The formation of counter-revolutionary units at the front and in the Cossack Provinces had inspired the generals with a certain hope of success. But these hopes were dashed by the spread of the revolution. A flood of revolutionary literature poured into the war area from the rear: reinforcements arrived and brought with them the charged atmosphere of the revolutionary centres. Delegations of workers came from the industrial cities, bringing the ardent slogans of revolution. The counter-revolutionaries could consolidate their temporary successes at the front only by isolating the front from the rear.
For a long time, ever since the outbreak of the revolution, attempts had been made to incite the army against the workers. The bourgeois Press waged a furious campaign against the introduction of the eight-hour day. The workers were accused of treason. The soldiers at the front, who, it was declared, were sacrificing everything for the fatherland, were held up as an example to them. The idea was instilled into the soldiers that the workers were earning piles of money and profiting by the shortage of labour. The economic dislocation, the food shortage and the inadequate supply of munitions to the front were ascribed to the unwillingness of the proletarians to work more than eight hours a day.
In places the attempt to incite the soldiers against the workers succeeded. Soldiers’ delegations came to Petrograd from the front with resolutions insisting that the workers should abandon their “excessive demands.” But when the soldiers’ delegations appeared in the factories, when the soldiers came into contact with the proletarians, they were soon convinced of the provocative nature of the bourgeois policy. The delegates would return to the front in an entirely different frame of mind. With the object of refuting the bourgeois calumnies, the workers in their turn began to demand that soldiers’ delegations should be sent to Petrograd. Thousands of soldiers from the Petrograd garrison, after having been at the factories, were sent by the military organisation of the Bolsheviks to the front, where they exposed the provocative character of the campaign.
The slanderous attacks of the bourgeoisie had the very opposite effect. Instead of inciting the front against the rear, they knit the soldiers and the workers in a united front against counter-revolution.
“In reply to your hypocritical cries, ‘Soldiers to the trenches, workers to the bench!’” the Grenadier Guards wrote, “we say, ‘And you, Messieurs the capitalists, to your money chests! Open them! The people have been giving their blood and sweat; now you give your money for the liquidation of the frightful world war which you started!’”(1)
The more shaky the ground under the feet of the bourgeoisie became, the more feverishly did they strive to create a gulf between the front and the rear. The Cadet press howled in fury that the cause of all the misfortunes lay in the rear. This malicious refrain was monotonously repeated by 150 bourgeois, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik army newspapers.
The units attached to the various military headquarters, in which the sons of the bourgeoisie had taken refuge; the personnel of the innumerable organisations operating in the war area; the hospitals and dressing stations, in which former lawyers, state officials and Zemstvo officials had found an asylum; the staffs, stores departments and supply organisations—all delivered themselves of protest resolutions and false accusations against the rear. These resolutions were copied from the army newspapers by the bourgeois press in Petrograd and Moscow and were printed under the heading: “The Voice of the Front.”
Here is one such resolution from the “front”:
“A general meeting of the Headquarters Committee of the N. Infantry Division, the adjutants’ company and the headquarters auxiliary squads passed a resolution stating that the meeting considers all insubordination to the will of the revolutionary government, to the will of the majority of the democracy, as represented by its Central Committees, treason to the revolution and as a direct menace to the fatherland. The fatherland is in danger not only here, at the front, but also, and still more, in the rear. It is from the rear alone that the disintegration in the army emanates. The army has been perverted by the traitors in the rear. Let the rear, like the army, observe iron revolutionary discipline. Let the traitors and betrayers of the common cause, whether soldiers or not, be tried in the rear by the same laws as at the front.”(2)
The campaign spread, its outcry became deafening. The extent and vociferousness of the campaign indicated that the reactionaries were raising this noise as a screen for more serious preparations. This soon became obvious. At the Council of State held in Moscow, General Alexeyev made a speech attacking the rear, in which he said:
“Those in the rear have not been made to perform useful work. They are all idling. . . . They have not been trained in the rudiments of the soldiers’ business. Not so long ago they were a solid unit, cemented by one thing—love of the fatherland . . . and by the realisation that the war must be fought to a finish.”(3)
The general attributed all the disorders in the army to the influence of agitators from the rear. He related the case of a soldier of one of the regiments who had been sent to a school for agitators in the rear and who on his return organised a demonstration against the officers.
This manœuvre on the part of General Alexeyev, one of the most active organisers of counter-revolution, was supported by the “Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” as the Socialist-Revolutionaries called Breshko-Breshkovskaya, who actually was one of the most active abettors of counter-revolution.
“The misfortune of our army,” she said, seconding Alexeyev, “lies not so much at the front as in the rear. Our rear has been idle for nearly three years. It is bored, it is putrefying. And those people who have been made wise by experience and who have been on various Soviets in Petrograd and Moscow and know what is going on in the army—one-half of them, a good half of them should proceed immediately to the rear and organize it, otherwise we shall get nowhere.”(4)
This Socialist-Revolutionary old lady blurted out what the more experienced general had left unsaid. The rear was to be bridled by the army, the front was to supply the people to bridle the rear. This contrasting of the front and the rear was needed to screen and justify the preparations for the Kornilov affair.
The suppression of the Kornilov revolt was a serious blow to the campaign for inciting the front against the rear. It became impossible to continue the campaign in its old form: the revolution had exposed its true character. The counter-revolutionaries, however, did not abandon their purpose of inciting the front against the rear, but now attempted to achieve it in a different way.
The garrisons of reserve regiments in the cities constituted one of the decisive supports of the revolution. These regiments counted about one and a half million men. The garrisons in the rear consisted of second category reserve men of the 1896 class or of the 1894 class, or else of young men recently conscripted. Part of the garrisons consisted of convalescent soldiers. The composition of the reserve regiments made them receptive to revolutionary propaganda. The young soldiers, recently conscripted, and the fathers of families of forty years of age and over who had been torn from their work, were very receptive material and expected big changes in their lives from the revolution. But, of course, it was not so much the composition of these regiments as their surroundings that counted. The garrisons, especially the garrisons of Petrograd, Moscow and other large cities, were under the constant influence of the Bolshevik newspapers and the revolutionary proletariat. The reservists like the workers, attended meetings, processions and demonstrations against the government. The Bolsheviks carried on intensive propaganda among the reserve regiments.
From the reserve regiments, the revolutionary influence spread to the front through the reinforcements consigned to the army on active service. The reserve regiments in the cities constituted an armed support of the revolution and an agitational force. They supplied the workers with military instructors, and often also with arms. From among the reserve regiments the Bolshevik Party recruited members and agitators for work at the front.
If the counter-revolutionaries succeeded in winning over the garrisons, the revolution in the rear would be undermined and the front would be protected from the revolutionary influence. The fight to win the garrisons in the rear became for the bourgeoisie the chief part of the fight for the support of the army and of the fight against the revolution. The plan of the generals was to transfer the most revolutionary regiments from the large cities to the front and to replace them by “reliable” regiments. As though in response to a signal, requests for reinforcements began to pour into General Headquarters. Even the Caucasian Front, where hostilities had practically ceased, sent telegram after telegram:
“The Caucasian Front requests the earliest possible dispatch of 100,000 effectives. Among this number, please send as early as possible 20,000 third-category men from the Petrograd garrison, and in addition, 30,000 men from the reserve regiments in the interior areas, either in whole reserve regiments or in companies. . . .”(5)
This telegram plainly states where the reinforcements were to be taken from: from Petrograd, the most revolutionary of the garrisons, 20,000 men, and from other cities whole regiments. In spite of the collapse of the June offensive and the almost complete lull in hostilities, there was a steady flow of drafts to the front. A large number of the reinforcements deserted en route, but the aim of the counter-revolutionaries was being attained: the garrisons in the rear began to melt away and, as a result, the base of the revolution was to a certain extent undermined.
It was not only by the dispatch of companies to the front that the garrisons in the rear were depleted. Reserve regiments were withdrawn from the cities on every possible pretext. For instance, on the complaint of the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet that discipline in the 45th Reserve Infantry Regiment in Nikolayev had completely broken down. General Dukhonin ordered:
“It is desirable that the 45th Reserve Regiment be withdrawn from Nikolayev immediately. . . .”(6)
The reserve regiments were withdrawn in the first place from cities where the revolutionary spirit was strong, or where the revolutionary influence of the soldiers hindered the concentration of reactionary forces, as, for instance, in the Don Region. The counter-revolutionary activities of the generals soon received government sanction; the Ministry of War prepared the draft of an order providing for the systematic reduction of the reserve regiments in the rear, and while this order was being examined in appropriate quarters, the reserve regiments were drawn closer to the front on the pretext of improving their fighting capacity.
The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik committees in the army worked hand in hand with the reactionaries.
“Experience shows,” wrote the Commander of the XVIII Army Corps to the Commander of the Ninth Army on August 20, 1917, “that the reserve regiments quartered in the big cities have an inordinately large number of men without a proportionate number of officers, who, in addition, are often very inexperienced. All this tends to undermine order and discipline within these regiments and results in their unsatisfactory state of training, which, in its turn, reacts unfavourably on the regiments for which they are recruited. Accordingly, I fully endorse the resolution of the Divisional Committee of the 37th Infantry Division [the committee consisted of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks—Ed.], which has been endorsed by the Chief of Division, and request the following:
“As practice has shown that the bringing of regiments from the rear into closer proximity to the army on active service at the front undoubtedly helps to create a more healthy spirit among them, kindly transfer the 1st Reserve Regiment from Petrograd to some point behind the Rumanian Front to reinforce the 37th Infantry Division.”(7)
On the other hand, reliable men, Knights of St. George, shock-troopers, reactionary officers, non-commissioned officers and picked and tried soldiers, were sent from the front to the reserve regiments. The Petrograd Military Area informed the Adjutant-General at General Headquarters:
“Work in the reserve regiments can be resumed only with the help of healthy and reliable cadres, without which the army runs the risk of being entirely deprived of decent reinforcements.”(8)
Protected by the Provisional Government, the counter-revolutionary generals developed intense activity. Thousands of soldiers from the reserve regiments were dispatched from the industrial centres to the front. The more active members of the soldiers’ committees were sent on furlough before they were entitled to it. Officers who sympathised with the masses were removed from the reserve regiments on every possible pretext and dispatched to the front. The officers of the Reserve Grenadier Regiment decided to get rid of Sub-Lieutenant Nikonov on the grounds that he was “noxious” to soldiers and officers, whereas it appears from the protest of the soldiers that Nikonov had been extremely active in combating the Kornilov conspiracy.
The press launched a widespread campaign designed to incite the front against the rear. The initiative this time was taken by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
“Where is the inspiration of the democracy?”—the Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which was controlled by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, indignantly inquired on October 3. “The peasants bury their grain and let it rot, only not to send it to the army, there the bread ration is often short. The soldiers of the garrisons on the rear are better clad and shod and often better fed than the soldiers in the trenches.”(9)
“The position in the rear at present is far from satisfactory,” the Izvestia wrote on October 6, “And this nourishes and accentuates the hostility to the rear. And this hostility cannot be overcome merely by refuting lies, but by actually removing what is justified in these accusations.”(10)
The Cadet Ryech slyly seconded the slanders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and maliciously enlarged upon them in its columns.
“The people of the reaction are not talkers,” Marx wrote of the counter-revolutionaries in 1848. The Cadets knew very well how feverishly and persistently the counter-revolutionaries were working to gain control of the regiments in the rear. Superfluous talk might only injure the persistent and expeditious work of the counter-revolutionaries. The petty-bourgeois compromisers zealously screened and justified the preparations for a counter-revolutionary offensive.
[1] Bolshevisation of the Petrograd Garrison.—Materials and Documents, Leningrad, 1932, p. 65.
[2] “The Army and Navy,” Ryech, No. 169, July 21, 19l7.
[3] “The Council of State in Moscow,” Ryech, No. 191, August 16, 1917.
[4] “The Council of State in Moscow,” Ryech, No. 191, August 16, 1917.
[5] Central Archives of Military History, Records of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—Adjutant-General’s Office, File No. 80-097, folio 42.
[6] Central Archives of Military History, Records of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—Adjutant-General’s Office, File No. 80-097, folio 191.
[7] Central Archives of Military History, Records of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander—Adjutant-General’s Office, File No. 80-097, folio 26.
[8] Ibid., folio 43.
[9] “Are We at War or Not?” Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, No. 187, October 3, 1917.
[10] “The Front’s Opinion of the Rear,” Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, No. 190, October 6, 1917.
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