"DEMOCRATISATION OF THE ARMY"--ADMINISTRATION, SERVICE AND ROUTINE.
In order to carry out the democratisation of the Army and the reform
of the War Ministry in accordance with the new régime, Gutchkov
established a Commission under the Chairmanship of the late War
Minister, Polivanov, who died at Riga in 1920, where he was the expert
of the Soviet Government in the Delegation for making peace with
Poland. The Commission was composed of representatives of the Military
Commission of the Duma and of representatives of the Soviet. There was
a similar Commission in the Ministry of the Navy under the Chairmanship
of Savitch, a prominent member of the Duma. I know more about the
work of the First Commission, and will therefore dwell upon it. The
regulations drafted by the Commission were not confirmed until they
had been approved by the Military Section of the Executive Committee
of the Soviet, which enjoyed great authority and often indulged in
independent military law-making. No future historian of the Russian
Army will be able to avoid mention of the Polivanov Commission--this
fatal Institution whose stamp is affixed to every one of the measures
which destroyed the Army. With incredible cynicism, not far removed
from treachery, this Institution, comprising many Generals and officers
appointed by the War Minister, systematically and daily introduced
pernicious ideas and destroyed the rational foundations of military
administration. Very often drafts of regulations, which appeared to
the Government as excessively demagogic and were not sanctioned,
appeared in the Press and came to the knowledge of the masses of the
soldiery. They were instilled into the Army, and subsequently caused
pressure to be brought to bear upon the Government by the soldiery.
The military members of the Commission seemed to be competing with
one another in slavish subservience to the new masters, and endorsed
by their authority the destructive ideas. Men who reported to the
Committee have told me that civilians occasionally protested during the
debates and warned the Committee against going too far, but no such
protests ever came from the military members. I fail to understand
the psychology of the men, who came so rapidly and unreservedly under
the heel of the mob. The list of military members of the Commission
of the month of May indicates that most of them were Staff Officers
and representatives of other Departments, mostly of Petrograd
(twenty-five); only nine were from the Army, and these do not seem
to have been drawn from the line. Petrograd has its own psychology
different from that of the Army. The most important and detrimental
Democratic regulations were passed concerning the organisation of
Committees, disciplinary action, the reform of the Military Courts,
and, finally, the famous "Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier."
_Military Chiefs were deprived of disciplinary power._ It was
transferred to Regimental and Company Disciplinary Courts, which also
had to settle "misunderstandings" between officers and men. There is
no need to comment upon the importance of this curtailment of the
disciplinary power of the officers; it introduced complete anarchy in
the internal life of regimental units, and the officer was discredited
_by the law_. The latter circumstance is of paramount importance, and
the Revolutionary Democracy took full advantage of this procedure
in all its attempts at law-making. The reform of the Courts aimed
at weakening the influence of military judges by appointment upon
the course of the trial, the introduction of juries and the general
weakening of military justice. Field Courts-Martial were abolished,
which meted out quick punishment on the spot for obvious and heavy
crimes, such as treason, desertion, etc.
The democratisation of the Military Courts might be excused to a
certain extent by the fact that confidence in the officers, having
been undermined, it was necessary to create judicial Courts of a
mixed composition on an elective basis, which in theory were supposed
to enjoy to a greater extent the confidence of the Revolutionary
Democracy. But that object was not attained, because the Military
Courts--one of the foundations of order in the Army--fell entirely
into the hands of the mob. The investigating organs were completely
destroyed by the Revolutionary Democracy, and investigation was
strongly resisted by the armed men and sometimes by the Regimental
Revolutionary Institutions. The armed mob, which included many
criminal elements, exercised unrestrained and ignorant pressure upon
the conscience of the judges, and passed sentences in advance of
the verdicts of the judges. Army Corps Tribunals were destroyed, and
members of the jury who had dared to pass a sentence distasteful
to the mob were put to flight. These were common occurrences. The
case was heard in Kiev of the well-known Bolshevik, Dzevaltovski, a
captain of the Grenadier Regiment of the Guards, who was accused, with
seventy-eight other men, of having refused to join in the advance
and of having dragged his regiment and other units to the rear. The
circumstances of the trial were these: In Court there was a mob of
armed soldiers, who shouted approval of the accused on his way from the
prison to the Court. Dzevaltovski called, together with his escort,
at the Local Soviet, where he received an ovation. Finally, while the
jury were deliberating, the Armed Reserve Battalions paraded before the
Court with the band and sang the "International." Dzevaltovski and all
his companions were, of course, found "Not guilty." Military Courts
were thus gradually abolished.
It would be a mistake, however, to ascribe this new tendency solely to
the influence of the Soviets. It may also be explained by Kerensky's
point of view. He said: "I think that no results can be achieved by
violence and by mechanical compulsion in the present conditions of
warfare, where huge masses are concerned. The Provisional Government in
the three months of its existence has come to the conclusion that it is
necessary to appeal to the common-sense, the conscience and the sense
of duty of the citizens, and that it is the only means of achieving the
desired results."
In the first days of the Revolution the Provisional Government
abolished Capital Punishment by the Ukase of March 12th. The Liberal
Press greeted this measure with great pathos. Articles were written
expressing strongly humanitarian views, but scant understanding of
realities, of the life of the Army, and also scant foresight. V.
Nabokoff, the Russian Abolitionist, who was General Secretary to the
Provisional Government, wrote: "This happy event is a sign of true
magnanimity and of wise foresight.... Capital Punishment is abolished
unconditionally and for ever.... It is certain that in no other country
has the moral condemnation of this, the worst kind of murder, reached
such enormous proportions as in Russia.... Russia has joined the States
that no longer know the shame and degradation of judicial murder."
It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Justice drafted two
laws, in one of which Capital Punishment was maintained for the most
serious military offences--espionage and treason. But the Department of
Military Justice, headed by General Anushkin, emphatically declared in
favour of complete abolition of Capital Punishment.
July came. Russia had already become used to Anarchist outbreaks, but
was nevertheless horror-stricken at the events that took place on the
battlefields of Galicia, near Kalush and Tarnopol. The telegrams of the
Government Commissars, Savinkov and Filonenko, and of General Kornilov,
who demanded the immediate reintroduction of Capital Punishment, were
as a stroke of a whip to the "Revolutionary Conscience." On July
11th, Kornilov wrote: "The Army of maddened, ignorant men, who are
not protected by the Government from systematic demoralisation and
disruption, and who have lost all sense of human dignity, is in full
flight. On the fields, which can no longer be called battlefields,
shame and horror such as the Russian Army has never known reign
supreme.... The mild Government measures have destroyed discipline,
and are provoking the fitful cruelty of the unrestrained masses. These
elemental feelings find expression in violence, plunder and murders....
Capital Punishment would save many innocent lives at the price of a few
traitors and cowards being eliminated."
On July 12th the Government restored Capital Punishment and
Revolutionary Military Tribunals, which replaced the former Field
Courts-Martial. The difference was that the judges were elected (three
officers and three men) from the list of the juries or from Regimental
Committees. This measure, the restoration of Capital Punishment, due
to pressure having been brought to bear upon the Government by the
Military Command, the Commissars, and the Committees, was, however,
foredoomed to failure. Kerensky subsequently tried to apologise to
the Democracy at the "Democratic Conference": "Wait till I have
signed a single death sentence, and I will then allow you to curse
me...." On the other hand, the very personnel of the Courts and their
surroundings, described above, made the very creation of these Courts
impossible: there were hardly any judges capable of passing a death
sentence or any Commissars willing to endorse such a sentence. On the
Fronts which I commanded there were, at any rate, no such cases. After
the new Revolutionary Military Tribunals had been functioning for two
months, the Department of Military Justice was flooded with reports
from Military Chiefs and Commissars on the "blatant infringements of
judicial procedure, upon the ignorance and lack of experience of the
judges."
The disbandment of mutinous regiments was one of the punitive measures
carried out by the Supreme Administration or Command. This measure
had not been carefully thought out, and led to thoroughly unexpected
consequences--it provoked mutinies, prompted by a desire to be
disbanded. Regimental honour and other moral impulses had long since
been characterised as ridiculous prejudices. The actual advantages of
disbanding, on the other hand, were obvious to the men: regiments were
removed from the firing line for a long time, disbanding continued for
months, and the men were sent to new units, which were thus filled
with vagabond and criminal elements. Responsibility for this measure
can be equally divided between the War Ministry, the Commissars,
and the Stavka. The whole burden of it finally fell once more upon
the guiltless officers, who lost their regiments--which were their
families--and their appointments, and were compelled to wander about in
new places or find themselves in the desolate condition of the Reserve.
Apart from this undesirable element, units were filled with the late
inmates of convict prisons, owing to the broad amnesty granted by the
Government to criminals, who were to expiate their crimes by military
service. My efforts to combat this measure were unavailing, and
resulted in the formation of a special regiment of convicts--a present
from Moscow--and in the formation of solid anarchist cadres in the
Reserve Battalions. The _naïf_ and insincere argument of the Legislator
that crimes were committed because of the Czarist Régime, and that
a free country would convert the criminal into a self-sacrificing
hero, did not come true. In the garrisons, where amnestied criminals
were for some reason or other more numerous, they became a menace to
the population before they ever saw the Front. Thus, in June, in the
units quartered at Tomsk, there was an intense propaganda of wholesale
plunder and of the suppression of all authority. Soldiers formed large
robber bands and terrorized the population. The Commissar, the Chief
of the garrison, and all the local Revolutionary Organisations started
a campaign against the plunderers; after much fighting, no less than
2,300 amnestied criminals were turned out of the garrison.
Reforms were intended to affect the entire administration of the Army
and of the Fleet, but the above-mentioned Committees of Polivanov
and Savitch failed to carry them out, as they were abolished by
Kerensky, who recognised at last all the evil they had wrought. The
Committees merely prepared the Democratisation of the War and Naval
Councils by introducing elected soldiers into them. This circumstance
is the more curious because, according to the Legislator's intention,
these Councils were to consist of men of experience and knowledge,
capable of solving questions of organisation, service, and routine,
of military and naval legislation, and of making financial estimates
of the cost of the armed forces of Russia. This yearning of the
uncultured portion of Democracy for spheres of activity foreign to it
was subsequently developed on an extensive scale. Thus, for example,
many military colleges were, to a certain extent, managed by Committees
of servants, most of whom were illiterate. Under the Bolshevik Régime,
University Councils numbered not only Professors and students, but also
hall-porters.
I will not dwell upon the minor activities of the Committees, the
reorganisation of the Army, and the new regulations, but will describe
the most important measure--the Committees and the "Declaration of the
Rights of the Soldier."