Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

The approach to European revolution, they thought, was quickening. Lenin had already ordered grain stocks to be laid aside for shipment to Germany when the revolutionary upsurge occurred. The Red Army undertook a massive additional recruitment so that Soviet forces could render military assistance for the same eventuality. 2 Pravda declared: ‘The robber claws of the Prussian brute are too deeply embedded in the western front. The robber has been caught in a tight spring-trap.’ 3At the same time the Soviet leaders continued to play things cautiously and earned ridicule from the German Independent Social-Democrats, passionate critics of Ludendorff and Hindenburg, for delivering the gold required by the Russo-German treaties of March and August. Lenin stopped shipments of bullion only when the Central Powers collapsed on the Bulgarian front and the Austrians surrendered to the Allies. 4At that point the Bolsheviks felt free at last to render direct help to the German political far left. Civil war in Russia made it unfeasible to divert any forces into central Europe: the Red Army could not reach the Urals, far less Poland and Germany, at that time. But the Bolsheviks wanted to make an impact. Despite the food shortages in Russia, the Soviet authorities offered to deliver grain for the new German government to distribute; 5and the scheme was finalized to establish the Communist International in Moscow.

The political climate in Germany had been fluid for some weeks before the armistice and the unconditional surrender. Wilhelm II discharged the cabinet installed in 1917, replacing it with ministers willing to work under Chancellor von Baden and negotiate for peace — and the Reichstag was no longer to be treated with public disdain. Even Ludendorff wanted the government to discover what terms might be on offer from the Allies. The last shred of hope among German ministers was that the Americans might moderate the French and British lust for a punitive settlement.

As a step towards conciliating socialists in the Reichstag, Baden released the Spartacist leader Karl Liebknecht from prison on 23 October. Pale from the lack of daylight, hair turned to the colours of pepper and salt, Liebknecht was, for Lenin and Trotsky, Germany’s revolutionary hero. 6He fervently believed that military defeat offered an opportunity to move the country by revolution to socialism. Two others headed the Spartakusbund with him: Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Only Liebknecht was German; Luxemburg was a Polish Jew and Jogiches a Lithuanian one. All three had spent time in prison for denouncing the war effort. Liebknecht now imposed himself upon them as a man of action. Before the Great War he had already been known for his capacity to inspire an audience:

[Liebknecht], a dark man with lively gestures, shot words at us like darts, words which kindled anger and protest against governments which could drag their peoples into the bloody holocaust of war.

[He] was a very good speaker. There was not only the art of the orator in what he said but a ring of truth and sincerity which won us over completely. 7

He wanted to take the political struggle on to the streets. Nothing short of insurrection would satisfy him — and he scorned those in the German Social-Democratic Party who urged caution and compromise.

Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary was falling apart, pressed heavily by the Italians from the south. Revolutions erupted in Vienna and Budapest on 31 October. Austria sued for an armistice, which was granted on 3 November; it took a further ten days for the Hungarians to achieve the same result. 8The German high command had long since lost confidence in the benefits of the military coalition with the Habsburgs. Now Germany was on its own.

The Soviet mission in Berlin prepared a banquet for Liebknecht with a view to publicizing his revolutionary agenda. Bukharin was delighted to hear that he was ‘in complete agreement with us’. 9Urgent contact with Russia was needed after Ioffe heard that the Germans were about to sue for peace, and he called Moscow on the Hughes telegraph apparatus. Radek rebuked Ioffe for having failed to encode the message: ‘Are you taking account of the seriousness of your communiqué and its possible consequences?’ But when Ioffe simply repeated what he had said, Radek raced to the Sovnarkom offices, where the news made everyone feel suddenly ‘liberated’. 10The embassies that still remained in Moscow were anxious about the news that came through to them. For the moment the talk among diplomats was focused on what kind of territorial and political settlement might be imposed by the Western Allies; and when Radek told the elderly Austrian ambassador De Potere about Italy’s pretensions in the southern Tyrol, he broke down in tears. Lenin and Sverdlov were ecstatic and asked Radek to draft an appeal to the Austrian working class. Since it was a Saturday evening, as Radek pointed out, the printworkers had gone home. The Hungarian communist leader Béla Kun, who was still in Moscow as an ex-POW, volunteered his fellow former prisoners to do the job if bread and sausages were made available. The atmosphere was euphoric. A crowd of Bolshevik supporters gathered next morning outside the Moscow Soviet on Tverskaya Street and, to their cheers, Lenin appeared on the balcony of the building. The celebrations lasted the entire day. 11

Meanwhile in Berlin on 5 November the supporters of the October Revolution gathered outside the Soviet mission to chant their admiration for Lenin and Trotsky. 12This was too much for German ministers, who knew exactly what the Bolshevik party thought of them after a crate being unloaded as part of the Soviet diplomatic ‘pouch’ was dropped at a railway station and insurrectionary propaganda spilled out. 13Ioffe and his mission, including Bukharin and Rakovski, were given twenty-four hours to leave the country; diplomatic relations were severed. 14

Their train left for the Polish frontier at six o’clock in the morning. 15It had not yet reached Russia when the radio station at Khodynka north of Moscow intercepted a telegram from Kiel indicating that the German naval garrison had mutinied. Radek tried without success to establish contact with the rebel sailors. Then news was picked up from Allied stations of revolution in Germany as Ebert and Scheidemann took over from Baden. Ioffe’s train had by this point pulled into Borisov, still in German-occupied territory. Using the Hughes apparatus, Radek instructed him to stay put while the Soviet authorities attempted to get his deportation revoked. Radek himself desperately tried to get through to the German Foreign Office:

Radek: Call the people’s plenipotentiary, Mr [Georg] Haase, to the apparatus.

Civil servant: He’s not in the ministry.

Radek: Who’s deputizing for him?

Civil servant: There’s nobody in the ministry. Everyone’s run off.

Radek: I order you in the name of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on your responsibility before the Berlin Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies! 16

Silence followed. There was no such thing as a Berlin Soviet and Radek had no authority to tell anyone in Germany what to do. As usual he was trying his luck.

The German embassy in Moscow later left a message for Radek saying that Berlin had been calling him. Radek consulted Chicherin before sitting down at the Hughes apparatus to communicate with Haase. Unlike Liebknecht, Haase as a leader of the Independent Social-Democrats was no sympathizer with the October Revolution. But he sent courteous greetings and did not rule out the possibility of letting Ioffe back into Germany. Then he added: ‘But knowing that there’s famine in Russia, we ask you to direct the grain which you want to give up for the German revolution for the benefit of the starving in Russia. President of the American Republic Wilson has guaranteed Germany the receipt of grain and fats needed to feed the population in winter.’ It seemed that American capitalist assistance was preferred to proletarian solidarity, which Radek took as a snub. He called Haase the Judas Iscariot of European socialism, and an exchange of insults followed. 17Eventually Haase reverted to practicalities and asked for German embassy staff to be allowed to leave Russia. Radek replied that the German occupation of Ukraine and other territories made Russo-German armed conflict a distinct possibility — and he warned that official diplomatic communications needed to be maintained with Germany if this was going to be avoided. 18