The Russian Revolution полностью

In his report on the Supplementary Treaty to the Reichstag (of course, omitting mention of the secret clauses), Hintze asserted that it laid the basis for Russo-German “coexistence” (Nebeneinanderleben).²¹¹ Chicherin used similar language to the Central Executive Committee on September 2, which unanimously ratified the treaty: despite the “profoundest difference between the Russian and German systems and the basic tendencies of the two governments,” he stated,

peaceful coexistence [mirnoe sozhitel’stvo] of the two nations, which is always the object of the strivings of our worker and peasant government, is at present also desirable for the ruling circles of Germany.²¹²

This is one of the earliest recorded uses in an official statement of the term “peaceful coexistence,” which the Soviet Government would dust off after Stalin’s death.

The two governments now drew steadily closer: one week before Germany’s collapse, they were in a state of de facto political, economic, and military alliance. Hintze was fanatically committed to the support of the Bolsheviks. In early September, when Moscow unleashed its Red Terror, in which thousands of hostages were massacred, he prevented the German press from publishing full accounts of these atrocities sent by correspondents in Russia, for fear of creating public revulsion injurious to further collaboration.²¹³

In September, at Moscow’s request, Germany began to supply Soviet Russia with fuel and weapons. In response to an urgent appeal for coal, the Foreign Office arranged in the second half of October for twenty-five German ships to sail for Petrograd with 70,000 tons of coal and coke. Only about one-half or less managed to reach its destination before the shipments were suspended because the two countries broke off relations. The fuel unloaded in Petrograd went to plants manufacturing weapons for the Red Army.²¹⁴

In September, Ioffe requested 200,000 rifles, 500 million bullets, and 20,000 machine guns. Under pressure from the Foreign Office, Ludendorff gave his reluctant consent, after managing to remove machine guns from the list. This deal did not materialize, due to the departure of Hintze and Chancellor Hertling: the new Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, was much less enthusiastic about a pro-Bolshevik policy.²¹⁵

Despite the looming defeat of the Central Powers, Moscow punctiliously fulfilled the financial obligations of the Supplementary Treaty. On September 10, it shipped to Germany gold worth 250 million deutsche marks as the first payment of compensation, and on September 30, a second installment of 312.5 million deutsche marks, partly in gold and partly in rubles. The third installment, due on October 31, it did not pay because by then Germany was on the verge of surrendering.

The Bolsheviks believed in the victory of their German friends as late as the end of September 1918. Then things happened which forced them to change their mind. The resignation on September 30 of Chancellor Hertling, followed by the dismissal a few days later of Hintze, removed their most loyal supporters in Berlin. The new Chancellor, Prince Maximilian, requested President Wilson to use his good offices to arrange for an armistice. These were unmistakable symptoms of a looming collapse. Lenin, who at this time was recovering at a dacha near Moscow from wounds suffered in an attempt on his life (see below, this page), at once stirred into action. He instructed Trotsky and Sverdlov to convene the Central Committee to discuss urgent questions of foreign policy. On October 3 he sent to the Central Executive Committee an analysis of the situation in Germany in which he spoke glowingly of the prospects for an imminent revolution there.²¹⁶ At his recommendation, the CEC on October 4 adopted a resolution in which it “declare[d] to the entire world that Soviet Russia will offer all its forces and resources to aid the German revolutionary government.”²¹⁷

The new German Chancellor found such brazen appeals to subversion intolerable. By now even the Foreign Office had its fill of the Bolsheviks. At an interagency meeting in October, the Foreign Office for the first time agreed to a break with Moscow. A memorandum drafted by its staff toward the end of that month justified the change in policy as follows:

We who are in bad odor for having invented Bolshevism and for having let it loose against Russia should now, at the last moment, at least cease to extend any longer a protective hand over it, in order not to forfeit also all the sympathies of future Russia …²¹⁸

Germany had ample justification for breaking with Moscow, inasmuch as Ioffe, who even in the spring and summer of 1918 had pursued subversive activities on its soil, now openly stoked the fires of revolution. As he later boasted, at this time his embassy’s agitational-propagandistic work