Read part 2 here
Part 1: The workers take power and the Whites take up arms
“It is no exaggeration to say that Bolshevism is now a far greater danger to Europe than German militarism.” The comment by Britain’s Foreign Minister Balfour in 1918 — after four years of war against Germany with millions dead — shows the mortal fear of global imperialism after the workers seized power in Russia.
Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Germany and six other states participated militarily on the side of the white generals in the war against workers and poor peasants in Russia in 1918–21.
This is the subject of Antony Beevor’s latest book, Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–21. The British popular historian has previously published books on the Battle of Stalingrad and the Spanish Civil War, which are well worth reading. On Russia, however, Beevor can’t keep away from the most commonly used bourgeois clichés and myths about the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks and especially its leaders Lenin and Trotsky. Despite this, the book ends up being one long enumeration of the massacres and anti-Semitic pogroms perpetrated by the white side, and of imperialism’s responsibility for the hellish living conditions of the Russian population.
Anyone following the war in Ukraine today and the total destruction of entire cities by Russian forces can read in Beevor’s book how Ukraine was occupied 100 years ago. In 1920, the French military held the entire Ukrainian Black Sea coast, from Odessa to Mariupol, with instructions that the whole of Ukraine would become a department of France. Even then, the export of agricultural products via the Black Sea was important for food supplies and the economy.
The German army captured Kiev and set up a puppet government. In the Black Sea, as in the Caspian Sea, the British Navy had a whole armada in control of shipping. At most, Japan had 145,000 troops in Siberia, while the British government estimated that it had spent £100 million on this war. The British Empire’s forces included troops from India, Canada and Australia.
The united Western powers maintained a hunger blockade that makes all current sanctions pale in comparison. Five million people died of starvation. The blockade and the war also gave full freedom to terrible epidemics. Millions died of typhus. In addition, smallpox, Spanish flu, dysentery and cholera were all rampant.
As in previous books, Beevor focuses on the development of the war itself, while crucial political decisions and events are mentioned only in passing. As a result, he fails to explain how the newly formed Red Army managed to mobilise so many soldiers in such an extremely war-weary country. The answer is that the soldiers were not mobilised for nationalistic reasons, but for land reform, freedom for oppressed nations and basically for peace and the possibility of building a brand new, socialist, workers’ society. For Ukraine, the Bolshevik programme for independence was crucial, a policy Putin has condemned as he now wages a war of aggression. The Russian workers who fought in 1917–22 were the complete opposite of today’s Russian army.
Revolution against the tsar
Russia in the early 20th century was an imperialist superpower where the vast majority of the population were extremely exploited peasants. Beevor quotes Maksim Gorky on how “half of all peasant children die of various diseases before the age of five”, even after serfdom was formally abolished in 1861. Alongside an agriculture of wooden ploughs, there was a young working class of three million gathered in large industries, with the experience of the 1905 revolution and the great strikes of 1913–14.
When the First World War began in 1914, the tsarist army mobilised 15.3 million soldiers, most of them poor peasants. Three million would not survive the war, and many more were wounded for life.
The distress and suffering created by the war led to the February Revolution of 1917, when the tsarist empire was overthrown. Beevor describes how the revolution began with women’s strikes and mass demonstrations, which quickly gained support across the working class and from the soldiers, who handed out weapons. “Every unit that was deployed joined up with the rebels” Bevoor quotes the head of the secret police, Globachev. None of the tsar’s authorities functioned while “crowds tore down any symbols of the monarchy from public buildings or double-headed eagles from shops by appointment to the imperial court."
Provisional government
A provisional government was formed, with Prince Lvov as Prime Minister. It also included two “socialist” ministers, Kerensky of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR), and the Menshevik, Chcheidze. At the same time, the workers’ council, the Soviet of 1905, was re-established. The Mensheviks and the SR gained a majority there, and they supported the government. Within the Bolsheviks, a faction under Stalin and Kamenev stood for the same line, while Lenin, from his return in April, won a majority for the struggle against the provisional government. The revolution of the masses had overthrown the Tsar and created an atmosphere of freedom. But the government continued the war, refusing to carry out land reform or give freedom to oppressed nations. The capitalists retained economic power. Would the revolution stop or move on? Beevor describes the mood in the countryside: “As word [of the revolution] spread, the peasants went into town and asked when they could take over the land and when the war would end.”
Like typical right-wing writers, Beevor excuses the actions of the Provisional Government, claiming that land reform and freedom for oppressed nations could only have been decided by a Constituent Assembly (a parliament that would make a new constitution). But no such assembly was set up by the government. The right and the high military were already advocating a new dictatorship.
During the summer, the Provisional Government, together with its allies in Britain and France, launched a new war offensive in June, forced the Bolsheviks underground and arrested several of their leaders in July, and dissolved the Finnish parliament, the Diet. Kerensky then became first Minister of War and then Prime Minister.
The government’s policy confirmed the Bolshevik line that the workers must take power. Only then could the slogans of peace, bread and land be implemented. The alternative was for the military to regain power, as evidenced by General Kornilov’s attempted coup in August, an attempt which Beevor claims he did not plan but was driven to.
Mass support for the Bolsheviks
Beevor notes that support for the Bolsheviks increased sharply. At the same time, he attributes “dictatorial instincts” to Lenin, although he refers to how Lenin often had to debate to win a majority in the party. According to Beevor, Leon Trotsky, who alongside Lenin led the October Revolution, “had no time for democracy”. Consequently, he calls the decision of the Soviet Congress to seize power the “October coup”. The Bolsheviks then formed a government with the support of the Left SR, which constituted the majority of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
What was the alternative? Beevor himself writes: “Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary leaders, mostly members of the high-minded intelligentsia, seemed increasingly out of touch.” While the right, the officers and the capitalists advocated dictatorship and continued war.
The book completely avoids the new government’s first decision: the world’s largest land reform, with land for 100 million in the countryside and an immediate declaration for peace. Nor does Beevor mention the many democratic decisions, on independence for Finland, the right to divorce and abortion, the ban on racism and anti-Semitism, the abolition of the death penalty.
Beevor refers to the elections to the Constituent Assembly — which were held only after the Bolsheviks and the workers took power. The Bolsheviks received 10 million votes and came second, while the SR received 16 million votes. But, Beevor is forced to admit, “…since many left socialist-revolutionaries were at this time prepared to collaborate with the Bolsheviks, it does not give an accurate snapshot of the political balance of power.” When the Assembly refused to recognise the power of the Soviets, it was dissolved, a move that was barely noticed, but used extensively by the Right internationally.
Start of the civil war
Beevor claims that Lenin wanted civil war, but again he is forced to show how the Bolsheviks were always seeking peace. The peace treaty with Germany on 6 March 1918 contained major concessions from the Soviet government, but it marked the beginning of the end of the First World War. The Left-SR, which wanted to continue the war against Germany, left the government in protest. They later assassinated the German ambassador in the vain hope of starting a revolt or provoking a war. Socialist revolutionaries also murdered several Bolsheviks and carried out assassination attempts on Lenin.
Who really wanted civil war became clear. The crushing of the revolution in Finland by the Whites in the spring of 1918 (40,000 dead, including 12,500 Red prisoners of war) showed the way for the Russian military. Both Kornilov and General Mikhail Alexeyev, the Tsar’s Chief of Staff, now began to build up armies. A Cossack army of 40,000 men was assembled in the Donbas. In March, the first imperialist troops, British Royal Marines, arrived in Murmansk. In April, regiments from Japan, the US and Britain arrived in Vladivostok. In August, the British conquered Arkhangelsk. At the same time, Germany planned to take over the Baltic States and put a German king in power in Finland.
The war was now a fact. In the east there were 12,000 Czech soldiers under the command of Major General Gadja (described by Beevor as a fascist), three Japanese divisions, two American infantry regiments, a French colonial battalion, two British units, a Canadian brigade and others. In the south there were Greek, Italian, Romanian and Bulgarian forces.
The Bolsheviks were now forced to build up a Red Army, under the leadership of Trotsky. The Red Army contained many internationalists, such as 25,000 Latvians, who often took the most important missions, and 30–40,000 Chinese. Beevor describes how Trotsky arrived at an important battle in Kazan and there sent his train home to show that he intended to stick the fight out. The morale of the Reds and their programme of land reform and freedom for oppressed nations led to many cases of mass desertion by Whites, which is repeatedly reported in the book.
After great success for the Reds, the Whites were forced to flee to Ufa in the Ural Mountains, 780 miles east of Moscow, as early as 1918–19. A conference was held there, whose participating generals are described in the book as psychopaths and reactionaries in a totally corrupt environment. A council of ministers headed by the leading candidate for dictator, Admiral Kolchak, was set up. At the same time, there were other “governments” among the whites, such as Semyonov’s, which were supported by Japan. A right-wing SR government was formed in Samara, also effectively controlled by the Whites. A provisional North Russian government with right-wing SRs ”could never have been implemented" without the involvement of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marine Light Infantry.
Churchill’s war plans
About halfway through the book, the British government and especially its war minister Winston Churchill become main characters while Lenin and Trotsky fade into the background. Churchill, who was in close contact with Kolchak, wanted to “draw up a plan for war against the Bolsheviks” on 16 February 1919. But one problem for London was that it had lost the pretext for war once Germany surrendered — a result of the German Revolution in November 1918.
The Great Powers are only after natural resources like oil, noted Boris Savinkov, an SR leader who became a White warlord. "Saving Ukraine’s grain fields for the rest of Europe‘’ was also the stated aim of the British government. Furthermore, the Entente powers demanded that Russia’s foreign debt not be written off. Their position of power is shown by the fact that communication between the warlords Kolchak in the east, Denikin in the south and Yudenich in the west was conducted through Paris.
Prime Minister Lloyd George was more cautious than Churchill, warning that escalating the war could “strengthen Bolshevism in Russia and give rise to it at home”. And so it did, with protests at home and mutinies of soldiers and sailors chanting the Internationale. German and Austrian prisoners of war came home as Bolsheviks. “The French and British governments became deeply concerned that Bolshevik sentiment was spreading throughout Central Europe and the Balkans,” Beevor writes. Revolutions followed in Hungary and Bavaria, but the local leaders lacked the experience of the Bolsheviks to bring them to victory.
At the same time in Russia, the White forces began to disintegrate. The British Major General Knox is described as “furious” when 80% of the White soldiers they equipped went over to the Reds. Trotsky wrote a telegram of thanks.
