Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

The Bolsheviks maintained a healthy distrust of Germany and decided to shift the Russian capital into the interior, to Moscow. Lenin and most of the other People’s Commissars left Petrograd on 10 March. On arrival, they found that the great clock on the Spasski Gate overlooking Red Square still played ‘God Save the Tsar’ on the hour. 9And if the Germans did invade, the monarchy’s restoration might not be wholly improbable.

Power to ratify or reject the treaty lay with the Fourth Congress of Soviets, which opened in Moscow on 15 March. It was no longer feasible to wait for messages from Washington or London. Lenin grimly told Robins: ‘I shall now speak for the peace. It will be ratified.’ 10He had arranged for the foreign missions to attend and hear his speech. In it he mentioned nothing of his recent approaches to the Western Allies and, seeking to keep his party’s spirits up, he asserted: ‘We know that [the German revolutionary] Liebknecht will be victorious one way or another; this is inevitable in the development of the workers’ movement.’ 11But on 29 April he had to admit: ‘Yes, the peace we have arrived at is unstable to the highest degree; the breathing space obtained by us can be broken off any day both from the west and from the east.’ 12He still could not afford to let the Germans conclude that he intended to challenge the terms of the treaty, but, provoked by criticisms in Russia, he came before the Central Committee to urge that the priority of Soviet diplomacy ought to be ‘to manoeuvre, retreat and wait’. 13This was as far as he could go without alarming Berlin. Many Russians thought that he was more interested in power for himself and his party than in spreading revolution westwards. But Lenin meant what he said: he remained committed to revolutionary expansion whenever the opportunity appeared.

The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs lost much of its earlier influence. It was obvious that Chicherin would never dominate policy. Lenin and Trotsky wanted him to operate as an expert executant of their wishes, and generally he was willing to comply. Chicherin in any case had his hands full coping with ‘subordinates’ who showed him no deference. The People’s Commissariat seethed with its own disputes. Radek was an unrepentant advocate of ‘revolutionary war’ whereas Karakhan favoured compromise with the Allies. Radek put it about that Karakhan — ‘a donkey of classical beauty’ — was not up to the job. Karakhan thought Radek a hothead who was too sharp-tongued by half. The rivalry suited Lenin, who could play them off against each other — or at least this was how Lockhart assessed the situation. 14

Trotsky at any rate was again seeing eye to eye with Lenin; and when the new People’s Commissar for Military Affairs finally left for Moscow on 16 March, he took Lockhart on the same train. 15Sadoul dismissed the Scot as ‘un bon bourgeois’ and regretted that the Allies had sent out no genuine socialist among their diplomats. 16But Lockhart at least counted for more with the Bolsheviks than Robins did. Trotsky disliked Robins for his lack of enthusiasm for the October Revolution and his past association with ‘imperialists’ like President Theodore Roosevelt. 17Lenin felt the same, and when Albert Rhys Williams put in a good word for Robins, Lenin exclaimed: ‘Yes, but Robins represents the liberal bourgeoisie of America. They do not decide the policy of America. Finance-capital does. And finance-capital wants control of America. And it will send American soldiers.’ 18

Lenin and Trotsky were also sceptical about Lockhart but thought he might come in useful while the Bolsheviks were looking for chances to play off the Allies and Germany against each other. Trotsky was hoping to get assistance as he built up the Red Army. Lockhart was a willing helpmate, assuring London that the Bolsheviks had been ‘wonderfully patient’. 19The Allies could perhaps be persuaded to lend a hand if they judged that the Russians might one day soon break with the Germans. But his words increasingly fell on deaf ears. Foreign Secretary Balfour, while encouraging him to be frank in his reports, complained that he had supplied no evidence of genuine anti-German purposes among the Bolshevik leaders. 20General Alfred Knox, the British military liaison officer in Siberia, was blunt about those Allied representatives who continued to press the case for accommodation with the Kremlin. In a report to London he wrote that Lockhart’s bland commentaries on Soviet politics were ‘criminally misleading’. 21

Anti-Bolshevik Russians were angry about liaison between the Allies and the Reds. E. D. Trubetskoi and fellow monarchists warned the French consul-general Fernand Grenard in Moscow that Allied policy was wrong in every way. They stressed that Lenin had not the slightest intention of fighting Germany. If France and Britain continued to indulge Sovnarkom, the result might be to push Russian patriots into seeking help from the Germans. Trubetskoi’s words were ignored and the Allies went on probing the possibilities of cooperation with the Soviet leadership. 22

Lenin’s manoeuvres annoyed the German high command. Rudolf Bauer, head of Germany’s military intelligence in Russia, threatened a German occupation of Petrograd unless Sovnarkom showed full compliance. 23But generally there was satisfaction in Germany at the closure of the eastern front. On 7 March the Germans signed a treaty with the White Finnish government and helped General Mannerheim to crush the remnants of the Finnish Reds and eliminate the prospect of socialist revolution in Helsinki. In April they tore up their treaty with the Central Rada in Kiev and installed Pavlo Skoropadskyi as a client ruler. Ukraine became a colony in all but name. The German military campaign stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was accomplished with ease, enabling the high command to divert men and equipment to the western front. Not only the Allies but also the Bolsheviks hoped that Germany’s onslaught in northern France would prove ineffective. The fate of the October Revolution rested on the resilience of the French and British armies in their cold, wet trenches. If the Germans overwhelmed the Allies, they would rip up the Brest-Litovsk treaty and turn their power against Sovnarkom.

The Western Allies were exasperated by a treaty that allowed the Germans to concentrate their forces against them in northern France. But Soviet leaders were pleased at least that London, Paris and Washington left their diplomats in Russia. President Wilson declined to do anything further to assist Sovnarkom. He replied politely but blandly to overtures from Lenin and Trotsky. 24He was simply being diplomatic. Things did not need to be made worse by an offensive telegram from the White House. Wilson disliked the British and French proposal for the Japanese to intervene in Russia from Siberia. He refused to contemplate a similar expedition by the Americans — and he insisted that in any case the outcome of the Great War was about to be decided on the western front. 25

The staff of the European embassies returned from Finland to Russia and joined the Americans and Japanese in Vologda. They all absolutely refused to transfer to Moscow even though they maintained consuls or other representatives there. Bruce Lockhart watched all this from afar: ‘It was as if three foreign Ambassadors were trying to advise their governments on an English cabinet crisis from a village in the Hebrides.’ 26He thought no Allied ambassador was up to the task. Francis in his eyes was ‘a charming old gentleman of nearly eighty’ and he recorded that Trotsky dubbed Noulens ‘the Hermit of Vologda’. Noulens supposedly shaped his attitude according to ‘the prevailing policy of his own party in the French Chamber’, whereas Della Torretta spoke Russian but allowed himself to be bullied by Noulens. Rumours proliferated in Vologda’s fetid diplomatic atmosphere; and Lockhart had to chuckle when Noulens, who had heard that the Germans had installed one of Nicholas II’s ministers in power in Petrograd, nervously asked whether the story was true. 27Moves were afoot behind the scenes to send expeditionary forces to protect Allied interests. The British were gathering troops for a landing in the Russian north at Murmansk and the Japanese were planning the same for eastern Siberia. Sovnarkom would receive no prior notice. The idea was to do the deed before anyone noticed, but the Bolsheviks got wind of Japan’s intentions and sought to pre-empt them by making pleas to the other Allies.