In the World War

by Graf Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz

But, in any case, a better arrangement of the money question would only have improved matters in a few of the best supplied districts, for the principal obstacle was simply the lack of supplies. The fact that Kieff and Odessa were themselves continually in danger of a food crisis is the best indication as to the state of things.

In the Ukraine, the effects of four years of war, with the resulting confusion, and of the destruction wrought by the Bolsheviks (November, 1917, to March, 1918) were conspicuously apparent; cultivation and harvesting had suffered everywhere, but where supplies had existed they had been partly destroyed, partly carried off by the Bolsheviks on their way northward. Still, the harvest had given certain stocks available in the country, though these were not extensive, and the organisation of a purchasing system was now commenced. The free buying in Ukraine which we and Germany had originally contemplated could not be carried out in fact, since the Ukrainian Government declared that it would itself set up this organisation, and maintained this intention with the greatest stubbornness. But the authority in the country had been destroyed by the Revolution, and then by the Bolshevist invasion; the peasantry turned Radical, and the estates were occupied by revolutionaries and cut up. The power of the Government, then, in respect of collecting supplies of grain, was altogether inadequate; on the other hand, however, it was still sufficient (as some actual instances proved) to place serious, indeed insuperable, obstacles in our way. It was necessary, therefore, to co-operate with the Government—that is, to come to a compromise with it. After weeks of negotiation this was at last achieved, by strong diplomatic pressure, and, accordingly, the agreement of April 23, 1918, was signed.

This provided for the establishment of a German-Austro-Hungarian Economical Central Commission; practically speaking, a great firm of corn merchants, in which the Central Powers appointed a number of their most experienced men, familiar, through years of activity in the business, with Russian grain affairs.

But while this establishment was still in progress the people in Vienna (influenced by the occurrences on the Emperor's journey to North Bohemia) had lost patience; military leaders thought it no longer advisable to continue watching the operations of a civil commercial undertaking in Ukraine while that country was occupied by the military, and so finally the General Staff elicited a decree from the Emperor providing that the procuring of grain should be entrusted to Austro-Hungarian army units in the districts occupied by them. To carry out this plan a general, who had up to that time been occupied in Roumania, was dispatched to Odessa, and now commenced independent military proceedings from there. For payment kronen were used, drawn from Vienna. The War Grain Transactions department was empowered, by Imperial instructions to the Government, to place 100 million kronen at the disposal of the War Ministry, and this amount was actually set aside by the finance section of that department.

This military action and its execution very seriously affected the civil action during its establishment, and also greatly impaired the value of our credit in the Ukraine by offering kronen notes to such an extent at the time. Moreover, the kronen notes thus set in circulation in Ukraine were smuggled into Sweden, and coming thus into the Scandinavian and Dutch markets undoubtedly contributed to the well-known fall in the value of the krone which took place there some months later.

The Austro-Hungarian military action was received with great disapproval by the Germans, and when in a time of the greatest scarcity among ourselves (mid-May) we were obliged to ask Germany for temporary assistance, this was granted only on condition that independent military action on the part of Austria-Hungary should be suppressed and the whole leadership in Ukraine be entrusted to Germany.

It was then hoped that increased supplies might be procured, especially from Bessarabia, where the Germans have established a collecting organisation, to the demand of which the Roumanian Government had agreed. This hope, however, also proved vain, and in June and July the Ukraine was still further engaged. The country was, in fact, almost devoid of any considerable supplies, and in addition to this the collecting system never really worked properly at all, as the arrangement for maximum prices was frequently upset by overbidding on the part of our own military section.

Meantime everything had been made ready for getting in the harvest of 1918. The collecting organisation had become more firmly established and extended, the necessary personal requirements were fully complied with, and it would doubtless have been possible to bring great quantities out of the country. But first of all the demands of the Ukrainian cities had to be met, and there was in many cases a state of real famine there; then came the Ukrainian and finally the very considerable contingents of German and Austro-Hungarian armies of occupation. Not until supplies for these groups had been assured would the Ukrainian Government allow any export of grain, and to this we were forced to agree.

It was at once evident that the degree of cultivation throughout the whole country had seriously declined—owing to the entire uncertainty of property and rights after the agrarian revolution. The local authorities, affected by this state of things, were little inclined to agree to export, and it actually came to local embargoes, one district prohibiting the transfer of its stocks to any other, exactly as we had experienced with ourselves.

In particular, however, the agitation of the Entente agents (which had been frequently perceptible before), under the impression of the German military defeats, was most seriously felt. The position of the Government which the Germans had set up at Kieff was unusually weak. Moreover, the ever-active Bolshevik elements throughout the whole country were now working with increasing success against our organisation. All this rendered the work more difficult in September and October—and then came the collapse.