Inside the Russian Revolution

by Rheta Childe Dorr

The democracy, created largely by Kerensky, in a country which is not yet ready for self-government, had split up into many anarchistic groups. It had become a Frankenstein too huge and too crazy with power to be handled by any man less than a Napoleon Bonaparte, and Kerensky is not a Bonaparte. Perhaps he had the brain of a Bonaparte, as he certainly had the charm and magnetism. It may be that he lacked the iron will or the deathless courage. It may only be that his frail physical health stood in the way of resolution. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that Kerensky never once was able to take that huge, disorganized, uneducated, restless, yearning Russian mob by the scruff of the neck and compel it to listen to reason. Apparently, also, he was unable or unwilling to let any one else do it, as the mysterious Korniloff incident seems to prove. The story of the disintegration of the Russian army has been described in many dispatches. Later I am going to tell what I saw of the Russian army, and what I know of the demoralization at the front. The state of things was bad, but it was by no means hopeless, as it is fast becoming. That Russian army, I confidently believe, could, as late as August, 1917, have been reorganized, renovated and made into an effective fighting force. It is very evident that it still has possibilities, because the Germans still keep an enormous number of troops on the eastern front. They know that the Russians can fight, and they fear that they will fight, as soon as they are given a real leader. Military leaders they do not lack, as the Germans also know. Most of the old commanders, the worthless, corrupt hangers-on of the old régime, are gone now. Some are dead, some in prison, some relegated to obscurity. The men who are left are real soldiers, good fighters, true allies of America, France and England. Especially is this true of the once feared and hated Cossack leaders.

The Cossack regiments to the last man had supported the provisional government, and were wholeheartedly in favor of fighting the war to a finish. There are about five million of these Cossacks, and practically every able-bodied man is a soldier. And what a soldier! Except our own cowboys, there never were such horsemen. No troops in the world excel them in bravery and fighting power. They are a proud race and would never serve under officers save those of their own kind. I asked a young Cossack at the front where his officers got their training. He had spent some ten years in Chicago and spoke English like one of our own men. “We train them in the field,” he said with a smile. “Every one of us is a potential officer, and when our highest commander drops in battle, there is always a man to take his place.”

The Cossack has no head for politics. He agrees on the government he is going to support and he serves that government with an undivided mind. When he served the Czar he did the Czar’s bidding. When he decided to serve the new democracy he could be depended on to do it. He has done no fraternizing with wily Germans in the trenches. He has listened to no German propaganda in Petrograd. He wants to fight the war to a successful end, and then he wants to go back to his home on the peaceful Don river, or in the wild Urals and cultivate his fields and vineyards.

Of all Cossack leaders the most picturesque and the most celebrated as a military genius was Gen. Korniloff. His life and adventures would fill volumes. He fought his way up from a penniless boyhood to a successful manhood. He knows Russia from one end to the other, and speaks almost every dialect known to the empire, and several foreign languages in addition, especially those of the Orient. He is a small, wiry man with a beard, and the only time I ever saw him he was surrounded by a bodyguard of tall Turkestan Cossacks wearing long gray tunics, huge caps of Persian lamb and a perfectly beautiful collection of silver-mounted swords, daggers and pistols. In a pictorial sense Gen. Korniloff was quite obscured by them.

Following a series of disasters and wholesale desertions at the front, the late provisional government announced that the chief command of the army had been given to Gen. Korniloff. The command was accepted with certain conditions attached to the acceptance. Gen. Korniloff would not be a commander in any limited or modified sense of the word. He demanded absolute power and control over all troops, both at the front and in the rear. He wanted to abolish the committees of soldiers who administered all regimental affairs, and who even decided what commands the men might or might not obey. Gen. Korniloff could never tolerate these bodies. Whenever he visited an army division he asked: “Have your regiments any committees?” And if the answer was yes, he immediately gave the order: “Dissolve them.” One of the principal demands made by Gen. Korniloff on the provisional government was the right to inflict the death penalty on deserters, both in the field and in the rear. I have written of the thousands of idle soldiers in Petrograd, and of the expressed refusal of many of them to go to the front when ordered. There was no secret about this, nor any concealment of the fact that of many thousands of soldiers sent to the front at various times since the early spring, about two-thirds deserted on the way. They captured trains—hospital trains in some instances—turned the passengers out, left the wounded lying along the tracks, and forced the trainmen to take them back to Petrograd, or wherever they wanted to go.

Kerensky had tried every means in his power to stop this shameful business. He had fixed three separate dates on which all soldiers must rejoin their regiments and must obey orders to advance. He had published manifestoes notifying these coward and slackers that unless they did report for duty they would be declared traitors to the revolution, their families would be deprived of all army benefits and they would not be allowed to share in the distribution of land when the new agrarian policy went into effect. These manifestoes were absolutely ignored. The desertions continued. Army disintegration increased. Anarchy pure and simple reigned on all fronts and in the rear. Soldiers who were willing to fight were afraid to, because there was every probability of their own comrades shooting them in the back if they obeyed their officers. The state of mind of the officers can be imagined perhaps—it cannot be described. Many committed suicide in the madness of their shame and despair.

Gen. Korniloff wanted to deal with this horrible situation in the only possible way, by shooting all deserters. This may sound drastic. No doubt it will to every copperhead and pro-German in this country. But remember, for every man who deserts on that Russian front some American boy will have to suffer. We shall have to fight for the Russians, we shall have to pay the awful price of their defection. Gen. Korniloff, a true patriot, knew this, and he wanted to save his country from that dishonor. Kerensky apparently could not endure the thought of those firing squads. Or else he did not dare to risk the wrath of the soviet. There is no doubt that he would have courted great personal danger, it may be certain death, but what of it? There is no doubt that Gen. Korniloff, if he saved the situation, would loom larger as a popular hero than Kerensky, but what of it? The whole country, all of it that retained its sanity and its patriotism, looked for Gen. Korniloff to establish a military dictatorship in the army. There was never any question of his assuming the civil power. There was never any indication that he wanted it.

But there was this question—what political party in Russia was going to dominate the constituent assembly, that consummation which has been postponed many times, but which cannot be indefinitely postponed? The Social Revolutionary party, of which Kerensky was a member, seems to have had a clear majority, but there was little organization, and the Socialists were split up into numerous groups. In one city election recently there were eighteen tickets in the field, most of them separate Socialist parties. The Cossacks, solidly lined up behind Korniloff, announced that in the coming constituent assembly election they would form a bloc with the Constitutional Democrats and the moderate party known as the Cadets, of which Prof. Paul Miliukoff is the leader. That bloc might dominate the constituent assembly. If it did the Bolshevik element in the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates throughout the country would be overpowered and discredited. The “social revolution” which the councils still insisted must come out of the political revolution might be modified.

Outside of the secret conclaves of the provisional government, outside of the inner circles of political life in Russia, there is no one who knows the exact truth of the so-called Korniloff rebellion. It is known that a congress was held in Moscow in late August, in which Kerensky made one of his great speeches, absolutely capturing his audience and once more hypnotizing a large public into the belief that he could restore order in Russia. Korniloff appeared, and aroused great enthusiasm, as he always does. Everybody seemed to think that the two leaders would get together and agree on a program. But they did not get together, and the government announced the “rebellion” and disgrace of Korniloff. Two more things were announced: that the Bolsheviki had gained a majority in the Petrograd Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, and that Lenine was on his way back to Russia to address a “democratic congress,” which had for its objects the abolishment of the Duma and the calling of a parliament chosen from its membership. Russia’s hour of hope had come and gone. When will it come again?