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.”

[CHAPTER XVIII.]
The Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier and Committees.

Elective bodies from the Military Section of the Soviet to Committees and Soviets of various denominations in regimental units and in the Departments of the Army, the Fleet and the rear, were the most prominent factor of “Democratisation.” These institutions were partly of a mixed type, and included both officers and men and partly soldiers and workers’ institutions pure and simple. Committees and Soviets were formed everywhere as the common feature of Revolutionary Organisations, planned before the Revolution and sanctioned by the Order No. 1. Elections from the troops to the Soviet in Petrograd were fixed for February 27th, and the first Army Committees came into being on March 1st, in consequence of the above-mentioned Order No. 1. Towards the month of April self-appointed Soviets and Committees, varying in denomination, personnel and ability, existed in the Army and in the rear, and introduced incredible confusion into the system of military hierarchy and administration. In the first month of the Revolution the Government and the military authorities did not endeavour to put an end to or to restrict this dangerous phenomenon. They did not at first realise its possible consequences, and counted upon the moderating influence of the Officer element. They occasionally took advantage of the Committees for counteracting acute manifestations of discontent among the soldiers, as a doctor applies small doses of poison to a diseased organism. The attitude of the Government and of the military authorities towards these organisations was irresolute, but was one of semi-recognition. On April 9th, addressing the Army Delegates, Gutchkov said at Yassy: “A Congress will soon be held of the Delegates of all Army Organisations, and general regulations will then be drawn up. Meanwhile, you should organise as best you can, taking advantage of the existing organisations and working for general unity.”

In April the position became so complicated that the authorities could no longer shirk the solution of the question of Committees. At the end of March there was a Conference at the Stavka, attended by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the War Minister, Gutchkov, his Assistants, and officers of the General Staff. I was also present in my capacity as future Chief-of-Staff to the Supreme C.-in-C. A draft was presented to the Conference, brought from Sevastopol by the Staff-Colonel Verkhovski (afterwards War Minister). The draft was modelled upon the regulations already in force in the Black Sea Fleet. The discussion amounted to the expression of two extreme views—mine and those of Colonel Verkhovski. The latter had already commenced those slightly demagogic activities by which he had at first gained the sympathies of the soldiers and of the sailors. He had had a short experience in organising these masses. He was persuasive because he used many illustrations—I do not know whether the facts he mentioned were real or imaginary—his views were pliable, and his eloquence was imposing. He idealised the Committees, and argued that they were very useful, even necessary and statesmanlike, inasmuch as they were capable of bringing order into the chaotic movements of the soldiery. He emphatically insisted upon the competence and the rights of these Committees being broadened.