The bourgeoisie was watching the behaviour of the compromisers with great growing nervousness. It had already felt for some time that the ground had become insecure under their feet. The Cadets, the principal bourgeois and landlord party, grew increasingly pessimistic over the dwindling influence of their “allies”—the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The reactionaries feverishly devised new methods of retaining the support of the masses. In the joint opinion of the bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois allies, one such method would be an offensive at the front. The calculations of the Cadets were extremely simple, namely, to involve the army in an offensive with the help of the compromisers. The continuation of the war would inevitably strengthen the hand of the military. This would put an end to the duality of power, and the entire power would pass into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Victory at the front would evoke a new wave of patriotism and encourage defencist sentiments. In the hurly-burly of war the burning question of the revolution—land and the condition of the workers—could be postponed and finally removed from the agenda altogether.
On the plea that all efforts must be concentrated on the struggle against the foreign enemy, the counter-revolutionaries would be in a position to maltreat, arrest and shoot those who agitated against the war.
The offensive at the front would benefit the bourgeoisie even if it failed. The entire blame for the failure could be laid on the Bolsheviks.
The British and French imperialists were likewise demanding active measures. They had realised for some time that Russia was not in a condition to prosecute the war any further. It was not by chance that America had entered the war very soon after the February Revolution: the American soldiers were to replace the exhausted Russian armies. But the transport of troops required time, and meanwhile the Russians had to be induced to divert as many German army corps as possible to their own front. It was necessary, as General Knox, the British representative at Russian General Headquarters, relates in his memoirs,
“to keep at all events some Russian troops on the line to prevent all German troops from going West.”(1)
The imperialist press persistently demanded an offensive. The diplomats haunted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, insisting on vigorous military action. Delegations of Socialists came to Russia from Great Britain, France and America to persuade the Russian people “to do their duty.” Arthur Henderson, J. H. Thomas and Albert Thomas, Socialist compromisers of international fame, visited the Russian front and Russian barracks and factories, appealing “in the name of the revolution,” to the soldiers and workers to fight.
On May 16, 1917, a report appeared in the French newspaper Information to the effect that America was prepared to grant Russia a big loan if “counter-guarantees” were given.
“From this the conclusion is drawn,” the paper stated, “that America’s secret note to Russia demands guarantees against the conclusion of a separate peace and a promise of whole-hearted co-operation. It is considered that such a definite guarantee by Russia would be the launching of an offensive on the Russian front.”(2)
The imperialists wanted to buy the Russian army just as cattle are bought for slaughter. The semi-colonial dependence of Russia became even more pronounced under the bourgeois Provisional Government than under the tsar.
The growing discontent of the masses and the rumours of an impending demonstration expedited the preparations for the military offensive. Stores of shells, guns and machine-guns were accumulated, purchased with money supplied by the British and French imperialists. Reliable troops were hastily transferred to the main points of attack.
The front was inundated with Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik agitators. Resorting in turn to coaxes and threats, promises and deceit, they urged the soldiers “in the name of the revolution” to undertake the offensive. To what lengths the deceit was carried may be judged from an incident related by a soldier of the Sixth Finland Regiment.
For a long time the regiment would not allow itself to be persuaded. But at last a delegation arrived from the Guards Corps and declared in the name of all the guards regiments that they would turn their bayonets on the Finland Regiment if the latter refused to attack.
The soldiers were dumbfounded when they learnt that they stood alone. Under pressure of the officers and of the delegation, they grudgingly raised their hands in favour of the offensive. This soldier of the Finland Regiment relates:
“The artillery preparations for the attack were carried out brilliantly. The enemy’s barbed wire defences were swept away, and our regiment, with slight losses, burst into the front line of the half-destroyed German trenches. The second and third lines of defence were taken by storm. The counter-attack cost the Germans dear. About 200 corpses of German soldiers, lads and young men in undershirts and unbuttoned uniforms, lay strewn about, their faces buried in the ground.
“In the third-line trenches our men lay down and demanded to be replaced, because one of the guards’ delegates at the meeting had declared that the guards would take our places as soon as we had broken through the German lines of defence. All the efforts of the generals to induce us to continue the attack were in vain. The Sixth Finland Regiment declared that they had fulfilled their obligations and would wait until they were replaced by the guards. Since the replacements did not arrive, the soldiers and the soldiers’ representatives on the regimental committee appointed a delegation to visit the regiments of the Guards Corps.
“Imagine our indignation and rage when we learnt that the soldiers of the Guards Corps had never had any intention of attacking, that they were being threatened with the guards, and as to the delegation that had visited us, it was simply the Menshevik group on the corps committee, to whom none of the guards paid the slightest attention, because as a matter of fact the whole corps was being led by a Bolshevik-minded committee of one of the divisions. We had been duped in the most unscrupulous manner.”(3)
The plan for the offensive had been drawn up before the revolution. On December 17 and 18, 1916, a conference was held at General Headquarters of the commanders of the fronts, who presented their schemes of attack. It was then that Nicholas II gave orders for an offensive to be launched in the spring,
“the main blow to be delivered from the region of the Eleventh and Seventh Armies in the direction of Lvov, and secondary blows to be delivered on the other fronts.”(4)
The Generals of the Provisional Government did not even take the trouble to work out a new strategical plan; they simply dug out the old tsarist plan. In this, as in everything else, the Provisional Government continued the brainless policy of the autocratic régime.
The offensive was originally planned for June 10. But on this day the Congress of Soviets was still in session. It was deemed desirable to get the consent of the defencists to the reckless venture. Kerensky requested that the offensive be postponed until he had secured a resolution of approval. General Headquarters consented to postpone the offensive for two days, but no longer, because “the enemy has obviously already got wind of the preparations on our side,”(5) as General Brusilov, the Supreme Commander, explained.
The two days passed. No resolution had been adopted and the generals were growing restive. On June 12 Brusilov summoned Kerensky to the direct wire and insisted that he immediately come to General Headquarters. Being himself occupied in coaxing the delegates at the Congress of Soviets, Kerensky sent the Chief of Chancellery of the Ministry of War to negotiate.
“The resolution will be passed to-day or to-morrow,” the Chief of Chancellery assured Brusilov. “It has been greatly delayed by the events in Petrograd, namely, the action of the Bolsheviks. . . . Many delegations from divisions at the front have already visited us. . . . The Minister has explained to each of these delegations that the orders of their commanders must be obeyed unreservedly. . . . They all departed satisfied on the whole, but this shows that, for the sake of certainty, the arrival at the front of the Minister himself with a resolution of the soldiers and workers, in addition to a resolution of the Peasants’ Congress, is absolutely essential.”(6)
Having obtained the resolution of the Congress approving the further prosecution of the war, Kerensky left with it for the front.
The offensive began on June 18.
In Petrograd thousands of workers and soldiers were sternly marching and demanding peace, yet at the front hundreds of thousands of men were being sent to their doom.
In Petrograd, the proletarian masses were voting against the Provisional Government, yet at the front thousands of men were perishing at the orders and for the sake of this government.
In the streets of the revolutionary capital the workers were tearing down banners with the motto . . . “Confidence in the Government!” Yet at the front, under this same motto, thousands of the finest members of the working population were being maimed and destroyed in a storm of shell-fire.
The attack on the Austro-German armies was delivered along a front of 70 kilometres, between the villages of Zdvizhino and Topelikha, where 312 battalions—about 300,000 strong—had been assembled. Here, too, were assembled about 800 light guns and over 500 medium and heavy guns. After an artillery barrage lasting two days, the Russian troops attacked. The Seventh Army captured the enemy’s trenches. But the incompetent generals were unable to consolidate the victory. Reinforcements arrived slowly, or were held up altogether en route. The enemy took advantage of the delay, mobilised his forces, and compelled the Russians to retreat.
This state of affairs was duplicated on the front of the Eleventh Army. Having occupied the enemy’s trenches, the regiments did not know what to do next. The plan of the army had not provided for a successful issue to the attack. The troops came to a halt. Time passed, the enemy brought up reinforcements and launched a counter-offensive.
On June 25, to the astonishment of the stupid generals, the Eighth Army began a successful advance. General Headquarters decided to swap horses in midstream—to alter the plan of attack and to dispatch reinforcements from the Seventh Army to the Eighth Army. But this bold manœuvre was too much for the old generals. Interminable time was spent in writing the orders. Even more time was spent in search of the required reinforcements, and by the time they had been found, the enemy had already delivered a crushing counter-blow (July 6).
Prepared in a hurry and based on fraud and deceit, the Kerensky-Brusilov offensive collapsed. Within four or five days the gulf between the soldiers and the bourgeois officers became fully revealed. The artificially fanned military enthusiasm soon collapsed, and the troops, who had been driven to attack by coercion and fraud, hurried back to the rear.
In the ten days that the offensive lasted the armies on the South-Eastern Front lost about 60,000 men. Such was the bloody price paid for Kerensky’s reckless adventure.
Proper measures for the success of the blow had not been taken. Plans had not been worked out. The commander of one of the armies was removed on Kerensky’s orders because he had not drawn up a detailed plan of attack. The technical preparations for the offensive were beneath all criticism. In the Tenth Army only three masked batteries instead of eighteen were set up on the front occupied by the II Caucasian Corps, and only 5,000 paces of trench were dug instead of 30,000. The I Siberian Corps in this same army had dug only one-third the length of trench planned. There was a shortage of cartridges. The training of the men was far from satisfactory.
Many of the soldiers even did not know how to use their rifles. The employment of the reserves and the contact between the various units could hardly have been worse.
“It is not astonishing,” Stankevich, one of the Military Commissars of the Provisional Government, bitterly confessed, “that our offensive failed. . . . Does not the secret of our military failures in face of the offensive of the enemy on the South-Western Front lie in complete lack of preparation?”(7)
The army proved to be technically unprepared, as one of the most active organisers of the offensive admitted. But the bourgeoisie found other excuses: it attempted to foist the whole blame on the Bolsheviks.
On June 23, as soon as the first news of the defeat arrived, General Brusilov sent an urgent wire to Kerensky:
“. . . The mood of the Fifth Army at the front is very bad.
“. . . The troops refuse to take up position and categorically protest against the offensive. . . . It is being openly stated in some of the regiments that they recognise no other authority but Lenin. . . . I consider that the purging of the army can be effected only after the purging of the rear and after the propaganda of the Bolsheviks and the Leninists has been proclaimed criminal and punishable as high treason. . . .”(8)
The tsarist general betrayed the secret of the offensive: its purpose was not so much to wage war on Germany as to combat the revolution.
The offensive at the front collapsed, and with it collapsed the manœuvre of the Cadets. The bourgeoisie realised that not only had the compromisers lost their influence over the masses, but the army was escaping from its control. By the time of the June offensive the revolution had taken firm hold in the army and threatened to wrest it altogether from the grasp of the reactionaries.
[1] A. Knox, With the Russian Army 1914-1917, London, Hutchinson & Co., 1921, Vol. II, p. 617.
[2] “Les États-Unis auraient envoyé une note secrete à la Russie,” Information, No. 136, May 16, 1917.
[3] V. A. Malakhovsky, “The Seventh Army in the Struggle for October,” Manuscript Records of the History of the Civil War, No. 1587.
[4] Central Archives of Military History, Records of the Chancellery of the Minister of War, File No. 703, folio 504.
[5] Ibid., File No. 1494S, folio 7.
[6] Ibid., folios 204-07.
[7] V. V. Stankevich, “Society, War and the Army,” The People and Army, Book I, 1918, Petrograd, p. 69.
[8] Central Archives of Military History, Records of the Chancellery of the Minister of War, File No. 1494S, folio 67.
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