I am horrified at what these men have since done, and abhor it, but I think I understand it, at least somewhat.
These Russian soldiers were provided with food and rum and cigarettes. They liked this. But they disliked everything else. They were sometimes commanded by British officers, which they hated. They were permitted to wear the British name on their shoulders when they went into battle, which they could not do with patriotic enthusiasm, and when they visited their friends, which they did with explanations and chagrin. They were Russians, but they were not a Russian army. I have seen many a Russian officer shrug his shoulders in quizzical dismay as he spoke about the British uniform he was wearing.
But there was real fighting ability in this new Russian army. It was greatly increased in numbers and much better organized and officered than the army of the previous winter. It was supplied with the new equipment, and much was justly expected of it. It was thoroughly saturated with British stories of Bolshevik atrocities, as fear is a mighty motive with the Russian soldier and the British were determined he should be thoroughly afraid of the Bolsheviki.
But this army of Russian peasants did not altogether believe the atrocity stories, did not in the least believe that England was there for the good of Russia or for the general good of mankind, and did not want to fight.
XII
MAKING BOLSHEVIKI
In May General Miller, the Russian commander at Archangel, issued a proclamation calling upon all people of Bolshevist sympathies to leave Archangel within a prescribed time, offering them transport to the Bolshevik lines and two days' rations, and threatening severe penalties to all who failed to go. This was startling. All the Bolsheviki had left when we came in. None had been permitted to come in since the campaign began. Where, then, did these come from who were reported officially as being in Archangel in "large numbers"? The obvious answer is the correct one. They had developed Bolshevist sympathies in Archangel. Some of them took their two days' rations and crossed the line, the military command ordered quite a number of them shot, but others kept springing from the ground until the British command had ample ground for its theory that if you scratch a Russian you find a Bolshevik.
How are these numerous Bolsheviki to be accounted for? They were made in Archangel. They were made by the British militarists, the Russian monarchists and the Bolshevik propagandists. The making of Bolsheviki in Archangel had not proceeded according to the pet American theory of Bolshevist-making. They had not been made by hunger. Archangel had been fed. Not by charity, but by work. Plenty of work, fair pay, and ample supplies.
The first great step in the process of making Bolsheviki was the conscription of men for the army. This was not done until ample opportunity had been given everybody to enlist voluntarily, but not everybody volunteered. The Russian point of view and ours were quite different in this matter. We had undertaken to fight the Bolsheviki for him and he was glad to have us do it. Our men and officers, on the other hand, declared it was preposterous to suppose they were going to do this fighting while the "lazy Russians stayed at home." So conscription went into force. At first a small class of young men, then a larger class, and finally practically every able-bodied man from seventeen to fifty. Here was another story. Here was war, real war, again. The new thing called Military Intervention or Allied Assistance or anything else had proved to be the old thing that Russia knew so well. And the peasant of North Russia did not want it. As early as January some of these conscripted companies at Shenkursk went over bodily to the Bolsheviki.
The suppression of all expressions of interest in Russia's "new-found freedom" was a stupid blunder. There were no public meetings, no open discussion of political questions, no real freedom of the press. The Russian soldiers were even afraid to sing the "Marseillaise," and confined themselves to the innocuous if beautiful folksongs, leaving all of the many excellent freedom songs of the revolution to the exclusive use of the Bolsheviki. The British never discovered that the Russian loves these freedom songs, because they took counsel solely of the reactionary monarchist element they had placed in power.