In Moscow the plan of a public trial of the Tsar was being discussed; such a trial would certainly have ended in the execution of the former monarch.

The unforseen course of the civil war, however, led to a simpler, more expeditious and more ruthless decision: to exterminate the entire family. No court could well have passed capital sentences on young children; but they could easily be disposed of in a secret and more or less unofficial killing. Early in July Ekaterinburg was threatened from two sides by the advancing Czechs and the Russian anti-Bolshevik forces who were fighting on their side. . . .

The decision to kill all the members of the family, together with the Tsar's personal physician, Botkin, and three servants, was taken at a meeting of the Ural Territorial Soviet on July 12. The military authorities reported that Ekaterinburg could not hold out more than three days."

Officially, the central government was not asked for orders by the Ekaterinburg Soviet; allegedly, it was the local Soviet which reached the decision. There can be no doubt, however, that at least Lenin and Trotsky, informed well in advance, had given their consent or their orders.

About midnight on the night of July 16, a member of the local Soviet, Yakov Yurovski, ordered the members of the Tsar's family to go to the cellar. After an hour the family and all servants were assembled in the cellar.

The Tsar stood in the middle of the room, at his side the Tsarevitch sat in a chair; on his right stood Doctor Botkin. The Tsarina and her daughters stood behind them near the wall; the three servants stood in corners of the room. Yurovsky told the Tsar (there is no clear record of the precise words which he used) that he was to be put to death. The Tsar did not understand and began to say "What?" whereupon Yurovsky shot him down with his revolver. This was the signal for the general massacre. The other executioners, seven Letts and two agents from the Cheka, emptied their revolvers into the bodies of the victims. The Tsar fell first, followed by his son. The room was filled with shrieks and groans; blood poured in streams on the floor. The chambermaid, Demidova, tried to protect herself with a pillow, and delayed her death for a short time. The slaughter was soon ended; Yurovsky fired two additional bullets into the body of the Tsarevitch, who was still groaning and the Letts thrust bayonets into any of the victims who still showed signs of life."

On July 19, the Moscow press carried a short official report of the execution. However, it falsely stated that "the wife and son of Nicholas Romanov were sent to a safe place."

.. Apparently the extermination of the former Czarina, the Czarevich, and his four sisters, was too unsavory for the public. Moreover, no code

Ibid., p. 90. 'Ibid., p. 91.

of laws, even summary revolutionary justice, could admit the "execution" of the former Czar's physician, cook, chambermaid, and waiter.

The night following the death of the former Czar seven other members of the Romanov family were executed in a town in the Urals. Earlier, Grand Duke Mikhail had been shot in Perm.

After the surrender of Germany in November 1918 the civil war in Russia, which was being fought since the end of 1917, took on even greater proportions. Communist detachments tried to occupy the Baltic countries; in the Ukraine several governments fought for supremacy. "Volunteer Armies" were organized in the south, mainly in the Don region, and in the east, beyond the Volga. General Mikhail Alekseev, who had served as the actual head of the General Staff during the World War, had been organizing anti-Bolshevik forces since November 1917. Leadership of the White armies was taken over by General Anton Denikin, commander-in-chief of the south-western front in the war with Germany. Also outstanding among the anti-Bolshevik military leaders was General Petr Krasnov, organizer of the Cossack troops along with General Aleksei Kaledin. In the east, the White armies stood under Aleksandr Kolchak, Admiral of the Russian Navy before and during the revolution. In 1918-19 Kolchak headed the anti-Soviet government in Siberia; he was proclaimed "Supreme Ruler" of Russia and he received support from the Allies.

In the course of the civil war Soviet troops

penetrated into the Urals, after having dislodged the Committee of the Constituent Assembly from Samara and the Directory of the Social Revolutionaries from Ufa, but they had to retreat before [Admiral] Kolchak's White Army under the orders of the Omsk dictatorship protected by the Allies."

In the course of 1919 the civil war was to be intensified

with the concentric advance of the armies of Kolchak and Denikin on Moscow, and the march of [General] Yudenich on Petrograd. The Soviet Republic, cut off from its natural resources, was for a moment reduced, in the current expression, almost to the grand duchy of Moscow.10

The situation of the Whites, however, was, in a way, worse than that of the Moscow government. Divided into political groups which ferociously fought one another, without supplies and sufficient food, with only feeble help from the Allies, they were doomed. The turn of the tide came in the second half of 1919. Kolchak was the first to be repulsed.

Shub, op. cit., p. 319.

Souvarine, op. cit., p. 234.

10 Ibid., p. 237.

2. The Red Army

After a rapid demobilization of the old army, the new Red Army was organized by Trotsky in the spring and summer of 1918. Universal conscription was introduced, but special measures had to be taken to obtain commanders for the army and insure their loyalty to the one-party regime.

Simultaneously with the introduction of compulsory military training for the workers and poorer peasants the practice of electing officers was abolished. The Bolshevik military authorities now began to talk about the harmful and disruptive influence of army committees very much as Kornilov, Denikin and the old officers had spoken in 1917; and strict obedience to the orders of the officers gradually became embedded in the discipline of the Red Army.11

11

The reintroduction of compulsory military service helped to create an army of large dimensions. In August 1918 it

numbered 331,000; this figure increased to 550,000 on September 5 and to 800,000 by the end of the year. . . . .. "We decided to have an army of a million men in the spring. Now we need an army of three million. We can have it and we will have it" [declared Lenin on October 4, 1918.] Lenin's desired figure of 3,000,000 was reached on January 1, 1920; and during 1920 the Army continued to grow until it amounted to about five and a half million.12

Discipline in the new army was weak and loyalty doubtful. Desertions reached huge proportions despite the severe punishment meted out to deserters.

According to official Soviet figures there were 2,846,000 deserters during the years 1919 and 1920. Of these 1,543,000 appeared "voluntarily" in response to proclamations promising them immunity if they joined the ranks before specified dates, while about a million were caught in raids which were regularly organized in towns and on the railroads.

... During the last seven months of 1919, 4,112 deserters were sentenced to death, but only 612 were actually executed, according to official figures. During the same period 55,000 deserters were sent to punishment units, where they were subjected to a very severe disciplinary regime.13

It was questionable, however, whether the officers of the old army, if ordered into the new military force, would be loyal to the Soviet government. A number of party leaders wanted the Red Army to be led by Communists or "proletarians"; Lenin and Trotsky disagreed with this view:

Trotzky insisted that without the old officers no regular army worthy of the name could be formed. . . .

However, Trotzky insured the loyalty of the majority of the former officers by an adroit mixture of cajolery and terrorism. He did not resort to the coarse abuse of the officers with which some of the cruder Petrograd Communists, such as Zinoviev, Volodarsky and Lashevitch, endeavored to reconcile the proletariat to the necessity of employing them.14

"Between June 12, 1918, and August 15, 1920, 48,409 former officers were taken into the Red Army."

"15

A number of former officers who refused to join the Red Army, or who deserted after joining, were shot. The families of the deserters were often arrested. Many former officers who refused to support the Communists succeeded in escaping to the South, however, where a White Army was being organized.

A very important rôle in the Red Army was played by the political commissars, who were supposed simultaneously to watch out for the political loyalty of the officers, to take charge of Party work in the units and to carry on political propaganda and educational work among the peasant recruits. The commissar was not supposed to interfere with the operative orders of the commander; but he was empowered to take drastic action if he suspected treason. As the civil war went on, an elaborate Communist Party organization was built up in the Army; so-called political departments were formed on every front and in every army. 16

3. The Communist International

The years 1919-20 witnessed the founding of the Communist International. Heir of the "Left Zimmerwald" faction," the new International had a base in a large country (Russia) and abundant help from its government. On the other hand, that government then placed all hope for its survival as a government on the success of the revolution abroad.

. . . The work of preparing the new international was done, quite naively at that time, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chicherin [People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs] launched a wireless appeal for an international conference.18

The first congress, convened in March 1919, included, in addition to the Russian participants, representatives of small left socialist groups from a number of other countries.

. . Most of the thirty-five delegates and fifteen guests had been handpicked by the Russian Central Committee from so-called "Communist par

14 Ibid., p. 31.

15 Ibid., p. 32.

18 Ibid., pp. 32, 33.

17 See chapter I.

18

F. Borkenau, The Communist International (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1938), p. 162.

ties" in those smaller "nations" which had formerly comprised the Russian Empire, such as Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Finland; or they were war prisoners or foreign radicals who happened to be in Russia at this time. . . . England [was represented] by a Russian emigré named Feinberg on Chicherin's staff; Hungary by a war prisoner who later escaped with a large sum of money.19

...

Grigori Zinoviev, Lenin's right-hand man, was elected President of the Communist International. In this capacity he exercised great influence, over a period of about five years, upon Communist movements in both the East and the West.

He [Lenin] knew that he had in Zinoviev a reliable and docile tool and he never doubted for a moment his own ability to control that tool to the advantage of the Revolution. Zinoviev was an interpreter and executor of the will of others, and his personal shrewdness, ambiguity, and dishonesty made it possible for him to discharge these duties more effectively than could a more scrupulous man.20

... A brilliant speaker and debater, he [Zinoviev] had the gift of dealing with various sorts of people, but an innate duplicity and love of doubledealing and intrigue very soon disgusted the most enthusiastic. He was notoriously anything but courageous, but, as is so often the case with excitable types, was capable of the wildest overrating of chances and unable to admit failure.21

Angelica Balabanoff, at the time a member of the supreme body of the Comintern (Communist International), described the machinery of the new organization as follows:

I was most disturbed at this time [1919] and during the coming year to find how many of our agents and representatives were individuals long discredited in the labour movement abroad. They were chosen because they had nothing in common with the labour movement and could, therefore, obey the most contradictory and outrageous orders quite mechanically and with no sense of responsibility. Adventurers, opportunists, even former Red-baiters, all were grist to Zinoviev's mill. They departed on secret missions, supplied with enormous sums-and as emissaries of Moscow to the revolutionary workers abroad, they moved in the reflected glory of the October Revolution.22

The regular work of the Comintern was carried out by a small group of

Russian leaders:

Simovjev [Zinoviev], Bukharin, and Radek formed the real day-to-day leadership of the Comintern. Occasionally Trotsky, while burdened with immense labours, lent a hand, especially in matters concerning France.23

19

Angelica Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel (New York and London: Harper & Bros., 1938), p. 213.