# The Making of a State/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
PAN-SLAVISM AND OUR REVOLUTIONARY ARMY (Petrograd–Moscow–Kieff–Vladivostok. May 1917—April 1, 1918)
The Russian Revolution.
ALL along I had feared a revolution in Russia; yet, when it came, I was—unpleasantly—surprised. What would be its effect on the Allies and on the waging of the war? The first reports were indefinite and hardly credible. After getting further information and beginning to find my bearings, I sent Milyukoff and Rodzianko, on March 18, 1917, a telegram in which I laid stress on the Slav programme—emphasis by no means superfluous either in Russia or in the West. Since, to my knowledge, one of the Allies, Tsarist Russia, cared nothing for democracy or freedom, it had not been easy for me to say that the objects of Allied policy were the liberation of small peoples and the strengthening of democracy. But now, after the Russian Revolution, I could say unreservedly that a free Russia had a full right to proclaim the freedom of the Slavs. The Slav programme I stated briefly as follows: The unification of the Poles in close association with Russia; the unification of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; and, equally, the unification and liberation of us Czechs and Slovaks. I added that it was a question not only of Slav but also of Latin nations, the French, the Italians and the Roumanians, and of their rightful national ideals. This programme was in harmony with the recent Allied reply to President Wilson and with the views of the Allied political circles which were in sympathy with us. I had also to take into account the position of the post-revolutionary Russian Government and especially of Milyukoff as Foreign Minister. He sent at once a friendly answer.
I have said that the news of the Revolution, and of its rapid course in particular, disquieted me. At that juncture, despite my knowledge of Russia, many of the revolutionary leaders and what they stood for were unknown to me. One may feel fears, have intuitions, imagine a general situation and guess how it will develop, yet not possess, at a given moment, concrete knowledge of realities, of the chief persons at work and of their motives and intentions. This knowledge ​I lacked. As I knew that the middle-class and the Socialists (the Democrats and the Revolutionaries) were unprepared, I had expected a demonstrative outbreak, not a revolution, to follow the reverses in the field. The meeting of the Duma, notwithstanding its dissolution by the Tsar, had been such a demonstration. What surprised me was that the army and the whole machinery of State, together with the Tsarist system itself, should be so deeply shaken, however clearly I had long seen through and condemned Tsardom and its incapacity.
With official Russia my relations had not been pleasant. For years I had been on the Index; but, on the other hand, I had friends in the progressive parties. Though the Russian translation of my first book “On Suicide” had been destroyed, it had aroused the interest of Tolstoy. The censorship passed my “Critique of Marxism,” which was widely read in Russian and made my name known. The Marxists disagreed with it but it did not estrange even them. Then, once again, my “Russian Studies” were banned. Nevertheless, in the German edition, they attracted attention. In the autumn of 1914 Trotsky wrote disparagingly of my “Russia and Europe,” from a one-sided Marxist standpoint, in the Viennese Social Democratic Review, “Der Kampf.”
Knowing that the Russian reactionaries liked neither me nor the Allies, I did not hasten to Russia during the Tsarist régime. A conflict, which might have arisen with the Russian Government, would have encouraged our enemies. For this reason I had always tried to influence official Russia through Russian and Allied diplomatic channels and by means of Svatkovsky and other Russians who came often to the West, and to keep in touch with our own people in Russia by letters and messengers and through members of our colony who came to see me. But when the Revolution had put my personal friends and acquaintances in power, some of them being members of the Government, I decided to go to Russia and to carry through the creation of an army among our prisoners of war. Upon Milyukoff as Foreign Minister I counted especially. We had long known each other and, as I have said, we had met in England during the war and had agreed upon the chief points of a war and peace programme.
Another reason for going to Russia, where I expected to stay a few weeks, was the serious position that had grown up on the Western front at the beginning of 1917. So, having made the necessary arrangements in London and discussed conditions in Russia with Lord Milner, who had just returned ​from his official mission there, I set out on April 16, 1917, with an English passport. The German submarines had begun a pitiless campaign against North Sea traffic, and the boat on which I was to have sailed from the little port of Amble on April 17 was sunk. I waited a day or two, when there came suddenly a telegram from London to say that Štefánik had returned from Russia, and a messenger calling me back to London. Thus the mishap to the boat had the advantage of enabling me to get a detailed report from Štefánik. He informed me of the development of our Legion; and he shared the view of leading Russian soldiers that the Revolution would enable the Russian army henceforth to operate more vigorously and effectively against the Germans, thanks to the removal of pro-German influences. Many leading men in the Russian army had favoured the Revolution and hoped that its achievements would be consolidated by military victory. Beneš joined Štefánik and me in London and we were able again thoroughly to discuss our future work in Europe in the light of Štefánik’s news of the work in Russia.
On May 5 I found another boat and started from Aberdeen. This time we went to sea escorted by two destroyers, and reached Bergen safely. During the night we nearly struck an enemy mine which the captain only avoided at the last moment by a smart manœuvre. This I learned next morning. From Bergen, where it was evident that Norwegian feeling was pro-Ally, I went by way of Oslo to Stockholm, spending a day there but not the night, so as to escape passport formalities. Though my passport was made out in another name, I had been warned in London that, under Austrian pressure, the Swedish authorities might interpret their neutrality in such fashion as to have me interned as an avowed enemy of Austria; and the precedent in Switzerland made prudence advisable.
Pavlu, who had been to see me in London, awaited me in Stockholm. Preparations were being made there for a con- ference of the International, especially of Scandinavian and Dutch Socialists. The International was in ebullition. In April the German Social Democrats had split into two camps at Gotha, and the Independent Socialist Party had been formed. The influence of the Russian Leninites was already perceptible—Lenin had reached Russia on April 4—pacifism was spreading and, with it, a certain pro-Germanism. I, however, went on by way of Haparanda to Petrograd. On entering the city I noticed a black cloud of ravens; evidently, ​it had not struck me in the same way during my previous visits. . . .
I called at once on Milyukoff, whom I found on the point of resignation—an unpleasant surprise. However, I established relations little by little with the other members of the Provisional Government, including the Prime Minister, Prince Lvoff, and with Milyukoff’s successor, Tereshtchenko. At the Foreign Office and War Office, with which I was chiefly concerned, I met, here and there, a few intelligent people who were open to reason and had retained pro-Ally feelings. Especially useful, in view of the obvious unpreparedness and weakness of the Government, were my relations with the Allied representatives, particularly General Niessel and Colonel Lavergne, of the French Military Mission at Petrograd; Major Buchsenschutz and General Janin (who was afterwards Commander-in-Chief of our army) at headquarters; General Tabouis at Kieff, and General Berthelot at Jassy—all good friends and helpful. In the place of the French Ambassador, M. Paléologue, who had just left Petrograd—my train must have crossed his on the way—I found M. Albert Thomas, well disposed towards us, whereas Paléologue had been pro-Austrian. M. Thomas’s secretary was Pierre Comert, a good friend of Steed’s.
The British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, was very obliging. As a loyal friend of the Provisional Government and of Liberal circles generally, he had remarkable influence in the Petrograd of that time. Against him the Conservatives and Reactionaries spread all sorts of obviously slanderous gossip, accusing him of having caused the Revolution. With the Italian Ambassador, Marquis Carlotti, my relations were very intimate. He urged his own Government to form a Czechoslovak Legion in Italy out of our prisoners of war. Finally, I was in constant touch with the Serbian Minister, Dr. Spalaikovitch—whom I had known when he gave evidence in the Friedjung trial—and with the Roumanian Minister, M. Diamandy.
An American Mission, led by Senator Root, came to Petrograd just then. Among its members were my old friend Mr. Charles R. Crane, Dr. John R. Mott and others. The Slavonic expert, Professor Harper, whose father had been Rector of Chicago University when I was lecturing there, was attached to it. Voska also turned up from America to organize a Slav Press Bureau for the American Government, and with him were our fellow—countrymen Koukol, Martinek and Švarc. ​Mr. Arthur Henderson, the English Labour leader, was likewise sent by the British Government to report upon the position, while Vandervelde came from Belgium. With Vandervelde I had already corresponded, and I had met him personally during the crossing from Aberdeen.
Besides Milyukoff, I was in touch with Peter Struve and other Cadets; with Plekhanoff, the Socialist, whom I had last seen at Geneva; and with Gorky, who was then publishing his daily newspaper. I made the acquaintance of several Social Revolutionaries, and of Sorokin, the editor of one of their chief journals. Savinkoff I saw afterwards at Moscow. With academic and University circles I renewed old relations; and when Kerensky’s Government came into power, I had to negotiate with its members. Kerensky himself I did not meet as he spent so much of his time away from Petrograd, especially at the front; but I often saw his uncle, Professor Vasilyeff, to whom I gave my messages and requests. I, too, travelled constantly between Petrograd, Moscow and Kieff.
As in London and in Paris, I gave public addresses in all these cities or arranged meetings with leading and influential persons. I kept the newspapers informed and wrote a number of articles. The refrain of my propaganda was “Break up Austria!”—propaganda not less necessary in Russia than it had been in the West, since the Russians had no definite anti-Austrian policy but accepted rather the idea of making Austria smaller. With the leading Russian Poles whom I met in all the chief towns—their centre was at Moscow—I made acquaintance immediately after my arrival, and we agreed upon joint or, at least, parallel action in the army question. The Poles were forming their future army out of their men in the Russian ranks, and their difficulties were naturally the same as ours.
The Russian Anarchy.
Before leaving London I had promised my friends to send them as soon as possible a report on the position in Russia. The question was whether and to what extent the Allies could still rely upon Russian help in the war. Upon military Russia, I soon discovered, the Allies could not and ought no longer to reckon. In a telegram to “The Times” on or about May 25, I expressed this conviction; though, as telegrams were censored, I cannot say whether the text as printed was what I actually wrote and what the Petrograd correspondent of “The Times” had agreed upon. I could do no other than dispel, once for ​all, the hope of Russian military help, for it was in the interest of us all not to cherish illusions. In England, as in other Allied countries, many people looked upon the Revolution as a protest against the feebleness of Russian military leadership; but, in Russia, the utter breakdown of the army, of officers and men alike, was evident everywhere and in everything. I will not describe its daily progress, but I remember the painful impression presently made upon me by the women’s battalion, in which not a few ingenuous Europeans and Russians failed to see a symptom of military decline and general demoralization.
A pertinent example of the state of official Russia and of the Court was the Rasputin affair. I had heard of it in London, but in Petrograd I learned the whole story. Just imagine that the Tsarist Court and, with it, the Government of Stürmer and Trepoff, had lain under the influence of a fellow like Rasputin, coarse and almost illiterate, albeit gifted and astute, and that this had lasted six years! If religious mania is pleaded as an extenuating circumstance, the answer must be that such religion was gross and repulsive superstition. Moreover, Rasputin was not the first adventurer to whom the credulous Court had succumbed, nor did the moral plague infect only the Court. The fact is that neither official, political nor ecclesiastical society withstood Rasputin’s influence sufficiently or was capable of protecting the Tsar and Russia against it. What must the position have been, morally and legally, if murder alone could get rid of Rasputin—murder committed by a great noble, by a Conservative Member of Parliament and by a member of the Imperial Family who knew what was afoot and witnessed the deed! In reading the detailed account of the murder (by Purishkievitch himself) I can see how shallow and incompetent these people were, even in crime, and, by reason of their shallowness, needlessly brutal. The very way the deed was done reveals the decline and the demoralization of official Russia—it may sound cynical, but it is true: these people were incapable even as criminals, and were therefore the more criminal.
And what of the Imperial Family, with its swarm of Grand Dukes who wielded decisive influence in the army and in the civil administration? I admit that, mutatis mutandis, things were much the same in Austria and, to a lesser extent, in Prussian Germany. But, in Russia, the stench of the moral and political morass at Court spread also to the nobility—and to the ecclesiastical hierarchy as well. The spirit of caste, not ethical or religious motives, turned the nobles against Rasputin; ​and therefore they hatched a plan to get rid of the Tsar, in the worst event, as the Emperor Paul was got rid of. Extremes of this kind are always the last resort of passive folk unable to overcome evil by systematic work. I learned of the plot for a Palace revolution from several trustworthy quarters, and the news of it has since leaked out, here and there, in the press.
My chief task was, however, to reconnoitre the military and political situation. Clearly, I could reach no other conclusion than that which I stated in “The Times.” To such a Russia neither we nor the Allies could look for help. The decisive cause of disaster in the field had been the moral depravity of the upper classes of Russian society and of no small part of the whole Russian people. The trial of Masoyedoff (who had been in touch with Rasputin and was hanged in March 1915) and that of Sukhomlinoff (who was arrested in May 1916) revealed the demoralization among military leaders. Such trials sufficed to condemn the army administration, even if there were no treason in favour of Germany—though this was widely alleged. To my mind it matters little whether or not a separate peace with Germany was discussed when Protopopoff met Wahrburg in the German Legation at Stockholm during the former’s journey abroad with the members of the Duma. It seems that it was not discussed but, in any case, the meeting was out of place and politically indiscreet. The real guilt of Tsardom seems to me to lie in the fact that it went to war unprepared, rashly and without conscientious consideration even of its own interests; for this reason, after the first defeats, it was driven towards Germany. As early as March 1916 there were reports that Stinnes was seeking an arrangement with Russia; and it was on account of Germany that Stürmer, like his successor, Trepoff, was appointed Prime Minister. No wonder the Allies lost faith in Russia. For a time they even hesitated to provide her with arms and war material lest these be turned against themselves.
Naturally, too, the military insufficiency of Russia compelled the Allies to change their strategy. Distrust of the Russians spread in France because the army they had promised was not sent. Yet, after every reverse, the Russian Command kept the Allies quiet by saying that there were millions and millions of Russian soldiers; and General Alexeieff is stated really to have wished to call up millions of men, without thinking that there would be no means of feeding, arming or managing them. I felt sick when, after the Brusiloff offensive, ​Russian generals boasted that they had still more than 15 million men at their disposal. They promised to send at least half a million men to France—and actually sent, in 1916, an insignificant 16,000 who were so undisciplined that they had to be interned. Neither then nor later had Russians any right to reproach the West with ingratitude. Rather would the Allies be entitled to reproach Russia for having failed to keep her promises. In the West, soon after the Russian defeats in 1914, this view was certainly expressed. It was recognized that Russia had gone into the war unprepared and as a gamble. This I heard more than once in Paris, London and Washington. Nevertheless, I admit that the goodwill of Russia cannot be gainsaid. At the beginning her promise to help Serbia was sincere. She invaded Prussia when Paris was threatened. Brusiloff began his offensive in order to relieve Italy; and Kerensky also wanted to help.
Russians often put forward the excuse that only the German clique at Court, led by the Tsaritsa, was guilty of treason. This is wrong. The Tsaritsa committed no treason. I have verified the stories told even by members of the Duma, and have come to the conclusion that she was no less loyal to Russia than were the Russians themselves. I do not say that there was no treason in her entourage, for she put blind trust in Rasputin who was in the hands of people cunning enough to take advantage of his relationship to the Empress—a fatal mistake. The Tsaritsa’s shortcomings lay in her lack of education, in her gross and morbid superstition and in the political incapacity which she combined with a domineering temperament. And her greatest shortcoming lay in her complete influence over the weakling Tsar, who believed in her as in a prophetess. Thus she became the strongest political power in Russia. She was a sworn foe of constitutionalism and of the Duma; and the Tsar shared her feelings. Not until February 1916, in the midst of the war, did he pay his first visit to the Duma! General Alexeieff wished to place her under arrest—but then it was too late.
The Tsar himself was loyal to the Allies. When Count Eulenburg, the Marshal of the German Court, put out peace feelers through Count Fredericks in December 1915, the Tsar would have nothing to do with them, just as he rejected the attempts made at the end of March 1916 by the Grand Duke of Hesse, the Tsaritsa’s brother. Not less was he against Witte’s pro-German agitation. In words, he wished the war to be vigorously waged, but he knew not how to wage it ​vigorously in deed. As they said at Petrograd, he was “wooden”; and, even when he saw the unhappy state of things, he did nothing. Equally weak was he when a section of the Court clique hatched a plan to let the Germans through to Petrograd in order that they might save Tsardom. The news I had received in London about Goremykin proved that this plan did not stand alone. Though, in comparison with his successor, Goremykin was a Russian Minister of the better sort, he did not shrink from the idea of courting defeat and of letting the Germans march into the Russian capital so that they might put things in order.
To the Tsar’s weakness and untrustworthiness the history of his reign bears frequent witness. In the Björkö affair of 1905, for instance, he heeded the whisperings of the Emperor William—whose plan showed a remarkable degree of political short-sightedness—and promised that Russia would be a party to a Franco-German alliance against England. Witte and the Foreign Minister, Count Lamsdorff, had to prevent the ratification of the Treaty at the last moment. The Tsar was just as foolish during the war. At the wish of the Tsaritsa he took over the Chief Command himself and did nothing but harm; he dismissed good men like Sazonof and accepted creatures like Stürmer. In our case, as we shall see, he broke his promise in the same way as, in the Björkö affair, he had gone back on his signed word.
Witte, in his Memoirs, says that the Tsar was a very well-bred man but, as regards education, on a level with a Colonel of the Guards of good family—a judgment terribly borne out by the published extracts from the Tsar’s private diary at the time of the Revolution and of his abdication. He was a pure nonentity. In distrusting his whole policy and character I see that I was not unfair to him. The Tsarist Sodom and Gomorrah had to be destroyed with fire and brimstone—not only the Court and Court society—for the demoralization had spread to all social strata, including the so-called “intelligentsia” and even the peasantry. Tsarism, the whole political and ecclesiastical system, had demoralized Russia.
In insisting upon the moral defects of Tsarism I am well aware that the morality and immorality of a community naturally show themselves throughout the official and military administration. Of this moral deficiency the inadequate provisioning of the Army and of the civil population was one result, a result, moreover, which revenged itself upon the Government and the system. Practically, the Revolution in ​Petrograd was brought about by hunger, and the commissariat troops were the first to revolt. The lack of weapons for the army, the senseless recruiting of masses of men which, in the autumn of 1916, swept the labourers from the soil, were symptoms and effects of a moribund administration. I am entitled thus to judge Russia during the war because I had judged and condemned her before the war. My judgment is not founded only upon her failures in the war, since these were but the outcome of the severe moral disease of the whole Tsarist system and, therewith, of the Russian people. On this point, study of pre-revolutionary Russia and especially of her literature leaves no room for doubt. Her greatest writers show us the sickness and enfeeblement of the Russian soul, yet also its elemental yearning for truth. Tolstoy did but bring this yearning into high relief when he descried the foundations of art in truth and truthfulness. Tsarism was untrue; and the war brought out its untruthfulness no whit more clearly or fully than it had been revealed by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontoff, Goncharoff, Turgenieff, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy and Gorky. The Russians now call Dostoievsky the Prophet of the Revolution—in the war and the Revolution, Russian literature found bloody confirmation.
Russia fell, had to fall, as Kirieyevsky would say, through her own inner falsehood. This inner falsehood merely found in the war a great opportunity to stand forth in all its nakedness, and Tsarism collapsed in and through itself. It had contrived to civilize Russia crudely, to lend some European quality to the nobles, the officials and the officers; but the peasantry and the peasant soldier—who were Russia—lived outside this Tsarist civilization. Hence they gave it no protection when, in the war, it failed through its own insufficiency and inward poverty.
As to the Russian Church, to whose inertia much of the blame is assigned, its sin was a sin of omission. It cared too little for the moral education of the people. What the Slavophils, and especially Kirieyevsky, praised in the Russian Church was, as Chaadaieff saw, precisely its chief shortcoming.
Russia and the Slavs.
This conviction as to the moral basis of Tsarism I had reached long before the war; and, in my book on Russia which appeared before the war, I had analysed and described Russia’s unhappy state. Thus, when war broke out, I could not agree ​with our uncritical pro-Russians at home or in Russia, where our people expected the Tsar to set Bohemia free. Their standpoint was the more comprehensible in view of the political upbringing of our colony in Russia, especially as the Tsar himself treated its members well. As early as August 20, 1914, he received a Czech deputation. To the hopes which this reception aroused at home I have already referred. On September 27, 1914, he gave audience to another Czech deputation, and showed his interest in Slovakia by asking for a memorandum upon it. In 1915 he sent decorations to our Legionaries in France, and in 1916 he discussed the Czech question with Štefánik whom General Janin had strongly recommended to Russian military circles and to the Court. In June of the same year he agreed to the release of the Slav prisoners of war in Russia; and in the following December received yet another Czechoslovak deputation.
All the greater therefore was the difference between the Tsar’s personal behaviour and the working of the Tsarist system. What he said to our people may not have been binding, but they grew enthusiastic whenever the “Slav Brethren” of Russia were mentioned. By “Slav Brethren,” official Russia meant primarily the Orthodox Slavs, as I had pointed out from the first. It is true that Russia, and the Tsar particularly, supported Serbia from the outset as did the other Allied Powers. None of them would allow Vienna to touch Serbian independence. But, like England, Russia would have agreed to an Austrian “punitive expedition.”
On careful perusal, the report of the audience of September 17, 1914, which our people in Russia thought especially significant, makes a disappointing impression. Political children can be put off with words, especially by the words of a political child like the Tsar. He expressed his interest but promised nothing definite. The deputation showed him a map of our future State—which included Vienna and Upper Austria! Of this fantastic product the Tsar said nothing beyond: “I thank you, gentlemen, for what you have told me. I trust that God will help us and that your wishes will be realized.” I, too, believe in God but not in a Rasputinian God—and things turned out as I expected.
At his father’s Court the Tsar had heard all sorts of things about the Slavs, and is said to have taken interest in the Wends of Lusatia; but neither he nor his Ministers had a comprehensive Slav policy. Otherwise he would never have ​given office to a fellow like Stürmer, whom he knew to be a strong pro-German, nor would he have agreed, in March 1916, with Baron Rosen—an anti-Slav and pro-German—that Russia and the Allies must make peace without delay, if possible under American leadership.
To the substance of Sazonof’s speech in the Duma on August 8, 1914, I have already alluded. Even Sazonof had no positive Slav and Czech policy in the war. I knew his past and his views. He certainly disliked the Rasputin business, for he was a good type of man; and at last the Tsar dismissed him because of his alleged liberalism. In the West, Sazonof was known to have been against the war and to have striven to avoid the conflict with Germany. For this very reason he cherished no such Slav policy as that which our people ingenuously attributed to him. When he spoke of the Slavs, Sazonof, like all high Russian dignitaries, meant chiefly the Orthodox Slavs. This is clear from his talk with the second Czech deputation in September 1914, though our people thought it very important. Sazonof asked the Czechs for their ideas of the relationship between an Orthodox dynasty and a Catholic people, and expressed doubts about it. The deputation referred him to our principle of toleration. According to the notes taken by our people, Sazonof spoke of us very kindly and also appealed to God, saying: “Should God grant decisive victory to Russian arms, the re-establishment of an entirely independent Czech Kingdom would be in accordance with the intentions of the Russian Government; this question was considered before the beginning of the war and decided in principle in favour of the Czechs.” I have no quarrel with Sazonof for having spoken thus cautiously. As a Russian and as a responsible Minister it was his right, nay, his duty. My only object was to rid our people of pan-Slav and pro-Russian illusions.
What I have said of Isvolsky applies also to Sazonof’s interest in the Orthodox Slavs. Paléologue, the former French Ambassador to the Russian Court, relates in his Memoirs that, on January 1, 1915, he suggested to Sazonof that the Entente should turn Austria against Germany; Austria might perhaps cede Galicia to Russia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia, and thus settle the matter. Sazonof asked him what was to happen to Bohemia and Croatia, and Paléologue answered that the Czech and the Southern Slav questions were of secondary importance to France and that it would be enough if the Czechs and the Croats were given a large measure of ​autonomy. According to Paléologue this argument made an impression on Sazonof, who admitted that the idea was worth considering. If Paléologue’s account is accurate, it would follow that, in the first period of the war, Sazonof had no general Slav policy; otherwise he must have put forward his own counter-arguments. It is noteworthy, too, that Sazonof spoke only of Bohemia and Croatia but said nothing of the provinces appertaining to them.
Similarly, the conquest of Slovakia or, at any rate, of Central and Eastern Slovakia, had been contemplated in many unofficial Slavophil Russian circles, the Bohemian Lands being left out of account. These, and particularly Bohemia, were to be given up to the West, though, according to some of these Slavophils, Moravia was graciously to be received into the Russian bosom. Some of our Slovaks remembered this idea during the Russian advance in the winter of 1914 and the offensive of Brusiloff in the summer of 1916. The fact is that Tsarist Russia had not thought out any Czechoslovak policy. On the contrary, official Russia was in so far anti-Slav as it desired to round off the Russian Empire on strategic principles and to reach Constantinople without troubling about individual Slav peoples. Its readiness to sacrifice considerable portions of those peoples was not due to ill-will but rather to weakness and ineptitude.
As the war went on, bringing defeat after defeat, Russian declarations in regard to the Slavs became more and more reserved. The high-sounding proclamations at the beginning of the war I have already mentioned. On May 29, 1916, Sazonof still spoke in the Duma of Russia’s “Slav Brethren,” though he referred only to their “future organization” and promised far-reaching autonomy to the Poles. But, in Trepoff’s speech on War Aims, in December 1916, nothing more was said of the Slavs; and, in an Order to the Army and Navy, the Tsar repeated what Trepoff and, before him, Stürmer had said that the aims of Russia were Constantinople, and a free Poland inseparably joined to Russia.
The real war aims of Russia were revealed in the secret agreements which she concluded. Of these the weightiest was the Secret Treaty made with France and England on March 18, 1915, of which the chief feature was the conquest of Constantinople. This Treaty is certainly important, particularly as regards England. The second (provisional) Treaty was Doumergue’s convention with Pokrovsky on February 12, 1917, by which France claimed a frontier on the Rhine and ​Russia a new frontier on the West. According to the situation, and under the Secret Treaty with Roumania (August 17, 1916) to whom the whole Bukovina (including the Ruthenes) Transylvania and the Banat were promised, this new Western frontier would, in harmony with Russian policy towards the Poles, have included Galicia, Poznania and perhaps a part of Prussian Silesia; though, as far as I can discover, the project was not worked out in detail.
An indication of the way official Russia looked upon Slav questions was also given by General Alexeieff. With him I had a conversation or, rather, a controversy upon Russia and the world situation. He was a cautious man of critical mind who, though Conservative and narrowly Russian in his views, would not have hesitated even to sacrifice the Tsar for the sake of saving Russia. He was one of the first to realize, as early as 1915, that the Russian army could not stand up to the Germans; and, therefore, at the time when I met him, there could be no question of his entertaining any serious Slav policy. Upon our people in Russia he looked with a critical eye, and the confusion about them in Petrograd displeased him. On Europe, on us and the Austro-Hungarian people, his views were hazy. At the beginning of the war he had imagined that Austria-Hungary could be divided into States serviceable to Russia. The Czechs were to extend to Trieste and Fiume on the Adriatic, and thus to take over a large part of German Austria, including Vienna, but were only to get a bit of Slovakia, as far as Kosice, while being presented with a lot of Magyars—that is to say, according to the Russian plan, the Czech State was to have a non-Czech majority. Serbia was to extend northwards to the Russian frontier as far as Uzhorod. Since the Tsar had promised to help Serbia, her northern frontier must march with that of Russia Of the Magyars, Alexeieff took no account, though at first even he had reckoned upon their detaching themselves from Austria, in which case he would have felt no compunction in sacrificing to them his “Slav Brethren.” The Russians had long had a chance—indeed, it should have been their duty—to pursue a Slav policy towards the Poles and the Little Russians; but the policy they actually followed forms at once a sorry chapter in Russian history and a proof of how un-Slav Russia really was. Tsarist Russia was not Slav but Byzantine, and perverted by Byzantine decadence.
Supilo.
Supilo and his visit to Russia I have mentioned more than once. According to his own report, he left London in January 1915 and went by way of Rome to Nish-then the seat of the Serbian Government—to consult Pashitch; and thence through Southern Russia to Petrograd in the hope of persuading Sazonof and Russia to oppose the reported negotiations with Italy which afterwards took shape in the Treaty of London. He was in Petrograd at the end of March; and, at the beginning of June 1915, in Geneva, he gave me a full account of his visit.
Supilo found that official Russia understood nothing whatever of Slavonic matters and was interested in the Serbs only because they were Orthodox. Sazonof demonstrated to him (a Dalmatian!) that Spalato was entirely Italian, drew a distinction between Catholic and Orthodox Dalmatia, and believed that the Orthodox Serbs lived in the South. He was extremely surprised when Supilo explained that the Orthodox Serbs lived not in the South but chiefly in Central Dalmatia, the very part which Russia was handing over to Italy. Thus Sazonof revealed to Supilo the negotiations with Italy, and said that the Southern Slavs would get Spalato and the supposedly Orthodox South. Supilo guessed that Sazonof was not expecting Northern Dalmatia to go to the Yugoslavs, and asked him pointedly what would happen to Sebenico. From this question the Russian Foreign Minister concluded that Supilo was aware of the negotiations and told him further details. Thus Supilo heard of the Treaty of London before it was actually concluded. He telegraphed the information to Pashitch and Trumbitch, and wrote a lengthy memorandum to the French Foreign Minister, Delcassé, in Paris.
Supilo was interested not only in the extent of the territorial concessions to Italy but in the question whether the Southern Slavs would in future be united or still be divided into three parts—Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro. Undoubtedly, the Treaty of London was inimical to the unification of the Southern Slav Lands and corresponded rather to the Great Serbia programme. In the West it was said that Sazonof was for a long time decidedly opposed to Italy. Others asserted that he opposed her only in so far as he did not want her to have Southern Dalmatia which he erroneously assumed to be Orthodox. This point is not yet quite clear.
Besides Sazonof, Supilo saw the Grand Duke Nicholas. His report of his long conversations with the Russian Com​mander-in-Chief and those about him, gave an uncanny picture of the political ingenuousness of the Russian leaders and of their ignorance of other things besides Slav questions.
Though Supilo was right, I did not agree with the agitation by which he set Petrograd not only against himself but against the Croats, while intensifying the antagonism between them and Serbia. He did not realize the difficulty of the position in which defeat had placed Russia, nor did he see that necessity had driven her and her Allies to make the Treaty with Italy. It had also to be remembered that the dynasty and the foreign policy of Serbia were Conservative and Tsarophil. Pashitch, the Prime Minister, wished to go to Petrograd himself after the conclusion of the Treaty of London, but Sazonof thought it neither opportune nor necessary. In the whole Slav policy of Tsardom nothing was realized save that St. Petersburg became Petrograd.
As regards us Czechs, Petrograd feared our Liberalism and our Catholicism. In the Russian Foreign Office, where there was many a decent, honest man, I learned that they did not take us seriously until Paris and London began to recognize us. Briand’s reception of me, in January 1916, which, as I have said, impressed the Russian diplomatists abroad, had also its effect at Petrograd, where my opposition to the German Berlin-Baghdad scheme attracted attention. But Petrograd was displeased at my acceptance of a Professorship in London. It was taken as showing the intention of England to gain control of our movement; and the story passed round that I was working in London to secure an English Prince as our future King. At any rate, London and Paris caused Tsarist Russia to pay heed to our revolutionary movement, and Bohemia came to be thought important as a barrier against German pressure on the Balkans and on the East generally. In the autumn of 1916 these considerations inspired the policy that ended in the creation of Dürich’s pro-Russian “National Council.”
Yet, as I have said, official Russia had received our National and Slav programme very early in the day. I sent it repeatedly and I presume that the Russian Ambassadors in London and Paris had reported upon it. But, beyond insignificant correspondence, neither of them, nor the Ambassador in Rome, received political instructions about it. No single act of the Tsar’s Government can be compared with Briand’s intervention on our behalf, or with the Allies’ mention of us in the definition of their war aims to President Wilson. The first Allied pro​nouncement in favour of our liberation was not—as we might have expected—attributable to Russian initiative or co-operation (for Isvolsky merely signed it) but to the understanding and the help of the Western Allies, and especially of France. The quality of Tsarist care for the Slavs is, moreover, most strikingly illustrated in the history of our army.
Our Army in Russia.
Like all the others, our colony in Russia declared itself for the freedom and independence of our people on the outbreak of war, and it took steps to form an army of Russian Czechs and Slovaks. These manifestations were spontaneous, and a logical consequence of our national programme. After the Paris colony, which was the first to take action, the Czechs of Moscow laid before the Government a scheme for a Czechoslovak Legion on August 4, 1914, a day before the Austrian declaration of war against Russia. At the end of August, organization began; and by the end of October, the Družina, as our legion in Russia was called, left for the front.
Permission to form this legion, as a part of the Russian army, was given to the Russian Czechs as Russian subjects. But when the prisoners of war began to volunteer for service in it, political inequality became apparent between the Russian subjects belonging to it and our own men. Many of the Russian officers were against the non-Russians; though, after the official difficulties had been overcome and recruiting among “trustworthy prisoners” was sanctioned, the non-Russians soon formed a majority. At Tarnopol, when the prisoners entered the Družina at the beginning of 1915, the name “New Družina” was used, but it was not applied to those who joined it later. The Government demanded that the prisoners should apply for Russian nationality and that at least a third of the officers should be Russians. It wanted to make of our people a reliable Russian army. Moreover, the military authorities, and particularly the General Staff, assigned to it from the first a political rather than a military task. When Austria should be occupied, the Družina was to be a corps of propagandists who were to facilitate the occupation by winning the goodwill of the inhabitants. Its non-military character was officially accentuated by demanding of it a discipline less stringent than that required of the rest of the army; it was supposed only to need just enough discipline to enable it to reach, in tolerably good order, the sphere of its ​propagandist work. As time went on, it was used for scouting purposes, thanks to our lads’ skill, intelligence and knowledge of languages; and, despite the opposition of the military authorities and of many Russian officers, they gained the favour of Radko Dmitrieff, Brusiloff and other commanders, and thus got a hold upon the scouting service. Yet, as a result, the Družina became scattered over a long front and could not bring itself to bear as a unit.
I will not describe the tribulations of these first Czech soldiers, the rebuffs and the disappointments they had to endure from Russians and even from Czechs—but they held out and lost neither their feelings as Slavs nor their liking for the Russians, albeit chiefly for the Russian peasant soldiers. Upon the Russian officers they soon came to look with a sceptical eye.
Though everything showed that the Government and the military authorities did not want a Czechoslovak army of any size, a regiment of Czechoslovak riflemen was formed out of the Družina in January 1916; and, in May, the creation of a brigade was permitted. It was more or less a nominal affair, for its strength was small; but it was a beginning. Štefánik was then in Russia and used his influence to this end. In October 1916 authority to form a Division was even given—but soon withdrawn.
Very early in the war—from March 11, 1915, onwards―our colony, organized as a “League,” entered enthusiastically into the establishment of the Družina. There was great devotion on every hand and, after the battle of Zboroff, the colony at Kieff looked after the sick and wounded in every possible way. Gladly do I recall the work of the Červený family; while Dr. Girsa, Dr. Haerink and others gave our men first-rate medical attention.
Personally, I was able to overlook differences of political opinion and to keep in touch with the Conservative members of our colony, though I could not fail to see that many of them lacked both political vision and military sense. The “League” was a Russian organization composed of Czech subjects of Russia and loyal to the Government. Hence it adopted the official view of the Družina’s propagandist task. Besides, fear lest our nation lose its future citizens in battle reconciled the “League” leaders to the idea of keeping our army small. Many were satisfied with military symbolism, such as the consecration of colours, or worked to convert our men to the Orthodox Church, and behaved in very unmilitary fashion. Even the prisoners started an agitation in favour of ​Orthodoxy as, for instance, when a number of officer-prisoners were solemnly converted at Murom. Some drew up incredible definitions of what a Czech soldier ought to be, and other puerilities of a like description.
Misunderstandings, too, arose between the Petrograd and the Kieff Czechs, and then misunderstandings at Kieff itself, where a singular “Czechoslovak Association” was set up which attacked the “League” and denounced everybody, especially me and my alleged Westernism. It addressed its complaints and denunciations, misstatements and lies, to the Russian military authorities and Departments of State. The better Russian soldiers, like Alexeieff, were disgusted by then, but they found a hearing in other quarters and even in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I need not describe all the fantastic and impossible things that were done, and were brought to my notice by the Russian authorities themselves. The name of Slavdom was used to cover orgies of reaction and of political shortsightedness. The circumstance that our prisoners came to be more and more the decisive factor in our army and, finally, the Revolution, prevailed over these effects of a Russian education; for the corruptibility of Tsardom and its political illiteracy had spoiled not only Russian society but many of our own people as well.
When I reached Petrograd in May 1917, the antagonism between the progressive Czechs of the capital and the more Conservative Czechs of Kieff, and between the “League” and the “Association,” had been formally set aside. Like the members of the “League” and the great majority of our prisoners, our people in Petrograd had always recognized our Paris National Council. At any rate, our brigade had recognized it as the supreme political authority and had proclaimed me Dictator on March 20, 1917; and the “League” followed suit, on March 23, by recognizing me as the sole representative of the Czechoslovak nation. Finally, the third Congress of the “League,” held in Kieff at the beginning of May, adopted by a large majority the programme of the National Council which Štefánik expounded. The effect of the so-called Kieff Pact, or Protocol, which was signed by Štefánik, Dürich, Delegates of the “League” and the delegation of American Czechs, was to compose, at least outwardly, dissensions that had lasted since the beginning of the war; though, as I found, there remained quite enough personal bitterness and ill-humour.
In fairness to the politicians among the Czech and Slovak colony, it should be said that, at first, our prisoners, as well ​as our people from Bohemia and Slovakia who had been in Russia when the war broke out, put all their hopes in official Russia. Not until they had got to know what official Russia really was, and after the Revolution had opened their eyes, did they change their views. All the greater is the merit of the Petrograd colony whose members kept an open mind throughout, particularly during Stürmer’s administration, and were steadfast in the conviction that our struggle for independence must bear a uniform character. Three names deserve special mention—those of Pavlu, Čermák and Klecanda. To this policy our prisoners rallied; and, at the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917, even before the Revolution, voices from our camps called for uniformity of action under the Paris National Council. The way our prisoners organized themselves politically in the various camps, and gave expression to their views in all kinds of memoranda which they addressed both to the “League” and to the Russian Government, is the more significant because the camps were isolated and the action they took was, I believe, taken independently.
Military Difficulties.
In Petrograd my first care was to get my bearings and to learn in detail what had happened since 1914 in relation to our military affairs. True, I had received, from time to time, written and oral reports besides the news from Štefánik; but now I was in a position to go more closely into things. What I knew of official Russia had never led me to expect any great readiness on its part in helping to create our army; and, naturally, the reverses of 1914 and 1915 had not increased Russian eagerness to trouble about any non-Russian formations. Yet, in 1916, with Brusiloff’s offensive, hope had revived, and France had supported our movement in Russia through Štefánik. When Brusiloff failed, pessimism set in again and, with it, indifference towards any new undertaking. The Russians were estranged, moreover, by the haziness of our own people as to what they really wanted and by the unsavoury quarrels between them. Frankly, I often wondered that the Russians had so much patience with us.
On behalf of the Czechs at Kieff, Dr. Vondrák had laid before the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the War Office a scheme for a Czech army. This scheme asked the Russian Government to recognize the “League” as the representative of the Czech people, for its authors never seem to ​have thought that they needed some credentials from the Czech nation itself if they were to possess authority in Russia. Nor did it occur to them that the Russian Government was not entitled to decide who was to represent our nation. As Russian subjects, they could only represent those members of our colonies who were likewise Russian subjects. They did not want a big army—not more than a division at most—and it was only to come into action after the occupation of Slovakia, which was to form part of the future Czech State. The Kieff Czechs feared that the Austrians would execute Czech soldiers who might be taken prisoners. This they hoped to obviate by an occupation of Slovakia, a proclamation of Czech independence, and the deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty. In addition, Russia was in some way to guarantee the future of the Czechs—perhaps, like that of the Poles, by a manifesto of the Commander-in-Chief! Should the Austrians nevertheless execute Czech prisoners, reprisals were to be taken upon Austrian prisoners.
Neither the Russian Departments of State nor Russian military men heeded witlessness of this sort, and Maklakoff, the Minister of the Interior, rejected the Kieff scheme categorically in May 1915. It was, indeed, an idle project, for it actually announced that, in the Czech army, officers would not be accepted, even if they were Czechs. Notions like these were hotly discussed in our colony; and not a few officers who joined the Družina and, afterwards, the Czech brigade, were very badly treated by these civilian wiseacres. The effort to create an ideally Slav, democratic and brotherly army, degenerated into fruitless hair-splitting about the “ideal qualities” of the Czech soldier—and, truth to tell, well-meant nonsense of the same kind cropped up even in the New Družina and among our prisoners of war.
The second Congress of Czechoslovak Societies, which met at Kieff from April 25 to May 1, 1916, resolved, in accordance with the plan we had worked out in Paris and had sent to Russia, to form an army out of our brigade and to set about getting our prisoners released. But in June 1916, the “League” (now established at Kieff) presented to Russian Headquarters a fresh scheme for a Czech army. General Alexeieff recommended the General Staff to work it out—which the General Staff did, after its own fashion-but still Headquarters would not sanction it. The Russian Foreign Office also raised objections, and General Alexeieff, hearing from General Červinka accounts of indiscipline in the brigade and of the complaints ​of the Czech “Association,” turned against it. Thus, early in August, it fell through.
Despite this failure, several influential people spoke for our prisoners, among them Brusiloff who made a full report to Alexeieff on January 6, 1917; but even he had no success. Our people had put great hopes in the Tsar’s own wish for the release of Slav prisoners, for he had agreed to it in principle on April 21, 1916, and had sanctioned, on July 10, the report of General Shuvayeff which urged strongly that they should be better treated. This, however, only authorized their release. Their formation into an army was still a long way off, as our people at Kieff realized. Hence, while invoking what the Tsar had said when he gave them audience, they asked for a decision by the responsible Government, remembering that Russia, albeit incompletely, was now bound to be constitutional.
In the autumn of 1916, as I have said, the Russian Foreign Office began to pay more attention to the Czechoslovak movement which it decided to direct and control. In this it was inspired by a spirit of opposition to the West and by dislike of the favour shown to us in England and France. Consequently, at the beginning of December, civil and military reactionaries got to work on their scheme of setting up a special Czechoslovak National Council for Russia. On December 17 they proposed to the War Office that Dürich should be placed at the head of this Russian semi-official National Council. On January 18, 1917, the Council of Ministers and, on February 2, Bielyaieff, the War Minister, gave their assent. Yet, while supporting Dürich, official Petrograd did not altogether agree with his policy in regard to Russia. He described himself as a supporter of Dr. Kramář, advocated the incorporation of Czechoslovakia in Russia and even the adoption by us of the Orthodox Faith. But the Russian Foreign Office, aware of French and British dislike of pan-Slavism and pan-Russianism, rejected or toned down Dürich’s scheme of annexation and local self-government. As I have said, our Liberalism and our Catholicism were not liked. Therefore, while seeking to control us, the Russians found my programme of complete independence more acceptable.
Into particulars of the change that occurred between the Tsar’s approval of the release of our prisoners and the hostile acts of Stürmer and Trepoff towards us, I will not enter, for I had neither the time nor the inclination to go fully into it. Our people naturally suspected Stürmer’s pro-German guile; ​and, though I cannot say what part pro-Germanism actually played, it certainly had some effect. To my mind, one of the most practical explanations is that Stürmer opposed the liberation of Slav prisoners of war in deference to capitalist wishes, since the Czech prisoners in particular were well qualified for work in factories and mines. This was also to the liking of some of our manufacturers at Kieff, who consequently wished our legion to be kept small and non-military. In support of this explanation stands the fact that, after the Revolution, even the Provisional Government had an eye on our skilled workmen and would not let them join the army. Under Stürmer’s pressure, the Tsar himself agreed that his assent to the release of the prisoners should not take effect. My information was derived from a trustworthy informant, and it is confirmed by one of the Tsaritsa’s letters (which have been printed) to the Tsar on August 17, 1916, asking, in the name of Rasputin, that the Slav prisoners should not be released. Another letter from the Tsaritsa, dated August 27, also gives colour to what I learned-that it was intended to honour the Tsar’s work by admitting gradually a small number of prisoners to our brigade so that its strength would have been slightly increased without making an army of it.
Ups and Downs.
So things went on until the Revolution broke out in March 1917. Štefánik and the French military mission had been urging the military and civil authorities in 1916 and 1917 to permit the formation of our army. The General Staff at Petrograd had set up a Commission to work out Regulations for it. Like so many others, this Commission served to delay matters. When the Regulations were ready, in October 1916, they were at variance with our programme. The Družina was to be slightly enlarged but it was not to be ours. It was to be entirely Russian, with a Russian Commander and Russian superior officers. General Červinka gave the Regulations to Headquarters. Then our “League” stepped in and rightly demanded that our army should be at least partly Czech, not wholly Russian. Headquarters instructed the General Staff to revise the Regulations. Their final text was still being drafted in February 1917 when the Revolution broke out, and they were confirmed only by the new revolutionary Government.
Like the Russians, our people changed front after the Revolution. On April 8, 1917, the “League” presented to ​the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government a declaration against Dürich’s National Council and in favour of my leadership; and, in a lengthy document addressed to the Provisional Government, it proposed that I should represent the Czechoslovak nation in international affairs while the “League” would represent the Czechs and Slovaks in Russia. This was a repetition of the constitutional error into which the Czechs of Kieff had originally fallen. The “Association” also hastened to present to the President of the Duma a memorandum hotly attacking Stürmer and Dürich—a right-about-turn that did not astonish me on the part of this section of our people. Had not Priklonsky, of the Russian Foreign Office, who had been a warm supporter of Dürich not so long before, threatened immediately after the Revolution to have him locked up!
Nevertheless, Gutchkoff, Minister for War in the Provisional Government, upheld the old decisions against us, refused the “League’s” application for a Czechoslovak army and ordered that our skilled workmen should be drafted into the factories which were working for the defence of Russia. On the other hand, Milyukoff, the Foreign Minister, supported our cause. On March 20 he asked Gutchkoff to assent to the League’s “application; the question of unitary leadership could stand over until I came. He demanded further, on March 22, that Dürich’s National Council should be dissolved. Four days later Gutchkoff agreed. Finally, on April 24, the Military Council of the Provisional Government confirmed the “Regulations for the Organization of the Czechoslovak Army.” On the basis of these Regulations, General Červinka, as President of a Commission ad hoc, began to form the army in May, after the General Staff had instructed the Military Districts to permit recruiting among our prisoners. Thus I reached Petrograd in May at exactly the right time.
Russian Anomalies.
In the West we had long been recognized. In agreement with the Russian Ambassador in Paris, the Entente had declared our liberation to be one of its chief war aims; yet, in Russia itself, we only received recognition—and then indirectly at the twelfth hour, thanks to the Revolution. Why this crying anomaly?
The sober account I have given-in broad outline, omitting details shows that the Russian civil and military authorities, beginning with the Tsar, failed to carry out their promises ​that our army should be formed. When a scheme had been sanctioned, its application was everywhere resisted, even at Headquarters. It was held up and fresh obstacles were continually created. This was a consequence of the very nature of official Russia and of its fundamental ideas—Absolutism, Orthodoxy, Nationality, that is to say official Russian Nationality. In the eyes of Tsarist Russia, we were not first-class Slavs and Brothers.
Day by day, in my countless dealings with military and civil authorities of all sorts, I felt the weight of Tsarist Absolutism even after its formal disappearance. The Regulations for the formation of our army, duly sanctioned, were in my possession. Assurances and orders were given, yet nothing was done, and there was open opposition at Headquarters. Individuals always made promises, and broke them. I dealt with the highest and most influential persons, with Korniloff, with Brusiloff, who promised and promised; but, month after month, the creation of the army was put off. On all sides I was aware of distrust and incomprehension. True, their own army gave the Russian military authorities enough cause for anxiety at that moment. They had more men than they could deal with and saw little use in a Czech army. The officials were obviously tired. Russia was losing, her army disintegrating—why make such an effort? That, at least, was a pertinent argument. But many, confounding two different conceptions, feared our Liberalism and our Catholicism. And—in keeping with the third term in the Russian absolutist trinity of ideas—the apprehension was expressed that, if a Czech National Army was set up, national armies would have to be granted to the Poles and others. For this reason our small brigade was kept as a part of the Russian army and our men had to swear allegiance to Russia, though not a few Russian Generals understood that, if only for military reasons, our men ought above all to swear allegiance to their own nation. Often, too, I heard complaints of Bulgarian ingratitude—doubtless the Czechs would be just as ungrateful!
In the eyes of many Russian administrative officers, our prisoners were still simply “Austrians.” Legitimist even in regard to Austria, they could not comprehend that our men should be Czechs and Slovaks. Hating the Russian Revolution, they would not recognize the Czech Revolution. In the prisoners’ camps our lads had constantly to turn a deaf ear to the reproach that they had sworn allegiance to Francis Joseph and that, were they to betray him, they would likewise ​betray the Tsar. It is some excuse for these Russians that, albeit only at first, the same argument was used against us in Italy, England, America and occasionally in France. Only by explaining our position over and over again could we manage to de-Austrianize ourselves. Even Alexeieff must be reckoned to some extent among the Russian Generals and officials who were so steeped in legitimism that they could not sympathize with our Revolution. Our people thought him their best friend. He was; but he could not free himself from his inveterate Russian views.
The legitimist argument took more practical shape in the contention that, if the Czechs were used against Austria, the Germans and the Austrians might use their Russian prisoners against Russia—the very contention which Sonnino adopted on behalf of Italy. It was the less justified in the Russian case because the Germans were already carrying on systematic propaganda for Germany among the Russian prisoners. But the Russian reactionaries who, in their heart of hearts, disliked the Entente and the West, made yet another point against the formation of a big Czech army—it must not be sent to France! In support of this plea they could appeal to some of our own people, for General Červinka did not favour the transfer of our men to France. One very influential reactionary explained to me his dislike of the West by saying that Brusiloff’s offensive in 1916 had brought no gain to Russia though, in the course of it, her troops had taken half a million prisoners and nearly a million guns! In reality, the number of prisoners was about 150,000 and that of the guns proportionately very much lower. He claimed that, under pressure from the Tsar, whom the King of Italy had influenced, Brusiloff had been obliged to strike before he was ready—proof that Russia was not working for the King of Prussia but for the Kings and Presidents in the West!
At last the Revolution gave things a turn for the better. It was fortunate that Milyukoff, whose support for our policy I had secured in England, should have become Foreign Minister. Yielding to the new spirit, General Dukhonin, who was then Quartermaster—General, ordered, on June 18, 1917, that our brigade should be raised to four regiments and that the battalions of the reserve should also be strengthened in view of a further increase. Militarily, also, things grew better after the battle of Zboroff, where our brigade showed both ​bravery and strategical skill. Our lads were officially commended, the name of the Czech Brigade became known throughout Russia and, as a recompense, the Supreme Command ordered the formation of a second division.
Its actual formation was, however, put off more and more. There was a fundamental difference between the Revolutionary Government at Petrograd and the Army and its command. Though Liberals and Socialists held political power, the superior military authorities were either monarchists or men of purely military mind, and the whole military machine was unchanged. Milyukoff and the Liberals recognized me, the Paris National Council and our policy, but the soldiers continued to tread their wonted path. Indeed, before the battle of Zboroff, we were opposed even by Socialists and Liberals of all shades, who thought us Chauvinists. The Liberal and Progressive Russians had always been in opposition to the Government and to its official Nationalism. Therefore they were likewise against our national aims, especially when the antagonism between the Right and Left wings of our movement showed that many of our people were reactionary, either tactically or on principle. For this reason Kerensky, as War Minister, ordered that our brigade should be disbanded; and the new Commanding Officer of the Kieff district, a Social Revolutionary named Oberutcheff, did the same. To Kerensky I explained the position in a memorandum on May 22, and I persuaded Colonel Oberutcheff also to be more moderate. But the change was wrought chiefly by the battle of Zboroff.
In explanation of Russian distrust, it should be said that, after the Revolution, all official archives fell into the hands of the new Government, and that in them were found a number of reports, official and unofficial, which compromised several of our people. Moreover, from liberal officials whose lips were now unsealed, I heard what had happened in the Russian Foreign Office and elsewhere under the Tsarist Government. An influential member of our “League” was alleged to have been in direct contact with the Okhrana, or secret political police, and with Protopopoff. Hence, our army had been disliked in military as well as in official quarters, for even the decent Russian Conservatives objected to Protopopoff and the Okhrana.
Our position emerges the more clearly if the lot of our brigade be compared with that of the Serbian Legion. Permission to form a Serbian Legion out of the Austro-Serbian prisoners of war had been easily obtained by Spalaikovitch, ​the Serbian Minister at Petrograd. Serbia was Orthodox, an independent State, an ally of Russia and was officially represented at Petrograd. Therefore the Russian authorities allowed her forthwith to recruit “Austrian” prisoners, despite the legitimist arguments that were brought forward against us. Several detachments were sent to Serbia as early as 1915. The Serbian General, Živkovitch, was at Odessa, and to him the Austrian-Serb officers and non-commissioned officers were despatched. Thus the first Serbian division in Russia was formed in 1916. Many of our officers and men, tired of waiting for a Czech army, joined it, the Serbians promising to organize a special Czech contingent; but Kieff opposed the scheme and it was dropped. Consequently, a number of our men left the Serbian division. Sad was the fate of those who remained in it, and of the Division itself. Strategically, its gallant struggle in the Dobrudja against Mackensen’s advance was bootless, yet it strengthened the ties between us and the Serbs and enhanced the closeness of our cooperation. I need not tell how the formation of a second Serbian Division was begun or how dissensions caused it to be disbanded, for I wish only to show the difference between the bearing of official Russia towards the Serbians and towards us. But I remember with gratitude our officers and men who gave their lives on the Dobrudja plains for Serbia and for our common freedom. In April 1917 the Serbian command released our men, who returned to join our own army at Kieff.
Our treatment by the Russian authorities reminds me of a story that is told of the Commander of an Austrian fortress who once gave the Emperor Francis Joseph a hundred reasons why a salute had not been fired in honour of his Majesty’s arrival, the final reason being that there was no powder. In dealing with me, the Russian military officials were in an analogous position. They gave me all sorts of explanations, reasons and excuses which I have faithfully set forth; but they did not tell me what I learned only after the Bolshevist Revolution—that, from 1915 onwards, the supreme military and political authorities had definitely decided not to create a Czech army. The Serbian military attaché, Lontkevitch, told me of this decision and promised to send me, to Paris or America, copies of the official minutes recording it. Unfortunately, he died; and, if he sent them, I never received them.
In the light of this information, I understood that Russian soldiers, trained in obedience, should have felt themselves bound by the decision and by official secrecy in regard to it; ​but I was surprised that neither Korniloff nor Brusiloff, despite their admiration for our lads, dared to change a resolution taken in wholly different circumstances. It became clear to me why the Tsar’s promises had not been kept and why, when the Regulations for our army were finally sanctioned, they had been at variance with our political programme. From Vienna I received trustworthy information that people there knew of and rejoiced over the resistance of the Russian authorities, and over the way in which things were being put off. Our lads attributed to Austrian bribery this systematic obstruction on the part of the Russian civil and military authorities; and the possibility that Austro-Hungarian influences were at work was often discussed in the Russian branch of our National Council. The presence of the same influences was suspected in the dissensions between our parties in Russia, and in the formation of Dürich’s National Council—unknown to Dürich himself—for its organizer, Priklonsky, was publicly accused, even by Russians, of being in Hungarian pay. He had been Consul at Budapest before the war and was seen there again after the Revolution. Štefánik mentioned to me what he thought well-founded suspicions of one of our people at Kieff—the one and only case of alleged treason. I doubted it, and Štefánik promised me written proof. This proof was probably burned when his aeroplane crashed near Bratislava after the war, though I am still unconvinced that it was conclusive.
Organization.
When I had got to know the situation and the principal people I drew up a plan of my own. Our task was to build up the army or, as we called it in Russia, the “Corpus,” out of the original Družina, which had been transformed, first, into a brigade and then into a division with the nucleus of a second division in it. My plan foreshadowed the creation of a “Corpus” and preparation for a second “Corpus,” since plenty of prisoners volunteered for service. I took up the work where Štefánik had left it. Against the Russian idea of making a political, propagandist army, he had upheld our view that we needed a real army, as big as possible, and that it must be sent to France. Upon this we had agreed as soon as Briand had recognized us and our anti-Austrian programme at the beginning of 1916.
But the work was greatly impeded by the variety and number of authorities with which we had to deal. At Petro​grad there were the War Office, the General Staff, the Foreign Office and the Council of Ministers; at Moghileff there was General Headquarters; at Kieff, the chief of the Military District; and, finally, the Commander-in-Chief had a word to say, as well as the Commander and the Staff of the Army Corps to which our units were attached. There were continuous pilgrimages from Pontius to Pilate, and long journeys from town to town. Everywhere and from everybody we had to get a Bumaga, a “paper” of some sort, which took long to make out; for in Russia the army, like everything else, was bureaucratized. The Allied representatives helped us generously and, in a number of minor matters, backed us up in our dealings with the Russian authorities. The military attachés, who were generally stationed at Moghileff, helped us too.
The work was simplified by the setting up in Russia of the “Branch” of our Paris National Council. Both the “League” and the “Association” had taken a hand in the military business; and, alongside of the “League,” there had been Dürich’s pro-Russian “National Council.” Our “Branch” simplified all that. In accordance with its statutes, I became its head on reaching Russia; things grew more orderly; the work was more unified, and thus we gained the confidence of the Russians and of the Allied representatives alike.
We extended the “Branch” and divided up the work. Most of it, of course, had to do with the army and its development. The correspondence with our prisoners, singly and with whole camps, was immense. Members of the “Branch” and many officers and men had to visit the camps and direct the recruiting. Money troubles soon arose, but we amended an old scheme and issued a national loan. I simplified things as much as possible, even in the arrangements made by the Russians. Klecanda, the “Branch” secretary, whose premature death was a great loss, was of the utmost assistance to me. He was a dear fellow, devoted to the cause, and a tireless worker. My private secretary was was the young historian Papoušek. The Russian Government had entrusted General Červinka, a Czech by birth, with the technical organization of our army. He was a Russian soldier and, if only on that account, had some trouble with the “League” and with the “Association”; but he laboured devotedly for the Czech cause. If, as a Conservative, he was not altogether in agreement with me, that did not prevent our working together. ​In fact he had been a good intermediary between the Russian Government, the “League” and, afterwards, Dürich’s “National Council.” He had been put in charge of Czech military affairs in the Kieff Military District, to which he was attached soon after the outbreak of war; and, when the General Staff issued the order for the formation of our army in the autumn of 1916, the execution of it was entrusted to him.
My Own Plan.
My own plan differed from those of the Russian Government and of the “League” in that my aim was to have an independent army at our own disposal. It was not enough that it should be a part of the Russian army since, in this case, it might be dispersed along a huge front without coming into play as a unit. Besides, I wanted as large an army as possible, an army really military, not political. Its spirit had to be Czech, not Russian, albeit pro-Russian. To me it mattered little whether the command were Russian or Czech, the main points were what its commanders would be like, what its spirit and what purpose it would serve. A Czech army must know clearly what political aims it was fighting for, and why; it must swear allegiance to our nation; in a word, it must be our own army.
Secondly, the army must be transferred to France. This had been agreed upon in Paris a year before, and to this end Štefánik had worked in Russia before I came. The anti-French and the anti-Western Russians had all along opposed the transfer which had been discussed in various Departments of State and in the Council of Ministers before the Revolution. On reaching Petrograd after the Revolution, M. Albert Thomas renewed, on behalf of the French Government, the request for the transfer; and, on May 14, 1917, the Russian General Staff granted it, on good grounds. The Revolution had broken the ice. I arranged with the French Military Mission that, as a first instalment, 80,000 prisoners should be sent to France, including some thousands of Southern Slavs. M. Thomas agreed and helped in every way to hurry things on. This Agreement with him was the first Treaty to be concluded by our National Council with a State; and, once again, France was the first to recognize our National Council as a contracting Power. It was understood that some of these prisoners would work in French factories. The Russian Foreign Office and General Staff promised to get the convoy off as quickly as possible by way of Archangel; but, in consequence of delays, the first contingent ​started only in November 1917, and its numbers were much smaller than we anticipated. At that time we hoped, however, that before long we should all be able to get to France by way of Siberia.
The prospect of service in France naturally affected the organization of our troops. To make things easier, we introduced French discipline and appointed French liaison officers. My whole care was to keep the army together and to prevent it from being drawn into the Russian military chaos. In this I succeeded to some extent, thanks to the collapse of the Russian army and to the demoralization of the country. The collapse taught our men a lesson; and, on the other hand, it helped us to get, from the Russian military magazines, material that would otherwise have been merely looted. We had to take what we wanted, for it was out of the question to make arrangements with the authorities, so great was the prevailing uncertainty and so rapidly did the authorities change. No sooner had I settled something with Korniloff than, on the morrow, Brusiloff was in his place. In short, there was utter confusion.
The official permission to form an army was merely a framework. Details had to be filled in and, particularly, the final dimensions of our force had still to be determined. At first I asked only for one Corps, to which a second could be added according to circumstances. General Dukhonin, the new Chief of General Staff at Headquarters, made me this important concession on October 9, 1917. Unlike Brusiloff, Korniloff and Alexeieff, Dukhonin, who knew and appreciated our lads, their work as scouts and their gallantry at Zboroff, had the pluck to set aside the obsolete decision of the Tsarist Government. Thus we got our Corps which, by definite agreement, was to be independent of the Russians. Furthermore, it was expressly stipulated with Dukhonin that it should only take action against the foreign enemy—an acceptance and confirmation by the Russians themselves of my main principle of neutrality in regard to Russian internal affairs. This safeguarded us against the danger of being dragged into Russian party quarrels, to-day on one side, to-morrow on another; and it reassured the Conservatives and Reactionaries in the Russian army who feared and resisted to the last the establishment of an independent Czech force.
Dukhonin was a young, vigorous and capable officer and a very honourable man. He understood our position and helped us. He withstood Lenin’s orders to conclude an Armistice with the Central Powers. Unhappily, he was killed by the ​Bolshevists on December 2 when, under Krylenko, he took possession of Russian Headquarters. For days his dead body was barbarously profaned at the Moghileff railway station before it could be taken to Kieff for burial. We assembled to pay our last respects to him, but the funeral was forbidden; and permission to bury the body at night could only be obtained by requests and pressure from all quarters. A few days later I visited his widow and learned, to my horror, that Dukhonin would gladly have accepted the command of our Corps. Indeed, Madame Dukhonin hinted that he had expected it to be offered to him. This had not crossed my mind when I discussed with him the choice of a Commander, since, in view of his high rank, I supposed he would look upon the command of a Corps as a degradation. Certainly, he would not have lost his life had he left his position at Moghileff to become our Commander. We shall ever hold him in grateful remembrance, for he gave body to the decision of the Provisional Government and made a living thing out of what had been mere words and paper.
Soon after getting Dukhonin’s consent, I had chosen the Russian General Shokoroff to command our Corps and appointed the former General Dieterichs to be its Chief of Staff. I had known of Dieterichs earlier, at Headquarters; and, when I heard that he was working as a labourer at the Kieff railway station, I was all the more disposed to take him for our Staff. With these two appointments, the formation of our Corps was practically assured. For the other superior commands we had to take Russians since we had only subalterns among our prisoners, and most of them were inexperienced and young. It was the same everywhere; and, just as the higher officers were Russian in Russia, they were French in France and Italian in Italy. In Russia, moreover, the tendency had prevailed from the beginning to make the leadership of our army Russian, inasmuch as the army was to be Russian, not Czech. It naturally caused difficulties, principally because most of the Russian officers did not understand their work. Many, too, were obviously affected by the general military and administrative demoralization of the Tsarist system. I had not a few worries on this account. Nor, for instance, did all our own officers and men forthwith understand why, soon after reaching Russia, I had removed Mamontoff from the command of our brigade, despite his popularity and the confidence he inspired. He was undoubtedly an able man, but more journalist and tribune than soldier.
​In the Družina, the language of command had been Russian. In the second Division it was Czech; and, in the Corps, Czech was introduced though, in some respects, only nominally, because our men had neither the time nor the capacity to translate the Russian words of command quickly and to adopt them to our needs. This was one of the difficulties inherent in the very character of our military organization.
The Materials of an Army.
Some effort of imagination is needed to understand how troublesome the work of organization really was. It was not merely a question of the language of command and of army signals, but of the whole military administration. Our men were volunteers. They had joined of their own free will, and this gave them a certain liberty. Our ideal was to make a democratic army; and it is comprehensible that, in the Russian chaos, the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity were, at times, somewhat anarchically interpreted. Especially after the Bolshevist Revolution, when Bolshevist ideas began to spread even in our ranks, it was a heavy task promptly to work out a democratic system of discipline and obedience such as is indispensable to an army in the field. As I have said, we adopted the French disciplinary system, with some necessary and provisional alterations.
Among our volunteers there were, of course, members of all our parties and factions at home—another source of trouble, because the men, and particularly the officers, could not always distinguish between politics and strategy. Yet antagonisms were not so sharp as they would have been at home. Nevertheless, in such circumstances, it was by no means easy to put the army on a purely military basis and to make it efficient. It was not, I repeat, merely a question whether the command should be Russian or Czech (though this was long debated) but of settling a far wider problem—what strategy and tactics would best express the spirit of our nation? In any event, we had to make our volunteer army fit to face a first-class foe; and, despite all our care, some degree of amateurishness remained in the organization and command both of the whole and of the various parts. The solution of many a puzzle cost me, a civilian, much hard thought. Our soldiers naturally compared themselves with the Russians around them, but we had to judge by the standard of the Germans and the Prussians whom we wished to fight. In battle, discipline and technical knowledge save ​lives. Not only military but humanitarian considerations demand good equipment and sound soldierly training.
Circumstances themselves required independence of thought and action on the part of individuals; and, in this respect, our Corps came out well on the whole. In big things and small, talent and a gift for improvisation were shown. It was not possible simply to order our men to ignore Bolshevist examples. Soldiers’ committees had, for instance, to be set up, but, as early as the Kerensky period, they were limited to economic and educational work. The democratic administration of a―volunteer—army demanded that the men themselves should have some voice in decisions. And, in a democratic army, the privileges of officers are hard to determine ought they, for example, to have their own mess? Such matters could not be dealt with at one stroke and in the lump, for conditions did not permit of strict uniformity. Therefore the various detachments did more or less as they liked. The principles and ideas of the Sokol organization served as a standard; and though I was well aware of the difference between a soldier and a “Sokol,” the influence of the Sokol idea was great and good. We made mistakes but, on the whole, we succeeded. Before long we numbered more than 40,000 men for whom arms, clothing, boots, bread and meat had to be provided—the commissariat question was difficult indeed. To some extent, as I have said, the breakdown of the Russian army helped us; but it was not easy to get corn and flour from the Ukrainian peasants—they demanded tools and nails, not money, in return—and the constant changes in the political situation hampered us. At first we had been dependent on the Russian military authorities; but, by the time we had mustered in the Ukraine, the Russian authorities were giving place to Ukrainian in proportion as the Ukraine gained independence. Yet we could not avoid dealing also with the new Bolshevist authorities who were coming into power. Then the grave problem of transport arose. How was our army to get to the East—for we held firmly to the plan of reaching France by way of Siberia and the sea—when the management and the rolling stock of the Russian railways were deteriorating daily?
Even had our men been veterans of uniform quality, things would thus have been hard enough; but, naturally, not all of our 40,000 volunteers were of equal character and worth. Naturally, too, not all of them had been prompted to join us by patriotic enthusiasm. Upon them the effects of life in most of the Russian prisoners’ camps had been very harmful, ​especially on account of the constraint and bureaucratic pressure which the uneducated Camp Commanders had exercised. Thus, to many of our men, service in our Legion meant release. This was certainly the case in the post-revolutionary period of 1917 and particularly in 1918. The Legion offered greater personal safety and better treatment, especially for the sick; it offered, too, protection against Austria; for, had they gone home, they would have been put into the Austrian army and would have fared worse. More lives would have been lost.
The men themselves kept a sharp eye upon the various forms of malingering. About a hundred members of the original Družina—born and bred in Russia—made themselves scarce before the battle of Zboroff; but the great majority of our men were good, trustworthy fellows who did their hard job honourably and well. I had many an opportunity to watch them and to study in them the Czech character. As I do not know how many Czech and Slovak prisoners there were in Russia, I cannot say what proportion they bore to the total number of our Legionaries. My impression was that a fairly large number did not join us. Had exact figures been obtainable they would have formed a good measure of the general degree of enlightenment and political determination.
With the men my own relations were those of a friend and comrade, though my rulings were severe and, in case of need, very severe. In a commander of high rank or low, I think sincerity is the best quality. Next to it, consistency and, above all, justice are requisite. An army is unconditionally based upon authority. In war, commanders and officers discharge the same functions as leaders in political life. But a military leader must not be a demagogue. If he is, he soon pays for it, even in person, for war is a matter of life and death and, in the moment of danger, men stand no nonsense but judge their superiors pitilessly. Misconceived democratism leads officers into demagogic insincerity and falsehood.
Soldiers are franker than civilians. The relations of superiors to inferiors, and vice versa, are free from the formalities of civil life. They become, as it were, laconic, corresponding to the precision, definiteness and efficacy of the whole military mechanism. A comparatively high degree of equality, and the circumstance that soldiers have not to think of bread, clothing and quarters, that they are free from the economic struggle for existence, tend to make them open and straightforward. Living constantly in the society of his comrades and, so to speak, in public, a soldier becomes more objective, less subjective. In ​essence, his calling does not foster scepticism. He is ingenuous, childlike and has childish weaknesses. The fact that an army is a hierarchy of duties and obligations gives rise to not a few jealousies; and men who are heroes when facing the foe may be childish and petty in the mass. Nearly every man in our Legion ran the gauntlet of censure and envy. Between the members of the original Družina and the later Legionaries there was often some degree of friction, the newcomers from the Serbian Legion being sharply criticized, and the shortcomings of which officers had been guilty in the Austrian army being remembered against them. Besides, the men from the various prisoners’ camps in Russia were jealous of each other—another instance of the abnormal conditions in which our army was formed.
My intercourse with the men proved that they trusted me. They knew that at home I had advocated a sober and discriminating policy. Hence they expected that what I undertook and demanded of them in Russia would be well considered. I offered them a well-grounded programme which they accepted. They were educated enough to understand, judge and adopt historical and political arguments. I appealed to reason, sought to convince and, by conviction, to engender a spirit of self-sacrifice. Our chief difficulties I discussed with them quite openly. They saw and learned by daily experience that I cared for their welfare; and I think that the simplicity of my own life and my fearlessness or, rather, my show of fearlessness, made a good impression on them. During the Bolshevist Revolution at Petrograd, Moscow and Kieff, as they knew, I had never avoided danger in the fulfilment of duty. Thus I earned the right to ask sacrifices of them, even the sacrifice of their lives.
I know well that the quality of an army cannot be assured by personal gallantry and individual efficiency. Efficiency must be upheld by general discipline. It is not only a question of courage under fire but of endurance in wearisome and exhausting service in the field. And soldiers do not live by discipline alone. They need bread. A good commissariat is a fundamental condition of success. A man, a regiment and a whole army may be valiant to-day, panic-stricken to-morrow. An army needs the right organization and management, and continual leadership. Individual courage is only one factor in victory. Hence the great importance attaching to officers and non-commissioned officers in a democratic army.
Our Czech soldiers are good fighters, brave to the point ​of heroism; but they must know wherefore they fight. The Slovaks are likewise good soldiers but accustomed rather to obey than to command or to lead. Our men are quick in action and in observation. They take their bearings rapidly. Though failure discourages them, they know how to cut their way out of a dangerous fix. I have already said that, in the battle of Zboroff, they showed notable tactical skill as well as personal bravery. Sacrifice out of blind obedience, such as had been demanded and encouraged in the Austrian army, soon disappeared; and the revival of the Hussite spirit among us was no mere catchword but the outcome of sincere feeling and resolve. Nor was it simply an historical embellishment that, after the battle of Zboroff, our regiments should have borne the names of Jan Hus|Hus, Žižka and others. As a characteristic detail I may mention that, as badges, our lads wore Hussite chalices and Bohemian lions. The Russian peasants nicknamed them “rjumotshky” and “sobatshky” (“liqueur glasses” and “puppies”)—one of the reasons, I imagine, why the badges were not generally worn. The Hussite idea would have been expressed consistently in the whole of our military organization had there been time to eliminate the Austrian and the Russian traditions and to harmonize our ideal with modern conditions; for when, in Switzerland, I first came out against Austria on the day of the Hus Centenary, it was an organic consequence of our history, just as the revival of our Hussite and Taborite military traditions was organic and, at the same time, national in the best sense of the word.
The Bolshevist Revolution.
The Bolshevist Revolution of November 7, 1917, was a source of further difficulties. I had been an eye-witness of the Bolshevist movement at Petrograd and had seen it spread to Moscow and Kieff. By some strange chance I found myself, in each of those cities, in the thick of the Bolshevist fighting. At Petrograd I lived in the Morskaya, near the Castle, opposite the Telegraph and Telephone office, all of which were fought for. The rooms of our Branch National Council were at first in Basejnaya and afterwards on the Znamenskaya. I used to go through every day from the Morskaya and had to cross the Litejni Prospect, where street fighting was often going on. My colleagues in the National Council grew anxious. One of them—I think it was our present Minister, Šeba—accused me of a physiological lack of the sense of danger. It was agreed that ​I should have an escort, and the prisoner Huza was attached to me. Then, under pressure from the Branch, I had to go to Moscow, lest evil befall me, the Branch itself meaning to come afterwards. So I went to Moscow; but, on the very morning of my arrival, the fight began between the Bolshevists and Kerensky’s troops, and I suddenly found myself in the famous Hotel Métropole which Kerensky’s cadets rapidly transformed into a fortress. There I spent six days, hotly besieged by the Bolshevists. When, at last, the Kerensky cadets withdrew unobserved in the night, and the Bolshevists captured the fortress next morning—the Hotel was very solidly built, with massive walls—I was chosen as spokesman for the foreigners; the Russians, who feared to speak for themselves, choosing a Pole to represent them.
Later on, when I left Moscow for Kieff, I found myself in the French Hotel on the Krescatik during the Bolshevist siege of Kieff a dangerous place on account of its position. While we were conferring there, a huge shell fell into an adjoining room but, luckily, did not explode. Friends then insisted that I should move to a sanatorium, where the danger was certainly not less, because bullets found their way even into my room there, and I had to go regularly to the sittings of the Branch. One afternoon, Huza and I walked and ran through a hail of Bolshevist projectiles. Even now, years afterwards, when I think of what I went through during the Bolshevist occupation of the chief cities of Russia, it seems to me like a nightmare. By a singular association of ideas, the word “Bolshevism” recalls to my mind one scene among the many horrible and inhuman sights I saw during the Bolshevist Revolution. After the street fighting, at Petrograd and elsewhere, the bodies of the fallen were sent to their families, usually in the well-known Russian izvostchiks. The stiffened bodies were thrown like logs into the little vehicles, the legs sticking out on one side and the head or, sometimes, a hand on the other. Often the corpse was placed on its feet and bound fast with a piece of rope or a rag. I even saw one standing head downwards with the legs sticking up in the air. When I think of those gruesome sights, the unnecessary, senseless, barbaric killing of human beings by the Bolshevists always returns to my mind.
But it was from the standpoint of our army and of our military plans that I was chiefly interested in the Bolshevist Revolution. It soon became clear that, willingly or unwillingly, the Bolshevists would make peace with the Germans. Even in this they followed the example of the Tsar and of their ​predecessors. Fate is strangely capricious—Milyukoff left the Provisional Government before Kerensky, because Kerensky wished to amend its programme in a pacifist sense; afterwards, when Kerensky attempted to fight, Milyukoff was ready to negotiate with the Germans for peace!
My own conviction was firm—not to meddle in the internal revolutionary affairs of Russia and to get away from Russia to France as had been agreed. Therefore, when the Bolshevists under Muravieff marched against the bourgeois National Council of the Ukraine and took Kieff, we made a Treaty with them. They guaranteed our armed neutrality and our freedom to leave for France. Thus we were recognized as a regular and independent army and Government; and, in order to strengthen our position, I declared-in agreement with the French Military Mission—that our army was a part of the French army. This was on February 7, 1918, a day before the Bolshevists captured Kieff.
Muravieff himself tried to keep his pledges; but, whether he knew it or not, the Kieff Bolshevist Soviet sent Czech agitators to persuade our troops to join the Red Army. This was one of the many critical moments we went through. After careful reflection I decided to let the Bolshevist agitators talk to our fellows. As a result, only 218 men out of our whole army joined the Reds, and several of them came back next day, for, naturally, they were not slow to see the defects of the Bolshevist forces. An episode which opened the eyes of the better sort more thoroughly than I could have done by any prohibition of Bolshevist propaganda, was that, on the morrow, one of our Reds boasted that he had a pocket full of watches. Not a few Russian and French officers were very sceptical about my decision to allow Bolshevist propaganda, but its upshot went in my favour and against military red tape.
I do not deny that there were decent and honest fellows among those who went over to the Bolshevists. Some of them afterwards rendered us good service as members of the Bolshevist army. But Bolshevist excesses at Kieff and in the neighbourhood tried our patience sorely. We were especially upset by the news that, despite the Agreement, some of our sentries guarding military stores near the city had been killed; for the Bolshevists, in their brutal arrogance, had not only killed our men but had profaned their bodies after stealing their clothing and boots. It was hard to resist the natural impulse to chastise them; but, taking all circumstances into account, I confined myself to a strong protest and to the exaction of a promise that ​the culprits would be punished and the Treaty would be loyally observed.
We had signed the treaty with Muravieff before the fall of Kieff. Two days after the fall, on February 10, 1918, I negotiated with him in his railway saloon car, in the presence of the Allied representatives who chose me as their spokesman because they did not themselves know Russian. On February 16, Muravieff sent me a written guarantee that our armed troops might leave for France freely and unmolested.
My relations to Muravieff were the subject of much reactionary gossip in Kieff. His attentions to me were said to be “marked.” He told me once that he had long known me by report and through my writings, and that he wished therefore to oblige me. I heard that he had been a police officer and had become a Bolshevist under compulsion. Later on, he was shot by order of Moscow for alleged embezzlement.
My View of Bolshevism.
As I have said, Bolshevism was for me, at that time, a military problem first and foremost. How would it affect our army? Yet, naturally, I watched the Bolshevist movement with sociological interest. I had long been an observer of the Labour and Socialist movement at home and throughout Europe. This was the origin of my “Critique of Marxism.” In studying Russia I had from the first kept an eye on Lenin’s tendencies; and when I reached Petrograd I had seen the beginning of his revolutionary propaganda. Then, for nearly six months, I had lived under the Bolshevist régime and had noted its growth and evolution.
This is not the place to discuss Bolshevism itself; I will deal with it only in so far as it bears upon my narrative. But, as my standpoint in regard to Bolshevism puzzled a number of people, I propose to explain it.
If Communism is taken to mean absolute economic and social equality, I do not look upon it, in principle, as a social or socialist ideal. Without strong individualism, that is to say, without free initiative on the part of individuals, society cannot attain a normal political and social condition. In practice, this means a system under which many individualities, unequally endowed by nature, physically and mentally, may unfold. No two individuals in society are in equal positions or have the same social surroundings; each knows best how to utilize his own powers and his environment. If one man decides for ​another and directs him, the danger arises that not all his abilities will find full scope. This is everywhere to be seen.
Politically, it finds expression in all strongly centralized forms of Government. Now, Communism is centralistic. Bolshevist centralism, in particular, is very rigid. It is an abstract system deduced from a thesis and applied by force. Bolshevism is the absolute dictatorship of a man and his helpers. It is infallible and inquisitorial. Thus it has nothing in common with science and scientific philosophy; for, without freedom, science, like democracy, is impossible.
Democracy, consistently and rightly applied, I hold to be the state of society most desirable and suitable for our own time and for a long time to come, not only politically but also economically and socially. The capitalist system is imperfect by reason of its onesidedness. True, it gives to some, not to all, openings for individual initiative, spirit of enterprise and productivity; but the values thus created are not distributed or appropriated according to productive efficiency but according to rules for the appropriation of others’ work and what it yields. In practice, democracy signifies a tolerable inequality, a least—and progressively lessening—common multiple of inequality. Doubtless, this is easy to say; but there are many ways of applying it, just as there are and may be many sorts of Communism—witness the Russian experiment, its rapid development and its great transformations.
In 1917, Lenin’s object was not so much to put Communist principles and ideals into practice in Russia as to use Russia for the purpose of applying them, or, at least, of hastening their application, in Europe. On this point he often spoke his mind; but he erred because his view alike of the condition of Europe and of the condition of Russia was mistaken. His philosophy of history was unsound. Both Marx and Engels had been wrong in expecting and foretelling the “final revolution”; but this did not deter Lenin and his followers who, in their turn, looked for the “social revolution.” When? Where?
What Marx, following Feuerbach, says about religious anthropomorphism is also true socially and politically. Not only do men make heaven after their own image but the earthly future as well. The Russians are incapable of carrying out Marxist Communism. Taken as a whole, they are still too uncultured, too perverted by Tsarism to understand and apply the Marxist views of Communism as the final stage of a long historical process. What Lenin and his fellows practised could not be Communism. It was, at most, a thing of Com​munist shreds and patches. As a system, it was a primitive (agrarian) capitalism and a primitive socialism under the control of a primitive State which arose out of anarchical elements that had broken away from a likewise primitive Tsarist centralism. Only the primitive condition of Russia—the mass of illiterate peasants isolated in their villages, the lack of communications, the decay of the army and the bureaucracy in consequence of the loss of the war, the collapse of Tsarism and of Caesaropapism, the bewilderment of political parties and classes—made it possible for a vigorous usurper to bring about the Bolshevist revolution in the chief towns and to establish the rule of a small but organized minority.
On all hands the defects and inadequacies of social and political anthropomorphism were to be seen in Russia. Responsible administrative and military functions were mostly entrusted to young, inexperienced and technically untrained men. The best of them did what they could. They sought and found things long known and already existing. But many of them merely abused their positions and turned them to selfish ends. The integral calculus is beyond beginners in arithmetic. In Lenin’s frequent admissions that mistakes had been made and that there was much to learn, lie something of Russian honesty and also an indictment. Neither in administration nor in politics is it necessary nowadays to invent the alphabet anew. Lack of system and countless improvisations produced the Bolshevist system. Bolshevist semi-culture is worse than no culture at all; its insufficiency and its strange primitivism are revealed in its official adoption of all the monstrosities of so-called “modern art.” Uncritical, wholly unscientific infallibility is the basis of the Bolshevist dictatorship; and a régime that quails before criticism and fears to recognize thinking men stands self-condemned.
Even the mistaken Marxist conception of the State took its revenge upon the Bolshevist administration; for the Marxists never paid sufficient heed to the organization and administration of the State. Anarchism, in the proper sense of the word, or Statelessness, seemed enough for them, and they insisted on the absolute pre-eminence of economic conditions, which they called economic or historical materialism. This Marxist materialism was well suited to the passive Russian character—why bother about anything save bread! But the State, Literature, Science, Philosophy, the Schools and Education, the health and morality of the nation, in a word, the whole civilization of the spirit, are not products of economic conditions ​but must be won alongside of them; and it is civilization that makes possible and ensures economic development—and bread. The Russians, even the Bolshevists, are children of the Tsarism in which they were brought up and fashioned for centuries. They managed to get rid of the Tsar but not of Tsarism. They still wear the Tsarist uniform, albeit inside out; a Russian, as is known, can even wear his boots with the soles inside.
The Bolshevists continued to employ the underground tactics which they had long practised. They were not prepared for positive administration but were fit only for a negative revolution, negative in the sense that, in their uncultivated one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness, they were guilty of much superfluous destruction. Particularly do I blame them for having revelled, after a truly Tsarist fashion, in the destruction of human life. Degrees of barbarism are always expressed in the way men deal with their own lives and those of others. In their extermination of the Russian intellectual class, the Bolshevists overlooked the warning example set by Severus when he killed off the old Roman families and especially the families of Senators. Thus Severus barbarized the State and the administration—and hastened the decline of the Empire. Historians may find more recent Russian precedents—in Ivan the Terrible or, apter still, in Stenka Razin.
In point of fact, the Bolshevists stand nearer to Bakunin than to Marx, or follow Marx in his first revolutionary period—1848—before his Socialist doctrine had been worked out. To Bakunin they could appeal in justification of their avowed Jesuitism and Machiavellism. To him they were drawn by their secrecy—which had become to them, as conspirators, a second nature—and by their striving for power, for dictatorship. To seize power and to hold it was their first aim. People who believe that they have reached the highest and ultimate degree of development, who think they have gained infallible knowledge of the whole organization of society, cease to trouble about progress and perfectibility and have one chief and only care—how to keep their power and position. Thus it was during the Catholic Reformation, when the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation arose. So it is in Russia.
Of Russia, the Bolshevists know little. Tsarism forced them to live abroad. Thus they lost touch with their own country. Nor can I say that they got to know the West better. Since they lived in groups of their own, they did not know even the West. They knew enough of it to take an interest in it and to make of it a standard for Russia; and, as they believed ​that the social revolution would break out in the West sooner than in Russia, they devoted so much attention to propaganda in the West that their minds were diverted from Russian conditions. On this propaganda they spent, moreover, comparatively large sums. In short, Bolshevist policy is extensive, not intensive; broad, not deep, inwardly and outwardly. In a word, it is primitive.
Russian Bolshevism which is, at best, a form of State Socialism and State Capitalism, is by no means identical with Communism. Experience shows that real, lasting Communism is possible only on a moral or a religious basis—among friends—but we have all far to go before we attain a state of society founded on friendship and sympathy. At the beginning of a revolution, in the moment of enthusiasm, Communistic experiments may succeed, but they decline and degenerate when enthusiasm has to stand the test of daily life.
The way for Lenin’s régime had been prepared by the Provisional Government and by Kerensky, both of whom showed administrative incapacity and entrusted wide spheres of action to bad and incompetent men. Lenin did likewise. The anarchical proceedings of the Russian intelligentsia, from 1906 onwards, had smoothed his path. Even the non-Socialist parties then failed to comprehend that, after a Revolution and the attainment of (no matter how imperfect) a Constitution, political action needed to become more positive. Lenin was a logical consequence of Russian illogicality. The sealed German railway carriages played a very minor part. Like many a usurper before him, Lenin took possession of Russia—usurpation fills a long chapter in Russian history. As means of agitation he utilized war-weariness, the disintegration of the army and the peasant yearning for land, a yearning stimulated by all the Socialist and Liberal tendencies after the liberation of the serfs in 1862. The peasants seized the land—there was no Communism about them—and the peasants are Russia. It is wrong to charge Lenin and his experiment with not being Russian. They are entirely Russian; and the Soviet system itself is an extension of the primitive Russian Mir and Artel.
This does not mean that, if Lenin’s system did not establish Communism and if it was guilty of many sins of omission and commission, it has brought no good to Russia or to the peasant masses in particular. Bolshevism awakened their sense of freedom and the consciousness of their own strength. They learned the power of organization. They became convinced of the need for hard work, Lenin himself and not a few leaders ​setting, in this respect, a good example. A certain Rousseau-like simplicity came to prevail in the towns and among the more educated. These and other relatively good qualities of Bolshevism must be recognized by just and sober observers of Russian evolution; but they are offset by the moral degeneration, the decline of the schools and of education, the anarchy in morals and culture which make up a great and, to my mind, the greatest deficit. Besides, the question arises why there had to be in Russia so violent an awakening from Tsarist slumber—a question to be pondered by all who love Russia; not least by the adherents of Tsarism and of the Church.
What I have said applies especially to the first period of Bolshevism. Subsequently, Communism developed or, rather, attempts were made to apply it, albeit at the cost of public welfare. As to foreign intervention in or against Russia, I am still a non-interventionist. Bolshevism is an internal Russian crisis which cannot be overcome by action from without; though the Bolshevist yearning for de jure recognition by bourgeois governments encourages interventionist tendencies.
The Ukraine.
From the moment that the Bolshevists opened peace negotiations—they did so formally on December 3, 1917, by asking for an armistice, the Peace of Brest-Litovsk being signed on March 8, 1918—it was clear to us that our army had nothing more to do in Russia. Therefore we began as early as possible to march out of the Ukraine into Russia on the way to Vladivostok and France.
As long as Russia ruled in the Ukraine, our position was simple. Russia gave us the opportunity to organize and arm our Corps and to provide it with the necessary stores. In return we mounted guard over military material of all sorts, particularly in Kieff, and kept order.
But, soon after the Bolshevist revolution, the Ukraine began to grow independent. On November 20, 1917, the third “Universal” was proclaimed, declaring the Ukraine a Republic and an autonomous part of the Russian Federation. Hence the necessity of negotiating with the Ukrainian Government; and we made with it, on January 15, 1918, the same terms as we had made with Russia. At first, the relationship between the Ukraine and Russia was vague, and our relations to the Ukraine were therefore vague. But, on the whole, there were no unpleasant incidents, though difficulties arose on ​account of party quarrels and of the disturbed conditions in the Ukraine.
The detachment of the Ukraine from Russia began in January 1918. On January 18, the Ukraine was recognized by the Central Powers. I was well informed of what was happening and made arrangements accordingly. In a Ukraine completely separated from Russia I felt it would be impossible to stay, not only by reason of our earlier promises and obligations to Russia but out of consideration for our fellow-countrymen and especially for our prisoners in Bolshevist Russia who might otherwise have been persecuted. Without Russia, moreover, we could not reach Siberia on our way to France. When the Fourth “Universal” was issued on January 25, declaring the Ukraine a completely independent State, I informed the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, A. J. Shulgin (not to be confounded with the Russian V. V. Shulgin at Kieff) that the Fourth “Universal” had annulled our treaty and that our troops would therefore leave the Ukraine as soon as possible. Our army had been formed in agreement with Russia; our soldiers had sworn allegiance to Russia; we were devoted to Russia; and, though we did not wish to oppose the Ukraine or its policy in any way, we could not simply transfer our allegiance to it. Russia herself would also deal with the Ukrainian question and, on principle, we did not meddle in her internal affairs. I told Shulgin that, in the circumstances, I thought the detachment of the Ukraine from Russia a mistake, particularly because the Ukraine, in its disturbed and administratively immature condition, would be subject to excessive Austrian and German influences. I had serious reason to take this view; and a formal reason was that we could not remain in the territory of a State which had made peace with the Germans and the Austrians. This affected also our relations with the Bolshevists. The Ukraine had made peace with the Germans and the Austrians at Brest-Litovsk on February 9, a day after the Bolshevists had taken Kieff; and it is pertinent to remember that our non-recognition of the fourth “Universal” soon facilitated our negotiations with the Bolshevist Commander, Muravieff.
In Roumania.
To go from Kieff to France by way of Siberia—a fantastical plan, I sometimes said to myself. Yet, as often as I weighed all the circumstances, I concluded that it was the most practical, notwithstanding the distance to be covered. Naturally we ​worked out all sorts of schemes. Some of our own people and the Allies proposed that we should go to the Cossacks in the Caucasus, and over the Caucasus to the British army in Asia. But France was the magnetic pole to which the needle of our compass pointed.
There had been a possibility of our fighting on Roumanian soil against Austria and Germany alongside of the Roumanians and the Russians. Before our Corps was formed we had gone into this possibility carefully at Petrograd with the French Military Mission and the Roumanian Minister, Diamandy. With the Roumanians we were always in friendly touch. In the prisoners’ camps, our lads helped to enrol Roumanian volunteers for the Roumanian army. In Paris, too, it was desired that our army should go to the Roumanian front. Consequently, I negotiated with General Berthelot, the head of the French Military Mission in Roumania, where the Russians were under the command of General Shtcherbatcheff. Štefánik had informed me a year before of conditions in Roumania and the plight of the prisoners there, and from this information I concluded that, even in 1916, the Roumanians were in difficulties with their commissariat. Before making up my mind I had wished, however, to see things in Roumania for myself and therefore I had gone to Jassy at the end of October 1917, for Moldavia was not occupied by the enemy.
At Jassy I saw the Roumanian politicians and military leaders as well as the French Mission and the Russian Commander. I had interviews with the King and the Prime Minister, Bratianu. Take Jonescu I knew well, and he had been recommended to me by English friends, but I met for the first time the Ministers Duca and Marcescu. Among the foreign diplomatists, all of whom I visited, I remember particularly the Serbian Minister Marinkovitch and his military attaché, Hadžitch. With the Italian Minister, Baron Fasciotti, I had important talks upon a detailed plan for the organization of our Legion in Italy, continuing thus the negotiations I had begun with the Italian Ambassador in Petrograd. Nor should our fellow countryman, Vopička, who was the United States Minister, be forgotten. Among the Roumanian Generals whom I saw were Averescu and Grigorescu. At the front, where I went to observe the state of the army and its supplies, I watched the soldiers in action during an artillery duel. They made a good impression, and I noted especially how the victory of Marasesti had encouraged them and had strengthened their spirit of initiative and endurance.
​From what I saw and heard I concluded that our army could not go to the Roumanian front. Commissariat difficulties were, I thought, already so great that it was doubtful whether Roumania could provide for an increase of 50,000 men; and, above all, I felt that Roumania would not be able to prolong her resistance. The troops and the officers made a very good impression and, as I have said, their spirit was excellent. The French officers in the Roumanian army did their work most honourably, but the situation as a whole seemed to be drifting towards peace, and it struck me that the Russian forces in Roumania were no longer trustworthy. It was clear that Bolshevist Russia would soon make peace with Germany. How would Roumania then be able to hold out? And what should we do on Roumanian soil when peace had been made? Events soon bore out my decision. News of the Caporetto disaster, which reached Jassy while I was there, only confirmed my estimate of the Roumanian position. In fact, the Roumanian peace negotiations began soon after those of Russia—armistice negotiations on December 9, 1917, provisional peace on March 5, 1918, definite peace on May 7. The comparison between Roumania, the Ukraine and Russia is interesting. With the two latter, negotiations went more quickly, whereas the Roumanian negotiations lasted six months.
People in Paris were dissatisfied with my decision. They could not judge accurately at that distance, though they soon saw that I was right. Politically, moreover, my stay at Jassy bore good fruit. Our personal acquaintance and cooperation with the Roumanians in Russia were the germ of the Little Entente. When Roumania decided to make war, Beneš, Štefánik and I had sent Bratianu a telegram saying that Roumania was fighting for the liberation of our people; and, after the war, our common interests brought us together. The same is true of the Southern Slavs though, at that time, the ideas of the Serbians and Roumanians were not clear enough about the delimitation of the Banat. I discussed this matter with both parties and advised them to seek a peaceful agreement.
Why we were Neutral in Russia.
Our rule in Bolshevist Russia, as well as in the Ukraine and in regard to all new political formations, was to avoid intervention in party disputes and conflicts. Since we were armed neutrals, we had weapons for self-defence in case of need; and, as a part of the French army, we should naturally have used ​them to defend the French and all other Allies had we been attacked.
From the first we had declared that our enemies were Austria and Germany and that we wished to fight them even in Russia. At Zboroff we did so, very honourably. But when Russia could fight no longer, when both Bolshevist Russia and the Ukraine began peace negotiations with the Austrians and the Germans and we saw that peace was being made, we could no longer fight our enemies in Russia. Therefore our whole endeavour was to get to France where our army could be of use. Early in November 1917 we sent a first detachment to France under Husák; and, in February 1918, two members of the Russian Branch of our National Council, Šeba and Chalupa, started for Italy to organize our Legion there on the model of our Russian Corps. A subsidiary yet not unimportant consideration influenced our efforts to reach France—there was no connection between Russia and the West. News passed very slowly and incompletely. The Germans and the Austrians controlled such communications as there were, and everything we did was distorted or ignored. If we were in France, friend and foe would get a better idea of our army. The politicians and military leaders of Tsarist and pre-Bolshevist Russia had opposed our departure. Generals Korniloff and Alexeieff, as well as Milyukoff, urged me to make common cause with them against the Bolshevists; and even the Bolshevists and the Ukrainers were against our going, in the sense that both tried to get hold of our army for themselves. Muravieff was, as I have said, particularly friendly and persuasive.
I declined all these suggestions. I was convinced that the Russian Commanders and politicians misjudged the general situation in Russia, and I had no faith in their leadership or in their power of organization. The impromptu undertakings of Korniloff and Alexeieff only strengthened my opinion. Besides, these gentlemen forgot that we had negotiated with them and with their successor, General Dukhonin, a treaty to the effect that we would only fight against the enemy and that this treaty had been signed after the establishment of Bolshevist rule. Moreover, our Corps was unprepared and lacked arms and munitions. We had no heavy artillery and, without it, regular fighting was inconceivable. Nor had we aeroplanes, and our general equipment was inadequate. We should have had to fight the Germans and the Austrians who would have advanced against us. Muravieff and his army before Kieff we could have smashed, but we should not have been strong ​enough to deal with the Bolshevists of Moscow and Petrograd. And were we to run the risk of seeing the Germans and the Austrians defend them against us? Of the impossibility of regular transport, on outworn railways beset by the enemy, I need not speak. The fate of the Polish Legions as early as 1917 and their subsequent disarmament under Pilsudski, Musnicki and Haller, warned us not to try conclusions prematurely with the Germans and the Austrians; and, in the fighting near Kieff and Bachmatch, we had already found that, in comparison with the Germans, we were weak. Besides—and this was a weighty consideration—the Russian people would not have understood us. They, who were strongly opposed to war, would have looked upon us as foreign intruders and would have cut off supplies. The reactionary “Black Hundreds” would have attached themselves to us and would thus have given a large proportion of the people reason to turn against us. Finally, the Russian people then wanted one thing and one thing only besides peace—land, and this we could not give them.
Therefore the revolutionary conditions in Russia dictated categorically the principle of non-interference—conditions the more complicated because districts and towns as well as races made themselves more or less independent. It was no longer merely a question of dealing with Central Russia and her Government, or even with the Ukraine, but with other autonomous groups, like the Cossacks, for example. Nor was it possible to occupy and hold the immense territory of European Russia with 50,000 men. We should have had to occupy Kieff and a number of towns and villages in the direction of Moscow, leaving garrisons everywhere—an enterprise entirely beyond our strength. In Russia, though not yet in Siberia, the Bolshevists were beginning to organize an army. To the East and in Siberia there were fewer troops, and therefore the Siberian route was the surest way to France.
It must unfortunately be recognized that the Allies had no Russian policy and that their action against the Bolshevists was not united. Immediately after the Bolshevist Revolution the Allies had no objection to recognizing or, at least to negotiating with them. I knew that the French Ambassador, M. Noulens, had negotiated with Trotsky in December 1917. A little later, at the beginning of January 1918, the American Ambassador promised them help and formal recognition if they would take action against Germany. The French General Tabouis joined me in negotiating with them at Kieff. But the ​Allies soon turned against them. I thought the Allied support of anti-Bolshevist movements a mistake, especially when it was given to out-and-out adventurers like Semyenoff and others. The Allies were not strong enough for a real anti-Bolshevist campaign, and sporadic fighting was meaningless. Not until the autumn of 1918 was the idea entertained of sending six divisions of the Salonica army against the Bolshevists, but neither Clemenceau nor Lloyd George supported it lest the Salonica troops prove insubordinate.
In regard to the Allies our position was difficult. We were autonomous, yet a part of the French army; on France and the Entente we depended for financial support. True, it had been agreed that the funds we received should be only a loan which our State would repay; but, in practice, we were not at that time independent. Nevertheless I went my own way and we set off for France.
Nor were the Allies agreed upon what our army should do. Paris wanted it to be brought to France, London would rather have seen us stay in Russia or in Siberia, possibly for reasons connected with the Bolshevist agitation in India. The details of our relations with the Allies in Russia I must leave to Dr. Beneš who will presently describe them. The fact that we had an army and that, in Russia, it was the only political and military organization of any size, gave us importance; and, in the negotiations for our recognition, respect for our army was a weighty factor.
In considering the question of intervention or non-intervention in Russia, a distinction must be made between meddling in Russian affairs under the Bolshevist Government and war against the Bolshevists themselves. Clearly, according to international usage, the Allies ought not to have interfered in Russian internal affairs; but the Bolshevists ought not to have interfered in Allied internal affairs. The Bolshevist doctrine of a proletarian International was naturally a serious matter; but, in any case, to fight the Bolshevists was, at that moment, to fight official Russia. If war was necessary against Russia—Bolshevist Russia, for there was no other—war, and the reasons for it, should have been formally declared. This was not done. I admit quite frankly that I did not approve of the way the Allies rode roughshod over political formality in their dealings with the Bolshevists—all the less because I was a much more radical opponent of Bolshevism, as far as principles went, than many gentlemen in Paris and London. I had thought much on the subject of a war against the Bolshevists and Russia, and ​I would have attached our Corps to any army strong enough to fight the Bolshevists and the Germans in the name of democracy. There was only one way to fight the Bolshevists—to mobilize the Japanese. This, neither America nor Paris nor London was prepared to do-as became apparent when, as I shall tell, our men came into conflict with the Bolshevists in the summer of 1918.
For us, in our isolation, neutrality was the more necessary on account of the political conditions in our army. A serious reverse would have imperilled its unity, since we should have been fighting for too negative an aim-an aim all the more negative because the Russian anti-Bolshevists were disunited, uncertain of the future of Russia and incapable of organization. And the Bolshevists, too, were Russians. In my eyes, Lenin was no less Russian than the Tsar Nicholas; nay, despite his Mongolian descent, there was more Russian blood in his veins than in those of the Tsar.
The Russian Bolshevists, and some of our own, have often sought to use against me an incident that occurred on October 29, 1917, during my absence from Kieff. In the fighting with the local Bolshevists, the Russian Commander led a section of our second regiment against them—treacherously—with the help of Colonel Mamontoff, who falsely alleged that he was acting under my orders. Maxa soon cleared up this ill-considered episode, though Dürich appeared on the scene with a number of lunatics. On the other hand, the Bolshevists fought side by side with our men against the Germans at Bachmatch. True, they were Ukrainian Bolshevists whose subordinate part in the affair was fortuitous, not inspired by a definite anti-German policy.
In the interest of historical truth it should be recorded that, even after the conclusion of the armistice on December 6 and 15, 1917, and during the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, the Bolshevists thought of reorganizing the Russian army to fight Germany. At the beginning of the war, Trotsky had written a sharp little pamphlet against the Germans and the Austrians. In February 1918 he proposed to the Central Committee at Petrograd that they should get France and England to help in the reorganization of the army. Lenin approved of the plan. This I learned on the spot from trustworthy witnesses, though I cannot give details; but it is known that, in January and February 1918, Captain Sadoul informed the French Government that the Bolshevists wished the Entente to help in reorganizing the army. It is known also that the Bolshevists ​only accepted the Brest-Litovsk peace terms under strong pressure from Lenin and in the absence of Trotsky. Further, I am able to state as a fact that, after the conclusion of peace in March 1918, Trotsky negotiated with several representatives of the Entente in the hope of securing the services of General Berthelot who was about to leave Russia with his Military Mission; but the French Ambassador, M. Noulens, who was then at Vologda, opposed the idea. This I learned after I had left Russia, and I cannot say how Lenin then behaved. I knew the Soviet state of mind in regard to the Germans, watched it constantly and was well-informed about it. Naturally I took it into account and was anxious, for this reason also, not to drive the Bolshevists into the arms of Germany by attacking them. Moreover, the anti-German mood among the Bolshevists led me to hope that they would not put obstacles in the way of our march through Russia and Siberia.
I know that the Bolshevists are accused of one-sided pro-Germanism because they made peace with the Germans; but that is not my view. What were they to do? There was no other way out. All the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, particularly the so-called Supplementary Treaty and the way in which the Germans forced peace upon them, show how unwillingly the Bolshevists made it. They followed the example of their predecessors during the Tsarist and post-Tsarist régimes. I have already said that Milyukoff would likewise have been ready to make peace with the Germans; and Tereshtchenko carried on peace negotiations with Austria though, in principle, he wished to continue the war. To this I shall refer later. The Bolshevists can rightly be charged with having foolishly accelerated the decomposition of the army (it had begun under the Tsar and was deliberately continued during the Provisional Government and under Kerensky) and with having exploited pacifist tendencies for purposes of agitation; though they soon found military reorganization indispensable. It may also be admitted that there were one-sided pro-Germans among them. But the chief errors of the Bolshevists lie in their home policy, not in their foreign; and, in so far as they were pro-German, they were the children of Tsarism.
The ignorance of Russia—and therefore also of the Bolshevists—which prevailed among the Western Allies was largely responsible for their mistaken relationship to Russia, both under the Tsar and during the Revolution. The anti-Bolshevist documents which have been published show how uncritically and ignorantly the Bolshevists were judged. What the ​Americans, English and French paid for those documents I do not know; but an expert eye could see from their very contents that our friends had bought forgeries—as was very clearly proved. The alleged documents, coming ostensibly from different countries, were all written with the same typewriter! It is true that, in these matters, the Bolshevists were no better. After the Revolution they began to publish the secret archives of the Russian Foreign Office and announced the publication as a great event. In point of fact, nothing came out that was not already known; and Trotsky's offensive against Tsarist secret diplomacy was somewhat childish.
My dealings with Russia, in all the phases through which she passed, were governed by our national policy and by my knowledge of Russian conditions. Though it was unpleasant not to be understood immediately in the West, the general result proved me not to have been wrong. The Russian situation, and the way Bolshevism necessarily grew out of it, were not known in Paris and London, though many Frenchmen and Englishmen who were in Russia and observed the position there, took less inaccurate views.
Finally, as regards the relationship of the Germans to the Bolshevists, it is wrong to say that the Bolshevists enjoyed German support from the outset and unconditionally. It is true that the Germans turned the Bolshevist Revolution to account, just as they had done with the agitation and the struggle against the Tsarist and the Provisional Governments. But their tactics were short-sighted; and not all German statesmen and military authorities were of one mind. The German middle-class parties, the Monarchists and the Social Democrats were anti-Bolshevist. Nor could the Bolshevists, at first, go hand in hand with the German Monarchists, politically or militarily. The Germans distrusted the Bolshevists and feared them to some extent, as may be seen from the Brest-Litovsk negotiations and from the fact that, in the spring of 1918, the Germans kept in Russia considerable forces which they could have put to more profitable use in France. In order to discover what the German-Bolshevist relations really were, I did my utmost to find out the real strength of the Austrian and German armies in Russia. Several Russian officers at headquarters estimated it at a million; my own estimate was about half a million—surely enough to make one wonder why the Germans kept up so strong a front in the East. I thought it was not merely as a precaution against the Bolshevists, for, at that time, the Germans reckoned with the possibility that ​the Bolshevist régime might fall and that, under another Russian system, especially if it were monarchical, the Russian army would certainly be resuscitated. To this conclusion I was led by General Hoffmann's threat to the Bolshevists that he would march on Petrograd and proclaim a Monarchy. There was reason to expect that the Germans would march on Petrograd. If they did not, it was because they were uncertain and wished not to spoil their relations with a new Russia.
A detailed examination of the Bolshevist relationship to the Germans would require a more careful analysis than is necessary here. Most of the theorists of Bolshevism were educated in Germany and Austria, and thus acquired to some extent a German bias; but on the other hand they found in the Germans, and even among the German Marxists, their most obstinate opponents-a circumstance which their affinity to the German Independent Socialists and to the followers of Karl Liebknecht did nothing to mitigate. Nor could the Bolshevists understand the German advance into Finland, or the policy of Berlin towards the Border States and the Ukraine.
If I review the whole course of affairs after the defeat of the Tsarist army, it seems to me that, as regards us and our liberation, the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought us more gain than loss. In saying this I take into account not only our forces in Russia but the influence of the Russian Revolution upon our people at home and upon Austria and Europe generally. Even the Bolshevist Revolution failed to harm us.
Across Siberia.
I had gone to Russia hoping that, in the course of a few weeks, I should be able to return to the West. Circumstances kept me there little less than a year. Serious difficulties both with the Tsarist and the post-Tsarist régimes had to be overcome; yet we carried out the chief point in the foreign policy on which I had insisted from the first—to make an army, and an independent army.
I have explained why it was important to transfer our army to France, and why the way through Siberia was safest. When the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and the whole position on the various fronts suggested that the war would end in 1918, I felt bound—as I told our lads in my capacity of Quarter-master-General—to go to Europe. On February 2, 1918, I went from Kieff to Moscow for the purpose of making final arrangements. There I learned that the French and British ​Missions were likewise starting for Europe, and I decided to go with them. Lady Paget and Mr. Bagge, the British Consul, willingly gave me a place in one of their railway cars.
At Moscow we explained our position to the Bolshevists and set forth clearly the meaning of our Agreement with them. There had been reason to fear misunderstandings. Klecanda had many interviews with Fritch, the Bolshevist Commissar at Moscow. The Russian Branch of our National Council was determined on one point—that non-interference in Russian affairs did not mean that our army would not defend itself against attack. Self-defence, and the defence of Allies who might be attacked, were natural implications of our independence. On this basis we dealt with the Bolshevists and again received recognition of our armed neutrality, though we handed over to them a proportion of our weapons which they claimed as Russian property. This demand was significant of their military position.
As we had agreed that our army should be allowed to go to France, it was obvious that, in France, it would be equipped by the French; and with the French representatives I had to settle also the financial question at Moscow. We needed money, enough money and in time, since we had to pay for everything we needed. Payment was strictly insisted upon. The British at Kieff had been the first to supply me with money because the French Mission was not then in a position to advance funds. The British gave me £80,000 which, as I heard afterwards, there was great difficulty in changing. At Moscow, all matters relating to finance and supplies were quickly and satisfactorily arranged with the French Mission, of which General Rampont was a member. On our side, Legionary Šíp was in charge of military finance.
On March 6, 1918, I took leave of my Czech fellow-countrymen in special proclamation, and said farewell to the army next day. It was hard to leave it and the Branch National Council alone in Russia, but I felt I must go to the West. Among the Czechs in Russia concord had been established. The army was harmonious and its spirit good. True, I expected that it would meet with many a difficulty on its long journey, though I was convinced that, by avoiding interference in Russian affairs, it would end by reaching its transports safely. One of my chief reasons for going to the West was to prepare shipping for it. Before starting, I gave Secretary Klecanda full powers to conduct political negotiations. I had worked with ​him for a considerable time and had discussed all contingencies, so that he was alive to all the problems of our work abroad.
The bad state of the Russian railways was likely to complicate arrangements for quartering and feeding our men; and, as I had seen at Moscow that Russia was daily disintegrating into more or less autonomous units, I anticipated trouble and misunderstandings with local Soviets. Strife among the Russian parties was a further cause of anxiety. Just before I left, there was talk of an offensive on the part of the Social Revolutionary elements in the Moscow Bolshevist administration. I thought it unlikely to succeed but, in any case, Klecanda was determined to hold strictly to our principle of non-interference. In the Bolshevist Peace Treaties with the Germans and the Austrians it had been stipulated that no agitation should be tolerated in Russia against the German Government, the State or the army. With this leverage the Germans might compel the Bolshevists to make our position unpleasant; and the lack of any concerted Allied policy or, indeed, of any policy in regard to Russia, might complicate the position still further. With Klecanda all these possibilities were considered at Moscow; and my written instructions were that the army should defend itself vigorously in case it were attacked in Russia, or in Siberia, by any Russian party. We agreed also upon the tasks to be assigned to a number of our people in the army and in the Branch of the National Council. It is sad that we should have lost Klecanda so unexpectedly. He died at Omsk on April 28.
Savinkoff, the Social Revolutionary leader, was then at Moscow. An acquaintance inquired whether I should like to see him. I had dealt with his philosophical novels in a section of my book on Russia and was therefore interested to meet the author of “The Pale Horse.” I was disappointed in him. Politically, his view of Russia’s position was wrong, and he under-estimated the strength of Bolshevism; philosophically and morally, he failed to realize the difference between a revolution and individual acts of terrorism. Nor did he comprehend the distinction between offence and defence in war and revolution. Morally, he did not rise above the elementary notions of the blood feud. His subsequent career (he helped even Koltchak) revealed his weakness—the weakness of a Terrorist Titan transformed into a Hamlet.
Vladivostok.
I started from Moscow at 8 p.m. on March 7, 1918, and reached Vladivostok by the Trans-Siberian railway through Saratof and Samara. I travelled in a third-class ambulance car, sleeping on a sort of mattress which I had bought at Moscow. The carriage was full of English people who were going to Europe. The time passed in observing Siberia, in reading, in finishing my little book, “The New Europe,” and especially in procuring daily bread. We had to buy our food wherever we stopped. Nevertheless, travelling in Siberia was better than in European Russia. We often waited long in railway stations and between stations. The carriages, as well as the engines and the permanent way, were out of order. There was, for instance, a long wait at Amazar, for we had been warned in time that two trains ahead of us had collided and that the line was damaged. At Irkutsk we stayed a whole day and were able to look at the town and buy things. I collected whatever current literature and older publications I could get, as well as local newspapers and pamphlets. Klecanda sent me several telegrams, in cypher and otherwise.
The British Mission was accompanied from Kieff to Vladivostok by a Bolshevist guard of four soldiers. With their leader I had daily discussions on Socialism and the social question. They were curious Socialists and still more curious Communists.
At Vladivostok I spent a day seeing my fellow-countrymen, visiting the Czech “Palacký" Club and, above all, at the Post and Telegraph Office. Fellow-travellers took a number of letters to Europe for me and I sent telegrams to Paris, London and America. At Vladivostok I received news of the Allies which supplemented what I had learned during the journey by telegram and from Siberian newspapers. It was an anxious moment. The great German offensive in the West had begun on March 21, 1918, while I was travelling, and the Bolshevist papers in Siberia had naturally made the most of the French and, especially, of the British reverse. As far as our own army was concerned, the chief thing in my eyes was that the fighting with the Germans near Bachmatch was finished and that, after the march of our divisions from the Ukraine into Russia they had, on March 16, voluntarily handed over a proportion of their arms. On March 26 a treaty was signed with the Bolshevists guaranteeing our men an unmolested passage to Siberia and Vladivostok. True, this had been already agreed ​upon with Muravieff after the Bolshevist troops had reached the Ukraine; but, to make assurance doubly sure, we negotiated also with the Moscow Soviet. On March 26, indeed, the Moscow Commissar, Stalin, telegraphed to the local Soviets that the Czechoslovaks were not going through as an armed unit but as free citizens, and that they carried a certain number of weapons as protection against the counter-revolutionaries. He added: “The Soviet of the People’s Commissars wishes every assistance to be given them on Russian soil.”