THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE ARMY: THE COMMISSARS.
The next measure for the democratisation of the Army was the
introduction of the Institution of Commissars. The idea was derived
from the history of the French Revolutionary Wars, and was fostered
in various circles at different times; it was prompted chiefly by
_distrust of the Commanding Staffs_. Pressure was brought to bear
from below. The Conference of the Delegates of the Front addressed an
emphatic demand to the Soviet in the middle of April that Commissars
should be introduced in the Army. The excuse was that it was no longer
possible to preserve order in respect of the attitude of the men
towards individual Commanding Officers, and that, if cases of arbitrary
dismissal had as yet been avoided, it was only due to the fact that
the Army expected the Soviet and the Government to take the necessary
steps and did not wish to handicap their work. At the same time, the
Conference suggested the absurd idea of the simultaneous appointment
to the Army of three kinds of Commissars: (1) from the Provisional
Government, (2) from the Soviets, and (3) from the Army Committees.
The Conference went very far in their demands, and demanded that the
Commissariats, as controlling organs, should: discuss _all_ matters
appertaining to the competence of the Commanders of Armies and Fronts;
counter-sign _all_ Army Orders; investigate the activities of the
Commanding Staffs, with the right to recommend their dismissal.
Protracted negotiations on this matter ensued between the Soviet and
the Government, and at the end of April it was agreed that Commissars
would be appointed to the Army--one from the Provisional Government and
one from the Soviet. This decision, however, was subsequently altered,
probably as the result of the formation of a Coalition Ministry (May
5th). One Commissar was appointed by agreement between the Government
and the Soviet. He represented both these bodies, and was responsible
to them. At the end of June the Provisional Government introduced the
office of Commissar of the Fronts, and thus defined their function:
according to the instructions of the War Ministry, they were to see
that all political questions arising within the Armies of the Front
should be given a uniform solution, and that the work of the Army
Commissars should be co-ordinated. At the end of July a final touch
was given by the appointment of a High Commissar attached to the
Stavka, and the entire official correspondence was concentrated in the
political section of the War Ministry. No law, however, was passed
defining the rights and the duties of the Commissars. The Commanding
Staffs, at any rate, were unaware of such laws, and this alone gave
rise to all the misunderstandings and conflicts that followed. The
Commissars had secret instructions to watch the Commanding Staffs and
Headquarters in respect of their political reliability. From that
point of view the democratic régime went further, perhaps, than the
autocratic. Of this I became convinced during my command of the Western
and South-Western Fronts, in reading the telegrams exchanged between
the Commissariats and Petrograd. These telegrams--may the Commissars
forgive me!--were handed to me, de-coded, by my Staff, immediately
after their despatch. This part of the Commissars' duty required a
certain training in political intelligence, but their overt duties were
infinitely more complex: they demanded statesmanship, a clear knowledge
of the aims to be pursued, an understanding of the psychology, not
merely of the officers and men, but of the Senior Commanding Staff,
acquaintance with the fundamental principles of service and routine in
the Army, great tact, and, finally, the personal qualities of courage,
strong will, and energy. Only such qualifications were capable of
mitigating to a certain degree the disastrous consequences of a measure
which deprived (to be more accurate, sanctioned the deprivation of) the
Commanding Officers of the possibility of influencing the troops--that
influence being the only means of strengthening the hope and faith in
victory.
Such elements were not to be found, unfortunately, in the circles
connected with the Government and the Soviet and enjoying their
confidence. The personnel of the Commissars whom I met may be described
thus: War-time officers, doctors, solicitors, newspaper men, exiles
and _emigrés_ completely out of touch with Russian life, members of
militant Revolutionary organisations, etc. These men had, obviously,
inadequate knowledge of the Army. All these men belonged to Socialist
parties, from Social-Democrat Mensheviks to the group "Edinstvo"
(unity), War party blinkers, and very often did not follow the
political lines of the Government because they considered themselves
tied by Soviet and party discipline. Owing to political differences of
opinion, the attitude of the Commissars towards the War also varied.
Stankevitch, one of the Commissars, who carried out his duties in his
own way most conscientiously, when proceeding to visit an advancing
Division was beset with doubts: "The soldiers believe that we do not
wish to deceive them; they force themselves, therefore, to forget
their doubts, and they go forward to death and murder. But we, are we
entitled not only to encourage them, but to take upon ourselves the
decision?" According to Savinkov (who was Commissar of the Seventh
Army of the South-Western Front, and later War Minister), not all the
Commissars agreed upon the question of Bolshevism, and not all of
them considered a resolute struggle against the Bolsheviks possible
or desirable. Savinkov was an exception. Although not a soldier by
profession, he was steeled in struggle and wanderings, in constant
danger, and his hands were stained with the blood of political victims.
This man, however, understood the laws of the struggle, threw off the
yoke of the party, and fought more resolutely than others against the
disorganisation of the Army. But the personal touch in his attitude
towards the events was somewhat too marked. None of the Commissars,
with the exception of very few men of the Savinkov type, displayed
personal strength or energy. They were men of words, not of deeds.
Their lack of training would not have had such negative results had it
not been for the fact that, their functions not being clearly defined,
they gradually began to interfere with every feature of the life and
service of the troops, partly on their own initiative, partly at the
instigation of the men and of the Army Committees, and partly even
of Commanding Officers, who were trying to escape responsibility.
Questions of appointments, dismissals, and even operative plans
attracted the attention of the Commissars, not only from the point of
view of "covert counter-Revolution," but from the point of view of
practicability. The confusion in their minds was so great that the
weaker elements among the Commanding Staffs were sometimes completely
disheartened. I remember one case during the July retreat on the
South-Western Front. One of the Army Corps Commanders rashly destroyed
a well-equipped military railway, thereby placing the Army in an
exceedingly difficult position. He was dismissed by the Army Commander,
and afterwards expressed to me his sincere astonishment: "Why had he
been dismissed? He had acted--upon the instructions of the Commissar."
The Commissars carried out the ideas of the Soviet and whole-heartedly
defended the sacred newly-acquired rights of the soldier, but failed
to fulfil their primary duty--direct the political life of the Army.
Very often the most destructive propaganda was permitted. Soldiers'
meetings and Committees were allowed to pass all kinds of anti-National
and anti-Government resolutions, and the Commissars only interfered
when the tension of the atmosphere resulted in an armed mutiny. Such a
policy puzzled the troops, the Committees, and the Commanding Officers.
The institution of Commissars did not attain its purpose. Among the
soldiers the Commissars could not be popular because they were to
a certain extent an instrument of compulsion, and occasionally of
suppression. At the same time, the extent of their power was not
well defined, and they could not gain proper authority over the most
undisciplined units. This was confirmed later after the seizure of
power by the Bolsheviks, when the Commissars were the first to flee
from their posts in a great hurry and in secret.
There thus appeared in the Russian Army, instead of one authority,
three different authorities, which excluded one another--the Commanding
Officer, the Committee, and the Commissar. They were shadowy
authorities. Another authority was overhanging, and was oppressing them
morally with all its insensate weight--the power of the mob.
* * * * *
In examining the question of the new Institutions--Commissars and
Committees--and of their bearing upon the destinies of the Russian
Army, I have done so solely from the point of view of the preservation
of our Armed Forces as an important factor in the future of our
country. It would, however, be a mistake to overlook the connection
between these measures and the entirety of laws which govern the
life of the people and the course of the Revolution. These measures,
moreover, bear the stamp of logic and of inevitability owing to the
part which the Revolutionary Democracy had chosen to play. Therein lies
the tragedy of the situation. The Socialist Democracy did not possess
any elements sufficiently trained to become the instruments of Army
Administration. At the same time, it did not have the courage or the
possibility to quell the resistance of the Bourgeois Democracy and of
the Commanding Staffs, and to compel them to work for the glorification
of Socialism, as the Bolsheviks afterwards did, who forced the remnants
of the Russian _intelligencia_ and of the officers to serve Communism
by applying methods of sanguinary and ruthless extermination. When the
Revolutionary Democracy actually assumed power and set up to fulfil
certain aims it was well aware of the fact that those elements in
the administration and the Command who were called upon to carry out
these aims did not share the views of the Revolutionary Democracy.
Hence the inevitable distrust of these elements and the desire to
weaken their influence and their authority. What methods did the
Democracy have recourse to? As the Central Revolutionary organ was
utterly devoid of statesmanship and of patriotism, it applied in its
struggle against political opponents destructive methods, completely
disregarding the fact that by these methods they were destroying the
country and the Army. Another circumstance must be borne in mind--the
Revolution that had shaken the State to its very foundations and upset
the established class relations occurred at the moment when the flower
of the Nation--over 10,000,000 men--were under arms. Elections to the
Constituent Assembly were impending. In these circumstances it was
impossible to avoid politics being introduced into the Army, as it is
impossible to arrest the course of a river. But it would have been
possible to divert it to proper channels. In this matter, however, the
two contending forces (that which wished to preserve the State and the
Demagogic Force) also collided, as both endeavoured to influence the
attitude of the Army, which was a decisive factor in the Revolution.
These were the propositions which pre-ordained and explained the
subsequent course of the Democratisation of the Army. The Socialist
Democracy, which governed at first behind the scenes and then overtly,
was endeavouring to strengthen its position and to bow to the
instincts of the crowd, destroyed the military power and connived at
the Institution of Elective Military Organisations, which were less
dangerous and more open to its influence than the Commanding Staffs,
although they did not answer the requirements of the Soviet. The
necessity of military authority of some sort was clearly realised.
The Commanding Staffs were distrusted, and there was a desire to
create a buffer between the two artificially separated elements of
the Army. These considerations inspired the creation of the office of
Commissars, who bore the dual responsibility before the Soviet and the
Government. Neither the men nor the officers were satisfied with these
institutions, which fell together with the Provisional Government, were
revived with certain modifications in the Red Army, and once again
swept away by the tide of events.
"Peoples cannot choose their Institutions, as man cannot choose his
age. Peoples obey the Institutions to which they are tied by their
past, their creed, by the economic laws and surroundings in which they
live. There are many examples in history when the people have destroyed
by violent Revolution the Institutions which it has taken a dislike
for. But there is not a case in history of these new institutions
forcibly imposed upon the people becoming permanent and solid. After a
while the past comes again into force, because we are created entirely
by that past and it is our supreme ruler."[19]
It is obvious that the Russian National Army will be revived not only
on democratic, but on historical foundations.