The imperialists and Russian counter-revolutionaries planned to start uprisings in numerous cities around Moscow and Petrograd in collaboration with imperialist invasion troops. The Yaroslavl uprising was not the earliest White Guard uprising (there had been others before, and some of them I will discuss in this series) but it was the most important one. The British forces had arrived in Murmansk already in March 1918 and talks for the formation of “the Union of Revival”, a counter-revolutionary organization uniting all the anti-Bolshevik parties with the Entente imperialists, had been going on since February. Some white guard revolts broke out in March, April and June, but the series of uprisings including that in Yaroslavl took place in July. However, the British-French invasion forces were delayed and did not reach their target locations in time to help the Yaroslavl White Guards.
“The leaders of the counter-revolutionary parties (SRs, Mensheviks and Kadets)… set up a common organization, the ‘League for Renewal’ (Soyuz Vozrozhdeniya). ‘The League,’ one of the SR leaders has written, ‘entered into regular relations with the representatives of the Allied missions at Moscow and Vologda, mainly through the agency of M. Noulens. With the reservations of hypocrisy, no direct cooperation between the Central Committee and the Allies was envisaged, only a cooperation from the activists which would not officially commit the parties. The League for Renewal was the main clandestine organization of the ‘Socialist’ petty-bourgeoisie and of the liberals who were determined to overthrow the Soviet government by force. In Moscow the Octobrists, representing the big bourgeoisie, joined the organization and linked it with the ‘Right Centre’, a united front of reactionary tendencies inspired by the generals Alexeyev and Kornilov. The Octobrist party was to the Right of the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets)… There was thus a chain of counter-revolutionary organizations running uninterruptedly from the most ‘advanced’ Socialists to the blackest reactionaries. The Military Commission of the SR party organized the League’s ‘combat groups’, whose command was entrusted to a general. The League’s political platform rested on three points: (1) the impossibility of a purely Socialist government; (2) the Constituent Assembly; (3) (as a provisional measure) a Directory invested with dictatorial authority. The local committee of the League in Petrograd was composed of two Popular-Socialists, one SR (A. R. Gotz, the leader of the party), one Kadet, Pepeliaev (who was to be one of Kolchak’s ministers) and two Mensheviks, Potresov and Rozanov. In June, M. Noulens sent the League a semi-official Note from the Allies approving of its political programme and promising it military assistance against the German-Bolshevik enemy.” (V. Serge, Year one of the Russian Revolution, Chicago, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972, p. 230)
“The Allied representatives had conceived a large-scale plan of operations, whose success would have ended Soviet rule. A rising by the Czechoslovak forces in the Ural and Volga regions and in Siberia was to coincide with a series of counter-revolutionary coups in the towns near Moscow and with the landings of the Japanese at Vladivostok and the British at Archangel. Starved, encircled and demoralized by a swift succession of defeats, the two workers’ capitals would fall; ‘order’ would have been restored. A former officer from the French Military Mission in Russia, Pierre Pascal, who subsequently became a devoted and serious revolutionary, has explained the plan in these terms:
“The insurrection at Yaroslavl and the Czechoslovak rising were organised with the direct collusion of the agents of the French Mission and of M. Noulens. The Mission was in constant relations with the Czechs, to whom it sent officers and funds. … The counter-revolutionaries were to seize Yaroslavl, Nizhni-Novgorod, Tambov, Murom and Voronezh in order to isolate and starve out Moscow. This plan began to be implemented with the insurrections in Yaroslavl, Murom, Tambov, etc, I can still see General Lavergne sketching a large circle with his finger on the map around Moscow and saying, ‘That’s what Noulens wants. But I shall feel guilty because, if our plan succeeds, the famine in Russia will be terrible…’”” (V. Serge, Year one, pp. 232-233)
“uprisings and attempts at rebellion occurred in several cities on the upper Volga (Yaroslav, Murom, Rybinsk), which were organized by the Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom under the leadership of the right-wing Socialist Revolutionary Boris Savinkov” (Uldis Ģērmanis, “Some observations on the Yaroslav revolt in July 1918”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 4(3), p. 237)
“Boris Savinkov (before 1917 an SR terrorist, in 1917 a commissar of the Provisional Government) played an important role in the Kornilov putsch in 1917, and in the preparation of the July 1918 Iaroslavl’ uprising.” (Brovkin, Menshevik comeback, footnote on p. 20)
SR writer Argunov writes “According to the plans of the Union, the sporadic armed clashes with the Bolsheviks, which at this time were occurring . . . here and there and being easily crushed by the Bolsheviks… were to give way at the most opportune moment to concentrated action on a large scale in a number of large cities simultaneously. The arrival of the Allies in more or less sufficient numbers was considered to be such a moment. . .
From its very inception the Union maintained regular relations and frequent contacts with the representatives of the Allied missions at Moscow, Petrograd, and Vologda, mainly through the French ambassador, Noulens. The Allied representatives were fully informed as to the aims of the Union and its membership and quite frequently expressed their readiness to help in every way.” (Quoted in James Bunyan, Intervention, civil war, and communism in Russia, April-December, 1918 : documents and materials, pp. 183-184)
Extreme anti-communist Schapiro describes the Savinkov organization in the following way:
“the Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom… included some extreme right wing socialists and the chief of staff was a monarchist.” (Leonard Schapiro, The origin of the communist autocracy; political opposition in the Soviet state: first phase, 1917-1922, p. 154)
The SR, Menshevik and White Guard conspirators had managed to infiltrate the Soviet apparatus in Yaroslavl:
“The former SR terrorist Boris Savinkov had formed another organization, the ‘Fatherland and Freedom Defence League’, which aimed to group the most advanced and pugnacious elements of the counter-revolution on a platform sufficiently vague to satisfy both monarchist or radical-minded officers and the SR intellectuals… The League proceeded to install its men in the Soviet institutions concerned with food supply, the militia and the army that was now in formation… All these clandestine associations received indiscriminate encouragement from the Allies.” (V. Serge, Year one, pp. 230-231)
“at that time many dark and hostile elements that sought to decompose and weaken Soviet power in Yaroslavl, attached themselves to the Soviet apparatus, in order to be able to easily overthrow it at the moment of rebellion. In the provincial executive committee a leading role was played by a certain Dobrokhotov, a man clearly hostile to the Bolshevik party and Soviet power. Enemies also took over the leadership of the land department, gubchek, gubernial military registration and enlistment office. With the support of these enemies Savinkovites took over the most important posts. So, for example, an assistant chief of an artillery warehouse was Colonel Lebedev, the head of the Yaroslavl department of the “Union”. Commissioner of Police there was warrant officer Falaleev, an active participant in the [White Guard] mutiny. Secretary of the district military conference Olshanovsky simultaneously performed the role of a courier-communicator between Moscow and Yaroslavl conspirators.” (Galkin, Razgrom Belogvardejskogo Myatezha V Yaroslavle V 1918 Godu, p. 34)
Conspirators even tried to worm their way into the party organization. “Comrade Nakhimson saw that the Soviet apparatus in the city is littered with alien elements that are enemies who made their way into the ranks of the Bolshevik organization. About these hostile elements, Comrade. Nakhimson said: “These are not communists, they mean nothing, have nothing in common with the communists, they represent a purulent abscess on the body of a party organization”.” (Galkin, p. 35)
“Several commissars, including one Bolshevik, went over to the Whites.” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 266) The non-Bolshevik commissars were clearly Left-SRs, who tried to carry out a coup against the Bolsheviks in Moscow and elsewhere. They collaborated with the White Guard uprising. The “Bolshevik” who “went over to the Whites” was clearly a Savinkovist infiltrator. Savinkov said:
“We had our agents in… the Sovnarkom, the Cheka, the Bolshevik Staff, and similar institutions” (James Bunyan, Intervention, civil war, and communism in Russia, April-December, 1918 : documents and materials, p. 180)
“The main combat force of the counter-revolutionary mutiny in Yaroslavl was the old officers from the tsarist army, many of whom were left in the region from dissolved army institutions like the “Yaroslavl province Army Research Institute… individual departments and units of the XII army constituted the fighting force of the Yaroslavl department of the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and freedom. Some of these officers were connected with the families of princes Golitsyn, Gagarin, Odintsov, Counts Mayer, Nirod, etc., who before the revolution had estates and lands in the Yaroslavl province.” (Galkin, p. 36)
“Savinkov… waited for orders from English and French embassies. On the eve of departure to Yaroslavl Savinkov received a telegram from Noulans from Vologda. This telegram confirmed that the foreign troops will land in Arkhangelsk between July 4-10 and it was categorically suggested to start an uprising in the Upper Volga, precisely in those days… The conspirators believed that the White Guards riots in Rybinsk and especially in Murom would distract military forces of the Soviet Republic away from Yaroslavl.” (Galkin, p. 39)
White officer “Radchenko, a former captain of the Preobrazhensky Regiment… was sent to Rybinsk by this [Savinkov’s] center with the task of organizing an anti-Soviet uprising in the city.” (V. A. Neumark, The formative years of the Kostroma police)
“Who did these conspirators rely on, whose interests did they express, who supported them? The force they relied on were the landowners, the bourgeoisie and their lackeys the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
Before the revolution of 1917 in Yaroslavl there was a strong organization of Black Hundreds, headed by Katsaurov. They were also called ardently Slavic Black Hundreds. This organization included a variety of social elements: merchants, priests, storekeepers, all kind of declassed elements. After the victory of the proletariat in October 1917 significant Black Hundreds personnel remained in Yaroslavl. They actively participated in the organization of the rebellion.
A “mentor” of the Katsaurians was the Yaroslavl Metropolitan Agafangel, who from the pulpit cursed the Bolsheviks. Literature consisting of slanderous fabrications of the Metropolitan Agafangel’s were taken up by the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries and were heard throughout the city…
The Yaroslavl zemstvo stood at the head of the local counter-revolutionary forces. In November 1917 there was a meeting of the provincial zemstvo council, at which cadet A. M. Kizner called on the Zemstvo people to the fight against Soviet power.
The report and speeches at this meeting were filled with slanderous fabrications against the address of the Council of People’s Commissars and especially the Red Guards” and gave its support to the reactionary Kerensky organization “The Committee for Public Order”. (Galkin, pp. 40-41)
In Yaroslavl the reactionaries, black-hundred elements under various guises, even in Menshevik or clerical processions fired at communists and workers and provoked violent clashes. In Vladimirskaya the clergy fired at workers with a machine gun from a church bell tower (Galkin, p. 42).
The Church was among the strongest supports of the counter-revolutionaries: “It should be noted that during the period under review, the Yaroslavl diocese occupied one of the leading places in Russia in terms of the number of clergy and parishioners: in 1917, 1064 Orthodox churches and 28 monasteries operated in the Yaroslavl region. The clergy had a strong influence on the broad masses of the population… long before the events of July 1918, the Yaroslavl clergy expressed “counter-revolutionary sentiments.” Thus, on January 22, 1918, “a crowd of the bourgeoisie, clergy and other dark elements tried to organize street riots of a pogrom nature. Filling the streets of the city center… the crowd tried to beat up Council workers passing through the streets. The crowd was dispersed by a detachment of soldiers under the command of Comrade Gromov. A similar pogrom demonstration was organized on January 17 under the guise of a religious procession.” (A. E. Kidyarov, “Yaroslavl rebellion of 1918 and the Orthodox Church”)
“Before the start of the rebellion, the leader of the uprising, Colonel A.P. Perkhurov personally asked for a blessing from Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky) of Yaroslavl and Rostov. “In the basements of the monasteries,” wrote R. Balashov, “food and weapons were hidden. When suppressing the White Guard rebellion, only in the Spassky Monastery in Yaroslavl, the Red Army soldiers discovered 6 thousand pounds of grain, and a lot of weapons were captured at Tolga… In the last days before the mutiny, as it later turned out, a lot of white officers were hiding in the monastery cells.” One of the participants in the summer events in 1918, D. Malinin wrote: “From the very beginning of the October Revolution, the Yaroslavl clergy was actively, counter-revolutionary… the priests called on Orthodox Christians to repent and take communion before entering the battle with the Bolsheviks. The same calls were heard from the lips of the clergy in the July days. In addition, in order to raise the spirit of the “defenders” of Yaroslavl, which began to quickly fall, the priests served prayers to the Lord God throughout the rebellion – “for victory and defeat of the hated Bolsheviks.” Some of the most ardent priests did not limit themselves to this and took an active part in the battles. Thus, after the mutiny at Vspolye station, the priest of the Vladimir Church was shot like a machine gunner firing from a machine gun from the bell tower of his church.”” (A. E. Kidyarov)
“Not only the clergy of Yaroslavl itself, but also the clergy of the surrounding villages took part in the July events of 1918.” (A. E. Kidyarov)
“in Murom, where members of the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom also organized an uprising, the clergy supported the rebels.” (A. E. Kidyarov)
“According to the testimony of novice Bishop Mitrofan V. Aleksinsky, “Sakharov often went to the bishop… On the eve of the uprising, Sakharov visited the bishop… they said how good life was under the tsar, and everything was cheap… The Bolsheviks brought Russia to the point of destruction and that they need to be driven out of power, then it will be better for us to live, they brought it to the point that there is no bread and the people are starving, and all this is because of the Bolsheviks.”” (A. E. Kidyarov)
The Mensheviks afterwards claimed the rebellion was not their doing, but they participated in it and also were members of the “Union of Renewal” which helped organize it:
“The Mensheviks diligently helped the White Guards and Socialist Revolutionaries. Mensheviks, right and left Socialist Revolutionaries united in the “Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and revolution” with the manufacturers Vakhrameev, Dunaev, Pastukhov, merchant Pozdnyakov and others for a joint fight against the Soviet authorities. In counter-revolutionary activities the Mensheviks tried their best to find support among workers in small enterprises, among workers with backward sentiments, among the petty-bourgeois strata of the city. The Mensheviks had some influence among some station workers at the Uroch, railway workshops, the printing house. The influence of the Mensheviks was explained by a strong change in the composition of workers during the years of the imperialist war. During war workers with revolutionary tempering and the experience of the revolutionary struggle were taken to the front or arrested by tsarism. Their places were predominantly occupied by people from the declassed [ruined] kulak strata and the city’s petty bourgeoisie.” (Galkin, p. 43)
Brovkin claims Yaroslavl was always a stronghold of menshevism (Brovkin, Menshevik comeback, p. 17). In his book Mensheviks after October (p. 42) Brovkin claims that although Menshevik organizations generally stagnated everywhere, in Yaroslavl the size of their party organization tripled after the October Revolution. This might be because the socialist revolution galvanized the backward workers to fight against it, but the most likely explanation is that either the Mensheviks aggressively recruited shopkeepers and petit-bourgeois who were the majority in Yaroslavl to desperately increase their organization, or – like happened with the Arkhangelsk Right-SRs – White officers from other regions joined it to use it as cover.
It certainly seems from other sources that the working class movement was weak in Yaroslavl, a rural clerical center with a strong anti-semitic black-hundred influence.
“Mensheviks assured Savinkov that they and all their supporters will support the rebels, will oppose Soviet power and will be the “foundation of the uprising”” (Galkin, p. 40)
The Mensheviks tried to organize workers into anti-communist guards, by lying to them, telling them the rebels did not kill communists, that they did not know what kind of government would be created in Yaroslavl by the rebels, claiming the guards were needed to protect buildings from bandits etc. They managed to persuade only a few workers to join their guard, and even they immediately left when they realized what was really going on.
“On the evening of the first day it hit us. The first disappointment, the workers did not come,” wrote [White] General Gopper in his memoirs. The first disappointment was followed by a second. The first Soviet regiment, on the neutrality of the which Perkhurov hoped for, came to the defense of Soviet power.” (Galkin, p. 52)
“The Whites had been promised the support of several hundred workers; in the event they got hardly a few dozen.” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 266)
The White Guards tried to threaten peasants in villages to join the Yaroslavl uprising, but only few joined, even after threats, and they quickly started to desert and run away from the Whites. (Galkin, p. 85)
“The leaders of the uprising had hoped that the Yaroslav workers would actively support them” but they did not. Further the number of peasants who joined the uprising “was smaller than hoped for and part of them later straggled back to their homes” (Goppers, quoted in Uldis Ģērmanis, p. 238)
To attract to their side at least the city shopkeepers the White Guards announced that “All obstacles to trade will be eliminated” (Galkin, p. 55)
“In terms of lies, Perkhurov’s scribblers surpassed all limits. For example, Savinkov’s counter-revolutionary rebellion in Rybinsk was suppressed on July 7, but the White Guard headquarters reported on July 9: “In Rybinsk there is an uprising against the Soviet-government which is developing successfully.”” (Galkin, p. 72)
Savinkov’s organization made the following demagogic and deceitful proclamations:
“We are acting in cooperation with the Northern and Samara Governments and are under the command of General Alexeev. The Northern Army is under the command of Boris Savinkov, an old revolutionist. Moscow is now surrounded, in a closed, circle”
Ģērmanis writes:
“No Northern Army existed at that time and the rest of the claims were also far from reality” (Uldis Ģērmanis, p. 239)
“The Northern government” was that setup by the British together with the SRs and Mensheviks in Arkhangelsk. The Samara government was the so-called “Komuch” setup by SRs and Mensheviks with the help of Czechoslovak troops supported by the French. It is noteworthy that in their declarations these reactionaries always stress that they want to “protect the Russian revolution from Germany” or that they are “revolutionaries”, because they knew the population would not support open counter-revolutionaries.
Savinkov’s group further said:
“The Soviet of People’s Commissars is not only in complete accord with the German imperialists but is carrying out unhesitatingly all their orders and demands… The People’s Commissars, having long since betrayed the cause of the working class and knowing that the wrath of the people is terrible, now depend upon the bayonets of the Germans… Down with the hirelings-the People’s Commissars and their tools!” (Quoted in Uldis Ģērmanis, p. 239) These are extremely hypocritical lies considering that the reactionaries themselves relied solely on foreign imperialist support.
Brave Bolshevik organizer Nakhimson was arrested by the Savinkov White Guard-Mensheviks. They told him to remove his jacket, so that it wouldn’t be pierced by bullets and they could steal it after murdering him. Nakhimson took off his jacket and shouted: “You cannot kill the revolution” and he was shot. Communist organizer Zackheim was arrested at his home. He faced his attackers with equal bravery and was murdered. Their bodies were desecrated and dragged around the streets. The same fate met many honest workers and communists (Galkin, pp. 46-47)
“After the bloody massacre of the communists, Perkhurov created a civil administration, at the head of which, with the rank of assistant chief, commander of the civil department, Menshevik Savinov was appointed (mainly the commander was Perkhurov himself). Directors of Perkhurov’s civil administration were cadet Kizner and landowner Chernosvitov. Perkhurov appointed homeowner Lopatin as city mayor, as members of the city council were chosen then Menshevik Abramov, cadet Sobolev, merchant Kayukov, Gorelov and lawyer Meshkovsky.” (Galkin, p. 49)
Soon all pretense of liberal democracy was abandoned and “Colonel Perkhurov declared himself a military dictator” in Yaroslavl (Galkin, p. 53)
But speaking of Germany, the whites themselves already at this point tried to get the Germans to support them: “On the night of 6 July a white officer, using promises alternating with threats, tried to convince the German commission that the German soldiers must be put in action against the Bolsheviks. The German commission stalled for time and replied evasively.” (Uldis Ģērmanis, p. 240)
And once the insurrection failed, the whites sought protection from the local German troops:
“During this time the battle was approaching its end. On 20 July the Headquarters of the Volunteer Northern Army of Yaroslav offered its surrender to the German commission. In this tragicomical action there was, however, a certain judicial logic: by becoming prisoners of the Germans the insurrectionists would come under the protection of Germany and thus escape Bolshevik revenge.” (Uldis Ģērmanis, p. 241)
However, the Bolsheviks still arrested the ringleaders and did not allow the Germans to stop them!
Despite all their demagogic claims about “patriotism” and claiming that Bolshevism was backed by Germany, it was most of all the capitalist class and all their hirelings that put their hopes not only in the Entente imperialists, but also German imperialism:
According to western capitalist eye-witnesses “in particular the Russian upper classes seemed to want to switch from the bolshevik regime back to the tsar, if possible, and on the other hand a German occupation seemed a lesser evil compared to the current regime.” (Tero Tapio Toivanen, “Länsimaalaisten kirjoittajien kokemuskertomukset kuvan muodostajina Neuvosto-
Venäjän ensimmäisinä vuosina 1917–1921″, p. 41)
Due to their obvious collaboration with the whites in the Iaroslavl’ uprising, local Menshevik leaders “Diushen and Savinov were expelled from the Menshevik party” because “Martov and Dan feared that Menshevik participation in anti-Bolshevik uprisings would provide the Bolsheviks with the excuse they were looking for to justify executions and disbandments.” (Brovkin, Menshevik comeback, p. 21)
So according to Brovkin it was “an excuse” to repress the Mensheviks, when the Mensheviks quite deliberately joined in the White Guard conspiracies!
Menshevik “Dan stated… ‘In the first few days, we had hoped that the Bolshevik conspiracy could be liquidated by force of arms. The attempt failed. …’ (These are Dan’s actual words.) ‘ That is why,’ he went on, ‘we have now taken up the position of conciliation.’” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 92)
The Mensheviks wanted to overthrow the Bolsheviks with force, but only denied responsibility for these attempts due to tactical and dishonest reasons.
The situation had become serious because Yaroslavl uprising was planned extremely carefully and with skill. The reactionaries had a favorable situation for their action and had even infiltrated the Soviet state and the communist party. The Bolsheviks were also distracted by the Left-SR coup attempt, which had just taken place in Moscow with backing from the Entente.
However, the rebellion was crushed. The Whites knew they could only win if the Entente invasion troops from Arkhangelsk reached them in time, which testifies to the insignificant degree of popular support they had among the people.
“The Communists, although surprised by this attack, delivered at the moment when the political conflict with the local Left SR branch was occupying all their attention, soon recovered… When the promised descent of the Allies from Archangel failed to materialize, the Whites knew they were lost.” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 266)
Savinkov testified at his trial:
“I thought at first of operating in Moscow; but the French [Consul Grenard and General Lavergne, the latter speaking on M. Noulens’s behalf] told me that the Allies felt that it was possible to continue operations against the Germans on the Russian front. … They informed me that a sizeable landing of Anglo-French forces would be taking place at Archangel, with this purpose in mind, and that it was necessary to support this expedition from the interior. The plan was to occupy the north of the Volga basin, when the British and French would support the insurrection. We were to take Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Kostroma and Murom. The French would concentrate on Vologda. But they deceived us. The Allied landing did not take place and we found ourselves on our own at Yaroslavl. … The French knew all the resources we could call on … I saw Grenard and Lavergne several times. … The French put money at my disposal. Our own funds [those of the Fatherland and Freedom Defence League], which were on a relatively small scale, came from three sources. There were insignificant donations; I had 200,000 roubles (Kerensky issue) via a Czech intermediary named Klepando. The French gave about two and a half million Kerensky roubles. An official brought me the money, in small amounts at first; when the insurrection was in the offing they gave a huge sum all at once, two million I think.” (Quoted in V. Serge, Year one, p. 267)
“Savinkov’s activities on the upper Volga were to complement those of the Czechoslovaks and the Right SRs farther down the river. A kind of SR government had been functioning for a month in Samara, receiving its directives likewise from M. Noulens. One of the leaders of the SR party at this time, who was also a leading figure in the so-called Constituents’ movement, wrote:
“In June we received an official note from M. Noulens … giving a categorical confirmation of the Allied governments’ decision to supply forces for joint action against the Germano-Bolsheviks; such forces were to be large enough to take the weight of the struggle in the first stage and to enable the anti-Bolshevik contingents to form themselves into a big regular army. The Allies rejected any possibility of co-existence with the Bolsheviks”” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 268)
“Yaroslav, July 4. The Left Socialist-Revolutionists formed their own Executive Committee of Soviets, in opposition to that of the Bolsheviks. The two committees do not recognize each other.” (From Menshevik paper Nashe Slovo, quoted in James Bunyan, Intervention, civil war, and communism in Russia, April-December, 1918 : documents and materials, p. 561)
“The Left SRs, too, though sincere and determined adversaries of all these counterrevolutionary groups, appear to have had relations with the French Military Mission. I have been assured from several quarters that the latter supplied the grenades which were used in the murder at the German Legation. Savinkov testified: ‘I remember one conversation that I had, I think, with Grenard. He told me that the French had given facilities for the assassination of Count Mirbach by the Left SRs.’” (V. Serge, Year one, p. 268). According to Serge’s information, these various parties recruited by the French did not necessarily know about each other’s actions and did not always know they were in cahoots. The French organized a division of labor between them (p. 269).
The Mensheviks, Right and Left-SRs all opposed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. With help from the French imperialists the Left-SRs tried to carry out a coup against the Bolsheviks, and assassinated the German ambassador Mirbach to try to provoke a war and cause the peace treaty to fail.
“The attempted insurrection of the Left SRs had one jarring echo on the eastern front. There the Red troops operating against the Czechs and the counter-revolutionary bands had been placed under the supreme command of Colonel Muraviev…
Having received the directive of his party… Muraviev suddenly announced that he considered himself to be at war with Germany, ordered his troops to wheel round towards the east, had the Simbirsk Soviet surrounded and presented himself there to demand their support. He was received in the Soviet by angry shouts, insults and threats; completely isolated, he was killed on the spot (12 July).” (V. Serge, Year one, pp. 269-270)
Let’s keep in mind that according to Brovkin, Mensheviks and SRs also supposedly had majority support in Simbirsk. Yet the population did not join in Muraviev’s revolt and he was “completely isolated”!
“When the Commander-in-Chief Mouravieff revolted against the Soviet power, a proof was furnished to the government that he had received sums of money from England.” (“Allied Intrigues Against Russia”, Soviet Russia, Vol. I New York, August 9, 1919 No. 10)
Muraviev’s goal was to join with the Czechoslovak legion (Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 165). Now let’s discuss the Menshevik popularity in Yaroslavl. Menshevik I. Rybalsky makes up all kinds of lies, but some of the things he says are important, as they contradict Brovkin’s narrative and from them we can see the truth peaking through. Rybalsky states that in Yaroslavl the Bolsheviks won the Soviet chairman election – though he calls it fraud, but does not provide any evidence for this claim. Even if there was some truth to some of the things he says, there could be a number of perfectly innocent explanations for it (especially after the February revolution when the Mensheviks still had a majority, the election procedures were highly irregular. I’ll discuss that in a later episode).
He then says that some Mensheviks and SRs were taken to court because “Comrade Loktov, an SR, and Comrade Shleifer spoke approvingly about the Constituent Assembly and disapprovingly about “Soviet power” and urged the workers to come out with arms against the existing state order.” (Brovkin, Dear comrades : Menshevik reports on the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war, pp. 77, 80) Brovkin writes about this court case elsewhere, but he claims the Mensheviks and SRs were completely innocent and in quite a funny manner, he says in passing that he doesn’t know if these events and accusations of plotting an armed rising had any relation to the armed rising by Savinkov’s White Guards which took place immediately afterwards and in which the Mensheviks participated! It would be quite the coincidence if they were not related!
The Mensheviks of course, at least afterwards in cities other than Yaroslavl, claimed they had won the election in Yaroslavl. The Mensheviks and Brovkin do not provide any good evidence for this, but it is still possible. Yaroslavl was a place where the black hundreds and clericalism were stronger than elsewhere, the Bolsheviks were temporarily weakened because the left-SRs tried to overthrow them and created a rival Soviet executive committee. For some reason Brovkin doesn’t mention this, even though it might well be relevant.
However, some historians have also claimed the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Yaroslavl Soviet because of votes from soldiers, but they lost the majority when the soldiers were sent to the front or left for their villages. This is of course possible, but Brovkin only hints at it elsewhere (p. 24) and doesn’t mention anything of the sort, relating to Yaroslavl, maybe because in that case the change in the Soviet wouldn’t be because of any change in the attitude of the people, but due to changes in class forces and revolutionary segments of the population simply being moved elsewhere. In the sake of fairness I must say this is possible, but Brovkin doesn’t demonstrate it.
Galkin of course mentions that the workers’ movement in Yaroslavl was weakened severely during WW1, because active workers were arrested or sent to the frontlines en masse. This helps to explain why Bolshevism was relatively weaker in Yaroslavl compared to other places, but despite of that the Bolsheviks gained majority support there after the October Revolution, as everyone recognizes.
One must ask the obvious: if the Mensheviks supposedly had great popularity among the workers and toiling masses, why did they feel that their only chance of success was this kind of conspiracy, where they ally with White Generals and a tsarist officer plot, relying on an invasion by the Entente, and totally funded by the Entente? Why did they feel like they even needed to invite the Germans to help them if the Entente failed? The Mensheviks knew they had to lie to the workers and try to trick them. Why did the workers refuse to join the Menshevik plot?
SOURCES:*
V. Serge, Year one of the Russian Revolution, Chicago, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972
Uldis Ģērmanis, “Some observations on the Yaroslav revolt in July 1918”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 4(3)
Brovkin, “Menshevik comeback”
James Bunyan, Intervention, civil war, and communism in Russia, April-December, 1918 : documents and materials
Leonard Schapiro, The origin of the communist autocracy; political opposition in the Soviet state: first phase, 1917-1922
Galkin, Razgrom Belogvardejskogo Myatezha V Yaroslavle V 1918 Godu
V. A. Neumark, The formative years of the Kostroma police
A. E. Kidyarov, “Yaroslavl rebellion of 1918 and the Orthodox Church”
Brovkin, Mensheviks after October
Tero Tapio Toivanen, “Länsimaalaisten kirjoittajien kokemuskertomukset kuvan muodostajina Neuvosto-
Venäjän ensimmäisinä vuosina 1917–1921″
“Allied Intrigues Against Russia”, Soviet Russia, Vol. I New York, August 9, 1919 No. 10
Brovkin, Dear comrades : Menshevik reports on the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war
Figes, Peasant Russia, civil war : the Volga countryside in revolution, 1917-1921
*Galkin is a good Soviet historian. “Soviet Russia” is a Soviet magazine. Serge was an anarchist turned communist, and later a trotskyist with anarcho-deviationist views. His book on the civil war is decent, but otherwise he is not recommended. All the other sources are anti-communist and I don’t recommend them.
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