Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West (14 page)

Shelepina started by calling him ‘comrade Trotsky’ but this only made him laugh, so they addressed each other with conventional politeness as ‘Yevgenia Petrovna’ and ‘Lev Davidovich’. She smartened up Trotsky’s room and requisitioned a functioning typewriter to replace the antique machine on his desk.
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He was still in the habit of writing all his letters in longhand,
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and she wanted to relieve him of this. Since she had not been trained
in shorthand, he arranged to dictate on to a phonograph; but he could not get on with this contraption and they reverted to amateurish methods. Shelepina was thrilled at being involved in the work.
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Trotsky wrote frequently to the Petrograd embassies stressing that Sovnarkom was the real power in Russia and deserved official recognition. This was vital if the Bolsheviks were to break down the obstacles to international communication. He had to admit that any diplomatic relations would be of an unusual kind since the Bolsheviks remained open enemies of every state in the world. He insisted that he aimed to have such relations not only with governments but also with ‘socialist-revolutionary parties that are thrusting themselves at overthrowing the existing governments’.
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At the same time he was determined to prevent Allied diplomats from interfering in Russian politics. When he thought that the British embassy was helping the anti-Soviet efforts of Boris Savinkov, he threatened to arrest Sir George Buchanan – if only in conversation with Sadoul.
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He refused to see a contradiction between demanding official recognition and encouraging worldwide subversion.
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Only the Spanish embassy would parley with Trotsky, and its charge´ d’affaires Garrido Cisneros welcomed the Soviet proposal for an armistice and peace negotiations. The rest of the diplomatic corps expressed outrage. But Spain was taking no part in the war and, although Cisneros had blotted his copybook in Allied eyes, nothing of practical consequence resulted.
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Routine work at the People’s Commissariat – in the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs building – was done by Trotsky’s deputy Ivan Zalkind. Zalkind’s professional qualifications were no better than Trotsky’s, but his science doctorate from Algiers University meant that he had fluent French.
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He was even brusquer than the average Bolshevik. France’s diplomats thought that he had a particular dislike for them,
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but he was just as aggressive to every other nationality and seemed to make trouble just for the sake of it. Skinny, myopic, with long silvery hair, he was puny in appearance; British agent George Hill, with no attempt at impartiality, described him as ‘a most unpleasant hunchback with the viciousness of a rat’.
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Zalkind compensated by adopting a quasi-military uniform and contriving to look bold and combative.
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(The sporting of military apparel was a growing trend among Bolsheviks: Party Central Committee Secretary Yakov Sverdlov had a black leather jacket and trousers tailored for him and bought a pair of long black boots and a black leather cap.)

Trotsky and Zalkind set up a Bureau of International
Revolutionary Propaganda for the Commissariat under Boris Reinstein, one of the revolutionaries who had returned from America; and John Reed and Albert Rhys Williams were taken on to the staff to bring ‘American advertising psychology’ to the publications directed at the troops of the Central Powers. There was also a Department of Prisoners-of-War, led by Radek, as well as a Department of the Press. These bodies produced material in German, Hungarian and Romanian.
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Reed, Rhys Williams and others were paid about $50–$60 a month.
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The Propaganda Bureau printed tons of material for dispatch across the trenches of the eastern front. Half a million copies of the German daily newspaper
Die Fackel
(later called
Der Völkfried
) were printed. The Hungarian print run was the same, while there were a quarter of a million copies each of the Czech, Romanian and Turkish versions.
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Even Rhys Williams helped out with
Die Fackel
despite his primitive grasp of German. He and Reed had little Russian but they possessed all the skills needed to sub-edit English translations of Soviet announcements.
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The Decree on Peace was hurriedly translated into German, French and English. Yakov Peters, the Latvian who oversaw the work, admitted that his own fluency in English and even Russian was inadequate – and Reinstein, Reed and Rhys Williams became as active in the Bolshevik cause as it was possible to be without joining the Bolshevik party.
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Allied diplomats tried to make sense of all this for their governments. On 19 November 1917 the American ambassador David Francis issued an appeal to ‘the People of Russia’: ‘I address you because there is no official in the Foreign Office with whom I can communicate, and all of the members of the government or ministry with which I had official relations are inaccessible, being in flight or in prison, according to my best information.’
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He emphasized that the US had signed no secret treaties and he repeated President Wilson’s hope of preserving good relations with Russia.
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On 27 November Sir George Buchanan fired off a telegram saying that it was unrealistic to expect the beaten and exhausted Russians to stay in the war. He proposed a change of policy. Russia should be released from its contractual obligations to keep up the fight on the eastern front. Buchanan argued that this would make a rapprochement between Russia and Germany less likely and might even induce the Russians to continue other kinds of resistance to the Germans.
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He did not recommend recognition for Sovnarkom. The Bolsheviks were not to be allowed privileges until their policies changed. But talks had to be
held with them. Buchanan advocated using informal intermediaries for this purpose, and the Foreign Secretary A. J. Balfour agreed.
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The Petrograd ambassadors have a reputation for being stupid old fogeys who lacked the intellectual and cultural depth to understand Soviet communism. Although some were indeed fogeyish and a couple were elderly, none was unintelligent. They thought seriously about Bolshevism as they witnessed it. Italy’s Marchese della Torretta knew about the breakdown of order from direct experience after being robbed late at night on his way back to the Hôtel de l’Europe.
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Leading diplomats, whether they represented the Allies or neutral countries, expressed revulsion at the end to civilities they had thought they could take for granted in Russia. They understood what Lenin and Trotsky wanted to do in the world. They saw from the start that religion, nationhood, civil peace, legality and civic freedoms were under threat. They observed for themselves how ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ brought about state terror. They came from a different world, and they preferred their world, warts and all.

Sovnarkom, however, had kept hold of some bargaining chips. On 28 November Trotsky sent a note to Buchanan saying that if the United Kingdom continued to imprison Chicherin and Petrov, British citizens conducting counter-revolutionary propaganda in Russia would not go unpunished. In gaol, Chicherin had cut his ties with the Mensheviks and become a Bolshevik. He announced that he would return to Russia only ‘as a free man’. He hired a lawyer. He demanded that he should be allowed visits by Joseph King MP; he intimated that he had personal friends including Consul-General Onou in the Russian embassy. He sent demands for the Mensheviks to repay the money he had lent them in the past – and he expressed the wish that his associates should buy him marmalade and golden syrup to supplement the poor prison diet.
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Consul-General Onou flatly refused to help. He thought there were ‘already enough dangerous madmen in Russia’ and did not want to add to the number.
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Chicherin hated having to rise early in the morning. He complained often about the injustice being done to him; but as the weeks passed he repeated that he would strenuously object to being released if the plan was to deport him straight away. When he left Brixton prison, he intended put his affairs in order before moving on to Russia.
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The cabinet in London at first refused to yield to Trotsky’s intimidation even though there seemed no national interest in holding
on to Chicherin or bringing him to trial.
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When Buchanan made no reply to Trotsky, the People’s Commissariat indicated that exit visas from Russia would no longer be issued to British subjects, including diplomats; Trotsky also threatened to take ‘counter-revolutionaries’ from Britain into custody.
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When in mid-December Trotsky demanded an interview with Noulens it was difficult to refuse him after he threatened that otherwise he would expel the military mission.
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Trotsky complained that France had sent agents to talk to the Central Rada in Kiev. Noulens replied that the French initiative was simply a reaction to Ukrainian national independence and that the Bolsheviks themselves had decreed the right of non-Russians to secede from the old multinational state. That the current governments in Petrograd and Kiev were enemies was not the fault of the French. Noulens added that the military mission had been instructed to avoid interference in Ukrainian politics and to stay out of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
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Lloyd George and Balfour soon yielded on the treatment of Chicherin and Petrov, and Buchanan relayed the news to the Soviet authorities. Trotsky exulted: ‘Sir Buchanan [
sic
] is a practical man with whom one can come to an understanding.’
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By the end of the month Buchanan had also conceded Sovnarkom’s freedom to send its couriers without hindrance to London.
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The British government edged towards putting Anglo-Russian relations on a fresh footing.

On 21 December the War Cabinet approved a memorandum on the Russian question for consultation with the French. Buchanan’s request for sick leave for his vertigo was to be granted, and Sir Francis Lindley would become chargé d’affaires in Petrograd.
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The ambassador’s departure was desirable on political as well as medical grounds: he was too closely associated in the Bolshevik mind with the Kadets to be able to liaise with Sovnarkom. ‘Unofficial agents’ would be used to conduct relations. British diplomacy should emphasize that the United Kingdom would not meddle in Russia’s internal politics or favour a counter-revolution. The Foreign Office would not even highlight its displeasure at Russia opening negotiations with the Central Powers. But the British reserved the right to stay in contact with Ukraine and other parts of the former empire not ruled by the Bolsheviks. Balfour’s idea was for France to take care of Ukraine while Britain busied itself with the other borderlands. He stressed the priority of facilitating the transport of Ukrainian supplies to Romania,
and he wanted the Bolsheviks to accept the need to prevent foodstuffs and munitions reaching Germany from its territory.
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The French welcomed the memorandum two days later.
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Every Allied embassy made use of unofficial agents. David Francis turned to Raymond Robins of the Red Cross as his intermediary with the Soviet leadership. Robins had friendly links with the Smolny Institute. He thought it was in the American interest to come to some kind of accommodation with Lenin and Trotsky – and he hoped to make an impact in Washington by influencing what went into Francis’s reports.
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Trotsky felt that he could exploit Robins and encouraged him to get himself appointed to the American Railway Mission to Russia. The restoration of the rail network to a normal working pattern was a priority for the Bolsheviks. If the Americans assisted in this, Trotsky promised to enable the transit of Allied military stocks currently held in Russian warehouses; he told Robins he would make him Assistant Superintendent of Russian Ways and Communications.
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Truly the People’s Commissar would do whatever it took to get the results he wanted. He let Red Cross trains run down to Iasi inside the Romanian sector of the eastern front. He also issued a prohibition on the growing export of Russia’s copper and other goods to Germany via Finland.
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