Was work in common possible in these circumstances?
The idea of the advance was finally, however, accepted by the Committee of the Front, which demanded that from itself and from Army Committees “fighting committees of contact” be established which would be entitled to partake in the drafting of plans of operations to control the Commanding Officers and Headquarters of the advancing troops, etc. I naturally refused the request, and a conflict ensued. The War Minister was very much perturbed, and sent to Minsk the Chief of his Chancery, Colonel Baronovsky, a young staff officer who prompted Kerensky in all military matters, and the Commissar Stankevitch, who remained at the Western Front for two days, was removed to the Northern Front and replaced by Kalinin. Baronovsky’s friends afterwards told me that the question of my dismissal had been raised in view of “friction with the Committee of the Front.” Stankevitch appeased the Committee and “fighting committees of contact” were allowed to take part in the advance, but were denied the right of control over the operations and of assisting in drawing up plans.
Of the three Army Commanders at that Front, two were entirely in the hands of the Committees. As their sectors were inactive, their presence could be temporarily tolerated. The advance was to begin on the Front of the 10th Army, commanded by General Kisselevsky, in the region of Molodetchno. I inspected the troops and the position, interviewed the Commanding Officers and addressed the troops. In the preceding chapters I have recounted impressions, facts, and episodes of the life of the Western front. I will, therefore, mention here only a few details. I saw the troops on parade. Some units had preserved the appearance and the routine of the normal pre-Revolutionary times. These, however, were exceptions, and were to be found chiefly in the Army Corps of General Dovbor-Mussnitzki, who was persistently and sternly maintaining the old discipline. Most of the units, however, were more akin to a devastated ants-nest than to an organised unit, although they had retained a semblance of discipline and drill. After the review I walked down the ranks and spoke to the soldiers. I was deeply depressed by their new mental attitude. Their speeches were nought but endless complaints, suspicions and grievances against everyone and everything. They complained of all the officers, from the Platoon Commander to the Army Corps Commander, complained of the lentil soup, of having to stand at the Front for ever, of the next regiment of the line, and of the Provisional Government for being implacably hostile to the Germans. I witnessed scenes which I shall not forget till my last hour. In one of the Army Corps I asked to be shown the worst unit. I was taken to the 703rd Suram Regiment. We drove up to a huge crowd of unarmed men who were standing, sitting, wandering about the plain behind the village. Having sold their clothes for cash or for drink, they were dressed in rags, bare-footed, ragged, unkempt, and seemed to have reached the utmost limit of physical degradation. I was met by the Divisional Commander, whose lower lip trembled, and by a Regimental Commander who had the face of a condemned man. Nobody gave the order “Attention!” and none of the soldiers rose. The nearest ranks moved towards our motor cars. My first impulse was to curse the regiment and turn back. But that might have been interpreted as cowardice, so I went into the thick of the crowd. I stayed there for about an hour. Good Heavens, what was the matter with these men, with the reasonable creature of God, with the Russian field-labourer? They were like men possessed, their brain dimmed, their speech stubborn and completely lacking logic or common-sense; their shrieks were hysterical, full of abuse and foul swearing. We tried to speak, but the replies were angry and stupid. I remember that my feelings of indignation as an old soldier receded to the background and I merely felt infinitely sorry for these uncouth, illiterate Russians to whom little was given and of whom little will, therefore, be asked. One wished that the leaders of the Revolutionary Democracy had been on that plain and had seen and heard everything. One wished one could have said to them: “It is not the time to find out who is guilty, it doesn’t matter whether the guilt is ours, yours, of the bourgeoisie or of autocracy. Give the people education and an ‘image of man’ first, and then socialise, nationalise, Communise, if the people will then follow you.”
The same Suram Regiment, a few days later, gave a sound thrashing to Sokolov, the man who drafted Order No. 1, the creator of the new régime for the Army, because he demanded, in the name of the Soviet, that the regiment should do its duty and join in the advance.
After visiting the regiment, in compliance with persistent invitations from a special delegation, I went to a Conference of the 2nd Caucasian Army Corps. The members of that Conference had been elected; their discussions were more reasonable and their aims more practical. Among the various groups of delegates whom our aides-de-camp had joined, the argument was put forward that, as the Commander-in-Chief and all the senior Commanding Officers were present, would it not be expedient to finish them off at once? That would put an end to the advance.
To meet the senior Commanding Officer was by no means a consolation. One of the Army Corps Commanders led his troops with a firm hand, but experienced strong pressure from the Army organisations; another was afraid to visit his troops. I found the third in a state of complete collapse and in tears because someone had passed a vote of censure upon him: “And this after forty years’ service! I loved the men and they loved me, but now they have dishonoured me, and I cannot serve any longer!” I had to allow him to retire. In the next room a young Divisional Commander was already in secret consultation with members of the Committee, who immediately requested me, in a most peremptory fashion, to appoint the young General to the command of the Army Corps.
The visit left me with a painful impression. Disruption was growing and my hopes were waning; and yet one had to continue the work, of which there was plenty for all of us. The Western Front lived by theory and by the experience of others. It had won no striking victories, which alone can inspire confidence in the methods of warfare, and had no real experience in breaking through the defensive line of the enemy. One was very often compelled to discuss the general plan, the plan of artillery attack, and to establish the points of initiative with those who were to carry out the general plan. We found the greatest difficulty in preparing the plans for storming a position. Owing to demoralisation, every movement of troops, every relief, trench digging, bringing batteries into position, either were not carried out at all, or else attended by delays, tremendous efforts or persuasion, and meetings. Every slightest excuse was made use of in order to avoid preparations for the advance. Owing to the technical unpreparedness of the positions, the chiefs had to perform the arduous and unnatural task of making tactical considerations subservient to the qualities of the Commanding Officers, instead of giving directions to the troops in accordance with tactical considerations. The degree of the demoralisation of different units and the condition of different sectors of a given firing line, purely accidental, had also to be taken into account. And yet the statement that our technical backwardness was one of the reasons of our collapse in 1917 should be accepted with reservations. Of course, our Army was backward, but in 1917 it was infinitely better equipped, had more guns and ammunition and wider experience of her own and of other fronts than in 1916. Our technical backwardness was a relative factor which was present at all times in the Great War before the Revolution, but was remedied in 1917, and cannot, therefore, be taken into account as a decisive feature in estimating the Russian Revolutionary Army and its work in the field.
It was the work of Sisyphus. The Commanding Officers gave their heart and soul to the work because in its success they saw the last ray of hope for the salvation of the Army and of the country. Technical difficulties could be overcome, as long as the moral could be raised.
Brussilov arrived and addressed the regiment. As a result, the officer commanding the 10th Army was relieved against my will ten days before the decisive advance. And it was not without difficulty that I secured the appointment of General Lomnovsky, the gallant Commander of the 8th Army Corps, who had arrived at the Front ten days before the action. There was an unpleasant misunderstanding about Brussilov’s visit. Headquarters had mistakenly informed the troops that Kerensky was coming. This substitution provoked strong discontent among the troops. Many units declared that they were being deceived, and that unless Comrade Kerensky himself orders them to advance they would not advance. The 2nd Caucasian Division sent delegates to Petrograd to make inquiries. And efforts had to be made to appease them by promising that Comrade Kerensky was due to arrive in a few days. The War Minister had to be invited. Kerensky came reluctantly, because he was already disillusioned by the failure of his oratorical campaign on the South-Western Front. For several days he reviewed the troops, delivered speeches, was enthusiastically received and sometimes unexpectedly rebuked. He interrupted his tour, as he was invited to hurry to Petrograd on July 4th, but he returned with renewed energy and with a new up-to-date theme, making full use of the “knife with which the Revolution had been stabbed in the back” (the Petrograd rising of July 3rd-5th). Having, however, completed his tour and returned to the Stavka, he emphatically declared to Brussilov: