Official delegations, not the soldiers, were negotiating an armistice, and the German and French commands at the front still had their troops firmly in hand.23 The armistice, as it went into effect on 11 November, amounted to a surrender to the Allies, and it contained significant provisions pertaining to Russia. While the German forces were required to withdraw immediately from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, they were obligated to remain in place in Russia until the ‘Allies shall think the moment suitable [for withdrawal], having regard to the internal situation of those territories’. After the armistice the perils Lenin had foreseen appeared to be materializing on all sides. In the east, at Omsk, in Siberia, on 18 November, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak overthrew a loose-knit coalition government that called itself the Directory and proclaimed himself Supreme Ruler of All Russia. Kolchak had solid credentials as a Russian nationalist and a conservative, if not a monarchist, and he was an Allied, particularly British, protege. He was a figure around whom the White counterrevolution might coalesce. The situation in the west took a serious turn on 23 November when, after two weeks of Soviet efforts to Bolshevize Germany, the provisional government in Berlin completed the break its imperial predecessor had begun. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland had declared independence; and Red Army troops and Soviet partisans had launched a campaign to capture the Baltic States that initially went quite well since the great majority of the German soldiers wanted only to go home. But by early December a British warship squadron was supporting the Estonians and some Germans in Latvia were beginning to see the armistice provisions as offering a chance to create a German sphere of influence there. Allied and Soviet attention centered most intently on the south, where the Turkish (on 31 October) and German armistices opened access to the Black Sea for the first time since August 1914. British and French naval vessels passed through the Dardanelles on 11 November. Two weeks later a combined French–British– Italian fleet anchored at Sevastopol to take over the German and Russian ships and installations there. At the same time, British and French military missions landed at Novorossiysk to establish contact with General Denikin and begin arranging assistance for the Volunteer Army. In the Ukraine, as the German grip weakened, groups professing all sorts of political aims contended with each other, and France installed a force of French and Greek troops at Odessa. Ostensibly to 74 an armed camp supervise the armistice with Turkey, British troops occupied Baku (lost to the Turks in September) and Batumi, which gave them potential control over the entire Transcaucasus.24 Lenin had told the Central Executive Committee in October that the south would be the primary target of British and French imperialism. In late November, the Red Army’s deployment strongly reflected that concern. South Front had 116,000 bayonets and sabers (not including the troops in the Kuban and Caucasus, on whom figures were not available) and Antonov-Ovseenko had set up a headquarters at Kursk from which he commanded detachments numbering 17,000 men ranged along the Ukrainian border west of the Don River. East Front had 86,000 bayonets and sabers, North Front 20,000, and the Western Independent Army had 8,000. When Vatsetis asked how the military supplies were being distributed, Lenin replied that nothing was going to the west, very little to the east and ‘almost everything’ to the south.25 On 30 November, the Central Executive Committee issued a decree the purpose of which was given as being to put the 2 September armed camp declaration ‘into practice in all areas of economic activity and state administration’. The preamble stated that the German, French and other European working classes had fallen under British and American dominance, leaving only one country to uphold workers’ rights, a single ‘fortress of Socialist revolution, Soviet Russia’. Therefore it was necessary to establish for food production, transportation and war industry as well as for the Army and Navy a centralized ‘military regime’ that could institute sufficiently ‘rigorous labor discipline’ to meet the requirements of the country’s conversion to an armed camp. The decree went on to create an instrument, the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense, to which it assigned ‘full power to mobilize the countrys’ manpower and resources for defense’. The membership consisted of Lenin as chairman (and chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars), Trotskiy as chairman of the RMCR, the deputy People’s Commissar of Food and Railroad Communications, the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Red Army Supply, and Stalin as Central Executive Committee representative.
Official delegations, not the soldiers, were negotiating an armistice, and the German and French commands at the front still had their troops firmly in hand.23 The armistice, as it went into effect on 11 November, amounted to a surrender to the Allies, and it contained significant provisions pertaining to Russia. While the German forces were required to withdraw immediately from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, they were obligated to remain in place in Russia until the ‘Allies shall think the moment suitable [for withdrawal], having regard to the internal situation of those territories’. After the armistice the perils Lenin had foreseen appeared to be materializing on all sides. In the east, at Omsk, in Siberia, on 18 November, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak overthrew a loose-knit coalition government that called itself the Directory and proclaimed himself Supreme Ruler of All Russia. Kolchak had solid credentials as a Russian nationalist and a conservative, if not a monarchist, and he was an Allied, particularly British, protege. He was a figure around whom the White counterrevolution might coalesce. The situation in the west took a serious turn on 23 November when, after two weeks of Soviet efforts to Bolshevize Germany, the provisional government in Berlin completed the break its imperial predecessor had begun. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland had declared independence; and Red Army troops and Soviet partisans had launched a campaign to capture the Baltic States that initially went quite well since the great majority of the German soldiers wanted only to go home. But by early December a British warship squadron was supporting the Estonians and some Germans in Latvia were beginning to see the armistice provisions as offering a chance to create a German sphere of influence there. Allied and Soviet attention centered most intently on the south, where the Turkish (on 31 October) and German armistices opened access to the Black Sea for the first time since August 1914. British and French naval vessels passed through the Dardanelles on 11 November. Two weeks later a combined French–British– Italian fleet anchored at Sevastopol to take over the German and Russian ships and installations there. At the same time, British and French military missions landed at Novorossiysk to establish contact with General Denikin and begin arranging assistance for the Volunteer Army. In the Ukraine, as the German grip weakened, groups professing all sorts of political aims contended with each other, and France installed a force of French and Greek troops at Odessa. Ostensibly to 74 an armed camp supervise the armistice with Turkey, British troops occupied Baku (lost to the Turks in September) and Batumi, which gave them potential control over the entire Transcaucasus.24 Lenin had told the Central Executive Committee in October that the south would be the primary target of British and French imperialism. In late November, the Red Army’s deployment strongly reflected that concern. South Front had 116,000 bayonets and sabers (not including the troops in the Kuban and Caucasus, on whom figures were not available) and Antonov-Ovseenko had set up a headquarters at Kursk from which he commanded detachments numbering 17,000 men ranged along the Ukrainian border west of the Don River. East Front had 86,000 bayonets and sabers, North Front 20,000, and the Western Independent Army had 8,000. When Vatsetis asked how the military supplies were being distributed, Lenin replied that nothing was going to the west, very little to the east and ‘almost everything’ to the south.25 On 30 November, the Central Executive Committee issued a decree the purpose of which was given as being to put the 2 September armed camp declaration ‘into practice in all areas of economic activity and state administration’. The preamble stated that the German, French and other European working classes had fallen under British and American dominance, leaving only one country to uphold workers’ rights, a single ‘fortress of Socialist revolution, Soviet Russia’. Therefore it was necessary to establish for food production, transportation and war industry as well as for the Army and Navy a centralized ‘military regime’ that could institute sufficiently ‘rigorous labor discipline’ to meet the requirements of the country’s conversion to an armed camp. The decree went on to create an instrument, the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense, to which it assigned ‘full power to mobilize the countrys’ manpower and resources for defense’. The membership consisted of Lenin as chairman (and chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars), Trotskiy as chairman of the RMCR, the deputy People’s Commissar of Food and Railroad Communications, the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Red Army Supply, and Stalin as Central Executive Committee representative.