3 - 9 December 1917
- By Mark Sutcliffe
- •
- 18 Dec, 2017
- •
3 December
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I ended the evening at the Military Mission, where General Niessel very
kindly made me stay for dinner. I had a long talk with Captain Sadoul, a
socialist and a friend of Trotsky’s. He told me that Trotsky receives
quantities of love-letters, flowers and cakes, just like Kerensky used to. He
would do well to be on his guard.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)
4 December
Letter to the Central Executive Committee of Soviets from a group of Putilov
factory workers, Petrograd
Comrades, Yesterday we wrote a letter saying that you have earned yourselves
enemies in the person of the workers by being more concerned about the bourgeoisie
than about the lower class of workers and peasants. For the second month,
workers have failed to receive their pound of sugar, but you are giving it to
the bourgeois confectioners who make sugar into all kinds of candles at ten
rubles a pound. As if a poor worker could buy that … You ought to be
worrying about the problems of everyday life, and take your percentage by the
thousands and not the hundreds, from the rich and not the poor. The power is in
your hands, don’t make yourselves enemies of the people. Requisition footwear
and clothing and food reserves from the rich.
Your comrades from the Putilov works
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)
Lenin’s Ultimatum to Ukraine, Warning
Against Independence
All that concerns the national rights and the independence of Ukraine we,
the commissaries of the people, freely recognise without any limits or
conditions. Nevertheless, we accuse the Rada of Ukraine of the fact that, under
cover of phrases and declarations regarding national independence, it has given
itself over to a systematic bourgeois policy … By sheltering the
counter-revolutionary movement of Kaledine, and by running counter to the will
of the great mass of Cossack workmen in allowing the armies favourable to
Kaledine to pass through the Ukraine, and at the same time refusing such
passage to the armies hostile to that General, the Rada is opening the way to
an unheard-of treason against the revolution … For the reasons given, the
Council of The People’s Commissaries, calling to witness the Ukrainian People’s
Republic, submits to the Rada the following questions:
1. Does the Rada promise to renounce in future all action for the
disorganisation of the common front?
2. Does the Rada promise to refuse in future to permit the passage over
Ukrainian territory of any troops going into the region of the Don, the Urals?
3. Does the Rada promise to lend assistance to the armies of the revolution
in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces of the Cadets and of
Kaledine?
4. Does the Rada promise to put an end to the attempts to crush the armies
of the Soviet and of the Red Guard in the Ukraine, and return their arms,
immediately and without delay, to those from whom they have been taken?
In case a satisfactory reply has not been received within twenty-four hours,
the Soviet of the People’s Commissaries will consider the Rada in a state of
war with the influence of the Soviet in Russia and in Ukraine.
(Source Records of the Great War , Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National
Alumni 1923)
5 December
V.I. Lenin and J. Stalin, ‘To all the toiling Moslems of Russia and the East’
Comrades and Brothers,
Great events are taking place in Russia … The old edifice of bondage
and slavery is tottering under the blows of the Russian Revolution. The days of
the world of despotism and oppression are numbered … The rule of
capitalist plunder and violence is collapsing. The ground is tottering under
the feet of the imperialist marauders. In face of these great events, we appeal
to you, the toiling and disinherited Moslems of Russia and the East. Moslems of
Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kirghiz and Sarts of Siberia and
Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and Cortzi of Caucasia,
all whose mosques and prayer houses were being destroyed and whose faith and
customs trampled under foot by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: Henceforth
your faith and your customs, your national and cultural institutions are
proclaimed to be free and inviolable … Moslems of Russia, Moslems of the
East, in this work of refashioning the world we count on your sympathy and
support.
Dzhugashvili-Stalin, People’s Commissar of National Affairs & V. Ulianov
(Lenin), Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Pravda
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches
from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)
Diary entry of Louis de Robien,
attaché at the French Embassy
Today Trotsky made a new move towards us and … he came to the Embassy,
where he spent over an hour in conversation with M. Noulens. This visit, which
was purely a courtesy one, does not imply any recognition of the Soviet
government on our part but it is a first attempt at contact, from which much
can be expected … The conversation … took a more personal turn.
Trotsky described his tribulations during the first year of the war when he was
harried by the Tsar’s ambassadors and deported at their demand from France to
Spain, from Spain to the United States and from the United States to Canada. He
finally got stranded in Halifax, where the English interned him in a
concentration camp, while Mme Trotsky and her children were locked up in the
house of a policeman. M. Trotsky seems to have been much affected by this
separation. He at once started to spread revolutionary propaganda among the
three hundred Germans who were interned with him, and in a few weeks he had
converted them all to the Bolshevik way of thinking.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)
‘Trotsky
against the cadets’
Replying to some speakers [at Smolny] who disapproved of violence being
offered to members of the Constituent Assembly, Trotsky said: — ‘You are
shocked at the mild form of terror we exercise against our class enemies, but
take notice that not more than a month hence that terror will assume a more
terrible form, on the model of that of the great French Revolution. No prison
but the guillotine for our enemies. It is not immoral for a democracy to crush
another class. That is its right.’
(Report in The Times)
6 December
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy,
Petrograd
The German menace is now uppermost in everyone’s mind! Whether it be true
that the armistice is iniquitous and will allow the Central Powers to move
their troops from one front to the other; whether it will permit German and
Austrian officers to establish a staff and bureau here; whether Russia becomes
a vassal of Germany or a passive neutral; whether she can profit by this
disruption or must wait until it has subsided — all of this makes no
difference. Germany will draw heavily upon Russia to recoup her economic and
material losses and we must be prepared to offset it in any way that may be
deemed possible. I wish that we had more assurance that Washington knew this
phase of it and that we had a deeper thinking man at the head here.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler
Wright, London 2002)
7 December
‘Armistice Illusions’ (from our special correspondent)
The success of the ‘Government’ in bringing about an armistice and
initiating peace negotiations is celebrated with resounding paeans in the
Bolshevist camp. Victory is claimed for the proletariat over German
Imperialism. ‘The will of the Russian soldiers,’ writes Pravda, ‘has dictated
the Armistice. The German plenipotentiaries yielded to us on the question of
troops from East to West.’ The real truth seems to be that large masses of
German and Austrian troops have already left for the West … According to
various journals, the German military delegates at Brest-Litovsk have asked on
behalf of the Kaiser what are Russia’s intentions with regard to the ex-Emperor
and the members of the Imperial Family. The People’s Commissioners, informed of
this request, sounded some members of the Imperial Family still residing at
Tsarskoe Selo, who replied that the best solution would be to let them go
abroad. The ‘Government’ is stated to have agreed to this in principle, but
wishes to obtain the decision of the Constituent Assembly.
(Report in The Times)
‘Ultimatum
to the Rada’
The ‘Government’ has addressed an ultimatum to the Ukraine Rada, accusing it
of following a bourgeois policy by not recognising Bolshevist authority in the
Ukraine … It is rumoured tonight that the Rada has rejected [its] demands.
The area of civil war is thus extended to the Ukraine.
(Report in The Times)
8 December
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I have a certain sympathy for these visionaries who believe in the future of
humanity. Instead of lolling about in the apartments of the Winter Palace like
Kerensky, they lead a communal life at Smolny, and together they all eat a
simple dish of gruel which is brought in every day for the Comrade Commissars’
dinner.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)
9 December
The talks at Brest resumed on December 9. Kuhlmann again headed the German
delegation. The Austrian mission was chaired by Count Czernin, the Minister of
Foreign Affairs; present were also the foreign ministers of Turkey and
Bulgaria. The German peace proposals called for the separation from Russia of
Poland as well as Courland and Lithuania, all of which at the time were under
German military occupation … Ioffe, under instructions to drag out the
talks, made for vague and unrealistic counterproposals (they had been drafted
by Lenin), calling for peace ‘without annexations and indemnities’ and
‘national self-determination’ for the European nations as well as the colonies.
In effect, the Russian delegation, behaving as if Russia had won the war, asked
the Central Powers to give up all their wartime conquests.
(Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution 1899–1919, London 1990)
The scene in the Council Chamber at
Brest-Litovsk was worthy of the art of some great historical painter. On one
side sat the bland and alert representatives of the Central Powers,
black-coated or much beribboned and bestarred, exquisitely polite ….
Opposite the ranks of Teutondom sat the Russians, mostly dirty and ill-clad,
who smoked their large pipes placidly through the debates. Much of the
discussion seemed not to interest them, and they intervened in monosyllables,
save when an incursion into the ethos of politics let loose a flood of confused
metaphysics. The Conference had the air partly of an assembly of well-mannered
employers trying to deal with a specially obtuse delegation of workmen, partly
of urbane hosts presiding at a village school treat.
(J. Buchan, A History of the Great War, Boston 1922)
9 December 2017
The treaty of Brest-Litovsk that signalled the end of Russia’s involvement
in the war was the conclusion of months of gradual withdrawal. Its year of
revolution had created enormous complications in waging war, many of them well
documented in these personal testimonies. In July Ukraine had asserted the
right of self-determination and its governing Rada (council) began to act as an
independent government. The October Revolution then of course exacerbated this
process of national fragmentation. Ukraine was represented at Brest-Litovsk
first as a ‘sovereign Ukrainian state’ and then, after the Rada’s rejection of
the ultimatum (see 4 December) demanding political control of Ukraine, as an
‘independent belligerent’. In a journal article Clifford F. Wargelin suggests
that Ukraine’s involvement in the negotiations, which opened the way for
others, notably Poland, to make similar representations over independence, was
an example of ‘spontaneous popular nationalism that transcended the ideological
and geopolitical interests of both sides in the war and threatened to disrupt
not only the peace negotiations but the stability and territorial integrity of
all of the eastern European empires’. The background is complex (later in the
negotiations the rival Kharkov-based Ukrainian Bolshevik government turned up,
demanding to negotiate in place of the delegation representing the Rada in
Kiev), and presumably some gnarled roots of the current Russian/Ukrainian
conflict can be traced back to this time. The Brest-Litovsk talks were to
continue for several months, until the treaty was eventually signed in March,
but one interesting issue that remains unresolved is the extent to which the
Germans tried to intervene in the fate of the tsar and his family. In her book
on the last days of the Romanovs, Helen Rappaport mentions a secret codicil to
Brest-Litovsk that guaranteed their safe handover to the Germans. It’s hard to
find evidence of this, though there is a certain amount of online speculation
involving the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and the usual ‘survival stories’.
But Wilhelm, related by marriage, presumably did raise the issue, and perhaps
more convincingly than George V, the tsar’s cousin and supposed ally.
as per the Gregorian calendar. 5 November 2017
8 October
Letter from Lenin to the Bolshevik Comrades attending the Regional Congress of
the Soviets of the Northern Region
Comrades, Our revolution is passing through a highly critical period …
A gigantic task is being imposed upon the responsible leaders of our Party,
failure to perform which will involve the danger of a total collapse of the
internationalist proletarian movement. The situation is such that verily,
procrastination is like unto death … In the vicinity of Petrograd and in
Petrograd itself — that is where the insurrection can, and must, be decided on
and effected … The fleet, Kronstadt, Viborg, Reval, can and must advance
on Petrograd; they must smash the Kornilov regiments, rouse both the capitals,
start a mass agitation for a government which will immediately give the land to
the peasants and immediately make proposals for peace, and must overthrow
Kerensky’s government and establish such a government. Verily, procrastination
is like unto death.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches
from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)
9 October
Report in The Times
The Maximalist [Bolshevik], M. Trotsky, President of the Petrograd Soviet,
made a violent attack on the Government, describing it as irresponsible and
assailing its bourgeois elements, ‘who,’ he continued, ‘by their attitude are
causing insurrection among the peasants, increasing disorganisation and trying
to render the Constituent Assembly abortive.’ ‘The Maximalists,’ he declared,
‘cannot work with the Government or with the Preliminary Parliament, which I am
leaving in order to say to the workmen, soldiers, and peasants that Petrograd,
the Revolution, and the people are in danger.’ The Maximalists then left the
Chamber, shouting, ‘Long live a democratic and honourable peace! Long live the
Constituent Assembly!’
(‘Opening of Preliminary Parliament’, The Times)
10 October
As Sukhanov left his home for the Soviet on the morning of the 10th, his
wife Galina Flakserman eyed nasty skies and made him promise not to try to
return that night, but to stay at his office … Unlike her diarist husband,
who was previously an independent and had recently joined the Menshevik left,
Galina Flakserman was a long-time Bolshevik activist, on the staff of Izvestia.
Unbeknownst to him, she had quietly informed her comrades that comings and
goings at her roomy, many-entranced apartment would be unlikely to draw
attention. Thus, with her husband out of the way, the Bolshevik CC came
visiting. At least twelve of the twenty-one-committee were there … There
entered a clean-shaven, bespectacled, grey-haired man, ‘every bit like a
Lutheran minister’, Alexandra Kollontai remembered. The CC stared at the
newcomer. Absent-mindedly, he doffed his wig like a hat, to reveal a familiar
bald pate. Lenin had arrived.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai
Sukhanov
Oh, the novel jokes of the merry muse of History! This supreme and decisive
session took place in my own home … without my knowledge … For such a
cardinal session not only did people come from Moscow, but the Lord of Hosts
himself, with his henchman, crept out of the underground. Lenin appeared in a
wig, but without his beard. Zinoviev appeared with a beard, but without his
shock of hair. The meeting went on for about ten hours, until about 3 o’clock
in the morning … However, I don’t actually know much about the exact
course of this meeting, or even about its outcome. It’s clear that the question
of an uprising was put … It was decided to begin the uprising as quickly
as possible, depending on circumstances but not on the Congress.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)
11 October
British Consul Arthur Woodhouse in a letter home
Things are coming to a pretty pass here. I confess I should like to be out
of it, but this is not the time to show the white feather. I could not ask for
leave now, no matter how imminent the danger. There are over 1,000 Britishers
here still, and I and my staff may be of use and assistance to them in an
emergency.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)
Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval
cadet at Kronstadt
The proximity of a proletarian rising in Russia, as prologue to the world
socialist revolution, became the subject of all our discussions in
prison … Even behind bars, in a stuffy, stagnant cell, we felt instinctively
that the superficial calm that outwardly seemed to prevail presaged an
approaching storm … At last, on October 11, my turn [for release]
came … Stepping out of the prison on to the Vyborg-Side embankment and
breathing in deeply the cool evening breeze that blew from the river, I felt
that joyous sense of freedom which is known only to those who have learnt to
value it while behind bards. I took a tram at the Finland Station and quickly
reached Smolny … In the mood of the delegates to the Congress of Soviets
of the Northern Region which was taking place at that time .. an unusual
elation, an extreme animation was noticeable … They told me straightaway
that the CC had decided on armed insurrection. But there was a group of
comrades, headed by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who did not agree with this decision
and regarded a rising a premature and doomed to defeat.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917, New York 1982, first
published 1925)
12 October
Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
On [Kerensky] expressing the fear that there was a strong anti-Russian
feeling both in England and France, I said that though the British public was
ready to make allowances for her difficulties, it was but natural that they
should, after the fall of Riga, have abandoned all hope of her continuing to
take an active part in the war … Bolshevism was at the root of all the
evils from which Russia was suffering, and if he would but eradicate it he
would go down to history, not only as the leading figure of the revolution, but
as the saviour of his country. Kerensky admitted the truth of what I had said,
but contended that he could not do this unless the Bolsheviks themselves
provoked the intervention of the Government by an armed uprising.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)
13 October
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Kerensky is becoming more and more unpopular, in spite of certain grotesque
demonstrations such as this one: the inhabitants of a district in Central
Russia have asked him to take over the supreme religious power, and want to
make him into a kind of Pope as well as a dictator, whereas even the Tsar was
really neither one nor the other. Nobody takes him seriously, except in the
Embassy. A rather amusing sonnet about him has appeared, dedicated to the beds
in the Winter Palace, and complaining that they are reserved for hysteria
cases … for Alexander Feodorovich (Kerensky’s first names) and then
Alexandra Feodorovna (the Empress).
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)
14 October 2017
The BBC2 semi-dramatisation of how the Bolsheviks took power, shown this week,
was a curious thing. Talking heads in the form of Figes, Mieville, Rappaport,
Sebag-Montefiore, Tariq Ali, Martin Amis and others were interspersed with
moody reconstructions of late-night meetings, and dramatic moments such as
Lenin’s unbearded return to the Bolshevik CC (cf Sukhanov above). The programme
felt rather staged and unconvincing, with a lot of agonised expressions and
fist-clenching by Lenin, but the reviewers liked it. Odd, though, that
Eisenstein’s storming of the Winter Palace is rolled out every time, with a
brief disclaimer that it’s a work of fiction and yet somehow presented as
historical footage. There’s a sense of directorial sleight of hand, as if the
rather prosaic taking of the palace desperately needs a re-write. In some
supra-historical way, Eisenstein’s version has become the accepted version.
John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World
, currently being
serialised on Radio 4, is also presented with tremendous vigour, and properly
so as the book is nothing if not dramatic. Historical truth, though, is often
as elusive in a book that was originally published — in 1919 — with an
introduction by Lenin. ‘Reed was not’, writes one reviewer, ‘an ideal observer.
He knew little Russian, his grasp of events was sometimes shaky, and his facts
were often suspect.’ Still, that puts him in good company, and Reed is
undoubtedly a good read.
