The Provisional Government mustered its fighting forces to crush the revolution. Although the generals were rapidly losing sway over the soldiers, the bourgeoisie never for a moment abandoned the attempt to utilise the army against the forces of revolution. The fate of the revolution was being decided by the army, in which about ten million workers and peasants were under arms. This was understood equally well by the bourgeoisie and by the Bolsheviks. That is why the counter-revolutionaries fought so stubbornly to retain control of the army both before and after the October Revolution.
The counter-revolutionaries recognised that the Northern Front and the Western Front were thoroughly affected by propaganda, and, recognising it, they of course did not remain idle. The generals still clutched at every opportunity to retain control of their troops. But the revolutionary process on the Northern and Western Fronts had already progressed so far that the Kerensky government and the military realised that here their cause was hopeless.
Almost as hopeless for the counter-revolutionaries was the position on the South-Western Front.
But this was not the case on the other fronts, especially the Rumanian Front. The Caucasian Front was of no great importance because it was isolated from the country.
The Rumanian Front lay a long way from the revolutionary and industrial centres. The soldiers on the Rumanian Front were surrounded by a population that did not speak Russian, and they therefore had to face their reactionary officers alone. Bolshevik newspapers were not allowed to reach the front, and the soldiers were fed exclusively on bourgeois “trash.” I. I. Vasilyev, a soldier and member of one of the army delegations from Petrograd, describes the state of affairs as he saw it at the front as follows:
“On arriving at the Rumanian Front, we found that the officers and the compromisers were making feverish preparations for an offensive, organising shock battalions and death battalions. The old régime prevailed in the army: there was not a single Bolshevik paper, and a most rabid campaign of calumny was waged against the Bolsheviks. The campaign went to such lengths that the word ‘Bolshevik’ itself was explained as being derived from the word ‘bolshak,’ i.e., a rich peasant, a kulak, and it was said that the ‘Bolsheviks’ wanted to restore Nicholas II to the throne.”(1)
The fact that the armies on the Rumanian Front were isolated from the revolutionary environment made them a suitable tool for the counter-revolutionaries.
But this was not the chief thing.
Side by side with the Russian army, or rather in its rear, Rumanian regiments were quartered. Little influenced by the revolution, they were used, on the instructions of General Shcherbachov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Front, as a police cordon to prevent “suspects” making their way to the front. Jointly with the Cossacks, the Rumanians disarmed regiments which opposed their commanders. Not a few of the more revolutionary regiments were “brought to their senses,” as General Shcherbachov cynically expressed it, by the threat of Rumanian machine-guns and cannon. The reactionary commanders dreamed of utilising the armies on the Rumanian Front to combat the revolution. It was a rallying ground for officers who had been driven from other fronts. Under the protection of the Rumanians, General Shcherbachov formed officers’ shock battalions, some of which later fought in the Civil War on the side of the White Guards.
Nevertheless, even here the revolutionary movement made its influence felt. Bolshevik ideas were brought by troops that had been transferred from Siberia in August. The Kornilov revolt also played its part: it at once brought the antagonisms between the officers and the rank and file into sharp relief. Towards the end of September the periodical reports from the Rumanian Front began to reflect what had long been reflected in the reports from the other fronts. Here, for instance, is the report of Colonel Drozdovsky, who later served under Denikin, on the situation in one of the most “reliable” regiments on the front:
“Bolshevik slogans have begun to penetrate into the regiment through the Priboi, the organ of the Helsingfors Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. I am unable to take measures to prevent the paper getting through, as it finds its way into the regiment secretly, by mail and in letters. . . . During the past week there have been several instances of individual insubordination and of attempts at wholesale insubordination; there were cases of incitement to disobey legitimate orders. Investigations into these cases have been instituted and the guilty men will be tried, but it is difficult to discover the ringleaders owing to the connivance and sympathy of the soldiers. Their prosecution arouses sullen discontent among the soldiers; every legitimate demand tending to restrict unbridled conduct, every demand for the observance of law and order they call ‘old régime.’ . . . Perverted by the fact that offences go unpunished and by the abolition of the forms of addressing superiors, the men, in conversation with the officers, go so far as insolently to accuse them of being in favour of the war because they receive big pay; the prevailing mood among the soldiers themselves is an unwillingness to fight, a failure to realise, or, rather, a refusal to realise, the necessity for continuing the war.”(2)
Reading this document, one might think that it refers not to the end of September but to the first months of the revolution. Such reports came from the Northern and Western Fronts even before the Kornilov revolt. At the end of September it was not so much a matter of “individual instances” on these fronts, or even of “attempts at wholesale insubordination,” and of a complete collapse of discipline among the soldiers. But delaying the spread of the revolutionary spirit among the masses did not mean destroying that spirit. In spite of the conditions that favoured reaction, in spite of the artifices of the generals and the compromisers, the Rumanian Front went the way of the other fronts.
The measures applied in the army by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were obviously ineffectual: the generals were rapidly losing control over the soldiers. Other measures had to be adopted to check this process. Without rejecting the services of the petty-bourgeois compromisers, the generals at the front decided to try a new method—to hold the rapidly disintegrating army together with the help of shock battalions.
In May, General Brusilov, the Commander-in-Chief of the South-Western Front, had sent Colonel Yasnikov and the bogus sailor Batkin to Petrograd to request, the formation of volunteer battalions to reinforce the front. The petty-bourgeois leaders came to the generals’ aid; on May 16 a congress of committees of the South-Western Front adopted a resolution urging the necessity of reinforcing the army by volunteer battalions. General Brusilov immediately endorsed the resolution and that very same day sent a message to the delegation informing them that the idea had the support of the front. One may judge of the haste shown by the counter-revolutionaries from the fact that the delegation left before credentials could be issued to them.
Brusilov’s proposal was quickly taken up by other commanders. On May 18 General Denikin, in his hurry to expedite the formation of shock battalions, wired the Minister of War requesting permission for a delegation from the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet to visit the reserve regiments of the Petrograd and Moscow garrisons in order
“after a passionate appeal, to call upon those who are willing to join these battalions. . . . It would be desirable to take action before the return of the Minister of War, because every day is valuable.”(3)
On May 20, only four days after the initiative was taken. General Brusilov reported to the Minister of War and the Supreme Commander that
“measures for the creation of shock groups at the front of the armies are already being adopted by me on a wide scale.”(4)
The initiative taken by the generals at the front at first aroused certain misgivings in the mind of General Alexeyev, the Supreme Commander. Alexeyev doubted the value of the new battalions. But the doubts of the Supreme Commander were apparently soon set at rest, because the formation of the shock battalions proceeded rapidly. An All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the Organisation of a Volunteer Army was formed in Petrograd and began to open branches in the large cities.
The shock battalions were at once singled out for special treatment in comparison with the rest of the army. They were better fed and better supplied. The volunteer shock troopers retained their former jobs and pay, and in the event of their death, pensions were paid to their families. Order No. 1 did not apply to the shock battalions, for which the army regulations were specially modified. The shock battalions were assigned their own colours—black and red—red symbolising revolution and black readiness to die—not, of course, for the revolution, but for the commanding officers: the shock-trooper took an oath “to obey without question and without protest, on duty and in battle all the commands of my superiors.”
The rank-and-file soldiers rapidly divined the character of the new battalions, which were initiated and formed independently of the Soviets. A number of Soviets at the front expressed their opposition to the formation of the shock battalions. The reason for their objection was very clearly expressed in a resolution adopted by the Pskov Executive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies:
“. . . Both the method of recruiting the volunteers and their better material supply stipulated in the regulations, as compared with their comrades in the army, places the battalions in a privileged position: the regulations provide for an internal organisation of the battalions which is at variance with the Declaration of Rights of the Soldier-Citizen; the political and strategical purpose of the formation of the battalions, vaguely formulated in the regulations, may be interpreted in a way which does not harmonize with the aims of revolutionary democracy; owing to the isolation and specific purpose of the battalions, the danger is not precluded of their acting in ways which do not coincide with the prevailing tendencies in the army. . . .”(5)
The class instinct of the soldiers did not deceive them: the generals very soon disclosed the secret of how General Alexeyev’s doubts were set at rest. The day after the suppression of the July demonstration, Brusilov, who had by then been appointed Supreme Commander, wrote to Kornilov, Denikin, Shcherbachov and others informing them of what had happened and ending with the following words:
“Events are developing at lightning speed. Evidently, civil war is unavoidable and may break out at any minute. . . .
“The time for energetic action has arrived. . . .
“In my opinion the most effective means for this is the formation, or, rather, the selection of troops tried and reliable from the standpoint of discipline, which might serve as a bulwark for the government, which would recognise the government and which would not strive for personal rights, but would act for the salvation of the fatherland from anarchy and collapse. . . .”(6)
The shock battalions were formed not to fight the foreign enemy, but to combat “anarchy and collapse,” as the generals called the revolution.
The petty-bourgeois leaders also promised their support to the new measure. Stankevich, the Commissar of the Northern Front, added to Brusilov’s plan the proposal to organise in the rear a corps, if not a whole army, which would be thoroughly reliable from the standpoint of fighting capacity.
The future leaders of the counter-revolution quickly set about carrying the instructions of the Supreme Commander into effect. General Shcherbachov demanded the formation of a shock battalion in every regiment.
On being appointed Supreme Commander, General Kornilov took this matter in hand and demanded that the Central Executive Committee for the Formation of Shock Battalions should be transferred to General Headquarters. By the time of the Kornilov revolt, thirty-three shock battalions and one artillery battalion had already been formed on the various fronts: seven battalions on the Northern Front; fourteen battalions and one regiment (of three battalions) on the South-Western Front; seven battalions and one artillery battalion on the Western Front and two battalions on the Rumanian Front.
While demanding that the Red Guard should be disbanded and disarmed, the counter-revolutionaries were recruiting their White Guard.
At the front, the shock troopers terrorised the soldiers and disarmed regiments and battalions that refused to go into action. In the rear, they broke up demonstrations and smashed labour organisations. These class detachments of counter-revolution not infrequently assumed the functions of a political police. Internecine war was started within the army at the behest of the generals. On July 16, 1917, one of the shock battalions on the South-Western Front, without trial or investigation, shot two workers belonging to the Fifth Engineering Construction Squad, compelling the whole squad to witness the execution. The White Guard committed many acts of savage terrorism, summary execution and incredible brutality long before the civil war broke out.
The failure of the Kornilov revolt changed the form and character of the attempts to create a class military organisation for the support of counter-revolution. But the collapse of the Kornilov revolt did not stop, or even restrain for long, the feverish work of forming shock battalions. The counter-revolutionaries only restricted the scope of their activities for the time being and endeavoured above all to preserve the White Guard cadres. The shock battalions were transformed to other districts; they were temporarily merged with other regiments or attached to non-shock units, or else had their names changed. The “re-christening” was done with the blessing and direct support of the Provisional Government—another proof that the Kerensky government was no less entitled to be regarded as the general staff of counter-revolution than the Central Committee of the Cadet Party or General Headquarters. Literally on the very day of the defeat of the Kornilov revolt, General Alexeyev wired Kerensky:
“Among our armed forces is a Kornilov Shock Regiment consisting of three battalions, which in the short period of its existence succeeded in earning its honourable title by its valour in action. The name given the regiment, and its recent transfer to Moghilev [where General Headquarters were located—Ed.] place the regiment in an extremely difficult position, surrounded as it is by other army units which, it is to be feared, will regard this regiment with undeserved mistrust and suspicion. . . .
“I would therefore consider it expedient not to disband this regiment, which is inspired with so firm a spirit, but to dispatch it either to France or to Salonika, or, at the worst, to the Caucasian Front. . . .”(7)
In response to General Alexeyev’s request, Kerensky wired General Headquarters on September 6:
“I consider it necessary to remove the Kornilov Death Battalion from Moghilev at once. Please give the necessary orders.”(8)
Kerensky did not even demand the disbandment of the Kornilov Regiment, but merely recommended that it should be removed from Moghilev. Relying on Kerensky, Alexeyev gave orders that the regiment should be re-christened the 1st Russian Shock Regiment and attached to the Czecho-Slovakian Division. It was this regiment, saved by Kerensky, which after the October Revolution made its way to the Don and became the core of the firmest division in the White Army—the Kornilov Division.
The suppression of the Kornilov revolt halted the formation of White cadres for only a very short time. Under the protection of the Provisional Government, the counter-revolutionaries once more resumed feverish activity. General Headquarters not only preserved the shock battalions, but even endeavoured to legitimate them by transforming the Central Executive Committee for the Formation of Shock Battalions from a nominally public organisation into a department of the General Staff.
The counter-revolutionaries endeavoured, under the protection of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, to create their military units even among the working class. At the end of September, General Bagratuni, Chief of Staff of the Petrograd Military Area, informed General Headquarters of the Northern Front:
“A detachment has been formed in Petrograd consisting of volunteers from the Obukhov Works. An excellent unit, thoroughly welded and organised. . . . Considering it extremely desirable to preserve this thoroughly healthy unit. I request that it be dispatched to the war area for final formation. . . . The detachment consists of about one thousand men. . . .”(9)
The workers’ detachment was hastily removed from the revolutionary capital, for fear that the Bolsheviks would win it from the reactionaries. But at the front, in spite of the repeated assurances that the unit was “in an excellent and thoroughly healthy condition,” fears were entertained that it might bring with it the charged atmosphere of the revolutionary capital. The Northern Front categorically refused to accept the workers’ battalion and insisted that it be disbanded. As an extreme concession, the Chief of Staff of the Northern Front offered to attach the workers’ battalion to the Second Detachment of Disabled Warriors, one of the units which were regarded as loyal to the government. But while correspondence between the staffs was proceeding, the revolutionaries wrested the battalion from the hands of the reactionaries. When orders were received from General Headquarters to form a regiment of Obukhov workers, with the volunteer battalion as a nucleus, the gloomy reply was received: “It is to be presumed that by this time it has joined the Red Guard.”(10) Revolutionary events developed at a rate which forestalled the measures of the counter-revolutionaries.
The failure of the attempt made with the help of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to enlist the Obukhov workers in the shock battalions did not discourage the generals. The feverish formation of shock battalions continued; the counter-revolutionaries set up recruiting centres in eighty-five of the larger cities, not counting the war area. By the end of October the counter-revolutionaries had at their disposal forty shock battalions and one artillery battalion, or over 50,000 men, splendidly armed and equipped.
The shock battalions could easily be hurled against any section of the front, they could rapidly seize key positions and prevent the movement of revolutionary troops.
On a footing similar to that of the shock troops were the Battalions of St. George, consisting of soldiers who had been awarded the Cross of St. George for valour in action. The formation of these battalions began at about the same time as the formation of the shock battalions. Selected for their unquestioned fidelity to the Provisional Government, the St. George Battalions joined the shock battalions in disarming revolutionary regiments, drove regiments to the front from the rear and convoyed fresh drafts proceeding to the front. The formation of the St. George battalions was in charge of the Alliance of the Knights of St. George, which acted in concert with General Headquarters.
When Kornilov was appointed Supreme Commander, General Headquarters decided to form St. George battalions on a wide scale. On August 12, Kornilov instructed the Commander-in-Chief of the various fronts to form a reserve St. George Infantry Regiment on each front. St. George Regiments were stationed in Pskov, Minsk, Kiev and Odessa and were combined into one brigade, the commander of which was directly subordinate to General Kornilov. The headquarters of the brigade were located in Moghilev.
Like the shock battalions, the St. George Battalions were created to combat revolution. The battalion stationed in Moghilev took part in the Kornilov revolt, a number of other battalions were sent against the revolution in the decisive days of the October Revolution, while the Kiev St. George Battalion made its way to the Don, where, together with the Kornilov Regiment, it formed the nucleus of the Volunteer Army.
In their endeavours to muster a force against the revolution, the bourgeoisie and the social-compromisers even tried to form shock battalions of wounded soldiers and of women. A Women’s Alliance for Assisting the Fatherland was formed in Petrograd in June. It appealed to women to form “death battalions” for active service at the front. The bourgeois press took up the appeal and launched an energetic campaign on its behalf. About 300 women enrolled in the battalions in the first month. Kerensky’s wife announced that she was leaving for the front as a nurse.
But the hullabaloo over the “women’s death battalions” soon subsided, because their direct military value was insignificant. Neither the support of the bourgeois press and of the General Staff, nor the participation of prominent counter-revolutionaries in the movement were of any avail. All that resulted from the movement was the formation of a single women’s battalion, and on October 17 the Supreme Directorate of the General Staff gave orders to discontinue the recruiting of women and to disband the detachments already formed.
The only women’s battalion formed never reached the front, where a few small women’s squads operated, and that not very successfully. On the other hand, it took part in the defence of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution.
The formation of battalions and regiments of wounded soldiers, or disabled warriors, as they styled themselves, proceeded with less fuss, but with no better success.
A few squads were formed. They took very little part in the fighting at the front, but, on the other hand, were made extensive use of by the counter-revolutionaries in the interior of the country.
[1] I. I. Vasilyev, “The Insurrection of July 1917,” Manuscript Records of the History of the Civil War, No. 1389.
[2] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Caucasian Front, File No. 2075, folios 152-55.
[3] Central Archives, Disintegration of the Army in 1917, Moscow, 1925, p. 64.
[4] Ibid., p. 66.
[5] Central Archives, Disintegration of the Army in 1917, Moscow, 1925, p. 74.
[6] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—General-Quartermaster’s Department.
[7] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—Adjutant-General’s Office, File No. 76-086, folio 208.
[8] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—The Coup d’État, and the State of the Army in Connection with the Coup, File No. 812, folio 73.
[9] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Northern Front, File No. 222-917, folio 196.
[10] Central Archives of Military History, Records of General Headquarters of the Northern Front, File No. 224-314, folio 268.
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