But the Russian people are not and never will be fired by enthusiasm for the Communist revolution. As long as the White armies were permeated by the landlord spirit there was indeed an incentive to defend the land, an incentive exploited to the full by the Bolsheviks in their own favour. I witnessed a striking instance of this on the northwest front. One of the generals of the White army operating against Petrograd issued an order to the peasant population to the effect that “this year the produce of the land might be reaped and sold by those who had sown and tilled it [that is, by the peasants who had seized it], but next year the land must be restored to its rightful owners [that is, the former landlords].” Needless to say, the effect was fatal, although this same general had been welcomed upon his advance three weeks before with unprecedented rejoicings. Moreover, this particular order was republished by the Bolsheviks in every paper in Soviet Russia and served as powerful propaganda amongst the peasant soldiers on every front.
In November, 1920, I talked to soldiers fresh from the Red ranks in the northern Ukraine. I found that peasants, who were willing enough to join insurgents, feared to desert to Wrangel’s army. Asked why they had not deserted on the southern front, they replied with decision and in surprising unison: “Rangelya baimsya”; which was their way of saying: “We are afraid of Wrangel.” And this in spite of Wrangel’s much-vaunted land law, which promised the land to the peasants. But behind Wrangel they knew there stood the landlords.
But the first campaign of the Red army against a non-Russian foe, Poland, which did not threaten the peasants’ possession of the land, resulted in complete collapse at the very height of Red power. And this is the more significant in that quite an appreciable degree of anti-Polish national feeling was aroused in Russia, especially amongst educated people, and was exploited by the Bolsheviks to strengthen their own position. But there was one striking difference between the Red and the Polish armies, which largely accounted for the outcome of the war. Badly officered as the Poles were by incompetent, selfish, or corrupt officers, the rank and file of the Polish army was fired even in adversity by a spirit of national patriotism unseen in Europe since the first days of the Great War. It only required the drafting in of a few French officers, and the merciless weeding out of traitors from the Polish staff, to make of the Polish army the formidable weapon that swept the Red hordes like chaff before it. In the Red army, on the other hand, the situation was precisely the reverse. The Reds were officered by commanders who were either inspired by anti-Polish sentiment, or believed, as the Communist leaders assured them, that the revolutionary armies were to sweep right across Europe. But the rank and file were devoid of all interest in the war. Thus they only advanced as long as the wretchedly led Poles retreated too rapidly to be caught up, and the moment they met organized resistance the Russian peasants either fled, deserted, or mutinied in their own ranks.
The Polish victory effectually dispelled the myths of peasant support of the revolution and the invincibility of the Red army, but beyond that it has served no useful purpose as far as Russia is concerned. Rather the contrary, for by temporarily aligning Russian intellectuals on the side of the Communists it served even more than the civil wars to consolidate the position of the Soviet Government.
The terror that prevails in the Red army, and is, when all is said and done, the measure most relied upon by the Soviet Government to ensure discipline, leads at times to extraordinary and apparently inexplicable episodes. In September, 1920, I witnessed the retaking of the fortress of Grodno by the Poles. As I watched the shells falling over the trenches on the outskirts of the town I thought of the wretches lying in them, hating the war, hating their leaders, and merely waiting till nightfall to creep out of the city. Though it was said that Grodno was defended by some of the best Red regiments, the retreat was precipitate. But a day or two later near Lida they unexpectedly turned and gave battle. Trotsky was, or had recently been in that sector, and had ordered that ruthless measures should be taken to stay the flight. One Polish division was suddenly attacked by five Red divisions. Four of the latter were beaten, but the last, the 21st, continued to fight with savage fury. Three times they bore down in massed formation. It came to a hand-to-hand fight in which the Poles were hard pressed. But after the third attack, which fortunately for the Poles was weaker, an entirely unforeseen and incomprehensible event occurred. The soldiers of the 21st Soviet division killed every one of their commissars and Communists and came over to the Poles in a body with their guns!
It would seem that conscious human intelligence was completely benumbed at such times. Impelled by despair, people act like automatons, regardless of danger, knowing that worse things await them (and especially their kith and kin) if they are detected in attempted disloyalty. People may, by terror, be made to fight desperately for a thing they do not believe in, but there comes after all a
