CAPTURED
Our journey from Taiga to Krasnoyarsk was a repetition of our journey
from Omsk to Taiga, only worse. There were numerous railway accidents
with considerable loss of life, and at one station we came across a
deserted train which was being looted. Most ominous symptom of all, many
of the Polish soldiers, who had hitherto formed an unbroken rearguard,
had now fled in a body from their echelons, and were marching in complete
disorder on foot. There was nothing, therefore, between us and the
enemy. Insurgent bands were operating on the line to the east of us, and
held for a short time one of the stations. The telegraph wires had all
been cut, but the presence of guerillas on the railway was signalled by
means of rockets at night. Everything indicated that we were running
into a catastrophe. The curtain had in fact risen on the last act of the
tragedy, but it proved to be a very short act with a rather tame and
unexpected climax.
After passing Bogotol we learned that Krasnoyarsk was in the hands of an
insurgent band under a well-known guerilla leader called Shitinkin, who
was, however, allowing all Polish echelons and foreign officers to pass.
Consequently we were not surprised or alarmed when, on January 6, we
were stopped at Bugatch, six versts from Krasnoyarsk, by three men whom
we took to represent Shitinkin’s Government. These three men were calmly
disarming the large number of Russian soldiers on foot, on horseback, and
in sleighs, who had been moving eastwards on both sides of the railway
and on the line itself all the way from Omsk. This interminable stream
of soldiers riding in the darkness and the snow was one of the many
things which made this journey seem to me at times a fantastic romance
or a feverish dream. I used to drop off to sleep at dusk while watching
the busbies of the Cossacks bobbing endlessly past the window; every
time I went out to “snow” the engine at night they were still passing;
and sometimes for a fraction of a second after I woke up from dreams of
happier lands, I was uncertain whether the dream was not reality and this
incredible, infinite procession the dream.
But now this long trail had come to an end, both for the Cossacks and
for us. In obedience to the orders of the mysterious Three, the Russians
surrendered their arms with the peaceful unconcern of railway travellers
surrendering their tickets to the ticket-collector at the end of their
journey, or of sheep surrendering their wool to the shearer; and soon
a huge pile of rifles, swords, and revolvers arose in the snow outside
our carriage. In obedience to further orders the officers tore off their
epaulettes and threw them on the ground. When I visited Krasnoyarsk a few
days later I found some parts of the streets so thickly littered with
epaulettes as to suggest the idea of fallen leaves in autumn.
None of the White officers offered the least objection to these
proceedings. Those who had been disarmed were allowed to drift into
Krasnoyarsk and there shift for themselves. We saw thousands of
weaponless men pass in the space of a few hours. Korff, the Russian
officer attached to our Mission, said, “These three men should be shot,”
but a few weeks later he himself was an officer in the Red Army. We felt
sure that the Three were not alone, and we afterwards discovered that,
behind a hill some 600 yards off, was a small detachment of Reds with
several machine-guns.
Being under the impression that this Trio represented Shitinkin and the
S.Rs. (Social-Revolutionaries), and that they would soon allow us to
pass, we were only amused at first by this extraordinary scene; but we
were rudely disillusioned when one of the Three, a soldier with a red
ribbon in his busby, entered our carriage and announced that he was the
representative of the Soviet Government (Sovietsky Vlast).
This first envoy of Bolshevism was a simple man, very polite, and very
sincere in his beliefs. He could tell us nothing more, however, than
that we could not go further. He could not even say if we were prisoners
of war or not, and had no directions to give us. As to the general
situation, civil and military, he was, however, frank and indiscreet.
He said that an anti-Kolchak Government had been formed at Krasnoyarsk,
and that there was a “partisan” army under Shitinkin in that town. Two
regular regiments of the Reds had arrived and were on their way into
Krasnoyarsk, where the local Government, which he described as being
practically Bolshevik, was expected to dissolve voluntarily after
handing over its power to the representatives of the Soviet Republic.
One Red regiment was between us and Krasnoyarsk. He said that these Red
troops had come by sleigh from Tomsk, sometimes travelling at the rate
of seventy versts a day, and that some of them had even come on our own
echelons.
Commissars and Red officers continued to visit us during the rest of the
day, and were all of them courteous. Some of them had been officers in
the old army, and one had been a trusted subordinate of General Sakharov,
Kolchak’s Commander-in-Chief. The Colonel of a Red regiment told us that
we might retain our arms, but he insisted on the disarmament of all the
Poles. Next day, however, a civilian functionary of some kind visited
us and made us surrender all our weapons. The military Reds were, as a
rule, friendly; the civilian Reds were fanatical and unfriendly; but the
friendlies were, unfortunately, afraid of the fanatics. The soldiers at
the Front were kind and courteous, as military people at the Front nearly
always are.
Those soldiers constituted in fact the flaming vanguard of the Reds, the
young heralds of universal revolt, who preach the Gospel of Lenin in
conquered lands, and who certainly made a good impression in Siberia by
their noble phrases and their scrupulousness in paying for everything. By
their swords and their enthusiasm Bolshevism is maintained, but by their
swords Bolshevism will fall. For their present ignorance and fanaticism
can only last so long as they are at a distance from their homes, are
misinformed about conditions in Russia by Propagandist newspapers, and
are daily worked up into a state of almost religious fervour by what
is called the political department of the army. When they return to
Russia and see how things actually are, their enthusiasm may take a very
different direction; and already, indeed, they are beginning to doubt.
Several of them confessed to us that they hate the military Commissars
who always keep well to the rear, and who sometimes live in great luxury.
“We shall kill them some day,” said one of the Red soldiers; “they are
no better than bourgeois.” This slaughter will begin once the Bolsheviks
have made treaties with their external enemies, and have turned their
attention from war, about which they know a good deal, to peace, about
which they know nothing.
But at present these Janissaries of the Reds are still intoxicated
themselves by revolutionary enthusiasm and capable of intoxicating
others. How capable they are, I saw from the effect produced on the
Russians in our party by their high revolutionary fervour. “We do not
kill prisoners,” they said, “they lie who say so”; and told a harrowing
story of a White officer at Taiga who shot his two daughters and himself
sooner than surrender. “That man,” they said, “was misled by his own
Propaganda.”
They told us, and I afterwards found that it was true, that, before
evacuating Omsk, Kolchak’s Cossacks had massacred a number of workmen
imprisoned there. “But,” they added, “we have blotted all that out of our
minds. We will not take revenge.” I began to see that Bolshevism, like
Puritanism, the Great Tai-P’ing Rebellion, and even Mohammedanism, owes
all its explosive force to—the Bible. The Divine element in Christianity
is of such tremendous and supernatural potency that, if mixed with the
wrong ingredients, it is capable of blowing the world to pieces. A grain
of primitive Christianity added to a mass of Marxian error has made
Russian Communism the terrible and most dangerous compound that it is.
“An Idealism gone wrong”; that description is true as far as it goes, but
it does not go far enough.
Ivan, our train conductor, an honest, hard-working civilian with no
previous political views, was quite carried off his feet by the strong
wind of the new doctrine, by the large and benevolent phrases, redolent
of an austere republican justice, which the Red leaders continually
rolled off their tongues, phrases such as are frequently met with in
the oratory of the Cromwellian captains and the French Terrorists. He
spent all his time drinking in these burning words, and brought us back,
incidentally, useful information as to what was going on. He witnessed
the arrival of a Red commander and heard the Poles ask that their lives
should be spared and that they should have special treatment. “We never
kill prisoners,” replied the Red General haughtily, “but after what I
have heard of the conduct of the Poles in the villages through which I
have just passed, _they_ should be the last people in the world to ask
for special treatment.” And, knowing how the Poles _had_ behaved in those
villages, Ivan marvelled greatly at that Red leader’s moderation.
Another Russian of our party was still more affected by the oratory.
He was a young bluejacket, Makarov by name, who had been quartered on
us by a Jaeger Colonel in order that he should attend to several of
that officer’s lady relatives who had been placed in our charge. The
Colonel had assured us that Makarov was absolutely Bolshevik-proof, and
certainly he was a very handy and active youth. Unfortunately he became
so mad-drunk on the Bolshevik oratory that he heard and on a considerable
quantity of raw alcohol which he imbibed that he forthwith declared
himself a Red, threatened to murder every officer in the carriage, and
went roaring up and down the corridor with a revolver. He made our
position to the last degree dangerous, for if he began shooting or we
tried to defend ourselves, the Red Guards watching through the window
would have massacred all of us. I put him to bed five times; but the
mixture of bad doctrine and bad drink had excited his brain to such a
degree of insane activity that sleep was out of the question, and on each
occasion he rushed into the corridor after me, madder than ever. In the
end I began to fear that it was a clear case of homicidal mania, and that
nothing would save us.
While this uproar was going on, a number of White officers who had not
yet surrendered or been disarmed were calmly planning an impossible
anti-Bolshevik _coup_ in the compartment of the Russian officers
attached to our Mission. The whole incredible situation lacked only this
finishing touch to make it perfectly unique. Here were armed officers of
Kolchak’s Army holding a Council of War inside the Red lines, which they
had entered by reason of the neglect by the Bolsheviks of the simplest
military precautions. A few miles off, on the west, was a large force of
Whites, which intended to advance on Krasnoyarsk that night. A few miles
off on the east was a Red force, part of which had come to Krasnoyarsk on
White echelons without anybody in those echelons having ever suspected
them of being Red. Our train was surrounded by Bolshevik guards, who were
apparently unable to distinguish between friend and foe. The Bolshevik
officers who had visited us during the day had given away their military
dispositions, or, rather, their lack of military dispositions, and our
Russian interpreters were now communicating that valuable information to
the White leaders who had casually dropped in for a chat and a smoke,
without meeting any objection on the part of the Red soldiers supposed
to be guarding us. The only member of our party who did justice to the
situation was old Sergeant-Major Walters, who, after having had the
position explained to him, sat down deliberately, and said: “It beats me.”
It was a farce, but a farce which might easily end in a tragedy; for
if the Whites advanced we would find ourselves between two fires. I
have passed more peaceful nights than the night of January 6, 1920, the
Russian Christmas Eve, a festival for which, by the way, we had during
the early part of the day been making elaborate preparations. We sat up
till daybreak with our rifles loaded and ready, for we felt that if the
Whites did come on it would be our duty to join them, though the most
probable outcome of any fighting would be that, after having stirred up
trouble, the Whites would run away and leave us to be wiped out.
The night passed, however, without incident, and we all thanked God when
Christmas Day broke at length over the infinite waste of snow.