This thread from Pipes’ chapter of post Brest-Litovsk Bolshevik-German relations and the Czechoslovak Revolt should be interesting for my followers, as it gets to the “Stab in the Back” by the Spartacists, the delusions of the finance class, and a massive failure of Wilhelm. 
2 months after Brest-Litovsk, the German diplomatic delegation goes to Moscow in May 1918, they find a critically weak Soviet Government that is at the Germans’ complete mercy for survival. Trotsky calls the party “a living corpse” the Latvians are the only force proping them up.
Adolph Abramovich Ioffe was the diplomat of the Bolsheviks to the Germans, the German General Staff wanted to isolate in Poland, instead thanks to the foreign office he gets an embassy and 2 consulates which immediately aid revolutionaries while neutralizing military opposition.
Please read this page. The German business and finance elite was utilized by the Bolsheviks, willing or clueless, to prevent the German high command from liquidating the Russian government, all the while it sent military secrets to the Spartacists and aided their cause.
Deutsche Bank lionized Ioffe’s arrival and mission, the Bolsheviks could peer into the German political scene and the socialist underground, but most functionaries knew nothing of The a Bolshevik structure on the other end. They made promises for resources they did not control.
But then further catastrophe struck the Bolshevik government at home, in May 22, the Czechoslovak legion revolted, and it was incontestable in military strength by the Bolsheviks who had very few loyal units that were not also police units like the Latvians.
It’s always important to shit on George Orwell’s understanding of the Russian Revolution because it’s basically the line still put out in our popular understanding. The Czechoslovak Revolt was explicitly the ineptitude of Trotsky here, who was playing war commander.
The Czechoslovak Legion Revolt lost the Bolsheviks control over all of Siberia in a month. By July in controlled the entire Trans Siberian. The diplomats and generals now thought that sponsoring a pro-German Kadet regime was possible, if it reworked the terms of Brest-Litovsk.
June 28, 1918 was the last day the Germans could have destroyed the Bolsheviks. It hinged on the Kaiser getting the Foreign Office telegram before Hindenburg’s.
This saved the Soviet government which was able to send the Latvians against the Czechs for the start of the Civil War
This saved the Soviet government which was able to send the Latvians against the Czechs for the start of the Civil War
The Czechoslovaks almost brought down the government anyway, as it set off two July 6th anti-Brest uprisings, the most dangerous from the Left-SRs. Maria Spiridonova lead a putsch to kill the German ambassador Count Mirbach and put Russia back at war with Germany.
The remaining Latvians in Moscow, under Colonel Vatsetis, whose loyalty was in question, again saved the Bolsheviks from an October style putsch lead by the Left SRs.
The Latvians had saved the Bolsheviks for the third time since their seizure of power in October.
The Latvians had saved the Bolsheviks for the third time since their seizure of power in October.
The Bolshevik government came extremely close to collapse here. Any further external pressure would have finished it. Because it was so vulnerable, it invited the Left SRs back, but this would become the reason to liquidate the entire movement and it’s survivors.
Riezler took charge of the German embassy after the assassination of the Ambassador Count Mirbach, he said that the German inaction, predicated on business saved the Bolsheviks no less than three occasions. He, like Trotsky, assumed the end was near for the Bolsheviks.
Unfortunately for the world, his plans for sponsoring the Whites and buying off the Latvians came to naught, largely because the Foreign Office was pro Bolshevik despite its own embassy and the German military souring quickly on the whole project.
The gloomiest hour in the Kremlin was early August 1918, because the Entente had committed to reopening the Eastern Front against the Germans, and, in effect,the Bolsheviks, but they were way too slow to get forces deployed in the east before the Germans had capitulated.
Paul Von Hintze is bizarrely pro Bolshevik despite every member of the German Moscow Embassy recommending that he destroy the Bolshevik government and replace it with right opposition.
I have no idea why Hintze would be pro Bolshevik over his ambassadors, one of whom was shot
I have no idea why Hintze would be pro Bolshevik over his ambassadors, one of whom was shot
The desperation of the Bolsheviks forced them to prostitute the entire country. Brest-Litovsk is famously harsh, but less well known is the even more punishing Supplementary treaty that basically made Bolshevik Russia into a wartime puppet government with German economic control.
Just read these articles. Von Mackensen would have had military control over St Petersburg only very thinly disguised, and this was underway before the surrender.
The Wehrmacht was going to take control of the Baku oil fields and fight the whites.
The Wehrmacht was going to take control of the Baku oil fields and fight the whites.
Prince Maximilian was part of the Armistice government and was appalled at Hintze’s blatant sponsorship of the Bolsheviks. He tried to immediately turn around the policies he had put in place but it was too late. The Bolshevik sponsored Spartacists rose up and Brest abnegated.
The spurned (and dismissed by Hintze) German philosopher-ambassador Helfferich could only marvel at the catastrophe that played out. The German finance sector had saved the Bolshevik government at its most critical early hour, all for greed and in spite of him and the military.
