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

by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

Having outlined a whole series of conditions which exercised an influence on the life, spirit, and military efficiency of the once famous Russian Army, I shall now pass to the sorrowful tale of its fall.

I was born in the family of an officer of the line, and for twenty-two years (including the two years of the Russo-Japanese War) before the European War served in the ranks of modest line units and in small Army Staffs. I shared the life, the joys and the sorrows of the officer and the soldier, and devoted many pages in the Military Press to their life which was my own. From 1914 to 1920, almost without interval, I stood at the head of the troops and led them into battle on the fields of White Russia, Volynia, Galicia, in the mountains of Hungary, in Roumania, and then—then in the bitter internecine war which, with bloody share, ploughed up our native land.

I have more grounds and more right to speak of the Army and in the name of the Army than all those strangers of the Socialist Camp, who, in their haughty self-conceit, as soon as they touched the Army, began breaking down its foundations, judging its leaders and fighters and diagnosing its serious disease, who even now, after grievous experiments and experiences, have not given up the hope of transforming this mighty and terrible weapon of national self-preservation into a means for satisfying party and social appetites. For me, the Army is not only an historical, social, national phenomenon, but nearly the whole of my life, in which lie many memories, precious and not to be forgotten, in which all is bound up and interlaced into one general mass of swiftly passing days of sadness and of joy, in which there are hundreds of cherished graves, of buried dreams and unextinguishable faith.

The Army should be approached cautiously, never forgetting that not only its historical foundations, but even such details of its life as may, perhaps, seem strange and absurd, have their meaning and significance.

When the Revolution began that old veteran, beloved by both officers and soldiers, General P. I. Mishtchenko, being unable to put up with the new régime, retired from the Army. He lived at Temir-Han Shoura, never went outside his garden fence, and always wore his General’s uniform and his crosses of St. George, even in the days of Bolshevik power. One day the Bolsheviks came to search his house, and, among other things, wanted to deprive him of his shoulder straps and decorations. The old General retired to a neighbouring room and shot himself.

Let whoever will laugh at “old-fashioned prejudices.” We shall reverence his noble memory.

And so the storm-cloud of the Revolution broke.

There was no doubt whatever that such a cataclysm in the life of the nation could not but have a grave effect. The Revolution was bound to convulse the Army, greatly weakening and breaking all its historic ties. Such a result was normal, natural and unavoidable, independently of the condition of the Army at the moment, independently of the mutual relations of Commanders and subordinates. We can speak only of the circumstances which arrested or hastened the disintegration of the Army.

A Government appeared.

Its source might have been one of three elements: The High Command (a military dictatorship), the Bourgeois State Duma (the Provisional Government), or the Revolutionary Democracy (the Soviet). It was the Provisional Government that was acknowledged. The attitude of the other two elements towards it was different; the Soviet practically robbed the Government of its power, while the High Command submitted to it implicitly, and was therefore obliged to carry out its plans.