A People's Tragedy (112 page)

As the Bolsheviks saw it, the peace campaign was inextricably linked with the spread of the revolution to the West. It was this that, in their
view,
would bring the war to an end

— or rather transform it, as Lenin had predicted, into a series of civil wars in which the workers of the world would unite to overthrow their imperialist rulers. The belief in the imminence of a world revolution was central to Bolshevik thinking in the autumn of 1917. As Marxists, it was inconceivable to them that the socialist revolution could survive for long in a backward peasant country like Russia without the support of the proletariat in the advanced industrial countries of the West. Left to themselves, without an industrial base to defend their revolution, and surrounded by a hostile peasantry, the Bolsheviks believed that they were doomed to fail. The October seizure of power had been carried out on the premise, naive though it may sound today, that a worldwide socialist revolution was just around the corner. Every report of a strike or a mutiny in the West was hailed by the Bolsheviks as a certain sign that 'it was starting'.

As long as this expectation remained alive, the Bolsheviks did not need a foreign policy in the conventional sense. All they needed to do was to fan the flames of the world revolution. 'What sort of diplomatic work will we be doing anyway?' Trotsky had said to a friend on hearing of his appointment as Commissar for Foreign Affairs. 'I shall issue a few revolutionary proclamations to the peoples and then shut up shop.' The basic aim of the Soviet peace campaign

was to serve as a means of revolutionary propaganda; and in this sense it was not a peace campaign at all. The Decree on Peace was a popular summons to revolution. It called on the peoples of the belligerent countries to revolt against the war and to force their rulers into peace talks. 'This proposal of peace will meet with resistance on the part of the imperialist governments — we don't fool ourselves on that score,' Lenin had warned the Soviet Congress. 'But we hope that revolution will soon break out in all the belligerent countries; and that is why we address ourselves to the workers of France, England and Germany.' As George Kennan once observed, this was the first example of what was later to become known in Soviet foreign policy as 'demonstrative diplomacy'

— diplomacy designed not to promote agreements between mutually recognized national governments within the framework of international law, but 'rather to embarrass other governments and stir up opposition among their own people'.*85

But what if the world revolution failed to come about? The Bolsheviks would then find themselves without an army, having encouraged its revolutionary destruction, and would be defenceless against the threat of German invasion. The revolution would be defeated and Russia subjected to the Kaiser's imperial rule. As time passed and this scenario became more likely, the Bolsheviks found themselves split down the middle.

To those on the left of the party, such as Bukharin, a separate peace with imperialist Germany would represent a betrayal of the international cause, killing off all hopes of a revolution in the West. They favoured the idea of fighting a revolutionary war against the German invaders: this, it was argued, would galvanize the Russian workers and peasants into the defence of the revolution, thereby creating a Red Army in the very process of fighting, and their example would in turn inspire the revolutionary masses abroad.

Lenin, by contrast, was increasingly doubtful both of the chances of fighting such a war and of the likelihood that it might spark a revolution in the West. Though he himself had put forward the idea of a revolutionary war in his April Theses, he now began to doubt that the workers and peasants, who had so far been reluctant to defend Russia, would prove any more willing to defend the Socialist Fatherland. Without an army, the Bolsheviks had no choice but to conclude a separate peace, for if they tried to fight on, the remnants of 'the peasant army, unbearably exhausted by the war, will overthrow the socialist workers' government'. A separate peace with Germany would give the Bolsheviks the 'breathing spell' they needed to consolidate their power base, restore the economy and build up their own revolutionary army. This of course meant giving priority to the policy of strengthening the revolution at home over that

* The Soviet anti-nuclear propaganda of the 1970s and 1980s, which was applauded by the anti-nuclear movement in the West, was the last, and in some ways the most successful, example of this 'demonstrative diplomacy'.

of stirring revolution abroad. 'Our tactics', wrote Lenin, 'ought to rest on the principle of how to ensure that the socialist revolution is best able to consolidate itself and survive in one country until such time as other countries join in.' Moreover, in so far as a separate peace in the East would enable the Central Powers to strengthen their campaign in the West and thus prolong the war, such a policy could in itself be seen as a means of
increasing
the chances of a European revolution. For it was surely the continuation of the war, rather than the prospect of a peace, which would intensify the revolutionary crisis, and, although Lenin himself never said so, it was in his party's interests to prolong the slaughter on the battlefields of France and Belgium, even at the risk of helping to bring about a German victory over the Western democracies.

Lenin's view, it must be said, was a much more accurate appraisal of the situation than the naive internationalism of the Bolshevik Left. The Russian army was falling apart, as the peasant soldiers, encouraged by the Bolsheviks, demobilized themselves and went home to their villages to share in the partition of the gentry's land. Even Kerensky's Minister of War, General Verkhovsky, had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to continue the war and Russia had no choice but to sue for peace. There was no reason to suppose that the national consciousness of the peasants had grown any stronger now that Mother Russia had been painted Red. These, after all, were the same people who had failed to see why they should be called up in 1914 because their own particular village had no quarrel with the Germans and, in any case, was not likely to be invaded by them. If anything, such parochial views had been reinforced by the uncertainties of 1917. The peasant and indeed the whole of the social revolution had been largely driven by this petty localism. The Red Guards, who were to become the basis of the new Red Army, were really no more than badly organized partisan units for the defence of the revolution in the separate villages and the separate factories; they were extremely reluctant to leave their own locality and were quite incapable of anything more than petty guerrilla tactics. It was a romantic left-wing fantasy — shared by the Left SRs and Left Communists — to suppose that these guards might sustain, let alone win, a revolutionary war against the German war-machine.

Yet most of the Bolshevik leaders continued to resist Lenin's iron logic. It was hard for them to give up the ideal of a world revolution, especially since so many of them had been drawn to Bolshevism in the first place as a sort of international messianic crusade to liberate the world. For those like Bukharin, and to some extent Trotsky too, who had spent much of their lives in exile in the West, the revolution in Russia was only part —

and a minor part at that — of the worldwide struggle between imperialism and socialism. To limit the victory of socialism to one country, let alone a backward one like Russia, seemed to them an admission of defeat. As the prospects of a general peace receded,

the Bolsheviks were increasingly divided between the two opposing policies of a revolutionary war or a separate peace with Germany. It was without doubt one of the most critical moments in the history of the party.

* * * On 13 November Trotsky applied to the German High Command for an armistice with a view to opening talks for a democratic peace. Three days later a Soviet delegation set off from Petrograd for the war-ruined town of Brest-Litovsk, where the German Headquarters were situated, to negotiate the armistice. The purpose of the delegation was propaganda as much as peace: alongside the Bolshevik negotiators, led by Yoffe. Kamenev and Karakhan, it included symbolic representatives from the soldiers, the sailors, the workers, the women and the peasants of Proletarian Russia. The whole preposterous idea was designed to give the impression that the Bolshevik government was filled with elements from the revolutionary democracy.

Actually, the peasant had almost been forgotten, which says a great deal about the peasantry's real place in the Bolshevik schema of the revolution. On their way to the Warsaw Station, Yoffe and Kamenev suddenly realized that their delegation still lacked a peasant representative. As their car sped through the dark and deserted streets of Petrograd, there was consternation at the omission. Suddenly, they turned a corner and spied an old man in a peasant's coat trudging along in the snow with a knapsack on his back. With his long grey beard and his weathered face, he was the archetypal figure of the Russian peasant. Kamenev ordered the car to stop. 'Where are you going,
tovarishch?
'To the station,
barin,
I mean
tovarishch',
the old peasant replied. 'Get in, we'll give you a lift.' The old peasant seemed pleased with this unexpected favour, but as they neared the Warsaw Station, he realized that something was wrong. He had wanted to go to the Nikolaevsky Station, where trains left for Moscow and central Russia. This would not do, thought Kamenev and Yoffe, who began to question the peasant about his politics. 'What party do you belong to?' they asked. 'I'm a Social Revolutionary, comrades. We're all Social Revolutionaries in our village.' 'Left or Right?' they queried further. 'Left, of course, comrades, the leftest you can get.' This was enough to satisfy the Russian peace delegation of the diplomatic credentials of their latest recruit. 'There's no need for you to go to your village,' they told him. 'Come with us to Brest-Litovsk and make peace with the Germans.' The peasant was at first still reluctant, but once he was promised some remuneration quickly changed his mind.

Roman Stashkov, a simple villager, was duly recorded in the annals of diplomatic history as the 'plenipotentiary representative of the Russian peasantry'. With his primitive peasant table manners, not unlike Rasputin's, he was to be the centre of attention at the lavish banquets that were laid on for the diplomats. He soon got over the initial embarrassment of not knowing what to do with his fork and began thoroughly to enjoy himself.

What a story he would have to tell when he got back to his village! He particularly enjoyed the fine wines and, on the first night, even drew a smile from the frozen-faced German waiter, when, in response to his question about whether he preferred claret or white wine with his main course, he turned to his neighbour, Prince Ernst von Hohenlohe, and asked: 'Which one is the stronger?'86

The first task of the negotiations — the conclusion of a separate armistice — was simple enough. The three main warring parties each had reason to want one: the Germans to release troops to the west, where Ludendorff was pressing for a final

'gambler's throw'; the Austrians to relieve their tired army and civilian population, which were showing signs of growing discontent under the burdens of the war; and the Russians, likewise, to gain a respite as well as time for their peace campaign to spark a revolution in the West. To begin with, the Russian delegation stood firm on the principle of a general armistice: Lenin was hopeful that such a stand might bring the Entente Powers, dragged by their people, to the negotiating table. The Bolshevik policy of encouraging their own soldiers to fraternize and negotiate local armistices at the Front had a similar propagandistic purpose. It was both a means of undercutting the authority of the old (and potentially counter-revolutionary) Russian commanders and of spreading pacifist sentiments among the enemy troops. The Bolsheviks published an enormous quantity of anti-war propaganda in German, Hungarian, Czech and Romanian which they distributed behind enemy lines. General Dukhonin, the acting Commander-in-Chief and a sympathizer with Kornilov, did what he could to oppose these peace initiatives. He even refused to carry out the orders of N. V Krylenko, the Bolshevik Commissar for War, to open negotiations for a general armistice along the whole of the Front. But Dukhonin, like the old command structure in general, was effectively without power. Krylenko dismissed him and went out to Stavka to replace him. But before he arrived at Mogilev the troops had arrested Dukhonin and savagely beat him to death. It was their revenge for the release of Kornilov from the Bykhov Monastery, and his subsequent flight to the Don, which they believed Dukhonin had ordered. Once Krylenko had gained control of the General Staff, the soldiers continued to negotiate their own local armistices at the Front; but their example failed to spread to the troops in Europe, and on 2 December, with the Entente Powers as determined as ever to continue the war, the Russian delegation was finally forced to accept a one-month separate armistice on the Eastern Front.

The Russians would have much preferred a six-month armistice, as they had suggested.

Their strategy was based on playing for time in the hope that the peace campaign might spark a revolution in the West. This was the reason why they had insisted on negotiations for a general peace — not so much because they thought that the Allies might be persuaded to join the talks on these terms (which was extremely doubtful), but because they knew that the effort to

persuade them to do so would spin out the talks for a much longer time, giving them the pretext they required to pursue their revolutionary propaganda in the international arena.

In replacing Yoffe with Trotsky at the head of the delegation in mid-December, Lenin acknowledged that, without the immediate prospect of a revolution in the West, it was essential to drag out the peace talks for as long as possible. 'To delay the negotiations,'

he had told Trotsky on his appointment, 'there must be someone to do the delaying.'

And Trotsky, of course, was the obvious choice. With his brilliant rhetorical powers, both in Russian and German, he kept the foreign diplomats and generals spellbound as he subtly switched the focus of the talks from the detailed points of territorial boundaries, where the Russian position was weak, to the general points of principle, where he could run rings around the Germans. Baron Kuhlmann, the head of the Kaiser's delegation, who had a typically German weakness for Hegelian philosophizing, was easily drawn into Trotsky's trap. Several days were wasted while the two men crossed swords on the abstract principles of diplomacy. At one point Trotsky halted the talks to give the Baron what he called 'a class in Marxist instruction for beginners'. As they went through the draft treaty's preamble, he even held things up by objecting to the standard phrase that the contracting parties desired to live in peace and friendship. 'I would take the liberty', he said tongue in cheek, 'to propose that the second phrase