E. H. Wilcox

From PREFACE, Russia's Ruin by E. H. Wilcox, 1919
( excerpts )

This book is based on articles published in the Fortnightly Review. It does not profess to give a complete and connected* story . . . Its object is rather to describe in detail some of the chief factors which caused the Revolution and determined its course.

The facts set forth are nearly all derived from documentary sources—most of those in the first section from evidence sworn in courts of law. It is no longer necessary to illustrate the abuses of the Tsarist Government by unverifiable anecdote. The trials of Souhomlinoff and Manasevitch-Manouiloff have shown down to the minutest detail how bad that Government was, and why it was so bad. These two men were typical figures for their respective ranks of the bureaucracy. Their careers tell us more convincingly than volumes of vague generalization how well justified were the attacks on the Old Regime.

After � The Korniloff Affair � was published in its original form, Mr. Kerenski challenged some of its statements. Except where there were good grounds for rejecting his criticisms, the narrative was modified in conformity with them. Mr. Kerenski�s Prelude to Bolshevism was published after the main text of this book was already in type. It is, however, dealt with in an appendix.

New York : Scribners, 1919.

From Russia's Ruin by E. H. Wilcox, 1919

BOLSHEVISM AND THE WAR

The outbreak of the War found Lenin and Zinovieff (Apfelbaum) in a little village in the environs of Cracow, whence they had been directing the action of the Social-Democratic Party in Russia. Like other Russian subjects living in Austro-Hungary, they were arrested. It is said that the police found special grounds for suspicion against them in some statistical diagrams on the agrarian question, which were in their possession and which at first were believed to be plans of fortifications. The circumstances of their release have never been satisfactorily explained. g. A. Alexinski, a well-known Russian politician and a member of one of the earlier Dumas, has stated that, at a meeting in Paris with Ganetzki (Fürstenberg), the latter said to him : "As soon as I heard of the arrest, I dashed off to Cracow, and I succeeded in obtaining both for Lenin and Zinovieff the right of free passage to Switzerland." When Ganetzki was asked in what capacity he was allowed to meddle with Austrian official proceedings, he was silent, and his boast did a good deal to strengthen the suspicion, which subsequently arose, that he was one of the principal intermediaries between Lenin and the German Government. The Austrian Socialist leaders Victor and Friedrich Adler are also said to have had a hand in the liberation of the two Bolsheviks. However, the finally decisive factor seems to have been the direct intervention of the Minister President Stürgkh., who considered that Lenin�s activity on the other side of the frontier would be in the highest degree advantageous for the Central Empires, as its ultimate result would be confusion in the political life of Russia.

Subsequent events justified the Austrian Minister's view, for no sooner had Lenin entered Switzerland that he started a violent defeatist propaganda. In his Geneva organ, the Social-Democrat, he preached that, though it might be a matter of indifference to the international proletariat as a whole, which side won the War, "we Russians are for the defeat of Russia, since that would facilitate her internal enfranchisement, her liberation from the fetters of Tsarism." This view was, apparently, at that time, confined to a very small minority of the Russian exiles, who had escaped the infection of the patriotic enthusiasm prevalent in their own country at the beginning of the War. Even Trotski wrote in October, 1914 : "Decisive defeats of Russia might accelerate the Revolution, but must weaken it to the depths of its being ; and in Germany the transformation which began with the capitulation of the proletarian party to militarist nationalism would be hastened, the working class there would fatten on the crumbs which fell from the table of triumphant imperialism, and social revolution would be struck to the heart. That in such circumstances even an apparently successful Russian revolution could only be an abortion, needs no demonstration." For that reason, Trotski indignantly rejected "the emancipating aid which German Imperialism is sending us in Krupp's shell-cases, with the blessing of its Social-Democracy.

Lenin seems also to have been an occasional contributor to the German paper Die Glocke (The Bell), which was revived by the migratory Parvus (Helphand) for the exposition of a curious mixture of Socialism and Imperialism. It was strange company for the Bolshevik leader to be in, for on one of Hindenburg's birthdays, this paper printed an article eulogising the Field-Marshal as an "embodiment of the German genius," and declaring that, as his work was facilitating the conclusion of peace, his name should be "sacred to socialists."

Of more far-reaching import than Lenin's Press work, was his share in the efforts to resuscitate the Internationale and make it an effective instrument for the restoration of peace. He had for some time been a member of the old Internationale, and had thus been brought into close touch with the leaders in all countries of those socialists who rejected the principle of nationality, and saw in patriotism nothing more than a combination of superstition, delusion, prejudice, and imposture. [?] These cosmopolitan connections he made use of to call the Zimmerwald and Kiental conferences, which seem both to have been dominated by the Russian [?] Social-Democrat refugees. The ideas which i was proposed to bring into operation by these conferences were set forth in a manifesto published by the Bolshevik refugees in Switzerland at the beginning of 1915. In this document it was declared that the "opportunists" of socialism had paved the way for the fiasco of the Internationale by rejecting socialism in favour of "bourgeois reformism" ; that they had repudiated the idea of transforming the "class struggle" at a favourable opportunity into civil war; [!] that they had been false to the principle enunciated in the Communist Manifesto, that "the socialist has no Fatherland" ; and that they had satisfied themselves with the sentimental views of the petite bourgeoisie as to the possibility of destroying militarism, instead of recognising the necessity of a revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of all countries against the bourgeoisie of all countries. It was, therefore, proposed, that "revolutionary" Social-Democrats should prepare for the moment of crisis "illegal" forms of action, in order to unite the working classes of all countries, not with their own bourgeoisie, but with the working classes of all other countries. In this way, the "imperialistic" War could, it was urged, everywhere be changed into civil war.

This was the basis on which the International Socialist Conference was convened at Zimmerwald, in Switzerland, on September 5, 1915. Lenin was vigorously supported at the meeting by the Polish Jew, Sobelsohn {Radek), who had been expelled from the Polish Socialist Party for equivocal conduct, but who afterwards became one of the leading lights of Bolshevism at Moscow. The discussions lasted four days, but produced no tangible result, as the representatives of the socialistic majorities in all the belligerent countries refused to abandon their nationalistic standpoints. Hardly more successful was the conference held at Kiental, in the Bernese Oberland, from April 24 to April 26, 1916. In fact, the chief characteristic of this gathering seems to have been shrill discord, for which the violence of Lenin and Radek was largely responsible. Thus Lenin failed to persuade the Socialists of all the belligerent countries to do what he himself eventually did in Russia alone. He was not, however, at that time quite singular in his aims. There were Germans at Zimmerwald and Kiental who thought just as he ; and very likely they misled him as to their influence and the prevalence of their ideas in their country. It may be mentioned in passing, that the Mensheviks Martoff and Axelrod also had some share in bringing abut the Zimmerwald and Kiental conferences.

When the Revolution broke out in Russia, Lenin felt that the chance of his life had come, and he fretted to get back to Petrograd. He applied for leave to travel through France and England,* but the Allied Governments regarded him with only too well-founded suspicion, and placed obstacles in his way. As things turned out, this was unfortunate, though Lenin was probably not a man to be biased by personal chagrins, as Trotski appears to have been by his detention at Halifax while on his way back to Russia from the United States. Lenin was in a hurry, for he had started with a heavy handicap, and it was essential for his purposes that he should be in Russia before the process of reconstruction could begin in earnest. He appealed to the Swiss Socialist Robert Grimm, the Editor of the Berner Tagwacht, who had presided over the Kiental Conference, and together they concocted the plan of traveling back through Germany. Some say the idea originated with the one, some with the other, but the point is negligible. For Lenin there were no conscientious objections to it : there were only tactical objections. To him, international frontiers, whether in peace or war, were artificial and conventional barriers, with no realities to correspond to them in the nature of things. In his eyes, there were no nations, but only two classes, into which all mankind was divided ; the �bourgeoisie � in all countries formed the one class, and the proletariat of all countries the other. These two classes, so he argued, were natural and eternal enemies to one another, and the War was merely a predatory feud, in which the bourgeoisie of one group of countries was making use of its �enslaved proletarians� to raid the ill-gotten possessions of the bourgeoisie of another group. In Russia a state of things had arisen, in which it might be possible for the proletariat to throw off its yoke ; and if that could be done in one country, the example would soon be followed in others, perhaps in all others. If the German Government, in the mistaken idea that it was promoting its own ends, was foolish enough to help him to carry out his plan, why should he refuse its assistance ? The �Imperialists� in Berlin would soon learn that they had been mistaken, and had, in reality, forged a weapon for use against themselves. On the other hand, Lenin doubtless recognised, that if he traveled through Germany, he would excite against himself a prejudice which would seriously hamper his agitation in Russia. But, after weighing the pros and cons., he decided that a prompt arrival in Russia would more than counter-balance the drawbacks which would result from �traffic with the enemy.� Unhappily, the sequel proved that he was right.

      * Mr. Wilcox seems to have been mistaken : there was no thought of such an application to be made by Lenin, etc. ; it was assumed that such a one would not be granted. Please confer other sources. — (WPT).

Naturally, the Berlin Government welcomed the proposal that the most potent agent of dissolution should be let loose on the already deliquescent mass of Russian society, and on April 9, 1917, Lenin, Zinovieff, and thirty other political refugees crossed the Swiss frontier on to German territory in �sealed� railway carriages. The party was not exclusively composed of Bolsheviks, as it had been stipulated by the Russians that political refugees of all shades should be allowed to take advantage of the opportunity. It was accompanied by the Swiss pacifist Fritz Platten, who had acted as intermediary between the refugees and the German authorities ; and it was under the surveillance of three German officers. The travelers seem to have pledged themselves to do their utmost to secure the release of the civilian German and Austrian prisoners of war in Russia. Any other obligations which they may have entered into have been kept secret. They were not allowed to leave the train during the three days of their passage across German soil.

When Lenin reached Petrograd, he found the conditions anything but favourable for his agitation. The archives of the Ohrana had been opened, and prominent Bolsheviks had been exposed as police spies in nearly every big town in Russia. Among these �Provokatory,� as has been seen, were the leader of the Bolshevik Party in the Duma, and a prominent member of the editorial staff of the Bolshevik paper, Pravda. To a plain mind, it might well have seemed that the whole Bolshevik Party was so tainted with treachery that no confidence could be placed in it. The circumstances of Lenin�s journey also produced a very unfavourable impression when they became known. At the beginning of the Revolution, at any rate, the popular feelings was still bitterly anti-German, and for many months the �sealed carriages� haunted the Russian newspaper. Moreover, Lenin had to suffer under a further handicap. When the Revolution came, nearly all his ablest lieutenants were either in Siberia or abroad ; and before they could be assembled in Petrograd from all the ends of the earth, the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had had time to consolidate their power over the masses. . . .

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons 1919.

From Colossal Blunders of the War by William Seaver Woods, 1930

Germany expected that the war would bring on a revolution in Russia, and, indeed, counted on it as part of their war plan, and Mr. E. H.  Wilcox, correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, who was in Berlin during the week before the outbreak of the war, heard that belief freely spoken everywhere. But, as a matter of fact, Germany�s declaration of war made all Russia absolutely solid in support of the Government, and it took over two and half years of the most awful blunders and incompetence by the Russian authorities themselves to shake the loyalty of the people and turn them against the men they blamed for military losses so huge that they have never even yet been reckoned up with anything like accuracy.

New York, Macmillan, 1930, pages 189 - 190.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/letters/november14.html

Hurd, Archibald, Sir, b. 1869. Title German sea-power; its rise, progress, and economic basis, by Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle [E. H. Wilcox, pseud. } . With maps and appendices giving the Fleet laws, etc. Publisher Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press [1971] Description xv, 388 p. 23 cm. ISBN 0837145139 Language English Note Reprint of the 1913 ed., without the maps.

Wilcox, E. H. Title Russia's ruin. Publisher London : Chappell & Hall, 1919. [ New York, Scribner, 1919. ] Description 316p. 22cm. "Based on articles published in the Fortnightly review."--Pref. Language English

Hurd, Archibald Spicer, Sir, 1869- Title German sea-power, its rise, progress, and economic basis; by Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle, with maps and appendices giving the Fleet laws, etc. Publisher N.Y., C. Scribner's sons, 1914. Description XV, 388 p. 2 fold. maps. 23cm. O Language English