Europe: A History (191 page)
Of course, the Peace Conference worked its way through an astonishing amount of business. Five major treaties were put into effect. A dozen new states were given international recognition. A score of territorial awards were made. A batch of plebiscites were organized and administered. Much of Europe was given a basis for the new start which so many desired. Nor is it fair to say that the
spirit of vengeance reigned supreme. As the Conference progressed, the tone softened. Lloyd George, the most flexible of the ‘Big Three’, arrived in January amidst cries of ‘Hang the Kaiser!’ but later took the lead in seeking the road of accommodation. The creation of the Free City of Danzig, for which he received no thanks, was an example of his moderating influence. There is no denying the vin-dictiveness which underlay the war guilt clauses, the principle of reparations, which set out to bill Germany for the entire cost of the war, and the one-sided plans for disarmament. At the same time, despite Clemenceau’s intransigence, there was a growing sense that Allied demands must be tailored to the limits of German tolerance, [
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Yet the resultant international climate was far from healthy. The mix of vengeance and cynicism portrayed by the victorious Allies did not augur well. Eastern Europe, the original source of conflict, was still unregulated. No sooner was the ink of the treaties dry than all sorts of people set out to revise them.
Most of the wars which erupted in 1918–21 were fuelled by disputes of a purely local nature. Whole encyclopaedias have been filled with the rights and wrongs of obscure localities which made the news, from Allenstein to Zips. Yet four of the wars had wider implications. These were Russian Civil War, the Hungarian Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War, and the Graeco-Turkish War. On each occasion, the inability of the Western Powers to exercise a benign influence on the Eastern part of Europe was amply demonstrated.
The ‘Russian Civil War’
of 1918–21 is arguably the victim of a misnomer. In reality, it was a series of civil wars and a series of international wars all rolled into one. It consisted of two main strands. One strand centred on a contest for control of the central Russian government, and was fought out between the Bolshevik ‘Reds’ and an assortment of their ‘White’ challengers. All the participants in this part of the proceedings aspired to the reconstitution of the Russian Empire in one form or another. A second strand involved a succession of conflicts between Reds or Whites on the one side and the independent republics of the former tsarist borderlands on the other. All the republics were fighting for the preservation of their new-found sovereignty. But that was not all. The Reds fielded local formations in each of the republics in addition to the central reserves based in Moscow. The Whites, too, fielded several separate armies. Numerous foreign forces intervened. The governments of the national republics were frequently confronted by local rivals; and there were a number of‘loose cannon’, such as the Czech Legion of ex-prisoners of war who in 1918 seized the Trans-Siberian Railway. As a result, the mêlée in most areas took the form of a multi-sided free-for-all. [
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In Ukraine, for example, which constituted one of the most valuable prizes, eleven armies took to the field. The forces of the Ukrainian Republic, which was formed in January 1918, were divided between supporters of the initial
Rada
or ‘National Council’ and those of the subsequent Directory. The German army of occupation on the Eastern Front had stayed on until February 1919 in order to
give aid to Ukraine’s independence. The ‘Red Army’ of Ukraine had strong backing among Russian workers in the Donbass region, and was supplemented by units from the central Bolshevik command in Moscow. General Denikin’s ‘Russian Volunteer Army’, backed by a French force, landed in Odessa; its successor, Baron Wrangel’s ‘White Army’, camped in Crimea. Piłsudski’s Polish army defeated the forces of the West Ukrainian Republic in early 1919, before advancing on Kiev in April 1920 in alliance with the Ukrainian Directory. The peasant guerrillas of the anarchist, Nestor Makhno, took over a broad region of central Ukraine. The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, changed hands fifteen times in two years. To reduce such a kaleidoscope to the binary struggle of Reds versus Whites is simplification pushed to absurdity (see Appendix III, p. 1315).
The course of events was no less complicated than the
orare de bataille
. But seen from the Bolsheviks’ point of view in the centre, there were two successive phases, each with its own priorities. The first phase, which occupied the whole of 1918 and 1919, saw the Whites advance on Soviet Russia from all sides—General Yudenich from the West in Estonia, Admiral Kolchak from the East in Siberia, General Denikin from the South in Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were desperately strained to hold the Muscovite heartland and to repel each advancing army in turn. The second phase, which began in the winter of 1919–20, saw the ‘Red Army’ take the offensive, pursuing each of the retreating Whites before moving on to crush each of the national republics in turn.
The critical moment occurred in November 1919, when Denikin had reached Tula, only 100 miles south of Moscow, and the Poles stood not much further away, to the west near Smolensk. One concerted push might well have spelled the end of the Bolshevik regime. But Piłsudski’s emissaries received no satisfactory answer about Denikin’s attitude to the independence of Poland. So the Poles stood still, and began to negotiate with Lenin. Denikin hesitated fatally, until swept from his positions by the Red cavalry, hotfoot from their victory at the siege of Tsaritsyn. In his memoirs, Denikin was to blame Piłsudski for the Bolsheviks’ final victory.
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After that, having secured the centre, numerous Red armies fanned out in all directions, carrying all before them. Their reconquest of the republics in the European part of the former Empire reached its term in 1921, when a Bolshevik force overthrew the Menshevik regime in Georgia (see Appendix III, p. 1314).
The Bolsheviks’ victory, which confounded the military experts, must be attributed to the divisions of their enemies, to the talents of Leon Trotsky, Commissar for War and the ‘Russian Carnot’, to the strategic advantage of internal lines of communication, and to the utterly ruthless measures of their ‘war communism’. The Bolshevik regime was unwelcome to all the major classes of Russian society, including the peasants, to all the major groupings of the political spectrum from reactionary monarchists to liberals and socialists, and to all the non-Russian nationalities. But the outbreak of civil war—which Lenin himself provoked— provided the pretext for suspending all existing institutions and for wiping out all social and political opposition. The
Cheká
or ‘Extraordinary Commission’ of
revolutionary police (forerunner of the OGPU, NKVD, and KGB) was organized by the Polish nobleman Felix Dzierzyński (1877–1926) with a ferocity that made Robespierre look faint-hearted. It struck down all ‘class enemies’, real or imagined, from the ex-Tsar and his family, murdered on Lenin’s orders at Ekaterinburg in July 1918, to unnumbered multitudes of nameless victims. The militarization of all branches of the economy, including labour, transport, and production, enabled the Bolsheviks to take over all enterprises and trade unions, and to shoot all dissenters for ‘counter-revolutionary sabotage’. Popular support rarely came into the reckoning, except when the Bolsheviks could appeal to patriotic Russian sentiment against the presence of foreign ‘interventionists’. In April 1920, when the Poles helped the Ukrainians to retake Kiev, all ideological pretence was cast aside. Lenin called for the defence of Holy Russia, and Trotsky for the enlistment of all ex-tsarist officers. Extreme necessity was the mother of extreme invention.
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10 July 1920, King Christian X rode on a white horse across the Danish frontier to reclaim the district of
Sónderjylland
(‘South Jutland’ or ‘North Schleswig’), which had recently been awarded to Denmark by popular plebiscite.
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Thus ended one of the most bitter and protracted territorial disputes of modern Europe.
The neighbouring provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, situated at the base of the Jutland peninsula, had long formed the borderlands between Germany and Denmark. Historically, Schleswig—or ‘Slesvig’ in Danish— had been a Danish fief whilst Holstein had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. The ancient ‘Eider Stone’ embedded in the city gate at Rensburg marks the Empire’s traditional frontier. Although the population was ethnically mixed, Danish-speakers predominated in the north and German-speakers in the centre and south. (See Appendix III, p. 1305.)
The ‘Schleswig-Holstein Question’ had first raised its head in 1806, when the French awarded both provinces to Denmark. The award was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna, but was subsequently rendered ambiguous when Holstein was declared a member of the German Confederation. It was a recipe for trouble. In an age of growing nationalism, the ‘autochthonous Germans of the northern marches’ demanded their secession from Denmark. Patriotic ‘Danes on the Eider’ rallied to resist them. Nationalist claims soon became embroiled with the struggles to establish constitutional government. In 1848 Prussian troops occupied Schleswig-Holstein in response to appeals from the German-dominated provincial assemblies. They were eventually forced to withdraw after both Britain and Russia threatened counter-measures. Prussia had its eyes on the naval port of Kiel.
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A further crisis was precipitated in November 1863, when Frederick VII of Denmark died without male heir, having just approved a joint constitution for ‘Denmark-Schleswig’. Saxon and Hanoverian troops promptly moved in to secure Holstein. In 1864, amidst growing uproar, Prussia and Austria agreed to take joint action, establishing a six-year period of joint occupation of both provinces for the examination of all problems. These dispositions were overtaken by the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The Prussians’ victory enabled them to take sole control of the occupied lands, and then to annex them outright. Arrangements to hold a plebiscite, and to ease the position of people opting for Danish citizenship, were not honoured.
Danish national pride was greatly aroused by the wars of 1848–51 and 1863–4. The fortifications of the Dannevirke Line had seen heavy fighting; and points of fierce resistance, such as Dybbol Mill, were to become national shrines. Still more persistent were resentments caused by the maltreatment of the Danish ‘optants’, and by crude policies of germanizaron pursued, as in Prussian Poland, in the 1880s and 1890s.
The Schleswig plebiscites of 1920 were instigated under Allied auspices in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. In the northern district, they showed a 92 per cent majority for Denmark; in Flensburg and central Schleswig, a 75 per cent vote for Germany. The agreed frontier has lasted ever since.
Lord Palmerston once said that only three people understood Schleswig-Holstein—’the Prince Consort, who was dead; a German professor, who had gone mad; and himself, who had forgotten all about it’. After 1920, the whole of Europe was free to follow Palmerston’s example, though many similarly intractable disputes remained elsewhere. For every territorial conflict settled at that time, several new ones were created.
Foreign intervention in Russia has been exaggerated. On the face of it, a terrible array of ill-intentioned outsiders had poked their noses into Russia’s distress. The regular German army was left over from the World War in the
Oberost
. The volunteer German army of the ‘Baltikum’ tramped round Latvia and Lithuania, the Polish irregulars of General Bulak-Balakhovich round Byelorussia; regular Polish troops appeared in the
Oberost
as soon as the Germans withdrew. British expeditionary forces landed at Murmansk and at Batum in Georgia; the French occupied Odessa; Americans and Japanese controlled Vladivostok and the Far East. It was an easy trick for Soviet propaganda to turn these foreigners into a concerted conspiracy of evil capitalists, hired to destroy Russia. There was no such conspiracy. The Allied governments were mainly concerned to hold the Russian Empire together; they had nothing to do with the presence of the Germans, and especially of the Poles, who expressly defied Allied advice to stay out. The Allied expeditions were despatched to guard the munitions which had earlier been sent
to Russian ports for the benefit of the Provisional Government. Their sympathies undoubtedly lay with their former Russian allies whom the Bolshevik coup had overthrown and who were now begging for help. But they never sent the men or the money to conduct serious military operations. They withdrew when everyone could see that their presence was handing a major propaganda success to the Bolsheviks. By then the damage was done; Soviet history books beat the nationalist drum on this point for decades.
Western history books have their own peculiarities. The collapse of the Russian Empire is rarely discussed along the same lines as the parallel collapse of the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman Empires. Except for Poland, Finland, and the three Baltic States, which were all recognized by the Peace Conference, the national republics that broke free from Russian control are not given the same status as those which broke away from the Central Powers. Few historians seem to regard Soviet Russia’s reconquest of Ukraine or the Caucasus as anything other than an internal ‘Russian’ event. It is still more unfortunate that the creation of the Soviet Union, which began in December 1922, is often thought to have involved a mere change of name. In this way the lengthy process of decomposition of the Empire, and the five-year labours of the Bolsheviks to replace it, can be passed over in silence. Crucial distinctions between ‘Russia’, ‘the Russian Empire’, ‘Soviet Russia’ (RSFSR), and ‘the Soviet Union’ (USSR) only entered general discourse when the Bolsheviks’ handiwork started to fall apart 70 years later, [
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The scale of the Russian Civil War is equally overlooked. Yet if the victims of the fighting, of the White and Red Terrors, and of the terrible Volga Famine are all added together, the total number of deaths would not be lower than the mortality on all fronts of the Great War.
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