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

by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

Matters were more complicated in the case of Lenin and his supporters. Despite the demands of the Russian Government, the Allies would undoubtedly have refused to let them through. Therefore, as Ludendorff acknowledges, the German Government despatched Lenin and his companions (the first group consisted of seventeen persons) to Russia, allowing them free transit through Germany. This undertaking, which promised extraordinarily important results, was richly financed with gold and credit through the Stockholm (Ganetsky-Fuerstenberg) and Copenhagen (Parvus) centres and through the Russian Siberian Bank. That gold which, as Lenin expressed it, “does not smell.”

In October, 1917, Bourtsev published a list of 159 persons brought through Germany to Russia by order of the German General Staff. Nearly all of them, according to Bourtsev, “were revolutionaries who, during the War, had carried on a defeatist campaign in Switzerland and were now William’s voluntary or involuntary agents.” Many of them at once assumed a prominent position in the Social Democratic party, in the Soviet, the Committee[23] and the Bolshevik Press. The names of Lenin, Tsederbaum (Martov), Lunacharsky, Natanson, Riazanov, Apfelbaum (Zinoviev) and others soon became the most fateful in Russian history.

On the day of Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd the German paper Die Woche devoted an article to this event, in which he was called “a true friend of the Russian people and an honourable antagonist.” And the Cadet semi-official organ, the Retch, which afterwards boldly and unwaveringly waged war against the Lenin party, greeted his arrival with the words: “Such a generally acknowledged leader of the Socialist party ought now to be in the arena, and his arrival in Russia, whatever opinion may be held of his views, should be welcomed.”

On April 3rd Lenin arrived in Petrograd, where he was received with much state, and in a few days declared his theses, part of which formed the fundamental themes of German propaganda: “Down with war and all power to the Soviet!”

Lenin’s first actions seemed so absurd and so clearly anarchistic that they called forth protests not only in the whole of the Liberal Press, but also in the greater part of the Socialist Press.

But, little by little, the Left Wing of the Revolutionary Democracy, reinforced by German agents, joined overtly and openly in the propaganda of its chief, without meeting any decisive rebuff either from the double-minded Soviet or the feeble Government. The great wave of German and mutinous propaganda engulfed more and more the Soviet, the Committee, the Revolutionary Press, and the ignorant masses, and was reflected, consciously or unconsciously, even among those who stood at the helm of the State.

From the very first Lenin’s organisation, as was said afterwards, in July, in the report of the Procurator of the Petrograd High Court of Justice, “aiming at assisting the States warring against Russia in their hostile actions against her, entered into an agreement with the agents of the said States to forward the disorganisation of the Russian Army and the Russian rear, for which purpose it used the financial means received from these States to organise a propaganda among the population and the troops ... and also, for the same purpose, organised in Petrograd, from July 3rd to 5th, an armed insurrection against the Supreme Power existing in the State.”

The Stavka had long and vainly raised its voice of warning. General Alexeiev had, both personally and in writing, called on the Government to take measures against the Bolsheviks and the spies. Several times I myself applied to the War Office, sending in, among other things, evidential material concerning Rakovsky’s spying and documents certifying the treason of Lenin, Skoropis-Yoltoukhovsky and others. The part played by the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine (of which, besides others, Melenevsky and V. Doroshenko were members)[24] as an organisation of the Central Powers for propaganda, spying and recruiting for “Setch Ukraine units,” was beyond all doubt. In one of my letters (May 16th), based on the examination of a Russian officer, Yermolenko, who had been a prisoner of war and had accepted the part of a German agent for the purpose of disclosing the organisation, the following picture was revealed: “Yermolenko was transferred to our rear, on the front of the Sixth Army, to agitate for a speedy conclusion of a separate peace with Germany. Yermolenko accepted this commission at the insistence of his comrades. Two officers of the German General Staff, Schiditzky and Lubar, informed him that a similar agitation was being carried on in Russia by the sectional president of the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, A. Skoropis-Yoltoukhovsky, and by Lenin, as agents of the German General Staff. Lenin had been instructed to seek to undermine by all means the confidence of the Russian people in the Provisional Government. The money for this work was received through one Svendson, an employee of the German Embassy in Stockholm. These methods were practised before the Revolution also. Our command turned its attention to the somewhat too frequent appearance of “escaped prisoners.” Many of them having surrendered to the enemy, passed through a definite course of intelligence work, and having received substantial pay and “papers,” were permitted to pass over to us through the line of trenches.

Being altogether unable to decide what was a case of courage and what of treachery, we nearly always sent all escaped prisoners from the European to the Caucasian Front.

All the representations of the High Command as to the insufferable situation of the Army, in the face of such vast treachery, remained without result. Kerensky carried on free debates in the Soviet with Lenin on the subject whether the country and the Army should be broken down or not, basing his action on the view that he was the “War Minister of the Revolution,” and that “freedom of opinion was sacred to him, whencesoever it might proceed.” Tzeretelli warmly defended Lenin: “I do not agree with Lenin and his agitation. But what has been said by Deputy Shulgin is a slander against Lenin, Never has Lenin called for actions which would infringe upon the course of the Revolution. Lenin is carrying on an idealist propaganda.”