’ Class, General Markov, a thoroughly educated man, wrote to Kerensky, condemning his system of slighting the Command: “Being a soldier by nature, birth and education, I can judge and speak only of my own military profession. All other reforms and alterations in the constitution of our country interest me only as an ordinary citizen. But I know the Army; I have devoted to it the best days of my life; I have paid for its successes with the blood of those who were near to me, and have myself come out of action steeped in blood.” This the Revolutionary Democracy had not understood or taken into consideration.

The Officers’ Congress in Petrograd, at which about 700 delegates were gathered (May 18-26), passed off in a totally different manner. It split into two sharply-divided camps: the Officers and officials of the Rear who had given themselves to politics and a smaller number of real officers of the Line who had become delegates through a misunderstanding of the matter. The Executive Committee drew up their programme in strict agreement with the custom of the Soviet Congresses: (1) The attitude of the Congress towards the Provisional Government and the Soviet; (2) the War; (3) the Constituent Assembly; (4) the labour question; (5) the land question; and (6) the reorganisation of the Army on Democratic principles. An exaggerated importance was attached to the Congress in Petrograd, and at its opening pompous speeches were made by many members of the Government and by foreign representatives; the Congress was even greeted in the name of the Soviet by Nahamkes. The very first day revealed the irreconcilable differences between the two groups. These differences were inevitable, if only because, even on such a cardinal question as “Order No. 1.,” the Vice-Chairman of the Congress, Captain Brzozek, expressed the view that “its issue was dictated by historical necessity: the soldier was downtrodden, and it was imperatively necessary to free him.” This declaration was greeted with prolonged applause by part of the delegates!

After a series of stormy meetings, a resolution was passed by a majority of 265 against 246, which stated that “the Revolutionary power of the country was in the hands of the organised peasants, workmen and soldiers, who form the predominating mass of the population,” and that therefore the Government must be responsible to the All-Russia Soviet!

Even the resolution advocating an advance was passed by a majority of little more than two-thirds of those who cast their votes.

The attitude of the Petrograd Congress is to be explained by the declaration made on May 26th by that group, which, reflecting the real opinion of the Front, took the point of view of “all possible support to the Provisional Government.” “In summoning the Congress the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Council of Officers’ Delegates did not seek for the solution of the most essential problem of the moment—the regeneration of the Army—since the question of the fighting capacity of the Army and of the measures for raising its level was not even mentioned in the programme, and was included only at our request. If we are to believe the statement—strange, to say no more—made by the Chairman, Lieutenant-Colonel Goushchin, the object of the summoning of the Congress was the desire of the Executive Committee to pass under our flag into the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates.” This declaration led to a series of serious incidents; three-quarters of the delegates left the meeting and the Congress came to an end.

I have mentioned the question of the Petrograd Officers’ Council and Congress only in order to show the spirit of a certain section of the officers of the Rear, which was in frequent contact with the official and unofficial rulers, and represented, in the eyes of the latter, the “voice of the Army.”

The Moghilev Congress, which attracted the unflagging attention of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and was much favoured by him, closed on May 22nd. At this time General Alexeiev had already been relieved of the command of the Russian Army. So deeply had this episode affected him that he was unable to attend the last meeting. I bade farewell to the Congress in the following words:

“The Supreme Commander-in-Chief, who is leaving his post, has commissioned me, gentlemen, to convey to you his sincere greetings, and to say that his heart, that of an old soldier, beats in unison with yours, that it aches with the same pain, and lives with the same hope for the regeneration of the disrupted, but ever great, Russian Army.

“Let me add a few words from myself.

“You have gathered here from the distant blood-bespattered marches of our land, and laid before us your quenchless sorrow and your soul-felt grief.

“You have unrolled before us a vivid and painful picture of the life and work of the officers amidst the raging sea of the Army.

“You, who have stood a countless number of times in the face of death! You, who have intrepidly led your men against the dense rows of the enemy’s barbed wire, to the rare boom of your own guns, treacherously deprived of ammunition! You, who, hardening your hearts, but keeping up your spirits, have cast the last handful of earth into the grave of your fallen son, brother, or friend!

“Will you quail now?

“No!

“You who are weak, raise your heads. You who are strong, give of your determination, of your aspirations, of your desire to work for the happiness of your Motherland—pour them into the thinned ranks of your comrades at the Front. You are not alone. With you are all those who are honourable, all who think, all who have paused at the brink of that common sense which is now being abolished.

“The soldiers also will go with you, understanding clearly that you are leading them, not backwards, to serfdom and to spiritual poverty, but forwards, to freedom and to light.

“And then such a thunderstorm will break over the foe as will put an end both to him and to the War.

“These three years of the War I have lived one life with you, thought the same thoughts, shared with you the joy of victory and the burning pain of retreat. I have therefore the right to fling into the faces of those who have outraged our hearts, who from the very first days of the Revolution have wrought the work of Cain on the corps of officers—I have the right to fling in their faces the words: ‘You lie! The Russian officer has never been either a mercenary or a Pretorian.’

“Under the old régime you were victimised, down-trodden, and deprived of all that makes life worth living. In no less a degree than yourselves, leading a life of semi-beggary, our officers of the Line have managed to carry through their wretched, laborious life like a burning torch, the thirst for achievement for the happiness of his Motherland.

“Then let my call be heard through these walls by the builders of the new life of the State:

“Take care of the officer! For from the beginning and till now he has stood, faithfully and without relief, on guard over the order of the Russian State. He can be relieved by death alone.”

Printed by the Committee, the text of my speech was circulated at the Front, and I was happy to learn, from many letters and telegrams, that the words spoken in defence of the officer had touched his aching heart.

The Congress left a permanent institution at the Stavka—the “Chief Committee of the Officers’ Union.”[29] During the first three months of its existence the Committee did not succeed in rooting itself deeply in the Army. Its activities were confined to organising branches of the Union in the Armies and in military circles, to the examination of the complaints that reached it. In exceptional cases incompetent officers were recommended for dismissal (the “black-board”); to a certain very limited degree officers expelled by the soldiers were granted assistance, and declarations were addressed to the Government and to the Press in connection with the more important events in public and military life. After the June advance the tone of these declarations became acrimonious, critical, and defiant, which seriously disturbed the Prime Minister, who persistently sought to have the Chief Committee transferred from Moghilev to Moscow, as he considered that its attitude was a danger to the Stavka.

The Committee, which was somewhat passive during the command of General Brussilov, did, indeed, take part afterwards in General Kornilov’s venture. But it was not this circumstance that caused the change in its attitude. The Committee undoubtedly reflected the general spirit with which the Command and the Russian officers were then imbued, a spirit which had become hostile to the Provisional Government. Also, no clear idea had been formed among the officers of the political groups within the Government of the covert struggle proceeding between them, or of the protective part played by many representatives of the Liberal Democracy among them. A hostile attitude was thus created towards the Government as a whole.

Having remained hitherto perfectly loyal and in the majority of cases well-disposed, having patiently borne, much against the grain, the experiments which the Provisional Government made, deliberately or involuntarily, on the country and on the Army, these elements lived only in the hope of the regeneration of the Army, of an advance and of victory. When all these hopes crashed to the ground, then, not being united in their ideals with the second Coalitional Government, but, on the contrary, deeply distrusting it, the masses of the officers abandoned the Provisional Government, which thus lost its last reliable support.

This moment is of great historical importance, giving the key to the understanding of many later events. As a whole, deeply democratic in their personnel, views and conditions of life, rejected by the Revolutionary Democracy with incredible harshness and cynicism, and finding no real support in the liberal circles in close touch with the Government, the Russian officers found themselves in a state of tragic isolation. This isolation and bewilderment served more than once afterwards as a fertile soil for outside influences, foreign to the traditions of the officer caste and to its former political character—influences which led to dissension, and in the end to fratricide. For there can be no doubt that all the power, all the organisation, both of the Red and of the White Armies, rested exclusively on the personality of the former Russian officer.

And if afterwards, in the course of three years of conflict, we have witnessed the rise of two conflicting forces in the Russian public life of the anti-Bolshevist camp, we must seek for their original source not in political differences only, but also in that work of Cain towards the officers’ caste, which was wrought by the Revolutionary Democracy from the first days of the Revolution.

As everyone realised that the “new order” and the Front itself are on the verge of collapse, it was obvious that officers should have attempted some organisation to meet such a contingency. But the advocates of action were lying in prison; the Chief Council of the Officers’ Union, which was best suited for this task, had been broken up by Kerensky in the latter days of August. The majority of the responsible leaders of the Army were perturbed by a terrible and not unfounded fear for the fate of the Russian officers. In this respect the correspondence between General Kornilov and General Doukhonin is very characteristic. After the Bolshevist coup d’état on November 1 (14), 1917, General Kornilov wrote to Doukhonin from his prison in Bykhov:

“Foreseeing the further course of events, I think that it is necessary for you to take such measures as would create a favourable atmosphere, while thoroughly safeguarding Headquarters, for a struggle against the coming Anarchy.”

Among these measures General Kornilov suggested “the concentration in Moghilev, or in a point near to it, under a reliable guard, of a store of rifles, cartridges, machine-guns, automatic guns and hand-grenades for distribution among the officer-volunteers, who will undoubtedly gather together in this region.”

Doukhonin made a note against this point: “This might lead to excesses.”

Thus the constant morbid fears of an officers’ “Counter-Revolution” proved to be in vain. Events took the officers unawares. They were unorganised, bewildered; they did not think of their own safety, and finally scattered their forces.

CHAPTER XXIV.
The Revolution and the Cossacks.

A peculiar part was played by the Cossacks in the history of the Revolution.

Built up historically, in the course of several centuries, the relations of the Cossacks with the Central Government, common to Russia, were of a dual character. The Government did all to encourage the development of Cossack colonisation on the Russian south-eastern borders, where war was unceasing. It made allowances for the peculiarities of the warlike, agricultural life of the Cossacks, and allowed them a certain degree of independence and individual forms of democratic rule, with representative organs (the Kosh, kroog, rada), an elected “Army elder” and hetmans.

“In its weakness,” says Solovyov, “The State did not look too strictly on the activities of the Cossacks, so long as they were directed only against foreign lands; the State being weak, it was considered needful to give these restless forces an outlet.” But the “activities” of the Cossacks were more than once directed against Moscow as well. This circumstance led to a prolonged internecine struggle, which lasted until the end of the eighteenth century, when, after a ferocious suppression of the Pougatchov Rebellion, the free Cossacks of the South-East were dealt a final blow; they gradually lost their markedly oppositionary character, and even gained the reputation of the most conservative element in the State, the pillars of the throne and the régime.

From that time onward the Government incessantly showed favour to the Cossacks by emphasising their really great merits, by solemn promises to preserve their “Cossack Liberties,”[30] and by the appointment of members of the Imperial family to honorary posts among the Cossacks. At the same time, the Government took all measures to prevent these “liberties” from developing to excess at the expense of that ruthless centralisation, which was a historical necessity in the beginning of the building up of the Russian State and a vast historical blunder in its later development. To the number of these measures we must refer the limitation of Cossack self-government, and, latterly, the traditional appointment to the post of Hetman of persons not belonging to the Cossack caste, and often complete strangers to the life of the Cossacks. The oldest and most numerous Cossack Army, that of the Don, has had Generals of German origin at its head more than once.

It seemed as if the Czarist Government had every reason to depend upon the Cossacks. The repeated repression of the local political labour and agrarian disturbances which broke out in Russia, the crushing of a more serious rising—the revolution of 1905-1906, in which a great part was played by the Cossack troops—all this seemed to confirm the established opinion of the Cossacks. On the other hand, sundry episodes of the “repressions,” accompanied by inevitable violence, sometimes cruelty, were widely spread among the people, were exaggerated, and created a hostile attitude towards the Cossacks at the factories, in the villages, among the Liberal intelligencia, and especially among those elements which are known as the Revolutionary Democracy. Throughout the whole of the underground literature—in its appeals, leaflets, and pictures—the idea of a “Cossack” became synonymous with “servant” of the Reactionary party.

This definition was greatly exaggerated. The bard of the Don Cossacks, Mitrophan Bogayevsky, says of the political character of the Cossacks: “The first and fundamental condition which prevented the Cossacks, at least in the beginning, from breaking up was the idea of the State, a lawful order, a deep-seated realisation of the necessity of a life within the bounds of law. This seeking of a lawful order runs, and has run, like a scarlet thread through all the circles of all the Cossack Armies.” But such altruistic motives, by themselves, do not exhaust the question. Notwithstanding the grievous weight of universal military service, the Cossacks, especially those of the South, enjoyed a certain prosperity which excluded that important stimulus which roused against the Government and the régime both the workers’ class and the peasantry of Central Russia. An extraordinarily complicated agrarian question set the caste economic interests of the Cossacks against the interests of the “outsider”[31] settlers. Thus, for instance, in the oldest and largest Cossack Army, that of the Don, the amount of land secured to an individual farm was, on the average, in dessiateens: for Cossacks, 19.3 to 30; for native peasants, 6.5; for immigrant peasants, 1.3. Finally, owing to historical conditions and a narrow territorial system of recruiting, the Cossack units possessed a perfectly homogeneous personnel, a great internal unity, and a discipline which was firm, though somewhat peculiar as to the mutual relations between the officers and the privates, and therefore they conceded complete obedience to their chiefs and to the Supreme Power.

With the support of all these motives, the Government made a wide use of Cossack troops for suppressing popular agitation, and thus roused against them the mute exasperation of the fermenting, discontented masses of the population.

In return for their historical “liberties,” the Cossack Armies, as I have said, give all but universal military service. Its burden and the degree of relative importance of these troops among the armed forces of the Russian Empire are shown in the following table:

Partly as cavalry of the line—in divisions and corps, partly as Army corps and divisional cavalry—in regiments, sub-divisions and detached sotnias, the Cossack units were scattered over all the Russian fronts, from the Baltic to Persia. Among the Cossacks, as against all the other component parts of the Army, desertion was unknown.

At the outbreak of Revolution all the political groups, and even the representatives of the Allies, devoted great attention to the Cossacks—some building exaggerated hopes on them, others regarding them with unconcealed suspicion. The circles of the Right looked to the Cossacks for Restoration; the Liberal Bourgeoisie, for active support of law and order; while the parties of the Left feared that they were counter-Revolutionary, and therefore started a strong propaganda in the Cossack units, seeking to disintegrate them. This was to some extent assisted by the spirit of repentance which showed itself at all Cossack meetings, Congresses, “Circles” and “Radas” at which the late power was accused of systematically rousing the Cossacks against the people. The mutual relations between the Cossacks and the local agricultural population were unusually complicated, especially in the Cossack territories of European Russia.[33] Intermingled with the Cossack allotments were peasant lands—those of whilom settlers (the indigenous peasantry)—lands let on long lease, on which large settlements had sprung up, finally lands which had been granted by the Emperor to various persons and which had gradually passed into the hands of “outsiders.” On the basis of these mutual relations dissension now arose which began to assume the character of violence and forcible seizures. With respect to the Don Army, which gave the keynote to all others, the Provisional Government considered it necessary to publish on April 7th an appeal in which, while affirming that “the rights of the Cossacks to the land, as they have grown historically, remain inviolable,” also promised the “outsider” population, “whose claim to the land is also based on historical rights,” that it would be satisfied, in as great a measure as possible, by the Constituent Assembly. This agrarian puzzle, which surrounded with uncertainty the most tender point of the Cossacks’ hopes, was explained unequivocally, in the middle of May, by the Minister of Agriculture, Tchernov (at the All-Russia Peasant Congress), who stated that the Cossacks held large tracts of land and that now they would have to surrender a portion of their lands.

In the Cossack territories meanwhile work was in full swing in the sphere of self-determination and self-government; the information supplied by the Press was vague and contradictory; no one had yet heard the voice of the Cossacks as a whole. One can understand, therefore, that general attention which was concentrated on the All-Russia Cossack Congress, which gathered in Petrograd in the beginning of June.

The Cossacks paid a tribute to the Revolution and to the State, referred to their own needs (after all, the question of their holdings was the most vital one), and ... smiled to the Soviet....

The impression thus produced was indefinite; neither were the hopes of the one side fulfilled nor the fears of the other dissipated.

Meanwhile, at the initiative of the Revolutionary Democracy, a violent propaganda was set on foot for introducing the idea of doing away with the Cossacks as a separate caste. But, on the whole, this idea of self-abolition had no success. On the contrary, a growing aspiration spread among the Cossacks for maintaining their internal organisation and for the union of all the Cossack Armies.

Cossack Governments sprang up everywhere, elected Hetmans and representative institutions (“Circles” and Radas), whose authority increased in accordance with the weakening of the authority and power of the Provisional Government. Such eminent men appeared at the head of the Cossacks as Kaledin (the Don), Doutov (Orenburg), and Karaoulov (the Terek).

A triple power was formed in the Cossack territories; the Hetman with his Government, the commissary of the Provisional Government, and the Soviet.[34]

The Commissaries, however, after a short and unsuccessful struggle, soon subsided and exhibited no activity. Far more serious became the struggle of the Cossack authority with the local Soviets and Committees, which sought support in the unruly mob of soldiers who flooded the territories under the name of Reserve Army Battalions and Rear Army Units. This curse of the population positively terrorised the land, creating anarchy in the towns and settlements, instituting sacks, seizing lands and businesses, trampling upon all rights, all authority, and creating intolerable conditions of life. The Cossacks had nothing with which to combat this violence—all their units were at the Front. Only in the Don territory, accidentally, in the autumn of 1917, not without the deliberate connivance of the Stavka, a division was concentrated, and afterwards three divisions, with the aid of which General Kaledin attempted to restore order.

But all the measures taken by him, as for instance the occupation by armed forces of railway junctions, of the more important mines, and of large centres, which secured normal communication and supplies for the centre and the fronts, were met not only with violent resistance on the part of the Soviets and with accusations of counter-revolutionism, but even with some suspicion on the part of the Provisional Government. At the same time the Cossacks of the Kouban and of the Terek asked the Don to send them if only a few sotnias, as it was “becoming impossible to breathe for comrades.”

The friendly relations, instituted in the early days of the Revolution, between the general Russian and the Cossack Revolutionary Democracies were soon broken off finally. “Cossack Socialism” turned out to be so self-sufficing, so concentrated in its own castes and corporation limits, that it could find no place in that doctrine.

The Soviets insisted on the equalising of the holdings of the Cossacks and the peasants, while the Cossacks vigorously defended their right of property and disposal in the Cossack lands, basing it on their historical merits as conquerors, protectors, and colonisers of the former marches of Russia’s territory.

The organisation of a general territorial Government failed. An internecine struggle began.

The consequences were two-fold: The first was a painful atmosphere of estrangement and hostility between the Cossacks and the “outsider” population, which later, in the swiftly changing kaleidoscope of the civil war, sometimes assumed monstrous forms of mutual extermination, as the power passed from the hands of one side into those of the other. Along with this, one or the other half of the population of the larger Cossack territories were generally deemed as participating in the building up and the economy of the land.[35] The second was the so-called Cossack separatism or self-determination.

The Cossacks had no reason to expect from the Revolutionary Democracy a favourable settlement of their destiny, especially in the question most vital to it—the land question. On the other hand, the Provisional Government had also assumed an ambiguous attitude in this matter, and the Government power was openly tending to its fall. The future assumed altogether indefinite outlines. Hence, independently of the general healthy aspiration towards decentralisation, there appeared among the Cossacks, who for centuries had been seeking “freedom,” a tendency themselves to secure the maximum of independence, so as to place the future Constituent Assembly before an accomplished fact, or as the more outspoken Cossack leaders put it, “that there should be something from which to knock off.” Hence a gradual evolution from territorial self-government to autonomy, federation, and confederation. Hence, finally—with the intrusion of individual local self-love, ambition, and interests—a permanent struggle began with every principle of an imperial tendency, a struggle which weakened both sides and greatly prolonged the civil war.[36] It was these circumstances, too, that gave birth to the idea of an independent Cossack army, which first arose among the Cossacks of the Kouban and was not then supported by Kaledin and the more imperialistic elements of the Don.

All that I have related refers mainly to the three Cossack bodies (the Don, the Kouban, and the Terek) which form more than sixty per cent. of Cossack-dom. But the general characteristic features belong to the other Cossack armies as well.

Along with the alterations in the composition of the Provisional Government and with the decline of its authority, changes took place in the attitude toward it of Cossack-dom, expressing themselves in the resolutions and appeals of the Council of the union of the Cossack armies, of the hetmans, circles, and Governments. If before July the Cossacks voted for all possible support to the Government and for complete obedience, later, however, while acknowledging the authority of the Government to the very end, it comes forward in sharp opposition to it on the questions of the organisation of the Cossack administration and zemstvo, of the employment of Cossacks for the repression of rebellious troops and districts and so forth. In October the Kouban rada assumes constituent powers and publishes the constitution of the “Kouban territory.” It speaks of the Government in such a manner as the following: “When will the Provisional Government shake off these fumes (the Bolshevist aggression) and put an end, by resolute measures, to these scandals?”

The Provisional Government, being already without authority and without any real power, surrendered all its positions and agreed to peace with the Cossack Governments.

It is remarkable that, even at the end of October, when, owing to the breach of communications, no correct information had yet been received on the Don about the events in Petrograd and Moscow and about the fate of the Provisional Government, and when it was supposed that its fragments were functioning somewhere or other, the Cossack elders, in the person of the representatives of the South-Eastern Union, then gathering,[37] sought to get into touch with the Government, offering it aid against the Bolsheviks, but conditioning this aid with a whole series of economic demands: a non-interest-bearing loan of 500,000,000 roubles, the State to pay all the expenses of supporting Cossack units outside the territory of the union, the institution of a pension fund for all sufferers, and the right of the Cossacks to all “spoils of war”(?) which might be taken in the course of the coming civil war.

It is not without interest that for a long time Pourishkevitch cherished the idea of the transfer of the State Duma to the Don, as a counterpoise to the Provisional Government and for the preservation of the source of authority, in case of the fall of the latter. Kaledin’s attitude towards this proposal was negative.

A characteristic indication of the attitude which the Cossacks had succeeded in retaining towards themselves in the most varied circles was that attraction to the Don which later, in the winter of 1917, led thitherward Rodzianko, Miliukov, General Alexeiev, the Bykhov prisoners, Savinkov, and even Kerensky, who came to General Kaledin, in Novotcherkassk, in the latter days of November, but was not received by him. Pourishkevitch alone did not come, and that only because he was then in prison in Petrograd, in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

And suddenly it turned out that the whole thing was a mystification, pure and simple, that at that time the Cossacks had no power left whatever.

In view of the growing disorders on the Cossack territory, the hetmans repeatedly appealed for the recall from the front of if only part of the Cossack divisions. They were awaited with enormous impatience, and the most radiant hopes were built on them. In October these hopes seemed to be on the eve of fulfilment; the Cossack divisions had started for home. Overcoming all manner of obstacles on their way, retarded at every step by the Vikzhel (All-Russia Executive Railway Committee) and the local Soviets, subjected more than once to insults, disarmament, resorting in one place to requests, in another to cunning, and in some places to armed threats, the Cossack units forced their way into their territories.

But no measures could preserve the Cossack units from the fate which had befallen the Army, for the whole of the psychological atmosphere and all the factors of disruption, internal and external, were absorbed by the Cossack masses, perhaps less intensively, but on the whole in the same way. The two unsuccessful and, for the Cossacks, incomprehensible marches on Petrograd, with Krymov[38] and Krasnov,[39] introduced still greater confusion into their vague political outlook.

The return of the Cossack troops to their homeland brought complete disenchantment with it: they—at least the Cossacks of the Don, the Kouban, and the Terek[40]—brought with them from the front the most genuine Bolshevism, void, of course, of any kind of ideology, but with all the phenomena of complete disintegration which we know so well. This disintegration ripened gradually, showed itself later, but at once exhibiting itself in the denial of the authority of the “elders,” the negation of all power, by mutiny, violence, the persecution and surrender of the officers, but principally by complete abandonment of any struggle against the Soviet power, which falsely promised the inviolability of the Cossack rights and organisation. Bolshevism and the Cossack organisation! Such grotesque contradictions were brought to the surface daily by the reality of Russian life, on the basis of that drunken debauch into which its long-desired freedom had degenerated.

Now began the tragedy of Cossack life and the Cossack family in which an insurmountable barrier had arisen between the “elders” and the “men of the front,” destroying their life and rousing the children against their fathers.