Riezler also resumed conversations with the Right Center. Its new representative, Prince Grigorii Trubetskoi, Imperial Russia’s wartime Ambassador to Serbia, pleaded for prompt German assistance to rid Russia of Lenin. He posed several conditions for the cooperation of his group: the Germans should allow the Russians to assemble their own military force in the Ukraine, so that Moscow would be liberated by Russians, not Germans; a pledge to revise the Brest Treaty; no pressure on the government that would replace the Bolsheviks; and Russia’s neutrality in the World War.175 Trubetskoi claimed that his group had contact with 4,000 combat-ready officers, who only needed weapons. Time was of the essence: the Bolsheviks were engaged in a regular “manhunt” for officers, executing dozens every day.176
By the time Mirbach’s successor, Karl Helfferich, arrived in Moscow (July 28), Riezler had a plan for a full-fledged coup d’état. Once the German battalion took over Moscow (the Latvian Rifles guarding the city having been previously neutralized with pledges of amnesty and repatriation), it would take little to bring about a collapse of the Bolshevik Government. This would be followed by the installation of a Russian Government completely dependent on Germany, on the model of Hetman Skoropadski’s regime in the Ukraine.177
Riezler’s plans came to naught. Their key provision, the installation of a German battalion in Moscow, was vetoed by Lenin and dropped by Berlin. Yielding to Hindenburg’s pressure, Wilhelmstrasse sent a note to the Soviet Government, which Riezler handed to Chicherin in the evening of July 14. It assured the Soviet Government that in proposing to send a uniformed detachment to Moscow, Germany had no intention of infringing on Soviet sovereignty: its only purpose was to ensure the safety of its diplomatic personnel. Furthermore, the note went on, should there be another anti-Bolshevik uprising, this force could help the Soviet Government to quell it.178 Chicherin communicated the German note to Lenin, who was resting out of town. Lenin immediately saw through the German ploy. He returned to Moscow that night and consulted with Chicherin. This was an issue on which he was not prepared to yield: he would give the Germans almost anything they wanted as long as they did not threaten his power. The following day he addressed the Central Executive Committee on the German note.179 He hoped, he said, that Germany would not insist on its proposal because Russia would rather fight than allow foreign troops on her soil. He promised to provide all the personnel needed to ensure the security of the German Embassy. Then he held out the bait of extensive commercial relations as a means of inducing German business interests to exert pressure on his behalf: it materialized in the form of the Supplementary Treaty concluded the following month. It is doubtful that Lenin could have stood up to the Germans had they been truly determined: he was now even weaker than in February, when he had capitulated to their every demand. But he was not put to the test, because the Foreign Office, apprised of his reaction, quickly dropped Riezler’s proposal. It instructed Riezler “to continue supporting the Bolsheviks and merely [maintain] ‘contact’ with the others.”180
Nor did Riezler have better luck with his proposal to win the neutrality of the Latvians with promises of amnesty and repatriation. This plan was scuttled by, of all people, Ludendorff, who feared “contaminating” Latvia with Bolshevik propaganda. The new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Admiral Paul von Hintze, who succeeded Kühlmann and was even more committed to collaboration with Lenin, needed to hear no more: he instructed the Moscow Embassy to suspend talks with the Latvians.181
To be prepared in the event of a Bolshevik collapse, the Foreign Office worked out its own contingency plans. If pro-Allied SRs seized power in Russia, the German army would strike from Finland, seize Murmansk and Archangel, and occupy Petrograd as well as Vologda. In other words, if the pessimists proved correct, rather than deliver the Bolsheviks a coup de grace and replace them with other Russians, Germany would march in and presumably restore them to power.182
