The Russian Turmoil; Memoirs: Military, Social, and Political

by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

What more could I tell them? Only, perhaps, something of the advice which Kornilov had given me at Moghilev, and through a messenger. But this was done as a matter of exceptional confidence on the part of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, which I could in no case permit myself to break. Therefore, the few details which I added next day to my original evidence did not console the commission and did not, apparently, satisfy the volunteer, a member of the Committee of the Front, who was present at the examination.

Nevertheless, we waited with impatience for our liberation from the Berdichev chamber of torture. But our hopes were clouded more and more. The newspaper of the Committee of the Front methodically fomented the passions of the garrison; it was reported that at all the meetings of all the Committees resolutions were passed against letting us out of Berdichev; the Committee members were agitating mightily among the rear units of the garrison, and meetings were held which passed off in a spirit of great exaltation.

The aim of the Shablovsky Commission was not attained. As it turned out in the beginning of September, to Shablovsky’s demand that a separate trial of the “Berdichev group” should not be allowed, Iordansky replied that “to say nothing of the transfer of the generals to any place whatsoever, even the least postponement of their trial would threaten Russia with incalculable calamities—complications at the front, and a new civil war in the rear,” and that both on political and on tactical grounds it was necessary to have us tried in Berdichev, in the shortest possible time, and by Revolutionary Court-Martial.[76]

The Committee of the Front and the Kiev Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates would not agree to our transfer, despite all the arguments and persuasions brought forward at their meeting by Shablovsky and the members of his Commission. On the way back, at Moghilev, a consultation took place on this question between Kerensky, Shablovsky, Iordansky and Batog. All, excepting Shablovsky, came to the altogether unequivocal conclusion that the front was shaken, that the soldiery was restless and demanding a victim, and that it was necessary to enable the tense atmosphere to discharge itself, even at the cost of injustice.... Shablovsky rose and declared that he would not permit such a cynical attitude toward law and justice.

I remember that this tale perplexed me. It is not worth while disputing about points of view. But if the Minister-President is convinced that in the matter of protecting the State it is admissible to let oneself be guided by expediency, in what way, then, was Kornilov to blame?

On September 14th a debate took place in Petrograd, in the last “court of appeal”—in the military section of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates—between Shablovsky and the representative of the Committee of the South-Western Front, fully supported by Iordansky. The last two declared that if the Revolutionary Court-Martial was not held on the spot, in Berdichev, in the course of the next five days the lynching of the prisoners was to be feared. However, the Central Committee agreed with Shablovsky’s arguments, and sent its resolution to that effect to Berdichev.

So an organised lynching was prevented. But the Revolutionary institutions of Berdichev had at their service another method for liquidating the “Berdichev group,” an easy and irresponsible one—the method of popular wrath....

A rumour spread that we were to be taken away on the 23rd, then it was stated that our departure would take place on the 27th at 5 p.m. from the passenger station.

To take the prisoners away without making the fact public was in no way difficult: in a motor-car, on foot in a column of cadets, or, again, in a railway carriage—a narrow gauge-line came close up to the guard-house and joined on to the broad gauge-line outside the town and the railway station.[77] But such a method of transferring us did not agree with the intentions of the Commissariat and the Committees.

General Doukhonin inquired from the Stavka, of the Staff of the Front, whether there were any reliable units in Berdichev, and offered to send a detachment to assist in our move. The Staff of the Front declined assistance. The Commander-in-Chief, General Volodchenko, had left on the eve, the 26th, for the Front....