My Service as Commander-in-Chief of the South-Western Front—The Moscow Conference—The Fall of Riga.
I was touched by General Alexeiev’s letter:
“My thoughts are with you in your new appointment. I consider that you have been sent to perform a superhuman task. Much has been said, but apparently little has been done there. Nothing has been done even after the 16th July by Russia’s chief babbler.... The authority of the Commanders is being steadily curtailed. Should you want my help in anything I am ready to go to Berdichev, to go to the Front, to one Command or another.... God preserve you!”
Here was a man, indeed, whom neither an exalted position nor misfortunes could change. He was full of his modest, disinterested work for the good of his native land.
A new front, new men. The South-Western Front, shaken by the events in July, was gradually recovering. Not, however, in the sense of real convalescence, as the optimists thought, but of a return approximately to its condition prior to the offensive. There were the same strained relations between officers and men, the same slip-shod service, the desertion, and open unwillingness to fight, which was only less actively expressed owing to the lull in operations; finally there was the same Bolshevist propaganda, only more active, and not infrequently disguised under the form of Committee “fractions” and preparations for the Constituent Assembly. I have a document referring to the 2nd Army of the Western Front. It is highly characteristic as an indication of the unparalleled toleration and, indeed, encouragement of the disintegration of the Army on the part of the representatives of the Government and Commanders, under the guise of liberty and conscious voting at the elections. Here is a copy of the telegram sent to all the senior officers of the 2nd Army:
The Army Commander, in agreement with the Commissar, and at the request of the Army fraction of the Bolshevist Social-Democrats, has permitted the organisation, from the 15th to 18th October, of preparatory courses for instructors of the aforesaid fraction for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, one representative of the Bolshevist organisation of each separate unit being sent to the said courses. No. 1644.
Suvorov.[55]
The same toleration had been exercised in many cases previously, and was founded on the exact meaning of the regulations for Army Committees and of the “Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights.”
Carried away by the struggle against counter-revolution, the Revolutionary institutions had paid no attention to such facts as public meetings with extreme Bolshevist watchwords being held at the very place where the Front Headquarters were situated, or that the local paper, Svobodnaia Mysl,[56] most undisguisedly threatened the officers with a St. Bartholomew’s Eve.
The front was holding out. That is all that could be said of the situation. At times there would be disturbances ending tragically, such as the brutal murder of Generals Girshfeld, Hirschfeld, and Stefanovich, Commissar Linde. The preliminary arrangements and the concentration of the troops for the coming partial offensive were made, but there was no possibility of launching the actual attack until the “Kornilov programme” had been put into practice and the results known.
I waited very impatiently.