A people's tragedy

fn13 The imperial couple were afraid that he would be taken to Moscow and forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. The fact that they believed that the Bolsheviks should either need or want his signature for this is a telling sign of how far removed they had become from political reality (see Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 206).

fn14 The only certain survivor was the spaniel Joy.

fn15 The Grand Duke Mikhail, Nicholas’s brother, had been killed in June.

fn16 Boris Savinkov, Kerensky’s Deputy War Minister during the Kornilov episode, led an uprising of army officers in the town of Yaroslavl’, to the north of Moscow, on 6 July. It gained the support of the local workers and peasants and spread briefly to the neighbouring towns of Murom and Rybinsk. Soviet troops regained Yaroslavl’ on 21 July. They shot 350 officers and civilians in reprisal for the revolt, which was said to be the joint work of the SRs, the White Guards, the Czechs and the Allies. Savinkov’s underground organization, the Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom, was linked with the National Centre in Moscow, which supported the Volunteer Army. It also received money from the Czechs and the Allies — who were both under the illusion that Savinkov’s sole purpose was to raise a new Russian army to resume the war against the Central Powers. There is no evidence linking the Allies with Savinkov’s plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

fn17 A government inspection of Moscow jails in March 1920 found that children under the age of seventeen comprised 5 per cent of the prison population (Izvestiia gosudarstvennogo kontrolia, 4, 1920: 7–10).

fn18 Brusilov’s brother, Boris, was also arrested at this time, along with three other members of his family. They were ‘hostages’ and were ordered to be executed if Brusilov joined the antiBolsheviks. Boris was ill with influenza and had been literally taken from his sick-bed. He died in prison a few days after his arrest. Whilst in jail he received no medical treatment.

fn19 During the 1980s the KGB still trained its recruits with Okhrana manuals (see Kalugin, Vid s Lubianki, 35).

fn20 She had been on her way to England, where she had good contacts with the Trade Union movement, in order to campaign for food aid to the hungry children of Russia, when she was arrested in Yamburg (GARF, f. 4390, op. 14, d. 57, l. 7).

Chapter 14

fn1 The other delegates were V. A. Maklakov (Kerensky’s Ambassador in Paris), Sazonov (Kolchak’s — and Nicholas II’s — Foreign Minister) and the veteran Populist N. V. Chaikovsky (head of the Northern Region government based in Arkhangelsk). The Russian Political Conference was a government in exile made up of former diplomats and other public men in Paris. Savinkov, Nabokov, Struve and Konovalov were among its members.

fn2 There is an order from Lenin to Smirnov, Chairman of the Siberian MRC, instructing him to explain Kolchak’s execution as a response to the threat of the Whites (RTsKhIDNI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 24362). But the date of this order is unclear. Richard Pipes believes it was written before 7 February, thus suggesting a plot by Lenin to camouflage the reasons for the execution (Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 117–18). But there is no corroboration of this.

fn3 This was the first major strategic disagreement among the Bolshevik leadership. Trotsky and Vatsetis, his Commander-in-Chief, argued against pursuing Kolchak beyond the Urals so that troops could be withdrawn to the Southern Front. But Kamenev, the Eastern Front Commander, backed up by Lenin and Stalin, insisted on the need to pursue Kolchak to the end. The conflict went on through the summer, weakening the Red Army leadership at this critical moment of the civil war. It showed, above all, that Trotsky’s authority was in decline. His strategy, both on the Eastern and the Southern Fronts, was rejected in favour of Kamenev’s, who replaced Vatsetis on 3 July. Trotsky was furious, suspecting that Stalin and the Military Opposition were trying to oust him from the leadership. He wrote a letter of resignation, which was rejected by the Central Committee on 5 July. Trotsky’s authority was further weakened by the reconstitution of the RVSR with four new members (Kamenev, Gusev, Smilga and Rykov) who all had differences with its Chairman.

fn4 It is true that Makhno’s partisans often broke down under pressure from the Whites. But given how poorly they were supplied by the Reds, this was hardly surprising. They certainly did not deserve the vilification they received from Trotsky. This in fact had less to do with Makhno than it did with Stalin. By laying the blame for the Red defeats on the guerrilla methods of Makhno’s partisans, Trotsky could attack the ‘guerrilla-ism’ of the Military Opposition and thus reinforce his argument for military discipline and centralization.