_pourparlers_ with the Admiral's delegates about the future
international status of Finland, whose help was then being solicited to
free Petrograd from the Bolshevist yoke. The Finns insisted on the
preliminary recognition of their complete independence by the Russians.
Kolchak's representatives shrank from bartering any territories which
had belonged to the state on their own sole responsibility. None the
less, as the subject was being theoretically threshed out in all its
bearings, the members of the Russian Council in Paris inquired of the
Allies whether the Finns had at least renounced their pretensions to the
province of Karelia. But the spokesmen of the Conference replied
elusively, giving them no assurance that the claim had been
relinquished. Thereupon they naturally concluded that the Finns either
still maintained their demand or else had not yet modified their former
decision on the matter, and they deemed it their duty to report in this
sense to their chief. Yet the plenipotentiaries, in their message on the
subject to Kolchak, which was sent about the same time, assured him that
the annexation of Karelia was no longer insisted upon, and that the
Finns would not again put forward the claim! One hardly knows what to
think of tactics like these. In their talks with the spokesmen of
certain border states of Russia the official representatives of the
three European Powers at the Conference employed language that gave rise
to misunderstandings which may have untoward consequences in the future.
One would like to believe that these misunderstandings were caused by
mere slips of the tongue, which should not have been taken literally by
those to whom they were addressed; but in the meanwhile they have become
not only the source of high, possibly delusive, hopes, but the basis of
elaborate policies. For example, Esthonian and Lettish Ministers were
given to understand that they would be permitted to send diplomatic
legations to Petrograd as soon as Russia was reconstituted, a mode of
intercourse which presupposes the full independence of all the countries
concerned. A constitution was also drawn up for Esthonia by one of the
Great Powers, which started with the postulate that each people was to
be its own master. Consequently, the two nations in question were
warranted in looking forward to receiving that complete independence.
And if such was, indeed, the intention of the Great Powers, there is
nothing further to be said on the score of straightforwardness or
precision. But neither in the terms submitted to Kolchak nor in those to
which his Paris agents were asked to give their assent was the
independence of either country as much as hinted at.[272]
These may perhaps seem trivial details, but they enable us to estimate
the methods and the organizing arts of the statesmen upon whose skill in
resource and tact in dealing with their fellows depended the new
synthesis of international life and ethics which they were engaged in
realizing. It would be superfluous to investigate the effect upon the
Russians, or, indeed, upon any of the peoples represented in Paris, of
the Secret Council's conspirative deliberations and circuitous
procedure, which were in such strong contrast to the "open covenants
openly arrived at" to which in their public speeches they paid such high
tribute.
The main danger, which the Allies redoubted from failure to restore
tranquillity in Russia, was that Germany might accomplish it and, owing
to her many advantages, might secure a privileged position in the
country and use it as a stepping-stone to material prosperity, military
strength, and political ascendancy. This feat she could accomplish
against considerable odds. She would achieve it easily if the Allies
unwittingly helped her, as they were doing.
Unfortunately the Allied governments had not much hope of succeeding.
If they had been capable of elaborating a comprehensive plan, they no
longer possessed the means of executing it. But they devised none. "The
fact is," one of the Conference leaders exclaimed, "we have no policy
toward Russia. Neither do we possess adequate data for one."
They strove to make good this capital omission by erecting a paper wall
between Germany and her great Slav neighbor. The plan was simple. The
Teutons were to be compelled to disinterest themselves in the affairs of
Russia, with whose destinies their own are so closely bound up. But they
soon realized that such a partition is useless as a breakwater against
the tidal wave of Teutondom, and Germany is still destined to play the
part of Russia's steward and majordomo.
How could it be otherwise? Germany and Russia are near neighbors. Their
economic relations have been continuous for ages, and the Allies have
made them indispensable in the future; Russia is ear-marked as Germany's
best colony. The two peoples are become interdependent. The Teuton will
recognize the Slav as an ally in economics, and will pay himself
politically. Who will now thwart or check this process? Russia must
live, and therefore buy and sell, barter and negotiate. Can a parchment
treaty hinder or invalidate her dealings? Can it prevent an admixture of
politics in commercial arrangements, seeing that they are but two
aspects of one and the same transaction? It is worthy of note that a
question which goes to the quick of the matter was never mooted. It is
this: Is it an essential element of the future ordering of the world
that Germany shall play no part whatever in its progress? Is it to be
assumed that she will always content herself with being treated as the
incorrigible enemy of civilization? And, if not, what do all these
checks and barriers amount to?
In Russia there are millions of Germans conversant with the language,
laws, and customs of the people. Many of them have been settled there
for generations. They are passionately attached to their race, and
neither unfriendly nor useless to the country of their adoption. The
trade, commerce, and industry of the European provinces are largely in
their hands and in those of their forerunners and helpers, the Jews. The
Russo-German and Jewish middlemen in the country have their faces ever
turned toward the Fatherland. They are wont to buy and sell there. They
always obtained their credit in Berlin, Dresden, or Frankfurt. They
acted as commercial travelers, agents, brokers, bankers, for Russians
and Germans. They are constantly going and coming between the two
countries. How are these myriads to be fettered permanently and kept
from eking out a livelihood in the future on the lines traced by
necessity or interest in the past? The Russians, on their side, must
live, and therefore buy and sell. Has the Conference or the League the
right or power to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom
alone they may have dealings? Can it narrow the field of Russia's
political activities? Some people flatter themselves that it can. In
this case the League of Nations must transform itself into an alliance
for the suppression of the German race.
Burning indignation and moral reprobation were the sentiments aroused
among the high-minded Allies by the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
For that mockery of a peace, even coming from an enemy, transcended the
bounds of human vengeance. It was justly anathematized by all Entente
peoples as the loathsome creation of a frenzied people. But shortly
afterward the Entente governments themselves, their turn having come,
wrought what Russians of all parties regard as a political patchwork of
variegated injustice more odious far, because its authors claimed to be
considered as the devoted friends of their victims and the champions of
right. Whereas the Brest-Litovsk Treaty provided for a federative Slav
state, with provincial diets and a federal parliament, the system
substituted by the Allies consisted in carving up Russia into an
ever-increasing number of separate states, some of which cannot live by
themselves, in debarring the inhabitants from a voice in the matter, in
creating a permanent agency for foreign intervention, and ignoring
Russia's right to reparation from the common enemy. The Russians were
not asked even informally to say what they thought or felt about what
was being done. This province and that were successively lopped off in a
lordly way by statesmen who aimed at being classed as impartial
dispensers of justice and sowers of the seeds of peace, but were
unacquainted with the conditions and eschewed investigation. Here, at
all events, the usual symptoms of hesitancy and procrastination were
absent. Swift resolve and thoroughness marked the disintegrating action
by which they unwittingly prepared the battlefields of the future.
Nobody acquainted with Russian psychology imagines that the feelings of
a high-souled people can be transformed by gifts of food, money, or
munitions made to some of their fellow-countrymen. How little likely
Russians are to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be
gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in the months of
April and May, when the fall of the capital into the hands of the
anti-Bolshevists was confidently expected.
At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary for their success
against Bolshevism was the capture of Petrograd. If that city, which,
despite its cosmopolitan character, still retained its importance as the
center of political Russia, could be wrested from the tenacious grasp
of Lenin and Trotzky, the fall of the anarchist dictators was, people
held, a foregone conclusion. The friends of Kolchak accordingly pressed
every lever to set the machinery in motion for the march against Peter's
city. And as, of all helpers, the Finns and Esthonians were admittedly
the most efficacious, conversations were begun with their leaders. They
were ready to drive a bargain, but it must be a hard and lucrative one.
They would march on Petrograd for a price. The principal condition which
they laid down was the express and definite recognition of their
complete independence within frontiers which it would be unfruitful here
to discuss. The Kolchak government was ready to treat with the Finnish
Cabinet, as the _de facto_ government, and to recognize Finland's
present status for what it is in international law; but as they could
not give what they did not possess, their recognition must, they
explained, be like their own authority, provisional. A similar reply was
made to the Esthonians; to this those peoples demurred. The Russians
stood firm and the negotiations fell through. It is to be supposed that
when they have recovered their former status they will prove more
amenable to the blandishments of the Allies than they were to the
powerful bribe dangled before their eyes by the Esthonians and the
Finns?
But if the improvised arrangements entailing dismemberment which the
Great Powers imposed on Russia during her cataleptic trance are revised,
as they may be, whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what
course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather under her wing
some of the peoples whose complete independence the League of Nations
was so eager to guarantee, will that body respond to the appeal of these
and fly to their assistance? Russia, who has not been consulted, will
not be as bound by the canons of the League, and one need not be a
prophet to foretell the reluctance of Western armies to wage another war
in order to prevent territories, of which some of the plenipotentiaries
may have heard as little as of Teschen, becoming again integral parts of
the Slav state. Europe may then see its political axis once more shifted
and its outlook obscured. Thus the system of equilibrium, which was
theoretically abolished by the Fourteen Points, may be re-established by
the hundred and one economico-political changes which Russia's recovery
will contribute to bring about.
A decade is but a twinkling in the history of a nation. Within a few
years Russia may once more be united. The army that will have achieved
this feat will constitute a formidable weapon in the hands of the state
that wields it. As everything, even military strength, is relative, and
as the armies of the rest of Europe will not be impatient to fight in
the East, and will therefore count for considerably less than their
numbers, there will be no real danger of an invasion. Russia is a
country easy to get into, but hard to get out of, and military success
against its armies there would in verity be a victory without glory,
annexation, indemnities, or other appreciable gains.
It is hard to believe that the distinguished statesmen of the Conference
took these eventualities fully into account before attempting to reshape
amorphous Russia after their own vague ideal. But whether we assess
their work by the standards of political science or of international
ethics, or explain it as a series of well-meant expedients begotten by
the practical logic of momentary convenience, we must confess that its
gifted authors lacked a direct eye for the wayward tides of national and
international movements; were, in fact, smitten by political blindness,
and did the best they could in these distressing circumstances.
FOOTNOTES:
[260] From whatever angle this Russian business is viewed, the policy of
the Allies, if it can be dignified with that name, seems to be a
compound of weakness, ineptitude, and shilly-shally."--Cf. _The
Westminster Gazette_, July 5, 1919.
[261] Cf. _Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919. Article by M. Auguste
Gauvain.
[262] There can be no doubt that the Bolshevist government under
Lunatcharsky has made a point of furthering the arts, sciences, and
elementary instruction. All reports from foreign travelers and from
eminent Russians--one of these my university fellow-student, now
perpetual secretary of the Academy--agree about this silver lining to a
dark cloud.
[263] This latter fact was doubtless known to the British government,
which decided as early as March to recall the British troops from
northern Russia.
[264] I published the facts in _The Daily Telegraph_, April 21, and _The
Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 10, 1919.
[265] Colonel House is said to have dissociated himself from the
President on this occasion.
[266] It was sent at the end of October, 1918, and to my knowledge was
not published in full.
[267] Omsk, Ekaterinodar, Archangel, and the Crimea. The last-named
disappeared soon afterward.
[268] See Chapter IV "Censorship and Secrecy," p. 132.
[269] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, July 5, 1919.
[270] This admission was made to a distinguished member of the
Diplomatic Corps.
[271] In _The Daily Telegraph_, June 19, 1919, and in _The Public
Ledger_ of Philadelphia.
[272] In July M. Pichon told the Esthonian delegates that France
recognized the independence of their country in principle. But this
declaration was not taken seriously, either by the Russians or by the
French.
XI
BOLSHEVISM
What is Bolshevism? A generic term that stands for a number of things
which have little in common. It varies with the countries where it
appears. In Russia it is the despotism of an organized and unscrupulous
group of men in a disorganized community. It might also be termed the
frenzy of a few epileptics running amuck among a multitude of
paralytics. It is not so much a political doctrine or a socialist theory
as a psychic disease of a section of the community which cannot be cured
without leaving permanent traces and perhaps modifying certain organic
functions of the society affected. For some students at a distance who
make abstraction from its methods--as a critic appreciating the
performance of "Hamlet" might make abstraction from the part of the
Prince of Denmark--it is a modification of the theory of Karl Marx, the
newest contribution to latter-day social science. In Russia, at any
rate, the general condition of society from which it sprang was
characterized not by the advance of social science, but by a psychic
disorder the germs of which, after a century of incubation, were brought
to the final phase of development by the war. In its origins it is a
pathological phenomenon.
Four and a half years of an unprecedented campaign which drained to
exhaustion the financial and economic resources of the European
belligerents upset the psychical equilibrium of large sections of their
populations. Goaded by hunger and disease to lawless action, and no
longer held back by legal deterrents or moral checks, they followed the
instinct of self-preservation to the extent of criminal lawlessness.
Familiarity with death and suffering dispelled the fear of human
punishment, while numbness of the moral sense made them insensible to
the less immediate restraints of a religious character. These phenomena
are not unusual concomitants of protracted wars. History records
numerous examples of the homecoming soldiery turning the weapons
destined for the foreign foe against political parties or social classes
in their own country. In other European communities for some time
previously a tendency toward root-reaching and violent change was
perceptible, but as the state retained its hold on the army it remained
a tendency. In the case of Russia--the country where the state, more
than ordinarily artificial and ill-balanced, was correspondingly
weak--Fate had interpolated a blood-stained page of red and white terror
in the years 1906-08. Although fitful, unorganized, and abortive, that
wild splutter was one of the foretokens of the impending cataclysm, and
was recognized as such by the writer of these pages. During the
foregoing quarter of a century he had watched with interest the sowing
of the dragon's teeth from which was one day to spring up a race of
armed and frenzied men. Few observers, however, even in the Tsardom,
gaged the strength or foresaw the effects of the anarchist propaganda
which was being carried on suasively and perseveringly, oftentimes
unwittingly, in the nursery, the school, the church, the university, and
with eminent success in the army and the navy. Hence the widespread
error that the Russian revolution was preceded by no such era of
preparation as that of the encylopedists in France.
Recently, however, publicists have gone to the other extreme and
asserted that Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and a host of other Russian
writers were apostles of the tenets which have since received the name
of Bolshevism, and that it was they who prepared the Russian upheaval
just as it was the authors of the "Encyclopedia" who prepared the French
Revolution. In this sweeping form the statement is misleading. Russian
literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars--with few
exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff--was unquestionably a vehicle
for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross
exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form
of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine
anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the
forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to
know, was one of its keenest antagonists. Nor was it only anarchism that
he combated. Like Leskoff, he was an inveterate enemy of political
radicalism, and we university students bore him a grudge in consequence.
In his masterly delineation[273] of a group of "reformers," in
particular of Verkhovensky--whom psychic tendency, intellectual anarchy,
and political crime bring under the category of Bolshevists--he
foreshadowed the logical conclusion, and likewise the political
consummation, of the corrosive doctrines which in those days were
associated with the name of Bakunin. In the year 1905-06, when the
upshot of the conflict between Tsarism and the revolution was still
doubtful, Count Witte and I often admired the marvelous intuition of the
great novelist, whose gallery of portraits in the "Devils" seemed to
have become suddenly endowed with life, and to be conspiring, shooting,
and bomb-throwing in the streets of Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, and
Tiflis. The seeds of social revolution sown by the novelists, essayists,
and professional guides of the nation were forced by the wars of 1904
and 1914 into rapid germination.
As far back as the year 1892, in a work published over a pseudonym, the
present writer described the rotten condition of the Tsardom, and
ventured to foretell its speedy collapse.[274] The French historian
Michelet wrote with intuition marred by exaggeration and acerbity: "A
barbarous force, a law-hating world, Russia sucks and absorbs all the
poison of Europe and then gives it off in greater quantity and deadlier
intensity. When we admit Russia, we admit the cholera, dissolution,
death. That is the meaning of Russian propaganda. Yesterday she said to
us, 'I am Christianity.' To-morrow she will say, 'I am socialism.' It is
the revolting idea of a demagogy without an idea, a principle, a
sentiment, of a people which would march toward the west with the gait
of a blind man, having lost its soul and its will and killing at random,
of a terrible automaton like a dead body which can still reach and slay.
"It might commove Europe and bespatter it with blood, but that would not
hinder it from plunging itself into nothingness in the abysmal ooze of
definite dissolution."
Russia, then, led by domiciled aliens without a fatherland, may be truly
said to have been wending steadily toward the revolutionary vortex long
before the outbreak of hostilities. Her progress was continuous and
perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and
myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to
traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, before reaching
the abyss. This, however, was mere guesswork, which one of the many
possibilities--and in especial change in the speed-rate--might belie. In
effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, and it
was the World War and its appalling concomitants that precipitated the
catastrophe.
As circumstances willed it, certain layers of the people of central
Europe were also possessed by the revolutionary spirit at the close of
the World War. In their case hunger, hardship, disease, and moral shock
were the avenues along which it moved and reached them. This coincidence
was fraught with results more impressive than serious. The governments
of both these great peoples had long been the mainstays of monarchic
tradition, military discipline, and the principle of authority. The
Teutons, steadily pursuing an ideal which lay at the opposite pole to
anarchy, had risked every worldly and well-nigh every spiritual
possession to realize it. It was the hegemony of the world. This
aspiration transfigured, possessed, fanaticized them. Teutondom became
to them what Islam is to Mohammedans of every race, even when they shake
off religion. They eschewed no means, however iniquitous, that seemed to
lead to the goal. They ceased to be human in order to force Europe to
become German. Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the
altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of
the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the
Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like
their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard
concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the
ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were
dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when
at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland
their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse,
impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their
demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became
frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another,
they finally started upon a work of wanton destruction relieved by no
creative idea. It was at this time-point that they endeavored to join
hands with their tumultuous Eastern neighbors, and that the one word
"Bolshevism" connoted the revolutionary wave that swept over some of the
Slav and German lands. But only for a moment. One may safely assert, as
a general proposition, that the same undertaking, if the Germans and the
Russians set their hands to it, becomes forthwith two separate
enterprises, so different are the conceptions and methods of these two
peoples. Bolshevism was almost emptied of its contents by the Germans,
and little left of it but the empty shell.