“Democratisation of the Army”—Administration, Service and Routine.

In order to carry out the democratisation of the Army and the reform of the War Ministry in accordance with the new rÉgime, Gutchkov established a Commission under the Chairmanship of the late War Minister, Polivanov, who died at Riga in 1920, where he was the expert of the Soviet Government in the Delegation for making peace with Poland. The Commission was composed of representatives of the Military Commission of the Duma and of representatives of the Soviet. There was a similar Commission in the Ministry of the Navy under the Chairmanship of Savitch, a prominent member of the Duma. I know more about the work of the First Commission, and will therefore dwell upon it. The regulations drafted by the Commission were not confirmed until they had been approved by the Military Section of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, which enjoyed great authority and often indulged in independent military law-making. No future historian of the Russian Army will be able to avoid mention of the Polivanov Commission—this fatal Institution whose stamp is affixed to every one of the measures which destroyed the Army. With incredible cynicism, not far removed from treachery, this Institution, comprising many Generals and officers appointed by the War Minister, systematically and daily introduced pernicious ideas and destroyed the rational foundations of military administration. Very often drafts of regulations, which appeared to the Government as excessively demagogic and were not sanctioned, appeared in the Press and came to the knowledge of the masses of the soldiery. They were instilled into the Army, and subsequently caused pressure to be brought to bear upon the Government by the soldiery. The military members of the Commission seemed to be competing with one another in slavish subservience to the new masters, and endorsed by their authority the destructive ideas. Men who reported to the Committee have told me that civilians occasionally protested during the debates and warned the Committee against going too far, but no such protests ever came from the military members. I fail to understand the psychology of the men, who came so rapidly and unreservedly under the heel of the mob. The list of military members of the Commission of the month of May indicates that most of them were Staff Officers and representatives of other Departments, mostly of Petrograd (twenty-five); only nine were from the Army, and these do not seem to have been drawn from the line. Petrograd has its own psychology different from that of the Army. The most important and detrimental Democratic regulations were passed concerning the organisation of Committees, disciplinary action, the reform of the Military Courts, and, finally, the famous “Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier.”

Military Chiefs were deprived of disciplinary power. It was transferred to Regimental and Company Disciplinary Courts, which also had to settle “misunderstandings” between officers and men. There is no need to comment upon the importance of this curtailment of the disciplinary power of the officers; it introduced complete anarchy in the internal life of regimental units, and the officer was discredited by the law. The latter circumstance is of paramount importance, and the Revolutionary Democracy took full advantage of this procedure in all its attempts at law-making. The reform of the Courts aimed at weakening the influence of military judges by appointment upon the course of the trial, the introduction of juries and the general weakening of military justice. Field Courts-Martial were abolished, which meted out quick punishment on the spot for obvious and heavy crimes, such as treason, desertion, etc.

The democratisation of the Military Courts might be excused to a certain extent by the fact that confidence in the officers, having been undermined, it was necessary to create judicial Courts of a mixed composition on an elective basis, which in theory were supposed to enjoy to a greater extent the confidence of the Revolutionary Democracy. But that object was not attained, because the Military Courts—one of the foundations of order in the Army—fell entirely into the hands of the mob. The investigating organs were completely destroyed by the Revolutionary Democracy, and investigation was strongly resisted by the armed men and sometimes by the Regimental Revolutionary Institutions. The armed mob, which included many criminal elements, exercised unrestrained and ignorant pressure upon the conscience of the judges, and passed sentences in advance of the verdicts of the judges. Army Corps Tribunals were destroyed, and members of the jury who had dared to pass a sentence distasteful to the mob were put to flight. These were common occurrences. The case was heard in Kiev of the well-known Bolshevik, Dzevaltovski, a captain of the Grenadier Regiment of the Guards, who was accused, with seventy-eight other men, of having refused to join in the advance and of having dragged his regiment and other units to the rear. The circumstances of the trial were these: In Court there was a mob of armed soldiers, who shouted approval of the accused on his way from the prison to the Court. Dzevaltovski called, together with his escort, at the Local Soviet, where he received an ovation. Finally, while the jury were deliberating, the Armed Reserve Battalions paraded before the Court with the band and sang the “International.” Dzevaltovski and all his companions were, of course, found “Not guilty.” Military Courts were thus gradually abolished.

It would be a mistake, however, to ascribe this new tendency solely to the influence of the Soviets. It may also be explained by Kerensky’s point of view. He said: “I think that no results can be achieved by violence and by mechanical compulsion in the present conditions of warfare, where huge masses are concerned. The Provisional Government in the three months of its existence has come to the conclusion that it is necessary to appeal to the common-sense, the conscience and the sense of duty of the citizens, and that it is the only means of achieving the desired results.”

In the first days of the Revolution the Provisional Government abolished Capital Punishment by the Ukase of March 12th. The Liberal Press greeted this measure with great pathos. Articles were written expressing strongly humanitarian views, but scant understanding of realities, of the life of the Army, and also scant foresight. V. Nabokoff, the Russian Abolitionist, who was General Secretary to the Provisional Government, wrote: “This happy event is a sign of true magnanimity and of wise foresight.... Capital Punishment is abolished unconditionally and for ever.... It is certain that in no other country has the moral condemnation of this, the worst kind of murder, reached such enormous proportions as in Russia.... Russia has joined the States that no longer know the shame and degradation of judicial murder.” It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Justice drafted two laws, in one of which Capital Punishment was maintained for the most serious military offences—espionage and treason. But the Department of Military Justice, headed by General Anushkin, emphatically declared in favour of complete abolition of Capital Punishment.

July came. Russia had already become used to Anarchist outbreaks, but was nevertheless horror-stricken at the events that took place on the battlefields of Galicia, near Kalush and Tarnopol. The telegrams of the Government Commissars, Savinkov and Filonenko, and of General Kornilov, who demanded the immediate reintroduction of Capital Punishment, were as a stroke of a whip to the “Revolutionary Conscience.” On July 11th, Kornilov wrote: “The Army of maddened, ignorant men, who are not protected by the Government from systematic demoralisation and disruption, and who have lost all sense of human dignity, is in full flight. On the fields, which can no longer be called battlefields, shame and horror such as the Russian Army has never known reign supreme.... The mild Government measures have destroyed discipline, and are provoking the fitful cruelty of the unrestrained masses. These elemental feelings find expression in violence, plunder and murders.... Capital Punishment would save many innocent lives at the price of a few traitors and cowards being eliminated.”

On July 12th the Government restored Capital Punishment and Revolutionary Military Tribunals, which replaced the former Field Courts-Martial. The difference was that the judges were elected (three officers and three men) from the list of the juries or from Regimental Committees. This measure, the restoration of Capital Punishment, due to pressure having been brought to bear upon the Government by the Military Command, the Commissars, and the Committees, was, however, foredoomed to failure. Kerensky subsequently tried to apologise to the Democracy at the “Democratic Conference”: “Wait till I have signed a single death sentence, and I will then allow you to curse me....” On the other hand, the very personnel of the Courts and their surroundings, described above, made the very creation of these Courts impossible: there were hardly any judges capable of passing a death sentence or any Commissars willing to endorse such a sentence. On the Fronts which I commanded there were, at any rate, no such cases. After the new Revolutionary Military Tribunals had been functioning for two months, the Department of Military Justice was flooded with reports from Military Chiefs and Commissars on the “blatant infringements of judicial procedure, upon the ignorance and lack of experience of the judges.”

The disbandment of mutinous regiments was one of the punitive measures carried out by the Supreme Administration or Command. This measure had not been carefully thought out, and led to thoroughly unexpected consequences—it provoked mutinies, prompted by a desire to be disbanded. Regimental honour and other moral impulses had long since been characterised as ridiculous prejudices. The actual advantages of disbanding, on the other hand, were obvious to the men: regiments were removed from the firing line for a long time, disbanding continued for months, and the men were sent to new units, which were thus filled with vagabond and criminal elements. Responsibility for this measure can be equally divided between the War Ministry, the Commissars, and the Stavka. The whole burden of it finally fell once more upon the guiltless officers, who lost their regiments—which were their families—and their appointments, and were compelled to wander about in new places or find themselves in the desolate condition of the Reserve.

Apart from this undesirable element, units were filled with the late inmates of convict prisons, owing to the broad amnesty granted by the Government to criminals, who were to expiate their crimes by military service. My efforts to combat this measure were unavailing, and resulted in the formation of a special regiment of convicts—a present from Moscow—and in the formation of solid anarchist cadres in the Reserve Battalions. The naÏf and insincere argument of the Legislator that crimes were committed because of the Czarist RÉgime, and that a free country would convert the criminal into a self-sacrificing hero, did not come true. In the garrisons, where amnestied criminals were for some reason or other more numerous, they became a menace to the population before they ever saw the Front. Thus, in June, in the units quartered at Tomsk, there was an intense propaganda of wholesale plunder and of the suppression of all authority. Soldiers formed large robber bands and terrorized the population. The Commissar, the Chief of the garrison, and all the local Revolutionary Organisations started a campaign against the plunderers; after much fighting, no less than 2,300 amnestied criminals were turned out of the garrison.

Reforms were intended to affect the entire administration of the Army and of the Fleet, but the above-mentioned Committees of Polivanov and Savitch failed to carry them out, as they were abolished by Kerensky, who recognised at last all the evil they had wrought. The Committees merely prepared the Democratisation of the War and Naval Councils by introducing elected soldiers into them. This circumstance is the more curious because, according to the Legislator’s intention, these Councils were to consist of men of experience and knowledge, capable of solving questions of organisation, service, and routine, of military and naval legislation, and of making financial estimates of the cost of the armed forces of Russia. This yearning of the uncultured portion of Democracy for spheres of activity foreign to it was subsequently developed on an extensive scale. Thus, for example, many military colleges were, to a certain extent, managed by Committees of servants, most of whom were illiterate. Under the Bolshevik RÉgime, University Councils numbered not only Professors and students, but also hall-porters.

I will not dwell upon the minor activities of the Committees, the reorganisation of the Army, and the new regulations, but will describe the most important measure—the Committees and the “Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier.”