were to be disarmed, and in the course of their movement east
towards Vladivostok they were subjected to offensive and
treacherous treatment. Some of them refused to give up their
arms; others, after having been disarmed, broke away, recovered
arms and munitions, and turned on the undisciplined rabble of
the Rd troops. As a result of encounters of this kind, the
Czechs, and some Slovak detachments which had joined them,
seized great tracts of the Siberian railway line near the Volga,
near Irkutsk, and by Vladivostok. Eventually, after many
vicissitudes, these corps made their junction along the whole
line. The total number of troops who effected this coup de
thedlre averaged some 80,000 men. It would be useless to
follow in detail the swaying fortunes of these detachments.
Their daring exploits would hardly have achieved success if a
considerable portion of the population of eastern Russia had
not sympathized with them. As it happened, these disciplined
troops succeeded in creating the backbone of resistance against
the Moscow dictators: in Siberia, Provisional Governments
were formed in Vladivostok, in Harbin (General Horvath),
and in Tomsk, besides the centres of military administration
started by Col. Semenov and Admiral Kolchak.

Unfortunately the various governments comprised different
and mutually hostile groups, which could not be prevailed upon
to act loyally together. The Vladivostok concentration reflected
the Socialist ferment in the country, and worked for an inde-
pendent Siberia. The Government formed in Tomsk was an
Executive of a Siberian Duma, composed of delegates from
various organizations zemstvos, municipalities, political parties,
social groups (workmen, students, cooperative associations).
The majority of these constituencies followed a socialistic
orientation, but their Executive adopted a more conservative
policy and admitted several Cadets into its ranks. From
Samara came yet another political tendency: some thirty fugi-
tive members of the Constituent Assembly, dismissed by the
Bolsheviks, had assembled there, and their political creed was
expressed in the demand for a restoration of that Assembly,
which they considered as the only body constitutionally entitled
to wield power in Russia. Their aim was to reconstitute an
All-Russian State, which would include Siberia as an autono-
mous part of its organization. On the other hand the adminis-
trations of General Horvath and Admiral Kolchak, while
reserving the ultimate decision as to the system of Government
to a new Constituent Assembly, discarded the authority of the



one elected in December 1917 as not representative of Russian
opinion. These administrations favoured the propertied classes
and built up their personnel from the remnants of the military
and civil bureaucracy of the monarchical period. Even in the
face of the enemy all these groups found the greatest difficulty
in establishing cooperation. The Vladivostok Government sub-
mitted to the authority of the West Siberian one, but the nego-
tiations with Horvath were protracted and fruitless. A coup
d'etat on a small scale was attempted in Vladivostok by Hor-
vath's lieutenant, Gen. Pleshkov, but the Allies intervened to
reestablish the Socialist administration because it was approved
of by the Vladivostok zemstvo.

In the west a conference held in Ufa laid down the founda-
tions of an All-Russian scheme in connexion with the Constit-
uent Assembly of 1917, and succeeded in persuading the
Siberian Government in Omsk to recognize its authority. The
moving element in this case came from the Moderate Sociah'sts,
chiefly Social Revolutionaries, but Social Democrats of the
Plekhanov persuasion and some Cadets were in agreement with
them. A directorate of five consisting of Avksentiev, Zenzinov,
Vologodsky, V. Vinogradov and Gen. Boldyrov was established.
Admiral Kolchak accepted the portfolio of War in the Ministry
which was to conduct the actual administration. This amalga-
mation of Governments was arranged in the beginning of Oct.,
and a mobilization of certain classes of the Siberian population
which had been started somewhat earlier was carried out on a
more extensive scale: it yielded some 150,000 men, whose mili-
tary instruction had to be taken in hand under very difficult
conditions. Many delays and mistakes occurred, and the differ-
ent sets of people who had been brought together with such
difficulty quarrelled over the task, suspected and accused one
another. The officers who had served under the old regime
were displeased with the policy of the Directors, whom they
accused of indecision and vain talk; the Socialists chafed at the
high-handed way in which they were treated by the military
chiefs and the employees of the Ministries. In the night of
November 18 these dissensions came to a head. A party of
soldiers led by officers of the Omsk garrison arrested the Social-
ist members of the Directorate, Avksentiev and Zenzinov, and
two of their assistants, while a third Director, Vologodsky,
joined a meeting of Ministers which elected Admiral Kolchak
as Supreme Ruler. In the communique issued on the occasion
by the newly constituted Government, it was explained that
" wide social circles had been discontented with the wavering
behaviour of the Provisional All-Russian Government in re-
gard to certain tendencies of the Left leading to the renewal
of a destructive policy. While condemning the coup d'ttat as
an illegal act the new Government endorsed it by taking advan-
tage of the accomplished fact: Avksentiev and Zenzinov were
allowed to escape and the two remaining Directors, Boldyrov
and Vinogradov, retired.

Such a start did not augur well for the future of the reconstruc-
tion movement: it showed that the enemies of the Bolsheviks
were still irreconcilably divided by the old feud between Con-
servative Nationalists and Socialistic idealists. These conflicts
helped to keep alive in the mass of the people a spirit of lawless-
ness and distrust. And yet nothing was more needed in those
days than steadiness and forbearance as regards details; those
who had assumed the task of restoring order were least able
to lay claim to efficient administration the lack of experience
and even honesty was felt everywhere. The mobilization, for
example, was carried out in the most haphazard fashion, crowds
of conscripts being left even without accommodation.

The fact that the Bolsheviks in Siberia were drawing largely
for support on the Austrian, Magyar, and German prisoners, of
whom about half a million were dispersed in various localities
of the wide country, and the difficult situation of the Czechs
astride the Siberian railway, had provoked an intervention of
the Allies. Japanese, American, British and French detach-
ments were landed in Vladivostok with instructions of varying
intensity: all the intervening Powers gave assurances of their
disinterestedness, of their friendship for the Russian people, of



326



RUSSIA



their resolve to leave it entirely free to decide as to its destiny;
but while the Japanese were committed by their past and their
future to safeguard and promote their own interests, the Ameri-
cans were enjoined to restrict themselves to guarding railway
communications and stores, and the French colonial troops
held aloof. The British followed a middle course in the sense
that part of their contingent, Col. J. Ward's Hampshire Regi-
ment, was pushed forward right through Siberia, but there was
no clear military aim in that operation and steps were retraced
when the real difficulties set in. Material support was given
by the British more than by anybody else, but these measures
were in the nature of a risky speculation dependent on the
trend of home politics and on the ability of the " White
Guards " to win the game.

A somewhat different situation arose in the north of Russia,
where the rule of the Soviet Commissars was overthrown both
in Archangel and in the Murman, and a patriotic Government
was set up under the leadership of N. Tchaikovsky, a " Popular
Socialist," who had lived in England for many years as an exile.
The opposition between progressive and conservative circles,
and the difficulty of conducting business with the available
demoralized elements, were also felt there, but Great Britain's
stake in the game was much more conspicuous, and the British
detachments under Generals Maynard and Ironside formed a
very important part of the forces operating against the Bolshe-
viks. There was, however, no real cohesion between the Russians
and their British allies, although cases of acute hostility were
exceptional. Apart from such dissensions the ground was felt
to be shaky on account of the war-weariness and the fickle
temper of the common people. The massacre of the British
officers by the men of Dyer's battalion showed that Bolshevik
propaganda and Bolshevik habits were by no means a thing of
the past.

The southern front, organized by General Denikin after
Alexeiev's death, was suffering from similar weakness. The
Voluntary Army constituting its backbone had become an
efficient and powerful instrument of war; the officers' division,
which had formed its bulk in the beginning, had expanded grad-
ually into several corps by drawing into its ranks veteran soldiers
who had learnt their trade in the terrible battles against Germans
and Austrians. But the trusty regiments named after Kornilov,
Alexeiev, Markov and Drozdovsky, had to act together with the
levies of the Don and the Kuban Cossacks, who, though unrivalled
as irregular horsemen, had their own axe to grind in the conflict.
The Don province had been subjected to repeated attacks and
devastation, and many of the Cossacks were anxious to keep
to their frontiers and to manage their own affairs. As for the
Kuban people, they were divided among two sets: the men of the
" line " in the north were patriotic enough and fought brilliantly,
but the Black Sea Cossacks, mostly descendants of the Zaporog
Cossacks transferred to the Kuban from the Dnieper by Cather-
ine II., were animated by a spirit of separatism and ready to
follow leaders who worked for a Cossack Republic. A great
deal depended on the skill and the political insight of Denikin's
administration, and in this respect, as on the eastern front,
grievous blunders and abuses occurred. The main direction was
necessarily in the hands of military commanders inclined to
insist above all on discipline, and contemptuous as to political
theories and subtle distinctions. Denikin himself, though per-
fectly honest and straightforward, held systematically aloof
from constitutional disputes, and declared his task to be pri-
marily one of liberation and restoration. His principal assist-
ants, Generals Dragomirov and Lukomsky, had even less taste
for political " metaphysics," and one of the civil advisers, Prof.
K. Sokolov, openly expressed the view that the only regime
suited to the circumstances of the time was a " democratic dic-
tatorship " satisfying the needs of the common people. Although
nothing was prejudged as to the ultimate form of Government,
the organization of the southern territories occupied by Denikin
was cast in the mould of the supreme authority of the command-
er-in-chief. By his side stood a Special Council composed of the
heads of departments and of a few representatives of public



opinion. All the members some twenty were nominated by
the commander-in-chief. The elements of military and civil
bureaucracy were decidedly predominant, and the " Left " was
confined to three Cadets, all moderate Liberals. The Socialist
parties were excluded from the Government and kept under
strict supervision as regards their Press. One of their influential
leaders, Schreider, was deported by order of the Government;
many others left of their own accord for the Crimea. The
greatest difficulty was experienced in holding the balance between
the aims of the Volunteer Army engaged in the reestablishment
of a National State and the aspirations of the Cossack communi-
ties tending towards federalism. The problem of reconciling
these contradictory tendencies was a most difficult one. The
Kuban Rada (Assembly) manifested openly separatist leanings:
its leaders, Bytch and Makarenko, were dissatisfied with a dual-
istic arrangement contrived after many efforts between the
Higher Command and the Rada. They wanted the political
independence of the Kuban to be recognized, and sought an
alliance with other Cossack territories in order to strengthen
their demands. This political strife reacted in a most unfa-
vourable manner on the conduct of operations in the field.

Reds v. Whiles. Disgust with the hypocritical tyranny of the
Bolsheviks and the humiliation of Russia found a vent in con-
spiracies and risings among the intellectuals. The German as-
cendency was challenged by the murder of the ambassador,
Count Mirbach, in July 1918. Almost simultaneously the
commissar in charge of the police in Petrograd, Uritsky, was
killed, and Lenin himself dangerously wounded by a Socialist.
The Social Revolutionaries made an attempt to overthrow the
Bolsheviks in Moscow, but were suppressed with great slaughter.
Later on, the most experienced of Terrorists, Boris Savinkov,
engineered a rising in Yarosla.vl and neighbouring districts; it
was quelled after bitter fighting. These. isolated attempts in
the heart of Russia were not so dangerous as the simultaneous
advance from the east and the south. Kolchak's armies reached
at one time Kazan and Simbirsk, Denikin pushed as far as
Orel, and in the north there was some hope that Gen. Iron-
side's British column might have joined hands with Kolchak's
force near Kotlas. The Communists made desperate efforts to
meet the onslaught. The Red hosts were reorganized by former
officers of the Imperial army, with Polivanov, Theremissov,
Klembovsky, Parsky, Dalmetov at their head. Even Brussilov
lent the prestige of his name to the cause of the Moscow Soviet.
These men were inspired not only by the pressure of want and
despair, but in many cases by a fatalistic belief that they were
serving the interests of Russia under the Red flag as against
reactionaries and foreigners. An iron discipline was reintro-
duced, disobedience, treachery and cowardice were promptly
punished with death, desertion was repressed as far as possible,
there was no more indulgence for committee discussions or for
the " self-determination " of military units which had wrought
havoc in the last stage of the war against the Central Empires.
In every battalion, squadron and battery nuclei of devoted
Communists were inserted in order to watch and to lead the
apathetic rank and file. Altogether the proletarian dictators
reverted without any scruple or confusion to the practices they
had fiercely denounced in the time of defeatist propaganda.
The cadres of the army were gradually filled by wholesale
mobilizations, and although crowds of conscripts were swept
away by desertion, there remained enough in the ranks to out-
number the White forces: the fact that the Bolsheviks had got
hold of the solid centre of Great Russia against the weaker out-
lying portions of the Empire was bound to assert its overwhelm-
ing influence in the end. Of course, if there had been an ele-
mental popular rising against the proletarian leaders, they
could not have withstood the attack. But the Great Russian
peasantry, although by no means sympathetic to Communist
doctrines and hostile to many of the commissars, were yet under
the spell of the opinion that they were defending their newly
conquered land against the squires who wanted to get it back.
While this broad basis of popular support remained unshaken
the dictators could exert their cruelty and lusts with impunity.



RUSSIA



327



Terror against the bourgeoisie had been proclaimed by them
from the very beginning: it formed one of the main planks of
their platform. It was expanded into a system of wholesale
slaughter and ruthless inquisitorial measures as a means of
self-defence. The Extraordinary Commission (the famous
Tchresvichayka) thrust the Tsar's Okhrana into the shade;
as a matter of fact, it was served to a large extent by hangmen,
torture-masters and spies borrowed from the Tsarist police,
but acting with much greater independence and thoroughness.
By the side of this cold-blooded and systematic machinery for
crushing human beings acted innumerable gangs of ruffians
and criminals, who robbed and killed in the sacred name of the
Red Revolution with complete impunity and with the approval
of the ruling powers. It is quite impossible to estimate the
number of victims who fell a prey to this campaign of hatred.

Here is an extract from Bolshevik sources which may illus-
trate this butchery, although it does not in any way give an
idea of its real dimensions:

" In 1918 the persons arrested on the charges of counter-revolu-
tion, crime in office, speculation, use of forged and other people's
documents, etc., numbered 47,348. In 1919 the activities of the
Tchresvichayka developed, and the number of persons arrested
reached 80,662. Out of the total number of persons arrested in 1919,
21,032 were classed as counter-revolutionaries, while 19,673 were
arrested for crimes of office. Out of the 128,010 arrested in 1918-9
54,250, or 42 \/ , were liberated without subsequent consequences.
Eight per cent of the total number of persons consisted of hostages.
Nearly 1 1 % were sentenced to compulsory labour, 29 % retained in
prison, and nearly 8 % sent into concentration camps. In 1918 6,185
persons were executed and 3,456 in 1919, the total number during
the two years being 9,641." (Lazies, The Fight on the Home Front.)

In such cases it is not only the number of victims that counts,
but also their quality: as in the times of Ivan the Terrible, only
" God knows the names of the murdered," but let us notice by
way of example that some of the most respected among Mos-
cow's citizens, whose whole lives had been devoted to the service
of the people the Astrovs, the Alferovs, N. Shtechepkin
were shot as " spies " in the summer of 1919.

What did the Whites oppose to the Red fury? In fighting
prowess the Whites were more than a match for the Reds, espe-
cially on the southern front: the exploits of Wrangel's Caucasian
corps in the attack and defence of Tsaritsin, the advance of the
Volunteer army's infantry against heavy odds on Kharkov and
Kursk, the rally at Rostov in the last months of 1920, are proofs
of the excellent quality of Denikin's troops. Kolchak's Siberians
were not seasoned to the same extent, but they were good mate-
rial and improved rapidly, and the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks
operating between the two groups did everything humanly pos-
sible to oppose the Reds. But neither the eastern nor the south-
ern armies were supported by a tolerably organized rear. Kolchak
and Denikin moved rapidly forward in the hope of cutting off
the economically important district of the Ural, the Donets, the
corn-growing provinces along the Volga and in the Ukraine,
but their rapid advance involved a hasty and superficial occu-
pation of wide tracts. They flooded their regiments with unwill-
ing conscripts and had to rely for supplies on requisitions: the
corn and the horses of the peasants were seized without any
regard for the needs of the farmers, while the raids of Cossack
cavalry into regions held by the Reds resulted in indiscriminate
looting of friend and foe. What constantly happened in such
circumstances was that the advancing Whites were received
with " bread and salt " and attacked in the rear when they
had been in the country for some time.

If the White leaders had succeeded in persuading the people
that their aim was genuinely patriotic and that private interests
had to be sacrificed for the sake of the great cause, all the miser-
ies of civil war might have been endured, if not willingly, at
least with resignation. But neither on the eastern nor on the
southern front did the Whites establish confidence, that condi-
tion precedent of success. There cannot be the slightest doubt
that not only Denikin and Kolchak, but also their principal
followers were fighting for the ideal of a reunited and free Russia,
but there was too much of the hated past intermixed with their
efforts; corrupt officials, greedy squires had flocked to the White



banners and were clamouring and pressing for revenge and com-
pensation. The frequent cases of lynching of commissars and
Communists were an inevitable consequence of the civil war
and of the hatred inspired by the wreckers of Russia: it was
impossible to draw the line between justified retribution and
wanton cruelty in many of these explosions of wrath. Sometimes,
as in the case of Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine, subordinate
officers acted against the direct orders of the High Command.
But there were other signs of the time in the policy of the White
leaders which created the suspicion that they were out for a
counter-revolution, for the reestablishment of the old monarchy
and the old gentry. The Socialists, who formed a great part
of the 'intellectual class as far as the latter still existed, were
driven back without any regard for the fact that they were
natural allies in the struggle against Communism. One of the
leading members of the Constituent Assembly was shot by
Kolchak's Government in Ekaterinburg. The same fate befell
leaders of the Kuban separatists in Ekaterinodar. The Liberal
members of the Denikin " Special Council," like N. Astrov,
protested in vain against a policy directed against all Socialists
indiscriminately. If Denikin had not personally prevented
further persecutions and open reaction, the dictatorial schemes of
the generals would have been embodied in some drastic Act
of the State for which Prof. K. Sokolov would have supplied a
juridical formula. As it was, for the mass of the people the
repeated protestations of acceptance of the social results of the
Revolution seemed belied by the way in which agrarian reform 1
was to be regulated. The subtle distinctions concerning com-
pensation and redemption tax reminded the peasants forcibly
of the procedure followed by the Emancipation Act of 1861,
and the Reds were not slow to take advantage of this unfortunate
association of ideas. The Whites started also a propaganda
office (Osvag), but although some 200 million rubles are said
to have been spent on it, its activity was subjected to bitter
criticism by various groups in the camp of the Whites. The
state of affairs brought about two fatal results confusion in the
rear of the White armies, and discord between the patriotic
forces in Russia and the Allies.

The conditions in the rear of Denikin's army were described
by Soviet propagandists with ironical satisfaction. There can
be no doubt that the activity of " green " bands of marauders,
and the rise of such potentates as Makhno, a brigand whose
followers are said to have mustered at times some thirty thou-
sand, made orderly life in the rear impossible and drew off con-
siderable forces at the most critical moments for the maintenance
of some sort of communications. What proved even worse was
the defection of dissatisfied Cossacks. When the Volunteer
army was straining its forces to hold the line against the
Reds north of Rostov, Kuban troops left their positions and
went home, leaving Denikin's right flank unprotected.

A similar state of affairs prevailed on the eastern front: the
population in the rear, excited by Communist propaganda and
fraternizing with the lawless elements so numerous in Siberia
convicts and prisoners of war conducted a constant guerrilla
warfare against the Russian and foreign troops protecting the
Trans-Siberian railway line. Kolchak tried to counteract this
shocking demoralization by reorganizing his government under

1 The following were the conditions of land reform proclaimed by
Denikin on July 19 1919:

(1) Safeguarding of the interests of the toiling population;

(2) The creation and the placing on a sound basis of small and
medium homesteads out of the land belonging to the State and
private owners ;

(3) The preservation of the right of the landowners to their land,
coupled, however, with the apportionment in each district of the
amount of land that is to be retained by the former owner and the
order of the transfer of the remainder into the ownership of those
who are land-poor ;

(4) These transfers may be achieved by voluntary agreement, or by
obligatory alienation for compensation. The new owners are to ac-
quire inalienable rights to their allotments.