AN HOUR OF HOPE
There was an hour when the sunrise of hope seemed to be dawning for the Russian people, when the madness of the extreme socialists seemed to be curbed, the army situation in hand, and a real government established. This happened in late July, and was symbolized in the great public funeral given eight Cossack soldiers slain by the Bolsheviki in the July days of riot and bloodshed in Petrograd. I do not know how many Cossacks were killed. Only eight were publicly buried. It is entirely possible that the government did not wish the Bolsheviki to know the full result of their murder feast, and for that reason gave private burial to some of the dead. The public funeral served as a tribute to the loyal soldiers, a warning to the extremists that the country stood back of the war, and a notice to all concerned that the days of revolution were over and that henceforth the government meant to govern without the help or interference of the Tavarishi, or comrades in the socialist ranks. The moment was propitious for the government. The Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates was in a chastened frame of mind, caused first by the running amuck of the Bolshevik element, the unmasking and flight of Lenine, and next by a lost battle on the Galician front, and the disgraceful desertion of troops under fire.
The best elements in the council supported the new coalition ministry, although it did not have a Socialist majority, and it claimed the right to work independently of the council. The Cossack funeral was really a government demonstration, and those of us who saw it believed for the moment that it marked the beginning of a new era in Russia’s troubled progress toward democracy and freedom. The services were held in St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest church in Petrograd, and one of the most magnificent in a country of magnificent churches. The bodies, in coffins covered with silver cloth, were brought to the cathedral on a Friday afternoon at 5 o’clock, accompanied by many members of their regiments and representatives of others. The flower-heaped coffins surrounded by flaming candles filled the space below the holy gate leading to the high altar; around them knelt the soldiers and the weeping women relatives of the dead, while a solemn service for the repose of their souls was chanted.
In the Russian church no organ or other instrumental music is permitted, but the singing is of an order of excellence quite unknown in other countries. Part of a priest’s education is in music, and the male choirs are most carefully trained and conducted. They have the highest tenor and the lowest bass voices in the world in those Russian church choirs, and there is no effect of the grandest pipe organ which they cannot produce. They sing nothing but the best music, and their masses are written for them by the greatest of Russian composers. Many times I have thrilled to their singing, but at this memorial service to brave men slain in defense of their country I was fairly overwhelmed by it. I do not know what they sang, but it was a solemn, yet triumphant symphony of grief, religious ecstasy, faith and longing. It soared to a great climax, and it ended in a prolonged phrase sung so softly that it seemed to come as from a great distance, from Heaven itself. The whole vast congregation was on its knees, in tears.
The service in the cathedral next morning was long and elaborate, and it was early afternoon before the procession started for the Alexander Nevski monastery where a common grave had been prepared for the murdered men. Back of the open white hearses walked the bereaved women and children, bareheaded, in simple peasant black. Thousands of Cossacks, also bareheaded, many weeping bitterly, followed. The dead men’s horses were led by soldiers. The Metropolitan of Petrograd and every other dignitary of the church was in the procession. I saw Miliukoff, Rodzianko and other celebrities. Women of rank walked side by side with working women. Many nurses were there in their flowing white coifs. There were uncounted hundreds of wreaths and floral offerings. The bands played impressive funeral marches. But there was not a single red flag in the procession.
There was, of course, Kerensky, and his appearance was one of the dramatic events of the day. I watched the procession from a hotel window, and I saw just as the hearses were passing a large black motor car winding its way slowly through the crowd that thronged the street. Just as the last hearse passed the door of the car opened and Kerensky sprang out and took his place in the procession, walking alone hatless and with bowed head after the coffins. He was dressed in the plain service uniform of a field officer, and his brown jacket was destitute of any decorations. The crowd when it saw him went mad with enthusiasm; forgot for a moment the solemnity of the occasion and rushed forward to acclaim him. “Kerensky! Kerensky!”
It was his first appearance as premier, and practically dictator of Russia, and he would not have been human if he had not felt a thrill of triumph at this reception. But with a splendid gesture he waved the crowd to silence, and bade them stand quietly back. At first it seemed impossible to restrain them, but the people in the front ranks joined hands and formed a living chain that kept the crowds back, and in a few moments order was restored. There was something fine and symbolic about that action, those joined hands that stopped what might have created a panic and turned the government’s demonstration into a fiasco. That spontaneous bit of social thinking and acting restored order better than a police force could have done, and it left in me the conviction that whenever the Russian people join hands in behalf of their country they are going to work out a splendid civilization. If they had only done it after that day! But the new coalition ministry, with President Kerensky, the popular idol, substituted for Lvoff, who had grown wearied and dispirited by the struggle, soon found itself facing the same old sea of troubles that had swamped the former ministries.
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?