The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 6
VI. The Collapse of the "Whites."
How can an army in the field fight an enemy, “when their division commander is arrested within an hour of the time fixed for their offensive, and his chief of staff has to be shot for being a Bolshevist intelligence officer? How can an offensive be carried out when a general who has given written assurances of his loyalty, and has undertaken certain important co-operation, makes an attack on the forces of his commander-in-chief instead?"[1] How can a commander-in-chief expect to maintain discipline when he fails to suppress the open sale to civilians of military stores at his own headquarters by his own officers? Yet all these incidents took place in Yudenitch's Army before it collapsed.
Is it any argument in favour of the Bolshevik régime that their White opponents are corrupt and incompetent, owing, in part, to the conditions forced upon them by the Allies (who throughout have encouraged only a negative and vacillating policy, viz.: anti-monarchial and anti-Bolshevik), and in part to the presence and influence of alien intriguers on the White side? Yet General Gough and many other superficial thinkers in England appear to imagine it is.
Is it surprising that discipline cannot be maintained in an army composed of warring elements, where the few loyal officers are exposed to the sabotage and conspiracy of alien intriguers and traitors? A system of sabotage which began with the first organization of the Volunteer Army in Siberia where a few loyal officers rallied round the Czecho-Slovaks. The same Czecho-Slovaks who eventually stabbed Kolchak in the back and secured his defeat; finally surrendering him to the Bolsheviks for execution. Is it surprising that Kolchak found it next to impossible to administer occupied territory when his political counsellors could unite on no policy beyond a willingness to defer all questions of policy and principle to the decision of a Constituent Assembly which is to be convoked after the destruction of the Soviet administration, and decline to accept even the temporary makeshift which might bind them to a definite principle?
Above all is it surprising that the White administration could have no policy, and the White Army could have no discipline, when one remembers the history of its growth. The part in it for instance, played by one, Savinkoff, who after a little difference with his next-of-kin the Bolsheviks and his failure to find employment with Denikin, joined his fellows of the Social Revolutionary Party—in Ufa—to form a Directorate, consisting exclusively of Social Revolutionaries or Mensheviks,[2] whose first steps were to institute soldiers' committees, commissaries, election of officers by their men, etc. All the methods in fact, which a year before had transformed 7½ million Russian troops into one band of deserters and mauraders.
Admiral Kolchak, it is true, temporarily scotched the plan to destroy his Army from behind his back, by arresting the directorate. They were, however, subsequently released, and dispersed, vowing vengeance on Kolchak, some of them, at any rate one of their number, Tchernoff, returning to Moscow and his friends the Bolsheviks.
Their activities were next directed against the "Russian Political Conference" in Paris, in the beginning of 1919. Here again Savinkoff took a prominent part with the other "heaven-sent" protagonists of the Kerensky revolution—the first, the glorious and thoroughly "democratic" revolution.
Mde. Breshko Brehkovskaya boomed the movement in America, and Dr. Sosskiss, Kerensky's Secretary became its high priest in London. The first object, of course, was to secure the downfall of the "wicked" counter-revolutionary Kolchak. A strenuous propaganda campaign was started to discredit him by labelling him "reactionary" and "autocratic," which, of course, are the stock social-revolutionary synonyms for efficiency when applied to their enemies. Kolchak was on no account to be helped unless he took the "democratic" oath of allegiance, i.e., he was to re-adopt the Social-Revolutionary experiments which successfully ruined the Russian Army in 1917. Unless these conditions were enforced Allied help must immediately be withdrawn. Meanwhile another branch of the same gang sprang up in Siberia. Unfortunately their efforts were now more fruitful. "Counter-Revolutionary" (i.e., experienced and capable) officers were replaced by "democratic" geniuses of the 1917 type. After much struggle, the principle of commissaries, committees and elected officers, was enforced, and the retreat which began in October and November, 1919, the loss of Omsk—the beginning of the end—was the immediate and inevitable sequel. The story of the Yudenitch failure is very similar, for the same hand was at work there; plotting in the rear of the Army and controlling supplies.
Their names, of course, with one or two exceptions, convey little to the English public, and some of them may shelter under the protective laws of this hospitable country. In any case the names of the members of the Social-Revolutionary party which devoted their especial attention to the Baltic are well-known. With the proximate success of General Yudenitch, Petrograd—the city of the dead, and the "Northern Commune's days were numbered." To prevent this at all cost was the work of our "friends" of the Revolutionary left. They hampered the Government and the Ministries, and they controlled large finances.
The sudden collapse of Yudenitch before the very gates of Petrograd, testifies to the thoroughness of their work.
The equally sudden decision to withdraw all British Troops from Archangel owing to the pressure of their friends and their dupes in England drew the curtain on the drama and its logical finale.
There are still people, especially in England, who ask in mild surprise how it is that the Whites everywhere collapsed so completely and effectually; when the forces at work within the White movement are examined in the light of the afore-mentioned circumstances it need occasion very little surprise. The reflection however that the Allied Governments did so much to assist the machinations of those whose avowed object was to work "for the advent of a Social-Revolutionary government and to maintain the Bolsheviks in power until preparations of the Social-Revolutionary party were completed, and, at all costs, to prevent the march on Petrograd," this reflection may indeed be a mortifying one to those who had little idea of what was going on behind the scenes.