The Germans and The Bolsheviks

The Germans and The Bolsheviks: A History of a Collaboration by Silvin and Maidi Eiletz is a book available in Slovene and in German dealing with the fascinating subject of German-Bolshevik collaboration during the First World War. The Eiletzs chronicle the links and the cooperation between the Bolsheviks and Imperial Germany. The story of Lenin's transport across Germany in April of 1917 is well known, but almost unknown is that the collaboration between the two parties did not end there. Germans transferred money to the Bolsheviks to fund their propaganda efforts, and actually continued to support them - and to use them for their own ends - once they took power in Russia. To the authors the book is not merely a chronicle of this collaboration, but also a study into the emergence of the Bolshevik totalitarianism in which they assert Germany played a decisive role in helping to bring about. A proposition they present convincing arguments for. The work mainly draws from the documents of the German ministry of foreign affairs.

Lenin's transfer itself was much more crucial than it appears at first glance. With all their most seasoned and prominent leaders in emigration, the Bolsheviks inside Russia were poorly led and had next to no real influence. Lenin's transport organised by official Germany changed this. It was also the first of such undertakings and was quickly followed up by more transfers of radical Russian emigres from Switzerland and from Belgium. 350 people in all.

Immediately after the Bolsheviks began to receive funding from the Germans which enabled them to churn out vast amounts of propaganda material. In February of 1917 the Bolsheviks did not jet possess their own press, but by early July they were printing and distributing 320,000 issues of various publications daily. This was useful to the Germans because they saw Bolshevik agitation as a way to increase turmoil in Russia and more specifically because the Bolsheviks agitated against the war and particularly among the soldiers which served to help demoralize the Russian army. Throughout this time the two collaborating parties were also exchanging information on the situation in Russia.

The Germans were aware from the information sent to them by their agent networks that the Bolsheviks seizing power in Russia was not out of the question. They considered this a welcome and advantageous outcome for themselves since they concluded that with the Bolsheviks in power they could have both peace in the east and the fulfilment of their expansionist war aims. Once the Bolsheviks took power Germany was the first country to recognise the new government.

The work is clear in pointing out that Lenin was not a German agent. His goals and the goals of the Germans - the Bolshevik overthrowal of the provisional government - merely happened to coincide. Lenin was very cautious in his dealings with the Germans and refused any direct contact in order not to compromise himself. However he was surrounded with people who were in direct contact with the Germans, most prominently Karl Radek and Jakub Hanecki. Lenin looked forward to an international revolution sweeping up Germany, which is why he could agree to an unfavourable peace - he saw it as a tactical move with which to gain breathing space for his movement to consolidate power in Russia. However the Germans initially knew very little about Lenin other than his antiwar stance - they had not put in the effort to learn more about him.

Upon arrival to power the Bolsheviks wasted no time in using their embassy in Germany to aid the agitation of the German left wing radicals. This was soon thwarted but regardless of this the Germans did not adjust their course of action even after they in this way became fully aware of the nature of the Bolsheviks. They saw in the Bolshevik government the best tool to keep Russia weak and in chaos and thus the best way to ensure the biggest possible gains for themselves at its expense. They also presumed the Bolshevik stay in power would be short lived and therefore saw the need to make the best possible use of that time. Due to this weakness of the Bolsheviks in Russia they perceived no real threat emanating from them to themselves.

With the dictated peace of Brest-Litovsk signed by the Bolsheviks Germany achieved all of its war goals in the east. The most important aspects were that Ukraine would become a dependency of Germany and that Germany would be granted economic concessions in Russia. The signing of the settlement was an outcome of an ultimatum issued by Ludendorf on February 23rd. With the truce agreed upon in December 1917 the Bolsheviks had already gotten the respite from the fighting that they wanted. They saw little reason to legitimise the German land grab that followed the truce and the disintegration of the Russian army. Therefore during the peace negotiations they went out of their way to stall. They acquiesced only once the Germans saw through their strategy and Ludendorf threatened to push even further should the Bolsheviks in a few days failed to respond to his ultimatum in the affirmative.

The Germans threw out the Bolsheviks out of Finland, the Baltic, Ukraine and Crimea but they continued to subsidise them through their embassy for the purpose of their staying in power in the rest of Russia. However by June 1918 the German ambassador to Russia Wilhelm von Mirbach was urging a change in course. He had come to belive that the Bolshevik position was untenable and wished to forge ties with other political options and help them bring down the Bolsheviks in order to have influence with the new government which in his opinion would soon come about. Ironically he was assassinated shortly after this by the Social Revolutionaries who were pro-Entante in outlook and aimed with this to trigger a German punitive measures that would rip the Bolsheviks away from the Germans.

Instead the Germans sent a new ambassador, Karl Helfferich, a prominent politician who quickly reached the same conclusion Mirbach had reached before him and actually succeeded to for a short time convince the German Emperor Wilhelm II of the need to change course. He argued that the Bolshevik position was extremely weak with them only being able to maintain power thanks to a campaign of terror and a widespread belief in Russia that Germany was behind them. In light of that that the overthrow could be achieved with a minimum of German involvement on the ground. A visible break off of support on the part of Germany would by itself already be enough to bring the Bolsheviks to the brink of collapse. He also envisioned that the Brest-Litovsk treaty would need to be modified to placate the anti-Bolshevik forces that would take power in their stead so as to distance them from the Entante. Just how weak the position of the Bolsheviks at this junction really was is best illustrated by the fact that even general Vatsetis, the commander of the Latvian Riflemen - the only real fighting force at the disposal of the Bolsheviks at the time - entered into secret contact with the German embassy to infer onto them that he would be willing to break off from the Bolsheviks and take the side of a German intervention against them instead.

In arguing for the removal of the Bolsheviks Hellferrich found an unlikely ally in the military personified by Ludendorf. However the military had a radically different plan in everything else. They argued for the removal of the Bolsheviks in which German military units would take a visible, even central part and which would be followed by a creation not of a government of patriotic forces of Russia, but of a puppet government subordinated to Berlin, which would eliminate the need to revise the Brest-Litovsk treaty, instead Germany would realize further gains.

Still, neither the vision of the army nor of the embassy prevailed. In this debate the ministry of foreign affairs headed by Paul von Hintze won over the emperor and had the last word. Von Hintze restated the familiar argument that the Bolsheviks present the best way to exploit Russia and that any changing of horse in mid race carried with it unforeseen risks. Thereafter the Emperor determined the Bolsheviks should be notified they have nothing further to fear from Germany. This was done on 23rd July and was a crucial boon for the Bolsheviks at the time when they were at their absolute weakest.

In summer of 1918 the Entante landed in Arhangelsk, anti-Bolshevik volunteers were in conjuction with Don Cossacks advancing from the south and most importantly the Czechoslovak legion had revolted against the Bolsheviks, removed them from power in Siberia and was now pushing back west taking Samara and dispersing the Bolsheviks there. The Bolsheviks had no reliable organised fighting force but the Latvian Riflemen which were positioned against the Germans. However the German notification of July 23rd enabled the Bolsheviks to move the Latvian Riflemen, from their positions facing the Germans to the East to face the Czechoslovaks and check their advance. Thus the Bolshevik government survived the deepest crisis they were ever to find themselves in.

The civil war would escalate further from here with the year of 1919 seeing more bitter fighting and much larger battles, but by then the Bolshevik position was much stronger. By then the effort of Trotsky to create the Red Army had bore fruit therefore despite the actual fighting being more intense the Bolsheviks in 1919 were much less vulnerable and did not come as close to a collapse as - but for German reassurances - they had in the crucial summer of 1918.

With this the Germans and the Bolsheviks found themselves tied to each other like never before. The formal confirmation followed in August 1918 with the signing of additional protocols to the Brest-Litovsk treaty under which Russia was compelled to pay massive war reparations and which envisioned the German military intervening in Russia on behalf of the Bolsheviks against a possible Allied intervention from Arhangelsk and against Russian anti-Bolshevik formations should it become necessary. With this agreement Bolshevik Russia became a client state of Imperial Germany.

The immediate necessity for Germany to knock Russia out of the war was to free up divisions fighting there for the transfer to the Western Front in order to try to stave off defeat there. However when this became a real possibility the thirst for conquest overrode other considerations and the German army instead stepped ever deeper into Russia. Though the victory Germany had won was an outcome of intrigue and chance - the outcome on the battlefield was in its favour but not decisive - it would not forsake the spoils. Though the Russian army had disintegrated nearly as soon as the truce with Germany was signed in 1917 when war was to end in November 1918 the greater number of German soldiers who had been in the east a year earlier were still there. Between exploitation of Russia and a greater chance of staving off defeat in the west German leadership chose the former.

It has been argued that Brest-Litovsk represented not a comprehensive settlement comparable to Versailles, but merely a temporary measure designed to enable Germany to get its hands on foodstuffs of Ukraine and therefore be able to continue the war. However the German control of Ukraine had no effect on the German war effort in the west. Despite requisitions the German army in Ukraine was just barely able to maintain itself, it was at no point able to ship any substantial supplies home.

Another damning argument against this proposition is the outcome of the previously mentioned three-way debate between the German embassy in Russia, the German military, and the German ministry of foreign affairs. The plan of the German embassy in Russia to overthrow the Bolsheviks was specifically rejected because it would necessitate the revision of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The plan of the military to do the same was rejected because it would jeopardise the treaty. Only the plan of the foreign ministry to continue with the charted course and continue to bet on the Bolsheviks would ensure the gains of Brest-Litovsk could be maintained for years to come.

Should Germans ever look for people who are to be blamed for some 15 million of them having to endure Communism for 45 years they would do well to assign a portion of the blame to men like Romberg, Brockdorff-Rantzau, Kühlmann, Hintze, Ludendorf and emperor Wilhelm the II who in the 1917-18 period aided the Communists in Russia and shifted the odds in their favour.

Pondering Marja

According to the New York Times which is embedded with the military and therefore in position to know the units taking part in the taking of Marja did not cordon off the town in any meaningful way. Their map below clearly shows this:



So not only did the Americans announce their offensive a month in advance, but they also intentionally permitted the enemy an escape route instead off boxing it in. This is consistent with the reports that of the estimated four hundred guerrillas in the area at the launch of the offensive up to one half had melted away since.

This is smart on the part of the attackers, there is no use in taking needless casualties which would certainly be higher if the enemy was pushed into a corner. But if they were truly smart they would not have launched this offensive in the first place. With it they are taking on a commitment they can not fulfil. They can take the town with military force, but they can not use it to create conditions where if they leave, the town will not simply revert to its condition before the offensive and sever its links with the present government in Kabul. So they are taking on a commitment to garrison the area indefinitely - something which is clearly not feasible.

Just like Americans have the ability to take things slowly on the tactical level - something which they are making apparent by advancing at a glacial pace in order to keep their casualties low. So can the opposition afford to take things slowly on the strategic level and wait them out until such a time as they vacate the town.

After all, they live there. They are not going anywhere.

Ukraine: Back to Normal

For a principled non-voter I sure follow many elections. Most recently the one in Ukraine. The result of the second round surprised me somewhat. I assumed that Timoshenko had been hurt more for presiding, as the prime minister, over the most recent economic downturn and that Yanukovich's margin of victory would therefore be greater than the 3.5 points he won by in the end. I guess it goes to show just how uninspiring a politician Yanukovich is and perhaps just how entrenched political preferences are across Ukraine's regions.

Still the most significant shift in Ukrainian politics happened long before the second round and even long before the elections themselves. The spectacular demise of the project of Orange Revolution. After their rise to power the orange partners quickly became bitter enemies, finally Yushchenko's ratings plummeted while Timoshenko ended up softening her stances, sometimes radically so, from the ones she was voicing in 2004. So whatever the outcome of the second round a large shift in Ukraine was inevitable either way.

Too much should never be made of any elections, particularly in a corrupt, dysfunctional state like Ukraine. At the end of the day elections in Ukraine are most fundamentally bitter hand-wrestling contests between adverse oligarch clans and no side should be seen as having many positives associated with it. At the same time nonetheless quite a bit was at stake for the populace. More so than is usually the case in elections elsewhere, which is confirmed by the high turnout — 69% in the second round.

Yushchenko's win would have meant the continuation of the orange, anti-Russian course, Timoshenko's victory its cessation and Yanukovich's victory its reversal. In the end Yushchenko was handed a total defeat, his bankrupt vision garnering a puny 5% of the votes - possibly some sort of a record low for an incumbent candidate while, as said, Yanukovich ended up edging out Timoshenko.

Foreign policy is only one aspect of the difference between the options in the Ukraine election, however. Fundamentally questions regarding the relationship between Ukraine and Russia are not about Russia and Ukraine, but about Ukrainians themselves. The approach taken by the ruling structures in Ukraine in regard to issues like the status of the Russian language in Ukraine, Ukraine's NATO bid, reactions to the 2008 South Ossetian War and the needless gas transportation crises cost them not because of Russia's clout, but because the approach taken was first of all unpopular with large swathes of the Ukrainian electorate itself.

In the English speaking press Ukraine is usually characterised as being split in half, the eastern pro-Russian part and the western pro-Western part. That is a mischaracterization. In reality the split is not between the part of the populace which favours Russia over West and the part which favours West over Russia, but more subtly — between the part of the populace which desires good relations with Russia and does not care an iota about the West, and on the other hand the part of the populace which desires both better relations with Russia and with the West. Only a small region of Ukraine composed today of the Lviv, Ternopol and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts — the only regions where Yushchenko did better than Yanukovich — people of an anti-Russian outlook predominate.

The region, known to history as Galicia or Halichina, was in the 19th century ruled by the Habsurgs. It is then that its Greek-Catholic populace, unlike other Ukrainians, doubled its Ukrainian identity to a feeling of animosity towards Russians or "Muscovites". The views of such Ukrainians are given great amount of space in the Western press, but the population of these three regions barely surpasses one tenth of the whole population of Ukaine.

The shift on the political scene of Ukraine which culminated with the election of Yanukovich and the definite end of the orange project was therefore in no way a surprise. To consider just the orange forces' stated intention to put the country on course for NATO membership. This was always an unrealistic proposition in a country where support for NATO membership is non-existent beyond the previously mentioned nationalistic Galician region and a peculiar, tiny, ostensibly Liberal strata of the populace, who view the solution for all problems berating Ukraine and the whole of Eastern Europe in ridding it its native character and wholesale Westernisation, which as its first step includes subordinating it to Washington and the Brussels.

On the whole the CSTO, the Moscow led counterpart to NATO, actually enjoys a level of support three times greater than NATO does. According to a recent poll 40% of Ukrainians want for Ukraine to join Russia and Belarus in CSTO while only 12.5% propose the country joins NATO. 36% desire for Ukraine to keep clear of any military alliances. These numbers correspond to the demographics of the regions of Ukraine. The CSTO option no doubt the prevailing one in the east and the south, the NATO option prevailing around Lviv and the neutrality option prevailing in the central Ukraine around Kyiv. It is no surprise then Yushchenko suffered a catastrophic defeat and Timoshenko had to modify her stances. Pro-Western policy which seeks to legitimise itself by creating, rather than bridging rifts with Russia can have no staying power in Ukraine. The West may think it has something to gain by opening another front against Russia in Ukraine, but Ukrainians can see they have nothing to gain by making their country into a battlefield. Should they ever be pushed into the contest anyway, they probably would not enter it on the side of the West.

Ukrainians and Russians along with Belarusians share a common origin. They are all the heirs of Old Rus. Ukrainian and Russian languages are less apart than for example Italian and Neapolitan. Russian itself is as commonly spoken in Ukraine as Ukrainian is. It is the language predominately heard in the Southern and the Eastern regions and in the capital, Kyiv. By some estimates in any given moment two million Ukrainians are on temporary work in Russia. In short there are numerous ties between the two peoples. The idea that in a country like this there is political capital to be made of anti-Russian policies was always preposterous. Not because it meant antagonising the Russian Federation but because it meant antagonising Ukrainians themselves.

In a place like Ukraine the most pro-Western political option always has a certain advantage because it can more credibly point to Western Europe as its model. This model will always carry a certain amount of appeal to the populace of any Eastern European country, in Ukraine as in Russia itself, since Western Europe is perceived as a place where state governance is less dysfunctional, where there is less corruption and most of all a place which is wealthy. This easily explains the initial success of the Orange Revolution in gaining power, however, as soon as they proved unable to deliver on their promises of the rule of law and economic improvement and all there seemed left of their project was political chaos of the magnitude unusual even in Ukraine, linguistic Ukrainization of state administration in the Russian speaking regions and rifts with Russia their days were counted.

In reality in a contest between the West and Russia a free Ukraine can only be unaligned or on the side of Russia. Western attempts, such as the one in 2004, to intervene into its politics with the view to push her into its camp can never prove successful in the long term. Ukraine which is anti-Russian is Ukraine which is at odds with itself. With the presidential election of 2010 Ukraine returns back to its natural state.

The Marja Thing: A Pro's Take

Patrick Cockburn over at counterpunch.org puts down his thoughts regarding the much advertised attack on Marja. The gist of it:

"The US strategy is to expel, kill or capture the Taliban, prevent their return, and then provide aid and services to a grateful populace. Described as a sophisticated attempt “to win the hearts and minds of Afghans”, its covert and more realistic aim is to win the hearts and minds of the American press, particularly those back in the US who direct the efforts of reporters on the ground. The message the US military wants to send is that in Afghanistan it is fighting a winnable war and not blundering deeper into a quagmire."

Priština - Not a Capital

On Sunday a draw for the qualifications for the UEFA European Football Championship 2012 was held in Warsaw. The national teams represented at the draw included tiny statelets like Liechtenstein and San Marino, countries not geographically in Europe like Cyprus, Israel and Azerbaijan, and even non-sovereign entities like the dependency of Faroe Islands and the four home nations of the United Kingdom.

But one entity not represented was Kosovo. Since the Albanian declaration of independence their state has been recognised by around sixty governments, majority of European governments among them. Despite this UEFA did not admit the Football Federation of Kosovo as its member coolly explaining that it is a body which disassociates itself from politics which is why according to its statue only the governing bodies of football of states recognised by the United Nations are eligible to join.

This is significant. In reality to an average person the recognition of organisations like UEFA, FIFA, FIBA, IOC and others is vastly more important than the recognition of any national government or even the UN itself. As long as Kosovo Albanians can not participate at events like European Championship in the mind of the average person in Europe theirs will not be a normal state even if their own government recognises Priština. At least as long as this is true for the world public opinion Kosovo will remain a territory whose status is disputed, regardless of the impatient and self-deceiving insistence of western officials that the matter is closed and that the Serbs 'need to move on'.

Every sporting event that goes by without a team representing the so called 'Republic of Kosovo' is a reminder that it is not a normal country, but merely another frozen conflict like Northern Cyprus or Transnistria, regardless of recognition by the US, the European powers, and their satrapies.

This is not to say UEFA and others will not somewhere in the future find a way to admit Albanian governing bodies of sport on the territory of Kosovo. After all despite their protestations to being independent of politics they were complicit in demonization of Serbs in the 1990s by going along with a blockade on FR Yugoslavia, banning its national team and sports clubs from international sporting events. But so far this is not in the cards.