Part 21

The Bolshevist Government made efforts to come to terms with the Ukraine, and also with Finland. In the middle of May a Russian peace delegation arrived in Kiev. Germany appointed Baron Mumm von Schwarzenstein, Ambassador to the Ukraine, as its representative to the peace conferences, with almost dictatorial powers, especially in questions relating to boundaries. The efforts of the Soviet Government to make peace with the Ukraine remained ineffectual. The delegates were unable to agree regarding the frontier line. Repatriation of Ukrainians living in Great Russia was another stumbling block. The removal of property by repatriated Ukrainians, it was objected, would conflict with the Soviet regulation allowing only small sums of money to be exported from Russia. Besides, said the Bolsheviki, this would give propertied Russians a simple means of escape from the Soviet Republic.

According to a London dispatch, dated June 7, Germany was responsible for the delay in the negotiations. The German command at Kiev was reported to have declared Russo-Ukrainian peace inopportune before all important points in the Ukraine were occupied.

It was reported on June 10 that Germany and Russia had entered into an agreement under which Finland ceded to Russia the fortresses of Ino and Raivola, with the understanding that they were not to be fortified, while Russia surrendered to Finland a part of the Murman Peninsula, with an outlet to the ocean, thus bringing German influence to Russia's arctic ports and to the railroads connecting them with the interior of the country.

INTERNAL CONDITIONS

Upon the whole, conditions in Russia showed no signs of improvement. Famine existed in Petrograd and in other, particularly urban, districts of Great Russia, while civil war was still raging in Siberia and in some parts of European Russia. According to information made public by the State Department at Washington on May 21, cholera broke out in Astrakhan and in the Caspian Sea region. Observers of Russian life also noted the growing moral laxity of the population and its complete indifference to public affairs.

Reports from Eastern and Central Russia indicated that in many districts less than half the usual acreage was plowed. This was attributed to the shortage of seed, horses, and implements. Even where seed was available the peasants, uncertain of the disposition of the land and the crops, did not plant extensively. Breadstuffs were scarce even in grain centres, and prices were very high. The attitude of the farmers to the city people continued to be one of distrust and hostility, and the exodus of the city dwellers into the country continued.

A recent article in Maxim Gorky's daily Novaia Zhizn (New Life) speaks of the conditions prevailing in the Russian village in the following terms:

All those who have studied the Russian village of our days clearly perceive that the process of demoralization and decay is going on there with remarkable speed. The peasants have taken away the land from its owners, divided it among themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. And they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine struggle for the division of the booty. In certain districts the population has consumed the entire grain supply, including the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to chaos, destruction, and murder.

The article gives also a glimpse of what is going on in the remnants of the Russian Army:

There are numerous reports to the effect that the soldiers are dividing among themselves the military property of the country and committing unspeakable acts of violence. Wild rumors are current about the troops returning from Asia Minor. It is said that they have brought with them into the Crimea a large number of "white slaves" and that there is in Theodosia a veritable slave market. The supply is so great that the price has fallen from 100 or 150 rubles to 15 or 30 rubles apiece.

RUSSIA A MADHOUSE

A terrible picture of the chaos in Russia is given by an educated woman in Petrograd, the daughter of a Russian diplomat formerly in Washington, and the widow of an officer in the Russian Army. To a former classmate in the United States she wrote:

It was bad enough before the March revolution, when our unhappy, half-witted Emperor, under the influence of his German wife, seemed to do everything possible to make people lose patience. But now we have a thousand anonymous potentates, the top ones paid by Germany, and the lower ones lured into supporting them by money, money, and money.

The present Government has abolished all laws, all courts, the police, land ownership, all private real estate in towns, all distinction of castes and grades in the army and navy. They have seized all the banks, are opening all the private safes, and confiscating all gold and silver found therein, though it had never been said before that it was criminal to have it. Of course, everything they "decree" is so mad that it is quite sure not to last forever, but the chaos they make will take centuries to forget. The country is going back to a savage state. And we will not live to wait for better times.

All Russia is suffocating--every day brings new surprises that show that there is but one way out of it--the grave. On the ground of liberty they abolish all laws, Judges, attorneys, and substitute for it "people's courts of justice," with only soldiers, workmen or peasants, often quite illiterate and always without the slightest knowledge of court proceedings, taking the places of the former judiciary.

On the same ground they abolish all police, let loose all the criminals from the prisons, arm them, constituting from their number, together with workmen, deserters and hooligans, a "red guard," and fill the prisons to their utmost with all those who crave for order and will not work together with them toward the total ruin of the country.

On the pretense of equality they abolish all grades in the army and navy and make all posts elective by the simple soldiers. In most places it is understood as complete extermination, lynching of the officers, who, for being better educated, are under suspicion of being "counter-revolutionary." The highest posts are occupied by elected soldiers who very often can hardly sign their names, and the former officers are made simple soldiers, with a soldier's pay of $3.50 a month, and ordered to the lowest tasks, cleaning of the barracks, cooking food, taking care of the horses.

Our great country could only exist when all the wheels of the Government were working in harmony. Now everything is a perfect chaos. Everybody was willing to throw over the Czaristic Government, but not in order to change it for this one, of loot, anarchy, and treason toward our allies! Ah, the shame, the disgrace, and the folly of it!

LOOTING AND DESTROYING

The army, which now consists of young boys, (the regular one is long ago killed,) without any sense of duty, morals, and discipline, see their acquired "freedom" in the freedom to go home when they want to. And so all the trains, all the stations, are attacked and destroyed by this horde of savages, who kill engineers, if it seems to them the train goes too slowly, who martyrize the railway agents who tell them of the impossibility of starting their train, for there is another one coming toward them on the same track. As this human flood goes home without any organization, everything is looted and destroyed.

Some months ago I was believing myself to be quite well off. I have a house in Petrograd. Last Spring I was offered $125,000 for it, but was advised not to sell and go over to America to have my little girl become a happy American school girl. Now--I have on hand about $2,000 and no other resources; the house, like other private property, is being confiscated, the revenue going to the Government, that is to say, to the private pockets of the usurpers. The Government bonds annulated (repudiated)--and even if I had more money--believe me--there is nothing to buy.

Life in Petrograd is horrible--all the criminals, all the workmen, and demoralized soldiers rob the few cars that still bring some kind of products. In the very heart of the city, in daytime, you have your clothes taken off your back literally. Just think that there is no police, nobody to call for help, for those who would like to help have had their firearms confiscated, even the officers, even the highest Generals. All the soldiers, &c., are armed have become highwaymen. At any moment you can expect a number of them to come into your private lodging and, under the pretense of "perquisition," take away all your money and valuables.

Our money is not accepted anywhere abroad. Russia is bankrupt, so that it is impossible to escape. All my friends and relatives are in the same awful position. Everybody lives on his last money, even those who were quite rich. Their money was in Government or private bonds, and, as they are declared void, where will you get money from? My poor mind cannot grasp the whole thing; it is too great a madness. My only chance to save my little girl's life and my own would be to get away from here and go to the United States. Here, if we do not die in the next months, we will be slaves, regular slaves, of our lowest classes.

RAILROAD SITUATION

Some light was shed on the railroad situation in Russia by the report made on June 2 to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets by the Assistant Commissioner of Railroads. The percentage of disabled locomotives, he stated, was about 30, that of crippled cars being higher. In 1917 Russia had 560,000 cars and upward of 20,000 locomotives. The Germans seized a large number of cars and locomotives. Nevertheless, there was no scarcity of rolling stock, for the mileage had been reduced from 45,000 to 35,000. The general conclusion of the report was that the situation had slightly improved, especially in Siberia.

On April 22, Leon Trotzky made a report to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets on the newly organized Russian Army. He defended the employment of officers of the old army on the ground that they were just as valuable as the military property taken over by the Soviet Government, and pointed out the eventual necessity of conscription. According to a London dispatch, dated June 8, the Soviet Government decided to introduce conscription. "One of the most promising things," said a Bolshevist diplomat in an interview on June 5, "is the steady growth of the new Red army. Its discipline already is better than that of the old one. Its members have so far been recruited from town and factory workers. * * * We take measures to provide for military training in villages and towns and all necessary steps toward raising the fighting capacity of our new army, which already is by no means negligible."

BOLSHEVIKI AND THE JEWS

A statement bearing on the situation of the Russian Jews under the Bolshevist régime was issued by the celebrated Russian jurist and former Senator, Oscar Grusenberg, and made public on June 10. The document follows:

Those who think that the Jews are at present ruling Russia are profoundly mistaken. The new laws, or rather administrative regulations, which the Bolsheviki have promulgated, have hurt the Jewish population more than other citizens, for the Bolshevist legislation has ruined the commerce and industry of the country.

After the Bolshevist insurrection we lived through events similar to those of October, 1905. In October, 1917, pogroms occurred in 200 Jewish towns and hamlets.

The tragedy of the Jews in Russia is heart-breaking. The united Russian Jewry, counting upward of 6,000,000, exists no longer. With the secession of the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland, the number of Jews in Russia is reduced to a million and a half. The situation of the Jews in the Ukraine, and particularly in Poland and Lithuania, under German domination, is very sad. The Jews have lost in this war, in killed and wounded, the majority of their youth. A great many Jewish soldiers are pining in prison camps, others are locked up in jails on slanderous charges of treason.

The Jews are almost the only nationality in Russia which, by every means available, is seeking to arrest the process of splitting up the Russian Empire, and which works for the reunion of the portions that have seceded.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews were ruined at the moment when the Bolsheviki took over the Governmental power. The population visited its wrath on the Jews, because some of the Bolshevist leaders are or are said to be Jews. But the Russian Empire has been demoralized, not by the Jews, but by the old régime. Russia lacks great leaders with heroic characters, who know how to act in an hour of distress. This made possible the triumph of men like Lenine and Trotzky.

The Jewish leaders of the Bolsheviki are themselves a product of the old régime. Czarism persecuted and exiled them. Education they were forced to seek abroad, and there, in foreign lands, they lost all connection with and love for Judaism and Russia. Every country is to them but a railroad station. It is these former Jews and present Bolshevists that are responsible for the appalling misery which has befallen the Russian Jews.

ANTI-BOLSHEVIST MOVEMENTS

An official French dispatch received in Washington on May 16 asserted that the opposition to the Soviet régime was growing stronger. On June 2 a Russian wireless message announced the discovery of a vast counter-revolutionary conspiracy, with ramifications throughout the country. Moscow was declared in a state of siege, a large number of persons were arrested, and stringent measures were taken to restrain the press. Boris Savinkov, Chief of the War Department under Kerensky, and Prince Kropotkin, the famous revolutionist and writer, were reported to have taken part in the conspiracy. A week later a Moscow dispatch reported that factory workers were boycotting Soviet delegates, that some provincial towns elected anti-Bolshevist Deputies to the Soviets, and that a general political strike appeared imminent.

In the middle of May the Central Committee of the Russian Social Revolutionary Party addressed to the National Council of the French Socialist Party and to the Parliamentary Socialist group the following message:

The Bolshevist Government, which exists but by the grace of our German masters, assumes, under the pressure of Germany's Ambassador, a provoking attitude toward the allied powers, and particularly toward France, addressing to them insulting ultimatums which are in striking contrast with the servile docility they manifest in executing the orders of German imperialism. The Russian Social Revolutionary Party sends its socialist greetings to the French section of the Labor International, and protests against the spirit of the foreign policy of the present dictators of Russia.

The Social Revolutionary Party declares at the same time that the newly formed Communist group, formerly Bolsheviki, must on all accounts be excluded from the International for having called upon the most elementary principles of democracy to resuscitate forms of despotism and violence. They have betrayed the cause of international socialism by an infamous separate peace with the crowned despots of Central Europe, transforming Russia, disarmed, humiliated, and crushed, into an administrative supply house destined to sustain the German offensive in the west.

The Social Revolutionary Party expresses the hope that all the national sections of the Labor International will determine their attitude as regards the Bolshevist usurpers, taking into consideration this declaration of our party, which itself has the right to speak for all Russian labor, having held an absolute majority in the Constitutional Convention, whose powers will be resuscitated in spite of the sanguinary repressions made by the usurpers of power. We beg our French comrades to send this declaration to the Socialist parties of the allied countries.

FIGHTING IN SIBERIA

Armed opposition to the Soviet Government was confined chiefly to Eastern Siberia. In the first week of June clashes occurred in Transbaikalia between the Government troops and the anti-Bolshevist forces led by General Semenoff. The Soviet troops were apparently mastering the situation. It was reported that they included armed Teuton prisoners, and that General Semenoff was expecting Japanese reinforcements. The other leaders of anti-Bolshevist forces, Admiral Kolchak, Colonel Orloff, and General Kalmakoff, co-operated in protecting the railways and massed their troops, which include Russians and Chinese, for an offensive. The Soviet Government repeatedly protested to China against the assistance it had given to General Semenoff, requesting that the Chinese Government should either close the Manchurian frontier to the General's forces or permit the Bolshevist troops to cross into Manchuria and subdue the rebel. On May 25 Ambassador Francis published a statement from Secretary Lansing to the effect that American Consuls had given no aid to General Semenoff, or any other anti-Bolshevist leader. The message contained an assurance of "the friendly purposes of the United States toward Russia, which will remain unaltered so long as Russia does not willingly accept autocratic domination by the Central Powers."

Late in May a new Government appeared the south of Russia. It claimed to represent the regions of Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, and Northern Caucasus, and was emphatically Bolshevist in its orientation. It was headed by a dictator, General Krasnoff, who had served under Kerensky up to the fall of the Provisional Government. His manifesto declared that the Don Government was a sovereign State, at war with the Soviet Republic, and on friendly terms with the Ukraine. This manifesto contained the following statement: "Yesterday's foreign foes, the Austro-Germans, have entered our territory in alliance with us to fight against the Red Guard and for the establishment of order on the Don."

Another anti-Bolshevist Government was formed, early in June, in Eastern Siberia. The new State, which proclaimed itself an independent republic, purported to include the entire territory stretching from Lake Baikal to the Pacific, as well as the district of Irkutsk and the Island of Sakhalin, comprising a population of 2,500,000.

Violent clashes occurred between the Soviet forces and the Czechoslovak troops, which had joined the Russian Army to fight for the allied cause. The Czechoslovaks defeated the Soviet army, which was trying to enforce Trotzky's order to disarm them, seized the railway stations at Penza, on the Volga, in an effort to force their way to Vladivostok, and penetrated into the Ural region.

DISMEMBERING RUSSIA

During the month under record Germany made further steps in pursuance of her policy of subjugating the _membra disjecta_ of the former Russian imperium.

On May 13 it was reported that Berlin planned to turn Lithuania into a "semi-federal" German State. The next day Emperor William issued a proclamation declaring Lithuania a free and independent State, on the basis of the action of the Lithuanian Landsrat, which, on Dec. 12, 1917, had announced "the restoration of Lithuania as an independent State, allied to the German Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance, and by conventions chiefly regarding military matters, traffic, customs, and coinage, and solicited the help of the German Empire." The declaration assumed that Lithuania would "participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured her liberation." According to information made public by the State Department at Washington, the Germans were forcing the Lithuanian peasants to work for the landowners at a starvation wage and were taking stringent measures against city workers.

Similar conditions prevailed in Livonia. A message sent on May 21 by Tchitcherin to Ambassador Joffe stated that the Germans had created a reign of terror there, persecuting labor and assisting the Barons in suppressing their political adversaries.

In the Ukraine the Germans disarmed the troops of the overthrown Rada and backed Skoropadsky's dictatorial régime with bayonets. Sporadic uprisings of peasants against the Teutons continued. In the Province of Kiev the Germans used gas bombs against several revolted villages, and whole communities were asphyxiated. Revolts also broke out in the Governments of Podolia and Poltava. Resistance was offered mainly in connection with German food requisitioning. It was reported that the Germans had twelve army corps in the Ukraine. In the middle of May the Central Powers granted a loan of 4,000,000 marks to the Ukraine.

GERMAN ATROCITIES

The German atrocities in White Russia are thus described in a Russian Government dispatch received in London on May 14:

In the Bobrinsk district entire villages have been set afire and plundered. In the village of Buda a Uhlan patrol extorted a contribution of several thousand rubles, and, when the peasants had paid part of it and were unable to pay more, the Uhlans surrounded the village and bombarded it.

In other villages peasants, women, and children who endeavored to escape from fires were pursued by Uhlans and cut to pieces with swords or flogged with whips. In one village an old Jew was first flogged and then hanged in the presence of all the villagers. Most savage acts were perpetrated in Jewish villages. All persons suspected of belonging to the Bolsheviki and those in military uniforms were immediately shot.

In Finland the Germans helped the White Guards to suppress the revolution, and strengthened their grip on the country. Some of the captured Red Guards were shot--7,000 were reported executed on June 6--others were to appear before twenty-one specially created courts. The reprisals of the White Guards were directed particularly against the Russians in Finland. A Russian wireless, dated May 14, contained the following statements: "Even 12-year-old children have been shot. At Viborg one witness saw 200 corpses, mainly Russian officers and mere schoolboys. According to other witnesses, more than 600 persons were executed in two days." The German headquarters in Finland estimated the number of persons massacred at 70,000. The Finnish High Court of Justice ordered the arrest of all Socialist members of the Finnish Diet. In contravention of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, the German commander demanded the control of the Russian war supplies at Helsingfors, which were valued at 150,000,000 rubles.

On June 12 the Finnish Government introduced into the Diet a bill providing for the establishment of a monarchic form of government in Finland. The Finnish King, who is to be a hereditary ruler, shall be invested with broad powers regarding treaties with foreign States, and shall have the absolute veto in several important matters.