RUSSIAN LABOUR
General Dutoff, as I have previously recorded, had informed us that
Bolshevist agitators had passed through our lines on this treacherous
mission, and for months nothing had been heard of these emissaries of
mischief. Now that we were approaching the critical point of the 1919
operations rumblings of an unmistakable character were heard in all
directions. The necessary military measures had been taken, but in our
English eyes suppression was not enough. We have learnt in our country
that the workmen are the backbone of the State, and that when labour is
badly paid the heart of the State is diseased. Russia has no ideas about
labour at all. The autocracy never gave it a moment's consideration. The
last Tsar's idea of labour reform was to abolish good vodka, and he lost
his life. The officer class, that forms so large a proportion of Russian
life, never gave the subject five minutes' consideration. There is not a
single general labour law upon the statute book of Russia, and the
horror of it is that those who have hitherto pretended to lead the
Russian workman refuse to demand laws to protect their labour. They
believe that "law" is the last thing that a workman robbed of the most
elemental rights should think about; that the only way for a workman to
obtain rights is to abolish all "law." And this they have done with a
vengeance! The professional Russian labour leader is an anarchist and
nothing else, and in Bolshevism he has given a glimpse of his policy in
practice.
This, then, was the problem with which we had to deal, and with only a
few weeks at our disposal. To the Russian workman it was a social
question; to us it was both social and military. Finally, General Knox
asked me to undertake a pacific propaganda along the railway to see if
it were possible to persuade the workmen to keep at work and give the
best service possible to their country to secure the restoration of
order. I came to the conclusion that if anything could be done to give a
more staple and practical outlook to the Russian labour mind it was well
worth trying to accomplish it.
At the outset I was faced with the difficulty of not being in a position
to offer anything definite to the workmen in return for their
willingness to assist the combatant branch of the Russian service in its
new crusade against anarchy. With nothing to offer it seemed hopeless to
ask for so much. The only man who could pledge the Government was the
Supreme Governor himself, so I wrote to him as follows:
[Copy.]
OMSK, SIBERIA.
_4th February_, 1919.
To His High Excellency, Admiral Koltchak, Supreme Governor.
Sir,--I have been requested by Major-General Knox, Chief of the British
Military Mission, Siberia, to undertake a tour of the railway works
along the Siberian Railway to address the workmen, and appeal to them
as a British Labour representative to give their best service to the
Russian State during the present and coming military operations, and to
join no strike movement, or do anything to hamper the transport of men
and supplies until the military operations against the enemy are
completed.
I have pointed out to General Knox that, while I am quite willing to
undertake this mission to the railway workmen, I fear it will be quite
useless unless I can promise, on behalf of the Russian Government, some
improvement in their condition.
1. For instance, I am informed that some of the railway and other
Government workmen have not received any wages upon which to keep
themselves and their families, for in some cases many weeks, and in
other cases months. If this is true, it is impossible to expect workmen
to be satisfied, and the wonder would be that they agree to work as well
as they do.
It would be necessary for me to be able to promise that such things
would be rectified, and wages paid regularly in future.
2. There are many things absent in Russia which industrial communities
like England find necessary elements for industrial peace. I admit that
very little constructional reform work can be executed during the
present disturbed condition of the country, but it would help immensely
if I could tell the workmen that I had the authority of the Russian
Government that directly order had been restored, laws for the
protection and help of the Russian workmen and their organisations, on
the lines of those already working so effectively in England, would be
adopted by the Russian Government.
If I could get something definite from Your High Excellency upon these
points, I believe it would do much to help in the work for the
pacification of the labouring classes of Russia, and greatly strengthen
Your Excellency's hold upon the hearts of the Russian people.
(Signed) JOHN WARD.
(_Lt.-Colonel, M.P., C.M.G., Commanding 25th Bn. Middlesex Regiment_.)
[COPY.]
OMSK.
_February 5th_, 1919.
SIR,--In reply to your letter of February 4th, I wish to inform you that
I have learned with the greatest satisfaction that you are willing to
undertake the important mission of addressing the workmen of our
railways and calling them to give their best service to the cause of
Russia in this crucial moment of our national existence.
The two questions which you have raised in your letter should not be
left without a prompt answer, and I therefore would like to bring to
your knowledge the following:--
1. The imperative necessity of orderly and regular payment of wages to
the workmen has been the object of my personal anxiety, and pressing
measures in that direction have been urged by the Government. The
railways being considered by us just as important as the army, you will
understand that everything in its power will be done by our Government
to help the threatening situation in that respect.
2. As for the second question which you have mentioned in your letter, I
venture to assure you that the Government has already stated in its
official programme that the workmen will find protection and help in the
laws which shall be enforced and have to secure their organisation on
lines similar to those of democratic states in Europe. The Government
has actually a special Department of Labour which is preparing the
future legislation on this question, following the general course of
constructive reform work which I hope to be able to pursue with all the
energy and vigour that the military situation will permit.
I take this opportunity to renew the expression of my profound
appreciation of the interest you take in our situation and of the
valuable assistance you so generously offer in this most important
matter of pacification of the labouring classes in Russia.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed) A. KOLTCHAK.
Lt.-Colonel JOHN WARD, M.P., C.M.G.,
_Commanding 25th Bn. Middlesex Regiment_.
This is believed to be the first correspondence ever conducted by the
head of any Russian Government upon a purely labour subject. It shows
that in supporting Admiral Koltchak we had at least this fact to
recommend our policy: that he was a democrat, and anxious that his
country should be in labour matters amongst the first flight of nations.
The question now to be solved was: What attitude would the anarchist
adopt to this new evangelism?
I was ready to start on my journey when there began such a blizzard as
is occasionally described in the literature of Polar exploration. For
forty-eight hours from the south came a furious gale. It was not too
cold, only about twenty degrees of actual frost, but with the wind came
blinding snow--not snow such as we see in England, but fine snow, like
white dust. It beat on your face, found its way between the flaps of
your head-covers, where it thawed and ran down your neck and chest and
saturated your underwear. It smashed straight on to your eyeballs, and
froze in cakes to your eyelashes and cheeks, so that in five or ten
minutes you were blind and unable to find your way or move in any
direction. All sentries had to be withdrawn and sent to the nearest
shelter, for it was impossible to locate oneself or see a building till
you blundered up against it. A note in my diary records that "a guard of
eighteen Russians and one officer walked away from their post and have
not been seen since, and six days have passed." Roofs were torn off the
houses, and the strongest buildings rocked in a most alarming manner.
The snow piled itself up against the houses till it covered the windows
on the ground floors and half-way up those of the second. This southern
gale took twenty-four hours in which to blow itself out, and a four
days' calm followed, during which the snow was cleared from the railway
and traffic resumed. The next startler was a message from Irkutsk
stating that a terrific gale was breaking down from the north--a recoil
from the one just described--accompanied with sixty degrees of actual
frost, making it impossible to live out of doors. This storm struck Omsk
on February 20, and no words can describe the complete obliteration of
man and all his works accomplished by such a gale. Nothing can live in
the intense cold created by such a wind. Hence movement and life cease,
and King Frost has the whole field to himself. In a few hours the earth
is levelled; all the indications remaining of the ordinary log dwellings
are a few snow-banks with a row of dark posts from which smoke is
emitted, showing that there are human habitations underneath. By
February 22 this storm had worked itself out and we were able to
proceed.
The influence of the Koltchak Government could be seen in the orderly
management of affairs connected with the railway and supplies generally.
Not till we reached Kameragh could we observe any sign that there still
remained unextinguished embers of the social inferno through which the
country had passed. At this point the line was guarded by a strong
detachment of troops quartered in trucks on the siding. The officer in
command informed me that an attack by revolters had been made on the
line at this point, who had held up the traffic for some hours, but had
been driven off before any permanent injury was accomplished. The
revolters did not wait after the attack, but set fire to the station and
departed. He suggested that it might be as well to be ready for sniping,
and for worse things, should accident force the train to come to a
standstill between here and Krasnoyarsk. We arrived at the latter place,
however, without incident on February 25.
Krasnoyarsk is a fairly large town on the River Yenesei. The fine bridge
over the river is the point to which the eyes of the revolters are
constantly directed. The garrison was composed of one company of the
25th Middlesex Regiment, an Italian battalion recently formed from
amongst the Italian prisoners of war and armed by the British, about
four hundred Cossacks, and a company of Czechs belonging to the 10th
Regiment, who arrived that morning. There were numbers of Bolsheviks
inhabiting an elevated part of the town. These met on the old Russian
New Year's Day and passed a resolution that it was necessary to execute
all army officers wherever they might be found isolated from their
comrades. The army chiefs replied by ordering all guns to be trained on
the Bolshevik part of the town and one round of shell from each of the
eight guns to be planted in the Bolshevik quarters for every officer
murdered. No officers had been murdered up to that time. A party of
Serbians who had been armed to assist in protecting the inhabitants were
caught selling arms and ammunition to the Bolsheviks; they were
surrounded in the middle of the night and disarmed, one Cossack being
killed. The 25th were "standing to" during this operation in case their
assistance was required.
We started for Irkutsk on the 25th, having been warned that the road to
Kansk was practically dominated by the revolters. About 8 P.M. we
arrived at the headquarters of General Affinasiaff, who came into my car
and gave a minute description of the situation. The enemy forces
numbered about 8,000, and those of the Russian Government about 3,000.
For about one hundred versts the Russian forces, in small detachments,
were allowing themselves to be pinned to the railway.
It was very interesting to hear a clear statement as to the cause of
the revolt and to find that the chief point of the grievances set forth
in the revolters' own proclamations. In great part these opponents of
the Government consist of rich peasants, who already possessing land
which in many cases was equal in extent to the County of Rutland, had in
1917, under the order of Lenin and Trotsky, taken forcible possession of
the furniture, horses, farmhouses, carts, carriages, land, etc., of the
big landholders, who with their families had been massacred by these
same rich peasants.
The next important element among the revolters were the escaped
prisoners of the old régime, who, being released by the Bolsheviks, had
taken to the forest to avoid recapture--probably the wildest and most
savage set of men in the world. They were illicitly fed and protected by
the aforementioned wealthy peasants with a view, firstly, to buy off
their hostility to themselves, and, secondly, to secure their help to
resist the civil officers of the new Government who were appointed to
inquire into the methods by which these wealthy peasants became
possessed of their dead neighbours' lands and properties; thirdly, to
enable these wealthy peasants to resist the payment of taxes, not only
those that were in arrears, but any that would become due in the future.
This was the point dealt with in their proclamation, wherein it was
stated that inasmuch as it was the people who lived in the towns that
forced the revolution, therefore it was unjust to ask the peasants to
pay for the damage done by those in the towns; further, that it was the
people in the towns who kept on fighting one another, and until they
had finished their quarrelling the peasants would not pay any taxes or
do anything to help the Government; fourthly, this unholy partnership
enabled the wealthy peasants to resist the mobilisation ordered by the
Koltchak Government for the same reasons.
As I have already pointed out, every minor Government and general,
including General Denikin, made haste to show their submission to Omsk
when Admiral Koltchak assumed authority, the only exception being
Colonel Semianoff. He, it was known, was accepting a regular subsidy
from the Japanese to enable them to resist the extension of the
admiral's power towards Vladivostok, and it was under their instructions
and protection Semianoff refused to recognise the authority of the Omsk
Government and issued insolent manifestos against the Supreme Governor.
The peasants inhabiting the western side of the Baikal seized upon this
fact and said in their proclamations that inasmuch as Colonel Semianoff
had refused to allow Koltchak's orders to operate on the east side, and
was supported therein by one of the Allies, there was every reason why
they should do the same on the west side of the lake. It shows what a
tremendous influence Japan had either to create order or to make order
impossible. She and Semianoff between them provided these revolters with
just the argument they needed. By so acting Japan created and extended
the area of anarchy and made the task of her Allies and Koltchak more
difficult than it might otherwise have been.
This may not be a very logical position for the peasants to have taken
up, but anyone who knows anything about Russia will see that it fitted
their psychology to a fraction. These people are more ignorant than our
worst educated agricultural labourers. They own and live on huge tracts
of land, in most cases as large as a great English estate. Their method
of living is many stages below that of our landless farm labourer. Their
ignorance is colossal, their cupidity and cunning the envy of the
Armenians, who openly confess that in a bargain the Russian peasant
beats the Jew to a frazzle. The order of the Soviet Government to the
peasants to take possession of the landowners' estates and property was
the trump card which Lenin and Trotsky played to secure immunity in the
provinces while they massacred and robbed the property owners in the
towns. These men, who are the natural enemies of all political progress
and social reform, and who should have exercised a steadying effect upon
the empty idealism of the professional classes, were too busy robbing
their neighbours to be able to exert any influence upon the major events
of the revolution. While perfectly willing to use the revolution--whose
principles they abhorred--for their own personal aggrandisement, this
wealthy peasantry are now equally unwilling to render the slightest help
in the restoration of order.
It was with profound interest that I read these documents, which
entirely exploded the English legend of the landless Russian peasant
pining for a few acres of land.
We arrived at Irkutsk and proceeded to investigate the situation. When
we passed here four months before it was the centre of Siberian life;
official indolence had, however, again reduced its status to that of a
third- or fourth-rate town.
I was anxious to know how the new Rumanian Division under French
auspices was progressing. Fourteen thousand rifles that could be ill
afforded from the front had been left here some six weeks previous by
one of our British supply trains. I found that the local Russian
military authorities knew nothing, nor had they ever been consulted
about it. They knew that not more than three thousand Rumanians lived in
the district, and these had mostly embraced the opinions of the
Bolsheviks. I made inquiries through the usual English channels, but
they were equally uninformed. A visit to the Russian railway department
elicited the fact that a French officer had signed the necessary orders
for the trucks containing the rifles to remain at Irkutsk, that three
thousand rifles had so far been unloaded, and that there was a French
proposal to send the remainder to Tomsk, where it was hoped they might
be got rid of amongst some Serbian bands with Bolshevik tendencies. This
may or may not represent all the facts, but it indicates the
unmistakable necessity that English help shall be given only by English
hands.
Russian officers were beginning to recover their old characteristics,
and nightly filled the entertainment halls and restaurants and led the
gaieties of the town. Very little thought was given to the grim
struggle their half-clad comrades were waging with the forces of anarchy
along the Ural mountains.
British Consul Nash kindly entertained Colonel and Madame Frank and
myself, and generally helped me in the organisation of this end of my
campaign. He did not think much of my objective, but he helped all the
same.