Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Sovnarkom met on the day of the killings to hear Sverdlov’s confidential report. 15Nothing was said in public for several months. It was understood that foreign monarchies, including the Hohenzollerns, would be enraged by what had been done. The Kaiser and the emperor were cousins, and even though their armies had fought each other in 1914–17 the ties of consanguinity still meant much to Wilhelm II. His anger would have been still fiercer if ever he learned that the communists had butchered Nicholas’s wife and children along with him. Empress Alexandra had originally been Princess Alix of Hesse and, although it was impolitic for the Kaiser to enquire about the deposed Nicholas, he could very properly send an emissary to ask Ioffe about Alexandra as a native German and indeed a relative. One of her brothers made the same approach. Lenin hid the full truth from Adolf Ioffe in the German mission, telling Felix Dzerzhinski: ‘Don’t let Ioffe know anything. It will be easier for him to tell lies there in Berlin.’ 16Ioffe therefore simply repeated the official story he had heard from Moscow. He prised the facts out of Dzerzhinski only later in the year when the head of the Cheka made a trip incognito to Berlin and Ioffe gained the opportunity to question him directly. 17

Even in Russia, most party leaders and militants were kept in the dark. As late as March 1919 Bolsheviks at their Eighth Party Congress were asking why Nicholas II was not being brought back to Moscow for a public trial. 18But by then the Western Allies were able to make an informed guess about the fate of the Imperial family. The American army contingent in Siberia now followed the Czechs to Yekaterinburg and learned from anti-Bolshevik investigators about their preliminary enquiries. It was no longer reasonable to doubt that the Romanovs had been slaughtered. King George V in Britain expressed his acute concern for his cousin Nicky and the family in comments that must have been tinged with guilt since he had turned down Kerenski’s request to grant them asylum in 1917.

The Bolsheviks felt steadily less secure in power, and Czech military actions were not the only cause. Humiliated at Brest-Litovsk, they were forced to give away further territory under German pressure in June. The Germans, worried by the British landings in the Russian north, demanded that Lenin should cede the western segment of the Murmansk area to the Finns. This would provide the contingent of German troops already stationed in Finland with a base to counteract the spread of Allied armed strength in Russia. 19The Bolsheviks gave way: they had no choice short of going to war against Germany. But they were not totally acquiescent. Even some of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries said that no party had done more than the Bolsheviks to assist Ukrainians willing to take up arms against the German occupation of Ukraine. 20Uprisings took place in small towns and villages. (The British officer George Hill helped with this, even though his claim to have led the entire campaign of sabotage was a somewhat exaggerated one.) 21But the Ukrainian forays by Bolsheviks were marginal to the Kremlin’s general line of appeasing the Germans. However arrogantly their diplomats behaved in Moscow, the communist leadership continued to draw a deep breath and overlook any offence.

This was an attitude that infuriated the Allies. Although Bruce Lockhart continued to parley with Trotsky, he no longer believed that Sovnarkom would ever fight Germany. It now made sense for the British to strengthen contacts with the enemies of Bolshevism and lend them their support. Approaches were made to Lockhart by the Volunteer Army and others. 22When a certain Fabrikantov asked him for help in enabling Kerenski to escape from Russia, he ignored protocol and issued him with travel documents under the alias of a Serbian soldier. 23Lockhart also handed over £200,000 worth of Russian rubles to George Hill and Sidney Reilly for delivery to Patriarch Tikhon to help with the Orthodox Church’s resistance to the Soviet government. 24William Camber Higgs, who owned a small British firm in Moscow, facilitated such subventions by cashing cheques drawn on the British Treasury. (George Hill did the same thing as Lockhart but specified the War Office.) 25

Lockhart passed on funds to Boris Savinkov for an uprising in Yaroslavl, 155 miles north east of Moscow; Ambassador Noulens, from Vologda, provided finance for Savinkov through Consul-General Grenard and the military attaché Jean Lavergne. 26Savinkov had assembled a Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom to organize a chain of resistance to Bolshevism on the eastern side of Petrograd and Moscow. As Lockhart reported to London, the immediate objective was to establish a military dictatorship. Savinkov had himself in mind as Minister of the Interior and some well-known general — almost certainly Mikhail Alexeev — as head of a national government; he alerted both the Czech Corps and the Volunteer Army to his plan and co-ordinated his activity with them. 27He also informed Sergei Sazonov, who by then was serving as the chief anti-Bolshevik diplomat attached to the Western Allies in Paris. Lockhart explained to London that Savinkov hoped to stir up a peasant revolt culminating in the execution of Bolshevik leaders. When Lord Curzon, as a member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, received Lockhart’s report he declared Savinkov’s methods to be on the drastic side, but nonetheless wished him well. What Curzon avoided was any promise to augment the British forces of intervention even though Lockhart had spelled it out that Savinkov’s scheme depended on such assistance from the Allies. 28Ambassador Noulens was less straightforward. Wanting to multiply the attacks on Sovnarkom, he advised Savinkov that the Allies were on the very point of undertaking a full invasion; and, although the French had no expeditionary force in the north, Noulens told him that he could count on decisive reinforcement from that direction. 29

Noulens achieved his purpose and the insurrection duly occurred on 6 July. As well as Yaroslavl, Savinkov occupied Vladimir, Rybinsk and Murom and proclaimed the overthrow of Soviet rule across Yaroslavl province. 30He restored private trade, promising to regenerate the economy and feed the hungry. He announced that he was acting in concert with anti-Bolshevik governments in Siberia and by the Volga. Savinkov put himself forward as leader of the Northern Army of rebels against communism while affirming his subordination to the command of General Alexeev, who was striving to build up the Volunteer Army in southern Russia. 31But when the Reds moved against the rebels no French or British assistance was made available to relieve Savinkov when he faced defeat. The Allies had never intended to invade — and indeed President Wilson would have opposed any such enterprise. Savinkov had been tricked. 32

The timing was awful for the anti-Bolshevik cause in Moscow. The Fifth Congress of Soviets opened in the Bolshoi Theatre on 4 July, and the Bolsheviks gave every sign of determination to fight on and win. The foreign missions sat in the boxes and watched from above. On one side was Mirbach with his Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Turkish colleagues; the head of German intelligence, Rudolph Bauer, was also present. On the other side were the Allied representatives with Lockhart prominent among them; the French and the Americans had places in the upper tier. (Sadoul turned up in a silk hat, frock coat and kid gloves.) 33Lenin spoke for the Brest-Litovsk peace, Trotsky for the Red Army’s preparedness. All Bolsheviks contended that every official policy had merit. No sliver of disagreement appeared between one Bolshevik commissar and another. Maria Spiridonova who led the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, still operating openly under the regime, denounced Sovnarkom at length; her comrade Boris Kamkov declared them to be inhuman scoundrels and, as he looked up at Mirbach’s party, shouted: ‘Down with the assassins!’ 34The Bolsheviks at the Congress did not try to silence the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries because they knew that Sovnarkom was guaranteed an absolute majority of votes. If the Germans were worried, they did not show it.