On January 24, 1919, the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Bolshevik Central Committee stated that, "in view of the experience with the Cossacks in the civil war," the only correct procedure was "to wage the most ruthless possible war against all the Cossack upper elements, exterminating them to the last man." The Orgburo document called for "total extermination" of the wealthy Cossacks and "ruthless mass terror against all Cossacks who have taken part directly or indirectly in the struggle against the Soviet government."116 The suppression of the Don Cossack revolt of the spring and summer of 1919 took the form of genocide. One historian has estimated that approximately 70 percent of the Don Cossacks were physically eliminated.117
This deliberate and systematic terror, embracing the entire population, was also applied in the army. After destroying the old army and beginning
to build another "on new foundations," the Bolsheviks soon returned to the conception of a regular standing army, but this time with a discipline more rigorous than the tsarist troops had known. "In the Red Army," Vatsetis wrote to Lenin,
discipline is based on harsh punishments, particularly executions.... Through these punishments and executions we have struck terror in the hearts of everyone, soldiers, commanders, and commissars alike. ... The death penalty ... is utilized so often at the front, for all possible reasons and on all possible occasions, that the discipline of the Red Army could be called sanguinary in the full sense of the word.118
Vatsetis was wrong in assuming that Lenin did not know what discipline was like in the Red Army. The chairman of the Council of People's Commissars explicitly discussed Red Army discipline on October 17, 1921: "Strict, stern measures were adopted, including capital punishment, measures that even the former government did not apply. Philistines wrote and howled, The Bolsheviks have introduced capital punishment,' Our reply is, 'Yes, we have introduced it, and have done so deliberately.'"119
Terror and the promise of Utopia."I am a simple man, you know," the chairman of the Cheka in Poltava confessed to the old Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko. "To tell you the truth, I haven't read anything about communism. But I know what it's about—that there shouldn't be any money. And you see, there isn't any money in Russia anymore. ... Every worker gets a card telling how many hours he's worked. ... He needs a coat. He goes to a store and hands in his card. They give him a coat worth so many hours work. ... Nowadays," the Cheka official admitted, "we're obliged to commit many cruelties. But after we triumph.. ."12° The conversation took place on July 10, 1919.
This mixture of Utopian promises and ruthless mass terror produced an explosive compound enabling the Bolshevik party to blast its way to victory in the civil war. A crucial factor in this process was the presence of a leader who knew how much of each component to put into the mix, depending on the needs of the moment.
FOREIGN INTERVENTION
The intervention of foreign powers in the Russian civil war did not substantially alter the balance of forces in that war. Soviet historians have made much of Winston Churchill's reference to a "campaign by fourteen
nations." Churchill, one of the few Western leaders who advocated intervention, mistook his wish for reality.
In the years 1918—1920 there was not one general intervention in Russia but a number of unrelated campaigns, whose objectives varied or, sometimes, remained totally unclear. For the intervening powers the interests of Russia were always secondary, and few among them understood what was going on in postrevolutionary Russia.
The first phase of intervention, from the summer of 1918 to November of that year, was for the Allies simply part of the war against Germany. After the February revolution, the countries of the Entente feared a separate peace between Germany and Russia. Their fears were justified; if the Provisional Government had withdrawn from the war, its outcome might have been quite different. The German army, transferred to the western front before the arrival of the Americans, might have won the second Battle of the Marne.
The Allies began to plan an intervention in Russia immediately after the October revolution. They had no doubt that the revolution was the work of the Germans because the benefits to Germany were so obvious. The struggle against bolshevism was seen as an extension of the struggle against Germany.
Before making peace with Germany, the Soviet government maintained contact with the Allies. In early 1918, when the port of Murmansk was threatened by a German—Finnish offensive, Trotsky, who had just been named people's commissar of war, ordered the Murmansk Soviet to collaborate with Allied troops. In March the British landed 2,000 men. After the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty the Germans demanded that the Soviet government order the evacuation of Allied troops from Murmansk. Germany regarded their presence as a casus belli. The Allies' refusal to comply and the landing of additional troops—with the agreement of the Murmansk Soviet—gave the Bolshevik government a pretext to initiate military action against the "interventionists." The fighting began on June 28. This area in the north of Russia remained under Allied control until the fall of 1919, when it was evacuated.
The successful German offensive on the Eastern Front in March 1918 increased the Allies' concern. They were afraid that German troops might quickly extend their control as far as the Urals. In London on March 16, 1918, the Supreme Allied War Council adopted Clemenceau's proposal to land Japanese troops in Russia's Far Eastern region. The first Japanese units reached Vladivostok on April 5. In August American troops arrived. By the end of September 1918 the Allied expeditionary corps in the Far
Eastern region had 44,000 men: 28,000 Japanese, 7,500 American, 1,000 Canadians, 2,000 Italians, 1,500 British, and 1,000 French. The number of Japanese troops was increased to 75,000. They occupied several rail centers along the Amur River and the Sino-Russian border, reaching the shores of Lake Baikal. The other Allied troops remained in Vladivostok.
The Czech Legion, formally under Allied command, was the only foreign military unit that regularly took part in operations against the Red Army. After Kolchak's coup in November 1918, the Czechoslovaks ceased their military activities and concentrated on trying to find a way out of Russia. On January 15, 1920, to improve their bargaining position, they turned Kolchak over to the Political Center, an SR-dominated body which had assumed power in Irkutsk. A week later, the Center transferred power to a Bolshevik revolutionary military committee. On February 7, 1920, Admiral Kolchak was shot by a firing squad.
The main arena of British intervention was the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. In August 1918, invited by the Transcaucasian government, the British entered Baku, but they were soon forced to retreat under pressure from Turkish forces, which had also entered the region. Meanwhile, in the Trans-Caspian territory the rail workers of Ashkhabad, enraged by local commissar Frolov's bloody reign of terror, overthrew Bolshevik rule on July 13, 1918. A locomotive engineer named Funtikov became head of the Trans-Caspian Government, the only government in revolutionary Russia actually composed of workers. None of the ministers in this government had more than a high school education except the minister of foreign affairs, a teacher named Zimin. Funtikov's government asked the British for aid. In response, General Malleson sent 2,000 troops from Baluchistan, who helped occupy the rail line from Ashkhabad through Merv to Krasnovodsk on the Caspian.