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 The Union of Regeneration: the Anti-Bolshevik
Underground in Revolutionary Russia, 1917-1919

PhD Thesis

Benjamin Wells

Queen Mary, University of London, 2004

B
1 r, cmr
Abstract

The Union of Regeneration has been chosen as the focal

main point of this thesis, a
study of underground political organisations in revolutionary Russia who came about
as a result of fragmentation of Russia's major political parties in 1917 and sought to

oppose the Bolshevik takeover of power. The thesis traces the origins of the
underground in the political turmoil of 1917 before detailing how each group was
formed, and how a number of plans were made, most of which hinged on the

extensive involvement of Allied interventionist forces, to form an anti-Bolshevik and

anti-German front in the wake of the signature of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The
efforts of the Union of Regeneration, the National Centre, and other groups such as
the Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom are presented as a series of
failures which took place mostly in 1918. By examining the reasons for each of these
failures, this thesis hopes to focus not on external factors, such as the lack of Allied
intervention to assist the underground groups or the machinations of reactionary
forces against them, in order to reveal the fundamental failings of the underground

movement as a whole. The underground lacked any organisational discipline or

coherence, its ranks were easily entered on a loose, `personal' basis and there was
little unity of purpose between its members, save the removal of Soviet power.
Consequently, plans made were too vague, agreements were too easily broken, and

alliances were too easily ruptured. This thesis, then, hopes to demonstrate that

although when considered together the anti-Bolshevik underground constituted a

genuine potential threat to the Bolshevik regime, that it failed to act as one

contributed greatly to it being easily marginalised by the extremes of left and right.

2
Contents

Acknowledgements 5

1 Introduction: the Politics of Coalition in the Russian

Revolution 7

2 The Anti-Bolshevik Underground Coalesces 39

The Right Centre; the Union of Regeneration; the UR in Petrograd;
Allied Assistance and the Growth of the UR; the Union for the Defence

of the Fatherland and Freedom; the National Centre; the Allies and the
Bolshevik Underground; the Union of Regeneration and the National
Centre; Allied Influence and Military Planning; Exodus; Iaroslavl; the
Underground in North Russia.

3 The Union of Regeneration and the `Democratic Counter-

Revolution' in the East 100
The Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion and the Beginning of the Civil
War; the PSR and Siberian Regionalism; the First Omsk Coup d'Etat;
Omsk versus Samara; the Road to Cheliabinsk; the First Cheliabinsk
Conference; Omsk, Tomsk and the Struggle for Siberia; the Urals oblast'
Government; the Sibobduma Opens; the Second Cheliabinsk Conference;

the State Conference Eclipsed: the Second Omsk Coup d'Etat;

4 The Ufa State Conference and the Directory 133

The Delegations; the Conference at Work; Enter the
Siberians; the Council of Elders: the Battle for the Constituent Assembly;

the First Compromise; the Membership of the Directory; Unenthusiastic

Agreement; the Formation of the All-Russian Government; Triumph

3
 or Debacle?; the Road to the `Citadel of Reaction' ; Dual Power in Omsk;
Vologodskii Returns; Isolation from the Right; Isolation from the Left: the
`Chernov Manifesto' ; Abdication: the Formation of the Council of
Ministers; the Final Omsk Coup d'Etat.

5 Debacle and Dissolution in the South 193

The National Centre,in South Russia; the Right in South Russia; the Jassy
Conference; the Consequencesof Failure; the Death Throes of the Anti-
Bolshevik Underground;

Conclusion 228

Bibliography 237

4
Acknowledgements

The researching and writing of this thesis was only made possible by the help and

support of a great number of institutions, friends and good Samaritans. The

Humanities Research Board of the British Academy of Arts and Social Sciences

provided not only a three year studentship but also provided a grant to assist me in
making an essential research trip to Stanford University. I am similarly indebted to the
Central Research Fund of the University of London for assistance with the cost of my

research trip to Russia.

Conducting research abroad can be a lonely and difficult task. I have been
lucky in on my travels, however. Thanks must go to my oldest friend Glen Ames for

putting me up (and putting up with me) in his flat in Palo Alto. I am also most grateful
to Carole Leadenham and her marvellous staff at the Hoover Institute Archive at
Stanford University for all. their help in locating useful material. I was even more

reliant on others while in Russia, I

and must thank Professor J. Arch Getty and all the
organisers of the GARF Summer School, in particular Leonid Veintraub and his wife
Lena, for all their help during my stay in Moscow. Igor Chubykin and laroslav
Leont'ev, both of Moscow State University, were of great help in providing guidance

regarding the negotiation of Russian institutional bureaucracy, and also in giving me

copies of two books that were indispensable to me: Krasnaia Kniga VChK, and
Semenov's Voenniaia i boevaia Rabota Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionnerov za
1917-1918gg. My fellow students at the summer school helped make my stay in
Moscow great fun, in particular the incomparable Mark Scharf and his girlfriend (now

wife) Iulia, and their friend Zhenia Rudemetova, who also arranged a trip to their
beautiful home town of Iaroslavl, allowing me to see for myself some of the locations

contained within my thesis. I must also express my deepest gratitude to Anita

Arsenio, sadly no longer with us, for her help in the archives, in surviving in Russia

generally and for making that trip (and that period of my life) so memorable.
The stress of researching a PhD pales into insignificance when compared to
I
that endured during the writing up phase. will never forget the help I received during

for many reasons, a very difficult time. I took great inspiration from the
what was,
endless faith placed in me by my late mum, Pamela Wells (to whom I owe
seemingly
everything), my dad, Ray, and, in particular, my sister Charlotte. I must also thank my

5
friends, in particular Kieron Butcher, Rodrigo and Kerrie Vivas Castaneda, and
Mahmud Mir for pulling me through the dark times.

Last but not least, I would like to pay special tribute to the guidance,

understanding, faith and patience of my supervisor, Dr Jonathan Smele, who has

helped me so much at every stage of my academic life. Without Jon's encouragement,
I would never have had the confidence to begin thinking about myself as a potential
PhD student, without his astonishing knowledge of the Russian Revolution and Civil
War and its historiography I would not have known where to begin, and without his

meticulous supervision above and beyond the call of duty I would never have been

able to produce a thesis worthy of submission.

6
Chapter 1

Introduction: The Politics of Coalition in the Russian Revolution

Either the dictatorship (i. e., the iron rule) of the landowners and capitalists, or the
dictatorship of the working class. There is no middle course. The scions of the
..
aristocracy, intellectualists and petty gentry, badly educated on bad books, dream of
the middle course. To whom did these dreams do service? Whom did they assist?
..
Kolchak and Denikin. Those who dream of a middle course are abettors of Kolchak. 1

The Union of Regeneration (UR) was one of several underground anti-Bolshevik

organisations existing during the period of the Russian revolution and civil war that
tried to find 2
a `middle course, as Lenin termed it. In this study the UR has been
chosen as the focal point of the work of the underground because of its significance as
a force of coalition between left- and right-wing forces. The origins of the UR can be
traced to the fragmentation of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) and the
liberal Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) Party in 1917, but the organisation can be

said to have been `born' in the spring of 1918. The UR had contact with other
underground political and military groups and also acted as a kind of bridge between
the so-called `democratic' and `White' phases of the Russian Civil War. The Omsk

coup of 18 November 1918, which led to Admiral Kolchak's assumption of the role

of Supreme Ruler can be seen as the point at which the hegemony of politicians over
the course of events in the civil war was finally swept away and replaced by that of
the military. This led to the downfall in 1919 of the UR as a coalition group, as many

prominent socialist members left Russia and those members who remained concerned
themselves with supporting General Denikin in South Russia. This has seen by Soviet

historians as proof that Lenin was correct in his maxim that there could be no `middle
).
course,
The raison d'etre of the UR had been to attempt to prove otherwise. Whilst it

was subsequently to be seen that the White generals of 1919 lacked sufficient political

sensitivity and neglected the need to appeal to the masses,focusing instead on matters

of a purely military character, much the reverse can be said of the preceding

' Lenin, V. I. Collected Works. Vol. 29. Moscow: Progress, 1965, p. 559.
2 The organisation was referred to in Russian by members as both Soiuz vozrozhdeniia and Soiuz
Rossii ('The Union for the Regeneration of Russia').
vozrozhdeniia

7
`Democratic Counter-Revolution'. 3 The UR was an attempt to unify not only

politicians of various colours, from the Kadets, through Popular Socialists to

Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), but also to include a significant number of members

of a military background. This was considered to be essential if a broad anti-

Bolshevik and anti-German front was to be created, appealing to the massesnot only

on a patriotic basis but also with the clear aim of creating a Russia in which the gains

of the February Revolution would be safe.

Coalition, then, is to be a theme which runs through this work. In many ways
during the year 1918 the UR were working for a return to the politics of 1917. Indeed,

the problems of 1917 came back to haunt the UR constantly. As the dominant theme

of the Provisional Government was coalition itself, the problem of the organisation of
power was one with which the UR was forced to wrestle and one which it ultimately
failed to solve. The relevance of the problems of the Provisional Government to the
UR and its work with other anti-Bolshevik organisations are such that an introductory

overview of the high politics of 1917, and the events which led to the collapse of the
February Revolution and of the Kadet and SR parties, members of which constituted

the majority of the UR's leadership, is essential.

The Blurring of Party Lines in 1917

When the February Revolution swept away the autocratic regime of the Romanovs,

the parties that were to be plunged into the dilemma of power had undergone years of
debate and discord, especially regarding the issues of the First World War and the

collapse of the Second International. The socialist parties that were significant in the

provisional coalition governments, the PSR and the Mensheviks, were indeed riven as

a result of the war and had splintered into a number of sub-groups. Left-SRs and
Menshevik-Internationalists opposed the war outright, whereas those on the far right

of both parties, including such luminaries as the Menshevik Georgii Plekhanov and

the `grandmother of the Russian Revolution', Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaia,

the war. The core of both parties, centred around leaders such as
actually supported

3 This phrase was coined by the Menshevik Ivan Maiskii and is largely a reference to the Committee of
Members of the Constituent Assembly, or Komuch, whose `People's Army' was defeated by the Red
Army in the autumn of 1918. See Maiskii, I. Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia. Moscow: Gosizdat,
1923.

8
Viktor Chernov (of the SRs) and Irakli Tsereteli
and Fedor Dan (of the Mensheviks)
was generally opposed to the war but fervently against the conclusion of a separate

peace with the Central Powers. The other moderate socialist party, the Popular
Socialist Party, was closest to the Right-SRs in its 4
issues.
attitude to most
The only significant non-socialist political party after the February Revolution

was the Kadet Party. The Kadets had campaigned throughout the war for a
responsible ministry to lead the Imperial government's war effort, and in many ways
they were the immediate beneficiaries of the revolution. Although the Chairman of
the Council of Ministers (and Minister of the Interior) of the First Provisional
Government was the non-party Prince Lvov, the most important member of the
council was undoubtedly the Kadet leader Pavel Miliukov. Throughout 1917
Miliukov stood for a vigorous prosecution of the war, although many members on the
left of his party were to drift away from his position during 1917 over the issue of

collaborating with socialism, which Miliukov was firmly against.

The first sign of collaboration between socialists and liberal-bourgeois society
in 1917 came in the immediate aftermath of the February Revolution. By 1 March `at

the very latest', the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies had largely

unified behind the call to work with the `Temporary Conmmittee'of the Duma in order
to ease the urgent supply problems faced by the capital. ' In fact, the supply

commissions of both organs were united by this date. With Order No. 1, the Petrograd
Soviet demonstrated to the Duma Committee that its co-operation was needed if the

authority of the Committee was to go unchallenged by the working masses of

6
Petrograd and the rank-and-file soldiers of the garrison. However, the view that
February was Russia's bourgeois revolution was consistent with Marxist ideology and

this prevented the Soviet from taking power from the new government. Additionally,
the Menshevik-dominated Executive Committee of the Soviet was firmly against

4 The name of the Popular Socialists referred to the party's roots in the Populist movement of the late
nineteenth century and in no way reflected its significance as a political force. The leader, veteran
revolutionary Nikolai Chaikovskii had, along with men such as the historian V. Miakotin, formed his
own Populist party in 1907, only two years after the PSR's first Party Congress. Chaikovskii's party
was small, but the leader was well respected by other revolutionaries, particularly those on the right-
wing of the PSR.
5 Galili y Garcia, Z. The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political
Strategies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 (hereafter The Menshevik Leaders), p. 50.
6 See Browder, R. and Kerensky, A. (eds.) The Russian Provisional Government 1917: Documents.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961 (hereafter The Russian Provisional Government), Vol. II,
pp. 848-849 for Order No. 1.

9
coalition, despite the fact that SR and Trudovik members (6 of 23 in total) were more
favourable to the notion. These early coalitionists included Vladimir Mikhailovich

Zenzinov, future UR affiliate and member of the five-man Directory created by the

Ufa State Conference in September 1918. Such initial discussion over the question of

coalition, two months before the first coalition government was formed, indicates
that, as a party, the Mensheviks were much more averse to co-operating with
bourgeois forces than their colleagues of a Populist background. This stance on

coalition led to the Soviet granting conditional support to the Provisional

Government, a cabinet formed out of the Duma Committee which contained only one

socialist, the Trudovik Alexander Kerensky, on 2 March. Dual Power was born.

Kerensky was able to keep some semblance of his ties with his socialist
background via those close to him in the PSR - in particular, Zenzinov, who had

secretly blessed Kerensky's entry into the government. As Oliver Radkey put it, `this

influential SR leader.. would be the mediator between the party and the minister'
.
throughout 1917.7 It is common practice to see Kerensky as a man who acted in

complete isolation from all notion of party loyalty or discipline. Indeed it is common

to see in Kerensky's behaviour a certain amount of self-serving ambition and

demagogy, embodied by Trotsky's depiction of him as `Bonaparte Kerensky'.
However, this link with other senior and respected party men which also included

Abram Gots, shows that others in the party were of like-mind. ' It is true that these

men represented the right (or, at least the centre-right) of the party, but their support

Kerensky is The PSR, unlike the Mensheviks, had a distinct `all-

of significant.
Russian' orientation. The Mensheviks were self-consciously a workers' party,

7 Radkey, O. The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist
New York London: Columbia University Press, 1958
Revolutionaries, February to October 1917. and
Zenzinov and Gots
(hereafter Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism), p. 146. Radkey's assertion concerning
is by the latter's Kerensky, A, The
being important contacts for Kerensky confirmed memoirs:
Point. London: Cassell, 1966 (hereafter The
Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History's Turning
Kerensky Zenzinov to discuss the mood of the Soviet in
Kerensky Memoirs). mentions meeting with
March on p. 235 and p. 240. He also mentions meeting both SRs in late August with regard to the
Coalition 408-409. It is from Chernov's
Party Central Committee's attitude to the Third on pp. clear
he hoped to Gots to Kerensky. See Chernov, V. The Great Russian
memoirs that use manipulate
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936 (hereafter The Great Russian Revolution), p.
Revolution.
399.
8 Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 146. Radkey statesthat as Zenzinov was the buffer between
Kerensky and the party, Gots performed the samerole with the Petrograd Soviet.

10
whereas the SRs saw as their constituency not only the peasantry, but also the urban
i
proletariat and intelligentsia. '
This kind of almost Kadet-like nadklassnost (being above class
-a sentiment
which dominated Kadet theory and practice), is unsurprising, given that the country
in
was the midst of a war which had inspired, even among so-called socialists, a wave
of patriotic fervour which caused many to support Russia's struggle with the Central
Powers, a stand which set them apart from their Zimmerwaldist brethren. These were

not minor figures. Edinstvo ('Unity'), the organisation of Mensheviks based around
Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, was perhaps the most `right-wing' (in

terms of pro-war orientation) of the Russian socialists. Senior SR figures were also

strongly pro-war. Among these were Breshko-Breshkovskaia, as well as other notable

SRs such as Andrei Argunov and Nikolai Avksent'ev. The latter, a member of the
`enthusiastically defensist' Prizyv group, had lived in Paris during the war and had

returned to Petrograd on 8 April along with Viktor Chernov, the party's leader and

chief theorist, as well as other revolutionary exiles. " Avksent'ev's fellow Parisians

included a number of Popular Socialists, whose party leader, Nikolai Chaikovskii was

to be a future UR leader along with Avksent'ev himself. These, Chernov excepted,

were the kind of figures on the left to whom Kerensky was closest in 1917. All were

to support Kerensky's governmental strategy throughout 1917, and many were to

become UR members. Even before the April crisis, it was this type of socialist
leadership - those of a `populist' as opposed to Marxist background - that advocated
between the First Provisional Government and the Soviet. "
closer co-operation
These voices did minority in the Soviet. The increase in the
not exist as a
those `peasants in uniform', had an effect on the shape of
representation of soldiers,
Soviet. The Populist had risen, and with it the power of the PSR.
the constituency
However, the SR leadership in the Soviet has been described as mediocre. Even in

by time SR leaders had returned from exile, few

mid-April, which most significant
the SR in the Soviet. To paraphrase Radkey: Kerensky
were willing to take up cause
in Chernov, the writer, was busily engaged in what
was busy government; compulsive

9 This point is well made in Melancon, M. `The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) 1917-1920, ' in
V. Rosenberg, W. (eds) Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-
Acton, E. Cherniaev, and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997 (hereafter Melancon, `Socialist
1921. Bloomington and
Revolutionary Party'), p. 282.
10 Abraham, R. Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987 (hereafter Kerensky), p. 169.

11
Radkey (in somewhat derogatory fashion) describes as `literary activity'
prior to his
own ministerial embroilment; Avksent'ev concentrated on his position as Chairman

of the Peasants' Soviet; and Zenzinov concentrated on party organisational matters

and management of the principal SR organ, Delo naroda. i2 Therefore:

The field was left to A. R. Gotz and his two lieutenants, Boldyrev and Livshits, who
were hopelessly outclassed in point of intellect, personality, forensic ability, and scent
for manuevre by that galaxy of Menshevik leaders in which Tsereteli, Dan, and
Chkheidze were the brightest luminaries. "

Thus, the Petrograd Soviet came to be dominated in March by the Mensheviks,

despite their numerical inferiority, in terms of mass support, to the PSR. In March the
Mensheviks underwent a transformation which was to affect the policy and action of
both the party and of `revolutionary democracy' as a whole right up to the Bolshevik

assumption of power. During that month disagreements between the Soviet and the
Provisional Government over the issue of the continuation of the war had threatened

open confrontation between the two rival centres of power. Until mid-March Nikolai
Sukhanov and other prominent internationalists in the party had advocated immediate

peace initiatives, even positing this as a way of strengthening the front. 14After the

return to Petrograd of Irakli Tsereteli, a leading `Siberian Zimmerwaldist' with

personal links with Gots and Fedor Dan as a result of their exile in parts of Siberia

around Irkutsk, the Soviet to

was unite and clarify its position around `Revolutionary

Defencism', which came from the basic theories about the war of the Siberian
Zimmerwaldists. 15This idea - to continue with the war, while attempting to cajole the
Allies into a revision of war aims via a diplomatic offensive as well as by convening

an International Socialist Peace Conference became the policy of the Soviet. The
-
rallying cry was of peace `without annexations or indemnities'.

This was enough to lay the groundwork for six months of SR and Menshevik

collaboration in the Soviet, with the SR delegates providing Tsereteli and Dan with

11Galili, The Menshevik Leaders, p. 142.

12Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 136.
13ibid., p. 137.
14Sukhanov, N. The Russian Revolution 1917; EyewitnessAccount. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1955 (hereafter Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution), Vol. I, p. 241.
15Essentially, Siberian Zimmerwaldism was a strain of Zimmerwaldist pacifism that found the notion
for national defence acceptable, if at the same time international peace efforts were vigorously
of war
of an attempt at a general armistice. See Wade, R. `Irakli Tsereteli and Siberian
maintained as part

12
the overwhelming support they occasionally lacked in their own party. This unity was

partly due to Tsereteli's oratorial skills and to his personal magnetism, but was also
due to the fact that his formula was sufficiently internationalist to win over those who,

like Dan, were slightly to his left. An important factor, though, was the'strength of the

right-wing of the PSR. According to Radkey, for those SRs mentioned above, the

majority of differences with the Mensheviks - over the pace of the revolution, for
instance - had disappeared. With Avksent'ev considering the February Revolution to
have been a patriotic movement, `The right wing of the party.. had in effect embraced
.
the Menshevik theory of revolution, finding in the "defensist" credo with its emphasis

on class collaboration the surrogate for their burnt-out faith in social revolution. ' 16

One might wonder why the right-wing of the party had such influence, when
in fact the mass of the party leadership was considerably to the left of the position

occupied by Gots, Zenzinov, Avksent'ev et al. There are a few pointers as to why this

was the case. One significant reason was that they were there first. Zenzinov was the
first leader of the PSR in Petrograd during the turmoil of early March, whereas the

Party Leader, Viktor Chernov, did not return from exile until April. In addition,
Radkey states that these figures, including Breshko-Breshkovskaia and Argunov,

were distinguished by past service to the party. " Finally, one must look at the actions

of Chernov. For whatever reason, Chernov did not allow past splits with these

colleagues to continue into 1917 (although they soon )

reappeared. Chernov allied

himself with his ex-opponents, supporting revolutionary defencism and, according to

Michael Melancon, `strengthening the party's post-February reformist tilt. "' This

shift to the right had been an ongoing process in the PSR ever since the scandal

the Azef affair had caused many SRs (including Avksent'ev and
surrounding
Zenzinov) to argue for an abandonment of terrorism and the pursuit of purely legal

Vol. 39 (1967), 425-431; Galili, Z and Garcia, R,

Zimmmerwaldism', Journal of Modern History pp.
`The Origins of Revolutionary Defencism', Slavic Review Vol. 41 (1982), pp. 454-476.
16Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 166.
17ibid., p. 171. Both were long-serving Central Committee members, and Breshko-Breshkovskaiawas
in fact instrumental in founding the unified party in 1901.
18Melancon, M. `Chernov', in Acton, E. Cherniaev, V. and Rosenberg, W. (eds) Critical Companion
Melancon, `Chernov'), 133. Chernov's tactics and passivity in
to the Russian Revolution (hereafter p.
1917 are indeed a subject of some interest. His decision not to break with other populist colleagues can
(somewhat ironic considering the factional nature of his
be explained by his avowed anti-factionalism
by his in 1901 for the party to follow the slogan `Irreconcilably against
party), as shown call
be his of the nature of the revolution itself that its
irreconcilability. ' Another explanation may view -
with peaceful, theoretical, intellectual battles. See
real purpose was merely to replace violent struggle
Chernov 1917', Russian Review Vol. 26 (1967), p. 355-357.
Cross, T. `Purposesof Revolution: and

13
 19
tactics. The war and the revolution only served to accentuate splits that already
existed within a party prone to factionalism from birth. Chernov himself claims that
the rapid growth of the party at the time, the influx of the `March SRs', meant that the

party was guided now more by the `motley, many-headed street', impressed by the
`dictatorial airs' of Kerensky. 20Melancon's assessmentof the May party congress is

also interesting. With 40 per cent of delegates voting for resolutions proposed by left-

wing party members, the centre ground, belonging to Chernov, remained closer to the
right-wing of Avksent'ev, Argunov and their associates.This, Melancon states, meant
that, `A core of party intellectuals had, in effect, taken upon themselves the task of

guiding the party and the nation along an evolutionary path.21However, if one takes
Radkey's point about the importance of past service in deciding who had authority in

the party, one might also form a picture of the party being guided along this path not
by its intellectual core but by its elders, distanced from a large section of their
followers not just by their attitude to the war and the nature of the revolution in

general, but by their age and experience. These veterans - now, of sorts, `socialist

evolutionaries' - had far more in common with the Menshevism of Tsereteli than they
had with the future Left-SRs, just as the Left SRs themselves had far more in common

with the Bolshevism of Lenin. This collaboration between the SRs and the
Mensheviks, based on Tsereteli's formulations, provided the February Revolution

with its first of many governmental crises.

The `April Days' came as a result of the conflict between the Soviet's peace

the tendencies the Foreign Minister, Miliukov. 22 The

policy and annexationist of

majority of the mass demonstrations called for Miliukov's resignation, and, according
Kerensky, `revealed the 23Then, as
to the precarious nature of government's position'.
Miliukov later put it, `From diplomacy, the argument switched to domestic policy'. 24

This led those on the left of the Provisional Government to favour the formation of a

coalition government including representatives of the Soviet. By 21 April, Kerensky,

19Hildermeier, M. `Nepopulism and Modernization: The Debate on Theory and Tactics in the Socialist
Revolutionary Party, 1905-14', The RussianReview Vol. 43 (1975), pp. 466-467.
20Chernov, The Great Russian Revolution, pp. 393-395.
21Melancon, `Socialist Revolutionary Party, ' p. 285.
22 For the text of the infamous `Miliukov Note', which sparked of the April demonstrations, see
Browder and Kerensky, The Russian Provisional Government, Vol. II, p. 1098.
23Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs, p. 245.
24 Miliukov, P. Political Memoirs 1905-1917. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967
(hereafter Political Memoirs), p. 450.

14
N. V. Nekrasov (a left-Kadet) and M. I. Tereshchenko, (a
non-party figure who was
then Minister of Finance), were arguing for a
coalition government as a way out of
this crisis. Other Kadet Central Committee members, Nabokov Vinaver,
such as and
by
were this time sympatheticto their cause.25
The crisis showed that, just as all other parties in Russia, the Kadet
party was
by no means homogeneous. And, again as with the
other parties, this lack of unity had
its roots in the pre-war `Constitutional Monarchy'
period of Russian history. The left,
or `conciliationist, ' wing of the party (led by Nekrasov, Nikolai Astrov and M. L.
Mandel'shtam) had long advocated the strengthening of ties with
so-called `living
social forces' among the proletariat and the peasantry, in opposition to the view of
those on the right of the party such as Mäklakov who were more traditional and
bourgeois in approach.26As with the PSR, this division had existed since before even

the 1905 27
revolution. By 1917, this division was serious enough for Nekrasov to act
in consort with Kerensky and Tereshchenko and even for him to approve of the

removal of his own party leader from his 28

governmental post. Soon the call for
coalition was echoed by the-then Minister-President, Prince G. E. L'vov. 29

At this point the official policy of the Soviet was against coalition with the

government. Most deputies held the viewpoint that it should merely exercise `control'
over the executive. Indeed, the April Days were ended by a new document issued by
the Soviet promising more `control' over foreign policy. However, this did not end
the crisis. The new document virtually ensured that A. I. Guchkov, the Minister for
War, would resign. Additionally, those SRs involved in high policy-making circles

to
were under pressure call for a coalition government. Tsereteli was the Menshevik

25 Nekrasov formed an alliance with Kerensky and Tereshchenko at the end of March, and had
convinced other Central Committee members of his point of view by the Central Committee meeting of
April 23. Rosenberg, W. Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democrat Party
1917-1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974 (hereafter Liberals in the Russian Revolution),
.
p. 103, p. 110.
26 Rosenberg, William. `The Constitutional Democrats (Kadets),' in Acton, E. Cherniaev, V. and
Rosenberg, W. (eds) Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution (hereafter Rosenberg, `The
Constitutional Democrats'), p. 257.
27Maklakov had consistently differed with Miliukov in his `liberalism'. Rather than being a radical
to
who wished see revolutionary change, Maklakov had long seen the role of the liberals as being the
promotion of peaceful evolution. Karpovich, M. `Two Types of Russian Liberalism: Miliukov and
Maklakov', in Simmons, E. J. (ed.) Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, pp. 134-136.
28 On Nekrasov's individualism and qualities as a go-between, see Miliukov, Political Memoirs, p.
459.
29Miliukov believed that L'vov, as well as Kerensky and Tereschehenko,was keen on securing his
resignation for the sake of coalition from April 21. Miliuikov, Political Memoirs, pp. 449-453.

15
leader who was most convinced of the possibility of working within the government.

By the end of March, he had concluded that, `the soviet should strive toward co-

operation with these moderate, "responsible" segments of the propertied and educated

classes', and at the Conference of Soviets on 31 March spoke of Dual Power as an

`agreement with the bourgeoisie' for the purposes of political reconstruction, and,

while emphasising the role of the Soviet, stressed the need for an `all-national
government' of the `vital forces in the 30
country' . The similarity between this view
and the concept of `living social forces' of left-liberals such as Nekrasov is striking.
However, the notion of coalition was still unpalatable to the vast majority of
Mensheviks, notably to Dan. On 28 April the Executive Committee of the Soviet

voted 24: 22 against coalition, with the SRs constituting the bulk of the `yes' vote.3'

Clearly, however, the principle of coalition was gaining support on all sides. Tsereteli
himself wrote of an encounter with the Procurator of the Holy Synod, V. N. L'vov,

who told him of his enthusiasm for a new government with socialist ministers. At this

point, `it became apparent that Guchkov and Miliukov were completely isolated in the

government' .32It may also have been at this point that Tsereteli decided that coalition

with the bourgeois government was the way forward. As it was, with Miliukov

resigning on 2 May, the way was clear for coalition. By this time Tsereteli had

Dan to the 33According

convinced that this was the only way avoid prolonging crisis.

to Tsereteli's sole biographer, he never thought that the formation of a purely soviet

course of action. 34 Therefore, despite receiving a

government was an alternative
telegram from their supposed party leader, Iulii Martov, to the effect that participation

in a coalition government was `unacceptable', the Menshevik leaders in Petrograd,

30Galili y Garcia, The Menshevik Leaders, p. 150.

31 ibid., pp. 169-171. The Party Organisational Committee had decided on April 24th that socialists
be 'inexpedient'. For the see Galili, Z. and Nenarokov, A.
entering the government would resolution
do iiul'skikh Moscow: IPA, 1994 (hereafter
(eds) Mensheviki v 1917 gody: tom 1. Ot ianvaria sobitii.
Mensheviki) p. 207.
32 Tsereteli, I. `Reminiscences of the February Revolution - The April Crisis, ' in von Mohrenschildt,
1917: Contemporary Accounts. London: Oxford University Press, 1971,
D. The Russian Revolution of
pp. 153-154.
33Dan made an announcementcautiously supporting the coalition on 5 May, reproduced in Galili and
Nenarokov, Mensheviki, pp. 221-222.
34 Roobol, W. H. Tsereteli -a Democrat in the Russian Revolution. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1976 (hereafter Tsereteli), p. 120.

16
together with their willing followers in the PSR leadership,decided to enter the first
coalition government.35
The approval of the first coalition by the parties of the Soviet was dependent

upon its composition. The coalition cabinet was mainly selected by a series of behind
the scenes deals by the triumvirate of Kerensky, Nekrasov and Tereshchenko and the
Presidium of the Soviet Executive Committee pejoratively termed the `Star
-
36
Chamber' by Sukhanov. In the end, the socialist representation was rather poor,

with the majority of leading Mensheviks opting, for their own personal reasons,not to
accept a portfolio. Of the leading party luminaries, only Tsereteli took a ministerial
position, that of the virtually meaningless Posts and Telegraphs. In fact, his presence
in the Cabinet was largely symbolic, and he had little in the way of governmental

work. His job was to act as a formal liaison between the Cabinet and the Soviet. This

is not to underestimate his influence at this time. Tsereteli's unique position of respect

and authority in both camps gave him great scope for action, and there is no doubt

that he strove to have as great an impact on the business of government as possible,

to the the 37This position led Chemov to refer
particularly with regard policy on war.
to him at this time as, `Minister for General Affairs' 38
.
Key appointments were of course Agriculture, Foreign Affairs and War, as the
land question and the war were the most important issues that the government needed

to address. Chernov's name was bandied about for both Agriculture and Foreign

Affairs. It was Chernov who had mounted a particularly strong campaign in the press

`Miliukov-Dardanellskii' and who was seen as a strong candidate, by those on

against
the left, to fill the post left vacant by Miliukov's departure. Kadets and Popular

Socialists were against his entering the government at all, though, and Avksent'ev

to be a possible right-wing alternative SR Minister of Agriculture.

was considered
Symbolically, of course, it was advantageous to have a leading SR in this post.

However, it seems that the Star Chamber was determined that the job should be

Chernov's, with the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs being entrusted to the

V.
35Getzler, I. `Martov', in Acton, E. Cherniaev, and Rosenberg, W. (eds) Critical Companion to the
Russian Revolution, p. 161.
36The group was centred around Tsereteli, Dan and Gots. Other important SRs, such as Chernov and
Avksent'ev, attended occasionally.
37Miliukov described Tsereteli as `a remarkable specialist on interparty technique, an inexhaustible
formulas his hero and his party from the most impossible situations'.
inventor of verbal extricating
Miliukov, Political Memoirs, p. 458.
38Roobol, Tsereteli, p. 124.

17
politically inexperienced Tereshchenko, who was something of an unknown quantity
to say the least.39 The power of the Star Chamber may have been important in

securing Agriculture for the PSR leader, but this appears to have been something of a
trade-off with the triumvirate; as Richard Abraham put it, at least this kept Chernov
busy and out of Foreign Affairs. 4°Thus, the socialists entering the Cabinet were rather

a mixed bag: Tsereteli's and Chernov's were undoubtedly important appointments,

but of the others, Kerensiy was a socialist in name only, while Skobolev (the
Menshevik Minister of Labour) and Peshchekhonov (the Popular Socialist Minister of
Supply) were rather token appointments with little significance. It is not without

reason that Miliukov later judged these men to have been, in sum, `a rather motley
socialist group'. 41

While it is common to focus on the policy failures of the First Coalition (in

particular its failures with agricultural and industrial policy, with the peace policy and
the Constituent Assembly) as a means of explaining its decline in popularity, it is

appropriate here to view matters from a different stance. These policy failures

demonstrate, among other things, the gulf between the bourgeois members of the

government and their socialist colleagues. Even the left-Kadets, including Nekrasov,

had no intention of allowing the parties of the Soviet to address the aspirations of the

masses. Whilst it is perhaps true that the parties of the Soviet should have been more

assertive, it is still important to understand the in

political situation which the SRs and
Mensheviks found themselves. After all, even their support for a new offensive did

not prevent the estrangement of the Kadets from the socialists. Despite the wishes of

Nekrasov, Astrov and N. M. Kishkin, the Kadets' Ninth Party Congress,

men such as
held in the aftermath of the July Days, maintained the shift to the right that had been

since February. 42 Certainly, the resignation of the Kadet

effectively occurring
from the the beginning of July must be taken to be a signal of
ministers government at
left than being due
their general disenchantment with the policies of the rather simply

to their opposition to Ukrainian autonomy. The July Days also clearly failed to cause

in Kadet thinking, is from the Kadet campaign against Chernov of

any change as clear

39Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, pp. 174-175.

40Abraham, Kerensky, p. 189.
41Miliukov, Political Memoirs, p. 459.
42Rosenberg, `The Constitutional Democrats', p. 260.

18
 "
mid-July, and by Miliukov's insistence in negotiations over the new coalition that

ministers should not be accountable to any organ or committee. 44

Those on the right of the Kadet Party had become further estranged from those

on the left during May, June and July. Nekrasov had even formed a new organisation,

the `Union of Evolutionary Socialism', which aimed at creating more unity between
left-liberals and moderate socialists. Ties with the Kadet Party were not broken, but it

is clear that the conciliationist wing of the party were as close to Kerensky as they

were to Miliukov. The party leader, a master of alliance-forming and accommodation

in the days of the `Progressive Bloc' of the Fourth Duma, was now at the head of a
45
more galvanized and single-minded anti-Soviet right wing. The Kadet Central
Committee was thus split on the issue of cooperation with socialists.46 As Russian

society was becoming increasingly polarized, with the right wing becoming more
overtly counter-revolutionary in the summer, the parties of the moderate left who
were attached to the coalitionist centre of Kerensky, Tereshchenko and Nekrasov

were becoming more distanced from the radicalised masses.

The Mensheviks had declined in popularity since the formation of the

coalition, as was shown by their declining share of the vote in District Duma elections
between May and September, as well as by the events of July. 47 However, Dan

remained confident of worker support and the Mensheviks as a whole did not change
48
their strategy, despite the fact that Tsereteli, the only member of the governmental
inner circle not to be a freemason, was tiring of the dealings of the masonic `troika' of
Kerensky, Tereshchenko and Nekrasov.49It appears that Kerensky and his allies, in

43Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 296.

44Roobol, Tsereteli, p. 158.
45Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, p. 151.
46 This is evident from a Central Committee meeting of 11 August. Those on the right of the
Tyrkova Protopopov, attacked the moderate socialists, while future UR
committee, such as and
Shchepkin the to work together with them. For the minutes of the
members Astrov and spoke of need
Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi Partii 1915-1920
meeting see
Moscow: Rospen, 1998 (hereafter Protokoly Ts. K. K-D Partii), pp. 384-388.
gg.
47 Galili y Garcia, The Menshevik Leaders, pp. 294-299. This decline was initially due to apathy
later to the increasing success of the Bolsheviks. See Rosenberg, W. `The
amongst the voters and
Russian Municipal Duma Elections of 1917: A Preliminary Computation of Returns', Soviet Studies
Vol. 21 (1969-70), pp. 158-162.
48Galili y Garcia, The Menshevik Leaders, pp. 312-313.
49Abraham, Kerensky, p. 228. On the issue of political freemasonry in the revolution see Aronson, G.
la Revolution Contrat Social Vol. 7 (1963), No. 5, pp. 259-265; No. 6,
`Les Francs-macons et russe',
Katkov, G. Russia 1917: The February Revolution. London: Longman, 1967; Norton, B.
pp. 331-337;
Political Freemasonry and the February Revolution of 1917', International Review of
T. `Russian
28 (1983), No. 2, 240-258; Smith, N. `The Role of Russian Freemasonry in the
Social History Vol. pp.
Evidence', Slavic Review Vol. 27 (1968), pp. 604-608; Smith,
February Revolution: Another Scrap of

19
this atmosphere of left-right conflict, had quite a free hand in drawing up the Second
Coalition's cabinet, in which Tsereteli declined a
place. Radkey hints at there also
being a possible masonic link here, in that Avksent'ev, `who they were for
grooming
high office', and who was also a French mason, became the new Minister of the
Interior. 50Again, Radkey blames the right-wing of the PSR in preventing Chernov,

who remained in his post, from granting sufficient power to Land Committees: `the
instructions inciting the land committees to action emanated from the SR Ministry of

Agriculture and the police power restraining the from action was wielded by the SR
Ministry of the Interior'. " Or as Chernov himself put it, `The leading figures in the

party sacrificed Chernov's policy to the coalition. '52 The stagnation that characterised
the Second Coalition can be seen as a result of the closeness of these new SR

ministers, who also included Lebedev and Boris Savinkov (Kerensky's new Deputy

as minister for War), to Kerensky's `troika', and the willingness of the SRs to put off

effective legislation until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. 53

At this point, with Tsereteli fading somewhat from the limelight, the only
Menshevik pushing for a change in the form of government was Iulii Martov who,

since the July Days (but only since then) had been urging the formation of a new
54
`democratic' government based on the parties of the Soviet. This was surely the

only alternative to coalition, other than that provided by the Bolsheviks in October,

but seemed to flout traditional Menshevik doctrine about historical stages. The
Mensheviks had seen the February Revolution as bourgeois, not socialist in character,

and it had been difficult even for Tsereteli to enter the government in May. Israel

Getzler, Martov's biographer, provides an explanation of this change. Martov no

longer believed that the Russian bourgeoisie could accomplish a bourgeois revolution.

N. `Political Freemasonry in Russia, 1906-18: A Discussion of the Sources', Russian Review Vol. 44
(1985), No. 2, pp. 157-171; Smith, N. and Norton, B. T. `The Constitution of Russian Political
Freemasonry (1912)', Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas Vol 34 (1986), pp. 498-517.
.
50Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 303.
51ibid., p. 327.
52Chernov, Great Russian Revolution, p. 396.
53 This group of three was blamed by the Kadet Nabokov for the `weakness, duplicity,
fruitlessness' of the Second Coalition. Of course, Nabokov was criticising the
unscrupulousnessand
from the kind of standpoint that demanded firm decision making and rallied around
government
General Kornilov in August. See Medlin, V. and Parsons, S. (eds) V. D. Nabokov and the Russian
Yale University Press, 1976 (hereafter Nabokov), 94-95.
Provisional Government. New Haven: pp.
54Martov introduced a resolution to this effect at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the
is in Ascher, A. (ed.) The Mensheviks in the Russian
Soviets on 17 July. This resolution reproduced
Revolution. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976, pp. 102-103.

20
They were, in Martov's view, becoming
counter-revolutionary. " The possibility of a
government comprised of representatives of the Soviet, the co-operatives, dumas
city
and zemstvos (that is, of Soviet and non-Soviet democratic Russian organisations)
was mooted, and a new programme known as the `Programme of 14 August',
was
worked out by these groups, with the aim of addressing the concerns of the masses

over the war and the economy. At the Moscow State Conference, on 19 August,
Chkheidze read out a new programme of economic 56
regulation. However, Chkheidze,
Kerensky's `old comrade, friend and Masonic brother'
was acting partly to help the
embattled Minister-President by calling for no change to the government's policies on
the war or the land until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. " Once again,

personal ties were as significant as party affiliations and policies, as they had been so
often since February -a key point in understanding the high politics of 1917. Just as
the moderate left was pushing in one direction, though, the bourgeoisie was moving in

quite another, towards support of General Kornilov, who became the star of the
conference.
The Kornilov Affair put an end to the prospect of stable and active coalition

government in Russia in 1917. With the commander-in-chiefs alleged coup causing

the end of the second coalition, again with the resignation of Kadet ministers, the

country was governed by an emergency `Directory'. Meanwhile, in early September,

the PSR began to pull itself apart. A number of editorials and articles written by
Chernov and published on 3 and 4 September attacking the government and Kerensky
drew the fire of the right wing of the party and led to a showdown between Chernov

and Avksent'ev at a party Central Committee meeting on September 6th.58Effectively

the party was splitting not into two, but into three. The Left-SRs were now very close
to the Bolsheviks. But perhaps an equally significant break was between those around
Chemov who broke with Kerensky and wanted coalition only if the Kadets were

excluded, and those around Avksent'ev who still believed in the cause of a broad-

based coalition at all costs.

55 Getzler, I. Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1967 (hereafter Martov), pp. 155-157.
56The resolution is reproduced in Browder and Kerensky, The Russian Provisional Government,Vol.
3, pp. 1480-1488.
5' Abraham, Kerensky, p. 261.
58Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, pp. 398-412.

21
 This issue was to be decided by the Democratic Conference, which met
between 14 and 22 September. The intention was clearly to gain the approval of

Russian democratic forces for a new coalition. The invitation to the conference was

issued in the names of the Chairman of the Workers' Soldiers' Soviet and that of the

Peasants' Soviet - none other than Chkheidze and Avksent'ev, two men notable for

their personal ties to Kerensky. 59 The PSR was divided between Chernov and
Avksent'ev (excluding the Left-SRs, by now virtually a separate party), the
Mensheviks between Tsereteli and Martov. In fact, it was Martov who had recovered

much of his lost ground and commanded the majority of the support of the Menshevik
faction of the conference. Tsereteli, together with Avksent'ev and Gots, tried to

muster support for a broad coalition to include the Kadets, but the splits in their own

party factions were mirrored in the A

conference as a whole. narrow vote in favour of

coalition was amended by further resolutions to exclude those implicated in the

Kornilov affair and then to exclude the Kadets as a party. After these amendments

were approved by the conference, the newly amended pro-coalition formula was

soundly defeated. The conference thus ended in a debacle which, according to

Chernov, signalled, `the complete bankruptcy of revolutionary democracy' 60 It also

.
Kerensky' Third Coalition, the Council of the Republic (or Pre-
ensured that s and
to give it political backing, were based on foundations so shaky
parliament) called
to
that they would put up no resistance the Bolsheviks the following month.
The Kornilov affair and the formation of the Third Coalition had an equally

divisive effect upon the Kadet Party. Miliukov had already somewhat `lost' his party

April Crisis the issue of coalition. Now, with him having allegedly
over the and
dictatorship, Kerensky met with Kadet Central Committee members
supported a
Nabokov and Vinaver concerning the formation of the new government. Kerensky

insisted that Miliukov relinquish his posts as party leader and editor of the party's

Rech. Also, Nekrasov accompanied the non-party Tereshchenko to talks

main organ
61
of the PSR and the Mensheviks on the subject of the new cabinet.
with members
Miliukov forced to leave for the Crimea, from where he did not return until
was

59 The text of the invitation is reproduced in Browder and Kerensky, The Russian Provisional
An version of the conference's debates on the issue of
Government, Vol. 3, pp. 1671-1672. edited
is
coalition on pp. 1672-1687.
60Getzler, Martov, p. 159.
61Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs, pp. 406-407.

22
immediately before the Bolshevik takeover.62In the total five Kadets defied
end, a of
the wishes of their `leader' and joined the new cabinet: Kartashov, Kishkin,
Konovalov, Smirnov and Tret'iakov. 63Kadet nadklassnost had been by
accompanied
a distinct nadpartiinost, with many senior members behaving more as individuals
than as party men.
Tsereteli, having lost much of his influence, left for his native Georgia on 5
October, and the only socialists remaining who supported the Third Coalition were

right-SRs. Many of these were to be instrumental in the formation and activity of the
UR. Despite, or perhaps because of, Martov's ascendancy in the party during
September, Mensheviks as a whole were unable to have an effect on the course of the
high political events or to prevent the pro-coalition group from `foisting another
Kerensky government on "revolutionary Russia"'. ' However, Kerensky also made it

very difficult for an all-socialist government to form, saying that he would hand over
power peacefully to such a government, in which he would not participate, but that
the conference presidium must reply within three days. This was judged by Kerensky
to be enough to force the SRs and Mensheviks to `capitulate' 65Kerensky, then, was
.
sufficiently confident in the strength of his own position that he was quite willing to

act to prevent the formation of an all-socialist government. Thus, while support for

not only Kerensky, but even those to his left, the SRs and Mensheviks, was withering

away, Kerensky seemed to hold the principle of coalition (with himself at the head)

above all other considerations. This misplaced confidence affected those around him

in the machinery of government. The Council of Elders of the Council of the

Republic, joined by as far-right a figure as Nabokov (who felt that the support of
by Avksent'ev, and contained Popular
authority was paramount) was chaired
Socialists Peshchekhnov and Chaikovskii. Of Avksent'ev, Nabokov wrote, `As

the council he behaved unimpeachably, and was both polite and pleasant
chairman of
in his personal relations. For all that, he was the very last whom one would call an

outstanding and strong personality, capable of winning the respect of others and

follow him. ' 66

persuading them to

62 Stockdale, M. Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880-1918. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1996, p. 261.
63Tyrkova-Williams, A. From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk. London: Macmillan, 1919, p. 230.
64Getzler, Martov, p. 159.
65Kerensky, A, The Kerensky Memoirs, p. 417.
66Medlin and Parsons,Nabokov, pp. 151-152.

23
 Avksent'ev's membership of the
council affected his relations with those close
to him in the PSR. With the centre ground firmly behind Chernov,
who had clearly set
his stall out to criticise the coalition
government from without, the new Minister for
Agriculture, Maslov, attempted some
new emergency agrarian reform. This
stimulated a flurry of SR activity, aimed at spurring the Council of the Republic into
action. Men such as Gots and the Menshevik Dan, who had now returned to a position

close to that of his great friend (and brother-in-law) Martov, saw the need by mid-
October to act swiftly to avoid a complete Bolshevik take-over. The Council

approved a three-point Dan resolution on immediate peace talks, the transfer of all
gentry land to land committees, and the prompt convocation of the Constituent
Assembly. 6'. On 24 October, Dan and Gots accompanied Avksent'ev
on a visit to
Kerensky and spoke of the urgency of radical measure to placate the
masses.
However, Avksent'ev did not join their call and instead tried to moderate their words.
This made it easier for Kerensky to ignore them. It was rather too late, of course. Dan,
Gots and men of their standing should have acted with more determination at the
Democratic Conference. This event was significant, though, as it shows why Gots
became estranged from Avksent'ev and explains the detachment of the far right-wing

of the SRs from the centre of the 68

party. It also explains why Gots would not become
involved in the UR. Avksent'ev, Zenzinov and Chaikovskii, who became leaders of

the UR, all supported Kerensky until the bitter end.

After October the divisions within the main parties were even clearer. The
PSR became temporarily reunited around Chernov, as he decideto fight the Bolshevik

take-over in support of Kerensky. This, of course, signalled the final break with the
left of the party. The Left-SRs were expelled for breaking party discipline, held a

separate congress which formed the new, separate party, and joined Sovnarkom in

December.69The SRs proper, meanwhile, became involved in what was effectively

the first underground anti-Bolshevik organisation, the Committee to Save the

Fatherland and the Revolution, which Radkey judges to have been a group of SRs
(around Avksent'ev and Gots) who allied themselves with armed forces which would
have been beyond their control had they in
succeeded putting an end the October

67Galili y Garcia, The Menshevik Leaders,p. 391.

68Radkey, Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, p. 450.
69Melancon, `Socialist Revolutionary Party', p. 287.

24
Revolution. 7° Gots, Chernov and Avksent'ev briefly
also attempted to create an SR
government at the military headquarters (Stavka) of Moglev. 7' The Kadets were also
involved with the committee, with those on the left of the
party willing to work with
`moderate socialists' (as Kadets saw them), although the centre
and right of the party,
legal minded as ever, saw the committee as another attempt to
usurp the legitimate
authority of the Provisional Government. " Some minor members of the government,
who had been briefly interned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in October,
upon their
release began to meet as an underground remnant of the fallen regime and in fact it
was to this group of mainly former deputy ministers that Kerensky communicated his
73
resignation. Vladimir Brovkin suggests that the continuation of this willingness to
act in consort with the military, then as well as later in 1918 (which of course was a - .,-ý-
ý,
central feature of the UR), `was a source of friction between the Mensheviks and the
SRs in those early days and eventually it would lead to a break between the two allied
74
parties,,. Not that the Mensheviks spoke with one voice. Dan may have become
closer again to Martov, the party returning to the latter's grip, particularly after
October, but the Defencists around Plekhanov's Edinstvo and Potresov's Den ('The
Day') `virtually declared war' on the central committee 7' and the Extraordinary
Congress of the party at the end of November saw the party `deeply divided on all

major issues.'76

The ravaging effects of the failed coalition experiment had clearly affected the
Mensheviks just as it had the Kadets and the SRs. The issue of power was the reason
for the detachment, if not formal separation, of the right wings of the SR and
Menshevik parties and also for the fragmentation of the Kadet party. These fissures,

though, had existed within the parties since 1905. The issue of struggle with the
Bolsheviks, one which was clearly emotive for many Mensheviks, who until 1917 had

70Radkey, O. The Sickle Under the Hammer: Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the First Months of
Soviet Rule. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963 (hereafter The Sickle Under the Hammer), p.
61.
71 Chamberlin, W. The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987
(hereafter Russian Revolution), Vol. 1, p. 346.
72Rosenberg,Liberals in the Russian Revolution, p. 269.
73Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 354.
74 Brovkin, V. The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik
Dictatorship. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1987 (hereafter The MensheviksAfter October), p. 20.
75ibid., p. 29.
76ibid., p. 39. The debates at the congress, which were lengthy and took place over eight days, are
in Galili, Z. and Nenarokov, A (eds) Mensheviki v 1917 godu: tom 3. Ot kornilovskogo
available
do kontsa dekabria. Moscow: Rospen, 1997, pp. 370-525.
miatezha

25
never given up hope of reuniting the RSDRP, was the issue which
caused the SRs and
Mensheviks, who had been drifting together finding
and common ground for years, to
begin to drift apart again. Although they formed
electoral blocs together in the spring
of 1918, the vast majority of leading Mensheviks (the behaviour
of local Mensheviks
was a different matter) did not become involved in the SR-led struggle
with Soviet
power that began in late spring 1918. The Kadets and Popular Socialists
were far
more interested in armed struggle, as shown by their involvement with the Committee
to Save the Fatherland and the Revolution. By the end of 1917, then, the
ground had
been laid for the possibility of organisational
unity between SRs (particularly right-
SRs), Kadets (particularly left-Kadets) and Popular Socialists. The dispersal by
the
Bolsheviks (supported by the Left-SRs) of the Constituent Assembly,
with its
overwhelming SR majority, on its first day of meeting on 5 January 1918, was
perhaps the final straw for those who had begun to consider the possibility of further,
long-term, armed struggle against Sovnarkom. Soon the anti-Bolshevik
underground
began to form.

The Historiography of the Anti-Bolshevik Underground

The previous section examined the origins of the anti-Bolshevik underground in the

politics of 1917. There follows a review of its historiography to date. Few western
histories touch upon the UR and the anti-Bolshevik underground.77 Invariably,

accounts of the Russian Civil War have focused upon the military campaigns of the
so-called 'White' generals Denikin, ludenich and Wrangel and Admiral Koichak. The
likes of the UR and the National Centre have only tended to be mentioned in

connection with those White leaders and their 78

regimes. The work of William
Rosenberg, on the Kadet Party in the years 1917 to 1921, contains some detailed

77It is telling that a web search for the phrase `Union of Regeneration' or `Union for the Regeneration
of Russia' does not find a single direct hit, although it does lead to a short piece by John Long (see p.
22, n. 80).
78The single most comprehensive study of the UR currently available in the west appearsin the first
chapter of Smele, J. D. Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolcha
1918-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 (hereafter Civil War in Siberia), pp. 33-
107. As the title suggests,however, this study is limited to the work of the UR in the setting up of the
Directory which was overthrown by Admiral Kolchak in the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918. The
UR also features quite prominently, again only in the chronological and geographical limits of the
period of the Directory, in Swain, G. The Origins of the Russian Civil War. London: Longman, 1995
(hereafter Origins of the Russian Civil War).

26
information on the National Centre (which
was essentially a Kadet organisation).
However, this again focuses in particular its
on work within General Denikin's
regime in South Russia.79The sole example of a dedicated English language
piece on
the UR is a brief but thorough introductory article by John Long. 80
However, a number of Russian language studies are available which,
whilst
not focusing on the underground in particular, give a more detailed picture of the UR
and other such organisations. These studies include a few works by Russian emigres,
but in the main are products of Soviet historiography. Consequently the vast majority

of published Russian language material is skewed towards one point of view or

another. Generally, emigre works tend to attempt to displace the blame not only for
the failures of 1917 but also of 1918, towards those with whom the author was not

associated. There is little objective analysis and criticism of the behaviour of the
figures involved. In Soviet historiography, the failure of the `democratic' phase of the

revolution and the transition to the Red-White struggle is viewed as inevitable. The
theoretical basis for such a position is usually set out in the introductory pages, often

utilising quotations from Lenin's collected works. Having stated at the beginning that
there could be no `third way', that petit-bourgeois (as both Kadets and SRs were

uniformly viewed in the Soviet era) counter-revolution was bound to lead to anti-
democratic reaction, Soviet works generally continue by showing the events in such a

manner as to prove this point. This is not to denigrate the value of either to the

western historian. The detail involved in such works is far greater than anything

available in western languages, and for the purposes of this study, the nature of the
.
relationships between is
underground groups explored in a way that has not yet been

achieved in the West. However, anything approaching a definitive study of the anti-
Bolshevik underground and its role in the civil war has until now remained unwritten.
In the West, as stated above, the best study of the liberal side of the equation
has been provided by William Rosenberg. In his study of the Kadet Party in the

war period, Rosenberg traced the divisions within the party

revolution and civil
through 1917 into the post-October scene and then into the aftermath of the dispersal

Constituent Assembly (coinciding, as that did, broadly with the shocking

of the
in of the leading liberals Kokoshkin and Fedorov). This led to
murders prison

79Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, pp. 286-356.

80Long, J. W. `Union for the Regenerationof Russia', in Modern Encyclopaedia of Russian and Soviet
History, Vol. 40 (1985), pp. 221-225.

27
emergency Kadet meetings over tactics, during which the basic alternatives discussed

were an alliance with Generals Alekseev and Kornilov (that is, with the
right) or with
the moderate left. This led to a serious split in the party between those (like
Novgorodtsev) who blamed the moderate left for the failures
of 1917, and those
(including Astrov, Vinaver and Lev Krol) who
were more concerned with regaining
the support of the masses than with acrimony. It was Novgorodtsev whose proposals
became the `official' party line, the old `conciliationists' being
pushed to the sidelines
of the 81
party. Thereafter Rosenberg outlines the growing closenessbetween Astrov's
wing and the Popular Socialists and SRs who formed the UR and examines the

agreement between the National Centre and the UR made in May 1918 on the

rejection of the Constitutional Assembly and the possibility of a government by a

Directory. 82This is all, of course, presented within the context of liberal politics
-
clearly a major problem for the Kadets, who had fared badly in the recent elections to
the Constituent Assembly. For the party to have supported the Assembly would thus
have rendered it without any say in the anti-Bolshevik struggle.

It is clear from Rosenberg's study that the left of the party, which is almost

universally identified with Astrov, wished to remain within the frame of mainstream
liberal politics. Not for Astrov the factionalism of the SRs. This was a tactic that was
largely unsuccessful, as at the same time as the left liberals were rallying around

opposition to the Brest-Litovsk treaty with rightist pro-Allied socialists, Miliukov was
taking his own wing of the party in an entirely different direction - that of working

with Germany for the possible overthrow of the Bolsheviks. Miliukov's group, the
`Right Centre' was thus involved in work with the German-installed puppet regime of
Hetman Skoropadskii in Kiev. Clearly divisions within the party were at a higher
level than ever before.
As regards the work of the left liberals, Rosenberg outlines the stance of the
National Centre in South Russia, as it gradually shifted to the right, from 1918 to
1919. The initial phase is one in which the Moscow agreement with the UR was
honoured, with Astrov hoping that Denikin would unify with the Ufa Directory.

However, this failed, possibly due to the perceived breaking of the agreement by the

UR at Ufa. This meant that Astrov refused his post and ended UR-National Centre

81ibid., pp. 282-87.

82ibid., pp. 291-99.

28
collaboration, at least as far as those in South Russia were concerned, although both

groups represented Russia at the Jassy Conference of November 1918.83Interestingly,

Rosenberg is clear that, from a Kadet perspective, the Directory doomed
was to
failure and thus the Ufa State Conference
was a dismal failure. 84Rosenberg also
outlines the work of the two prominent Kadets sent to the Urals and western Siberia
to link with the UR and the Siberian Kadets. One, Lev Krol, was a UR member and

worked for compromise, the other, Viktor Pepeliaev, was a National Centre affiliate
who worked against this and is implicated in the Omsk coup.8SSubsequent parts of the
book outline later UR work in South Russia as a part of a new collaborative
effort
with the National Centre to persuade Denikin to enact popular legislation and involve
local government to maintain control over White held territories. 86However, this is

again a rather brief treatment, more concerned with the attitude of the Kadet Party as
a whole and their influence on Denikin than with the efforts of inter-party
organisations which is the focus of the present thesis.
The Soviet counterpart to Rosenberg's work is that of Natalia Dumova. 87
Rather than a study of the party in the years of the revolution and civil war, though,
her work focuses on the part played by Kadets in the civil war itself, including the

military plans of 1918. Therefore, it is natural that her book contains more
information than Rosenberg on the National Centre and its links with both the UR and
Boris Savinkov's group, the Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom.
The negotiations with the UR are examined in detail, with the reasons for the later
disagreement being hinted at. Dumova says that the agreement made between the two

sides was only made `for the sake of achieving an agreement', with much emphasis

placed on the links between all underground groups in Moscow and Allied agents

who were, it is alleged, their ß8

paymasters. Dumova's view is, unsurprisingly, less

sympathetic towards the Kadets than that of Rosenberg, although the latter is far from

uncritical. From Dumova's perspective, the breakdown in relations between the

83The Conference at Jassy in Romania was called by the Allies to discuss possible Allied aid for the
White movement. The three groups that represented the Conference, the UR, the National Centre and
the Council for the National Unification of Russia failed to put forward any kind of united appearance
fiasco. See below, pp. 200-217.
and the conference was thus a
84Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, pp. 392-393.
85ibid., pp. 389-396.
86ibid., pp. 422-423.
87 Dumova, N. G. Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia i ee razgrom (Oktiabr' 1917-1920gg.). Moscow:
Nauka, 1982. (Hereafter Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia).
88ibid., pp. 125-129.

29
Kadets and the left was due to the fact that in the spring was largely
any unity
illusory, and thus the failure of the Ufa State Conference to
create a genuine all-
Russian government was entirely due to the attitude
of the Kadets. Dumova looks at
the Kadet-dominated Provisional Regional Government of the Urals (one
of the
regional governments represented at the Ufa State Conference), in which Krol was the
`main actor', and which allegedly brought terror and chaos to the
region. She also
examines Kadet representation in the North Russian government, led by the UR's
Chaikovskii, and at Pepaliaev's actions in Siberia, all of which
are used to show the
`strict course of the Kadets towards a military-terrorist military dictator' 89
.
The second half of Dumova's study concentrates on the work of the Kadets

with each of the White leaders. The importance of the National Centre in Petrograd is
highlighted, with the National Centre and the UR working to prepare the ground for
General ludenich's attack on the city. In addition, the situation in Moscow in 1919 is
detailed, with underground members sending reports on the Red Army to Denikin,

and with the formation of a `Tactical Centre' out of Moscow UR and National Centre
members and the `Council of Public Figures, ' which supported a temporary
dictatorship to restore order to Russia.9°In her section on South Russia, there is some
detail on the attempts at unity between the National Centre, the UR and the Council
for the State Unity of Russia, a right-wing group. On the whole, Dumova views the

actions of the left-Kadets and the UR in South Russia to have been an `unnecessary
ballast' of support for the Volunteer Army (and later in its new guise of the Armed
Forces of South Russia) and as a `false cloak' which attempted to conceal from the

masses the reactionary nature of Denikin. On the whole, Dumova's work is a mine of
information, a superbly detailed study which is less didactic than many Soviet works.
However, it is too hostile to the Kadets to treat the anti-Bolshevik underground in a
balanced way. The attempt to bring a more political dimension to the civil war is
derided as a shamelessbourgeois capitulation to military reaction.
As Kadet-based studies focus on the National Centre with occasional

reference to the UR, precisely the opposite is true of studies which look at the work of

the SRs and the early stages of the civil war as it began on the Upper Volga, in the

Urals region and in Siberia. A recent study by N. G. O. Pereira traces the long-term

89ibid., p. 168.
90ibid., p. 265.

30
 V

development of Siberia and the reasons for it having

more bourgeois sensibilities than
European Russia, before outlining the
various anti-Bolshevik governments which
appeared in Siberia in 1918, leading up to the events in Omsk in November
which
made Admiral Kolchak `Supreme Ruler. '9' Pereira then moves on to the Kolchak

regime itself. Much the same ground has been covered by Jonathan Smele,
although
in considerably more detail. 92In the latter's
work, though, proportionally less space is
given to the origins of the oblastnik (regionalist) movement and the various
regionalist governments (such as the Provisional Siberian Government or PSG, the
Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia or PGAS
and the Western Siberian
Commissariat. ) More important to this study, which focuses
on Koichak's rule, is the
origins of the Ufa Directory, and it is for this reason that Smele' s work contains much
more on the UR. Smele examines the role of the UR in mediating between the rival
anti-Bolshevik Governments of the area from the Upper Volga towns to Vladovostok,
in particular the SR-dominated Komuch (an abbreviation of the Committee
of the
Constituent Assembly) and the Omsk-based (and more bourgeois in nature) PSG.
Identifying the UR as a `fragile partnership', Smele sees their success in organising

and dominating the conferences at Cheliabinsk and then finally the major conference
in Ufa as being due to pressure of the influential Czechoslovak Legion and to the

respect the UR gained by its `principled stand,.93However, Smele portrays the all-
important Ufa State Conference as a fudge which resulted in the left and right both
deserting the UR's cause.94 This is an interesting version of events, as others,
including Geoffrey Swain, have concluded that the conference was a UR triumph,
largely due to the fact that the five-man Directory contained three leading UR

members: Nikolai Avksent'ev, Vladimir Zenzinov and General Boldyrev. 95However,

the course of events between the Ufa Conference and the Omsk coup, a period which

was characterised by the inaction and failure on behalf of the new government to

protect itself form the machinations of bourgeois and Kadet circles in Siberia,

indicates that the conference was not a success. As much as exterior factors were
important, including the actions of individuals such as Pepeliaev and PSG Minister of

91Pereira, N. G. 0. White Siberia. Dalhouisie: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996 (hereafter White
Siberia. )
92Smele, Civil War in Siberia, pp. 10-677.
93 35-36.
ibid., pp.
94ibid., pp. 45-48.
95Swain, Origins of the RussianCivil War, p. 220.

31
Finance Ivan Mikhailov, the failure of the Directory
must be seen in part as the failure
of the Ufa Conference and, by implication, of the UR, to create a progressive
government acceptable to bourgeois society. Of course, as civil war historians

concerned with a larger picture, neither Smele, nor Swain nor Pereira examine the

reasons for the failure of the Directory in these terms. However, the question must be

posed: why did the Ufa Conference create the Directory in a form which ensured that
Kadets both in Russia and Siberia would spurn it, and that the
centre ground of the
PSR led by Chernov would not support it?

This question has been addressed somewhat more satisfactorily by Russian

historians. In particular, the work of S. P. Mel'gunov on Kolchak
provides some
indications as to where problems were encountered at Ufa. 96As
well as briefly tracing
the development of plans for an anti-German and anti-Bolshevik front, Mel'gunov

examines the rivalry between Komuch and the PSG and the role of the National
Centre and particularly the UR. Mel'gunov's overall assessment of the Ufa State
Conference is that it was something of a debacle. Not only was Ufa a poorly chosen
location, which meant that virtually no National Centre members could attend, but

once there delegates from the opposite ends of the political spectrum of the
conference held intractable positions. There were two major sticking points as
represented by Mel'gunov: the issue of the authority of the Constituent Assembly
dispersed by the Bolsheviks on 5 January, and the issue of the Directory's

membership. Mel'gunov believes that Komuch were too inflexible over the power of
the Assembly, as the responsible body to which the new government must be drawn.
Likewise, it would seem that the small PSG delegation had been instructed by its
leader, Vologodskii, not to enter into any compromise, especially considering the

weak position of Komuch (with the towns of Kazan and Simbirsk falling to the Red

Army in mid-September) and the fact that he was holding talks with Allied

representatives in the Far East in the hope of receiving official recognition for the
97
PSG. The compromise agreement, that the Directory was to be responsible to no
body until either 1 January 1919 (if a quorum of 250 Constituent Assembly members
be 1 February (if 170 members could meet and form such a body)
could gathered) or
is judged to have been due to exterior circumstances which pressurised the Komuch

96Mel'gunov, S. P. Tragediia Admirala Kolchaka: Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voini na Volge, Urale iv

Sibiri. 3 Vols., Belgrade: Russkaia tipografiia, 1929 (hereafter Tragediia Admirala Kolchaka).
97Smele, Civil War in Siberia, pp. 37-38,78.

32
and PSG delegates. For Komuch, of course, the deteriorating military situation was
key, and for the PSG the murder of PGAS member Novoselov (in which PSG

members were implicated) damaged its authority. 98However, Mel'gunov also blames

the UR for what he considers to have been their giving in too much to the demands of
Komuch, not only with regard to the theoretical approval of the Constituent Assembly

of 1917 and the possibility of its utility as a responsible body in the future, but also
over the membership of the Directory, which included two SRs and one SR
99
sympathiser. This was clearly not acceptable to bourgeois circles in either Siberia or
in South Russia, and moreover contravened an agreement with the National Centre

made in Moscow in the spring over the composition of the Directory and its
100However, the the Constituent Assembly still meant
authority. arrangements over
that the new government had license to act without responsibility, and no Komuch

members were chosen to serve on it. Thus, the Directory was unsatisfactory to both

sides, who left the Conference feeling that they had given too much away. All

concessions to the left are considered by Mel'gunov to have been mistakes.

This portrayal of events appears to be a little one-sided, as though the left was

merely required to give concessions to the right over the Constituent Assembly to

ensure the success of the Directory. Mel'gunov later shows how vulnerable the

Directory was to attack, with Avksent'ev unwilling to use the Czechoslovak Legion

Mikhailov for his apparent complicity in the Novoselov murder. "' Concern
against
for legality and moderation restricted the Directory's course of action. In fact,

Mel'gunov's account of events leading up to the Omsk coup is, like that of Smele,

in tone, portraying the Directory as being

rightly or wrongly rather pessimistic
incapable of action and essentially doomed, especially after the decision, made in

from the Red Army, to move the seat of government to Omsk.

retreat advancing
A number of Soviet have looked at the SRs and the civil war in the
works
the Russian Empire. The closest examination of the anti-
eastern and northern parts of
Bolshevik underground has been undertaken by Grigorii loffe in a number of articles

Kolchak. In an article on the `Council for the National

and a monograph on

98Mel'gunov, Tragediia Admirala Kolchaka, Vol. 1, pp. 214-222.

99ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 226-228.
100The agreement was that the government would be in the form of a three-man directory, consisting
and one military general This directory would act as a collegiate
of one socialist, one non-socialist
dictatorship. See below, pp. 66-68.
101Mel'gunov, Tragediia Admirala Kolchaka, Vol. 2, p. 6.

33
Unification of Russia', loffe briefly
outlined that organisation's formation, and links
with the National Centre and the UR in South Russia in the spring of 1919,
explaining
that its main aim was to create a united political front
which was more right-wing
than the UR and National Centre alone, and that its
aim was the restoration of a
Constitutional Monarchy. 1°2A later article
on the Omsk coup details the rising tide of
reactionary feeling in Omsk in October and November 1918 and identifies many
of
the key participants. 1' Ioffe gives some detail on the connections between Kadets,
Popular Socialists and Right SRs in 1917 in the `Republican Centre',
which shows
that such organisations existed before the October Revolution, in a
collection edited
by Korablev and Shishkin which contains a number
of useful articles on Siberia and
the nature of the oblastniks, their work with SRs and Kadets throughout 1918 and the

nature of the PSG.1°4However, loffe's most important work is a book on Koichak

which, like Dumova, gives space to the formation of the UR, the Right Centre and
later the National Centre in Moscow in spring-summer 1918.1°5Ioffe also gives
information about the connections between the UR and the National Centre with
Savinkov's Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom, and their common

usage of money obtained from Allied sources, together with their work, which loffe
suggests was close, on plans for armed uprising on the Volga. l loffe goes on to

supply another narrative of events surrounding the Ufa State Conference, which,
although by no means as detailed or revealing as Mel'gunov's work, contains some
original material. For the purposes of this study, though, it is the section on the
Moscow underground that is significant. If loffe is correct, and he unfortunately

presents little supportive evidence, then the uprisings on the Volga in the summer of
1918 were co-ordinated between the UR and Savinkov. The recreation of an Eastern
Front southwards from Arkhangel'sk, where Chaikovskii led a successful overthrow

of Soviet power with Allied help on 1 to 2 August, could lead through Iaroslavl,

102loffe, G. Z. `Pomeshchich'e-burzhuaznaia organizatsiia "Sovet gosudarstvennogo ob"edineneniia

Rossii" (1918-1919gg. )', in Mints, I. I. (ed.) Neproletarskie partii Rossii v 1917g. iv grazhdanskoi
voiny. Moscow, Kalinin: Kalininskii Gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1980 (hereafter `Sovet
gosudarstvennogo ob"edineniia' ), pp. 223-233.
103 loffe, G. Z. `Ot kontrrevoliutsii "demokraticheskoi" k burzhuaznei-pomeshch'ichei diktature
(Omskii perevorot)', Istoriia SSSR (Moscow), No. 1 (1982), pp. 108-119.
104Ioffe, G. Z. `Iz istorii kadetsko-monarkhisticheskoi kontrrevoliutsiia v Rossii', in Korablev, lu. V.
and Shishkin V. I. )
(eds. Iz istorii interventsii i grazhdanskoi voini v sibiri i na Dal 'nem vostoke 1917-
1922gg. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1985, pp. 161-169.
ios loffe, G. Z. Kolchakovskaia aventiura i ee krakh. Moscow: Mysl, 1983 (hereafter Kolchakovskaia
aventiura).

34
which Savinkov held for sixteen days from 6 to 22 July,
and other towns which
Savinkov's Union also attempted to
seize in early July.
Another important Brezhnev-era
source is a monograph on the PSR by K. V.
Gusev. 107This study, which follows the various
strands on the party in much the same
way as Dumova does the Kadets, details Central Committee meetings of 1918 and the

way in which the exodus of SRs to various parts of the empire was sanctioned. The
coverage is, however, very brief and is not particularly revealing. Gusev predictably
contradicts Mel'gunov over the Ufa State Conference, stating that Avksent'ev,
Zenzinov and the others bowed to pressure from bourgeois
reaction in the creation of
the Directory. Later sections of the study, however, are useful on UR/SR activities in

emigration in France.
The work of both loffe and Gusev expanded on that of earlier Soviet
historians, such as Vera Vladimirova. Vladimirova's work, which dates from the late
1920s is largely based on anecdotal evidence, such as personal memoirs, as
well as
trial testimonies. "' However rather than an interpretive study, such as that of loffe,
this is more akin to a highly valuable collection of first-hand accounts and contains a

wealth of minute detail on the UR's formation in Moscow in April 1918, its

membership and its contacts with other groups (including officer groups) as well as
Allied representatives. Vladimirova claims (again, citing no evidence) that UR
representatives provided Allied representatives with a detailed military plan. '09This
claim is, of course, highly dubious: the purpose of this claim being to associate the
Allies as much as possible. with the beginning of the civil war. However, in later

sections on the Volga uprisings Vladimirova uses Savinkov's trial testimony to

demonstrate that the aim was to link up with Chaikovskii's overthrow of the
Bolsheviks in the northern region. "' Vladimirova also provides more information,

albeit again often anecdotal in nature, on the Ufa State Conference and events in

Siberia, and on Chaikovskii's government in Arkhangel'sk and its subsequent

overthrow by Chaplin. Throughout her book, Vladimirova is at pains to point out any
facts which show a general lack of popular support for the anti-Bolsheviks, whether in

106ibid., p. 57.
107Gusev, K. V. Partiia Eserov: Ot melko-burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia do kontrrevoliutsiia. Moscow:
Mysl', 1975 (hereafter Partiia Eserov).
108Vladimirova, V. God sluzhby "sotsialistov" kapitalistami: Ocherki po istorii kontr-revoliutsii.
Moscow: Gosizdat, 1927 (hereafter God sluzhby "sotsialistov ").
109ibid., p. 214.

35
Arkhangel'sk, Iaroslavl or anywhere in the Volga-Urals region. Indeed, the tone of

the study somewhat unfairly portrays the moderate socialists who fought the
Bolsheviks as rather pathetic figures, isolated between extremes on both the left and

the right and who were bound to serve as agents of reaction.

Apart from the relevant sections in Vladimirova's work, the Popular
Socialist's part in the UR and the civil war are best covered by emigre writings

relating to the revolutionary life of Chaikovskii. An exhaustive political biography of

Chaikovskii in the revolution and civil war period by Mel'gunov is of great utility to

the student of the anti-Bolshevik underground and its work in the struggle against
Soviet power. "' The book covers Chaikovskii's vital role in the creation of the UR

and its negotiations with the National Centre, the preparation for the overthrow of the
Bolsheviks in Arkhangel'sk and his actions as Chairman of the subsequent regional

government, before moving on to his deposition and emigration to France, where he

worked to gain Allied support for the Kolchak regime (which he now supported) and
his return to Russia to link with General Denikin's regime. Mel'gunov is utterly

sympathetic towards his old party leader in his gradual but unending shift to the right,

which he justifies as the only way to fight the Bolsheviks. Therefore, once again,
Mel'gunov is highly critical of the SR members of the UR who made concessionsto
Komuch at the Ufa State Conference. Unfortunately, while being a source of immense

value, the study is so uncritical that certain questions are never addressed, such as
Chaikovskii went North instead of continuing to the Urals where he could have
why
the Ufa State Conference. In short, Chaikovskii's actions are apologised for
attended
and justified without reference to his motives, other than the obvious wish to create a

broad based anti-Bolshevik movement. A complementary volume, a collection of

by those knew and worked with Chaikovskii, is similarly

articles written who
1' Largely recollections, of most use is an article
sympathetic. a collection of personal
by fellow Popular Socialist and UR member V. A. Miakotin, who gives some

information on the creation of the UR. lla This is in fact a truncated version of a

journalist historian by profession, from the

lengthy memoir article by Miakotin, a and

110ibid., p. 250.
111Mel'gunov, S. P. N. V. Chaikovskii v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (Materialy dlia istorii russkoi
191 7-1925gg. ) Paris: Rodnik, 1929 (hereafter N. V. Chaikovskii).
obshchestvennosti, i Paris:
112Titov, A. A. (ed.) Nikolai Vasilevich Chaikovskii: religioznii obshchestvennye poiski.
Nikolai Vasil'evich Chaikovskii).
Rodnik, 1929 (hereafter
113Miakotin, V. A, `Iz vospominanii', in ibid., pp. 257-258.

36
emigre journal Na chuzhoi storone which is perhaps the most detailed account of the
formation of the UR and its negotiations with the National Centre. 114

Unfortunately, in-depth study of the revolution and

civil war has not been in
vogue in Russia in the post-Soviet era. A small number of studies on the period refer
to the UR or other organisations, but usually either in passing or in a very general
115
manner. It can therefore be seen that the existing published accounts of the work of
the anti-Bolshevik underground are highly fragmentary and/or partial in nature. There
has thus far been no attempt to gather the various strands of UR-led activity in the

political underground and in the non-Red zone of Russia in the revolution and civil
war. While some historians, both in the west and in Russia, have made reference to
these organisations, none examine them as a whole, to show when they existed, what
their aims were and what part they played in the struggle with the Bolsheviks.
Generally, the works referred to above only contain information about the UR, the
National Centre and the other organisations where directly relevant to the focal point

of the study in question. It is hoped that by investigating the UR and the work of it
and other political groups as a whole, a different part of history of the civil war can
emerge - one that does not focus on the White generals but is also neither a social or
regional study. The characters that remained in Russia during 1917-1919 and joined

the organisations that are the focus of this study did so in the hope of preserving a

political element to the anti-Bolshevik movement, and of preventing a wholesale

return to the pre-February situation, while recognising that strong military authority
was also necessary if the Red Army was to be defeated. They conducted their struggle
in several of the major theatres of the civil war.
It is the aim of this thesis, then, to fill in one of the gaps in the historiography

of the civil war. Whilst the organisations to be examined are mentioned in several
important studies, there has been no comprehensive study of them in any language.

Were the studies by Mel'gunov more objective, there would have been no need for

h14Miakotin, V. A. `Iz nedalekago proshlago', Na chuzhoi storone (Berlin), No. 2 (1923), pp. 178-
199. Hereafter `Iz nedalekagoproshlago 1'.
115Trukan, G. A. Antibol'shevistskie pravitel'stva Rossii. Moscow: IRI RAN, 2000, pp. 50-63 contains
the Ufa State Conference and the life of the Directory; Fediuk, V. P. Belye:
a small general chapter on
dvizhenie iuge Rossii, 1917-1918gg. Moscow: Airo-XX, 1996 (hereafter Belye)
antibol'shevistskoe na
to organisations in South Russia in 1918; Pleshkevich, E. A.
makes some references political
`Vremennoe oblastnoe pravitel'stvo urala: diskussiia o prichinakh obrazovaniia', Otechesvennaia
No. 5, 30-34 is rare, if short, dedicated study of the Urals Government formed in
istoriia (2003), pp. a
August 1918.

37
this. However, the activities of the anti-Bolshevik underground, which was so crucial
in determining the course of events of the first year of the Russian Civil War, is yet to

receive a balanced treatment. It is not difficult to justify providing that treatment. The
UR may have been a failure, but the study of the anti-Bolshevik camp in general is the

study of colossal failures. Equally. the crucial year of the civil war in military terms

may well have been 1919. However, the crucial year in political terms was

undoubtedly 1918, and the present study will show why, in 1918, moderate political

opposition to Bolshevism failed.

38
Chapter 2

The Anti-Bolshevik Underground Coalesces

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the formation of the Union Regeneration
of
and the underground groups that were connected with it (the National Centre and the
Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom) and to
examine the work of
these groups from March to August 1918. Included in that work was the attempt to

encourage Allied intervention and gain financial and military assistance for anti-
Bolshevik uprisings to be conducted that summer, and the agreement on the future

structure of an all-Russian anti-Bolshevik government which, it was hoped, would

receive Allied recognition and help. The initial uprisings, and attempted uprisings,
conducted mainly by representatives of the UR and the Union for the Defence of the
Fatherland and Freedom, failed to achieve the goal of re-establishing the Eastern
Front. The work of the anti-Bolshevik underground might have ended with this
failure, were it not for the liberation of Siberia from Soviet rule by the revolt of the
Czechoslovak Legion. The examination of this period will focus on the work of the

underground groups and will attempt to avoid retelling the story of Allied

intervention, which has already holds a disproportionately high share of the

historiography of the Russian Civil War. Likewise, a comprehensive history of the
Northern Oblast Government will not be attempted here, as it was only tangentially

related to the activities of the underground in central Russia but was of sufficient
to a
substance merit specialised study of its own. For the purposes of this study, only

the month of August is important, as the Chaplin coup of 6 September effectively

ended the democratic counter-revolution in North Russia and it will suffice to

Chaikovskii, the leading UR member and Chairman of the

examine the role of
Northern Oblast Government, with regard to the Chaplin coup and his election as a

Provisional all-Russian Government, the Directory, at the end of

member of the
September.
The formation of the anti-Bolshevik underground had its roots in 1917 in more

In addition to the fragmentation of moderate political parties as

ways than one.

39
detailed in the previous chapter, the emergence
of political groups of a less tightly
defined and disciplined type began during the
summer. Two of these groups were to
be precursors of the Right Centre, the first conspiratorial
organisation to form in 1918
and precursor to the National Centre. These were the Union of Public Figures and the
Union of Landowners, two right-of-centre pressure groups which both began their

activity around the time of the Moscow State Conference. The Union of Public
Figures originated at the end of July, its first conference being held on 8 August. ' At

this meeting a number of groups (including representatives of the co-operative

movement) were present, but the conference largely consisted of members of the
intelligentsia and the Kadet Party? Generally speaking, the Kadets who were involved

were conservative in hue, and a major role was played by Miliukov, who was elected
(along with General Alekseev and S. N. Tret'iakov) to a committee intended to

establish links with right-wing delegates to the Moscow State Conference.' The two
groups talked openly of the abstract conservative Russian ideal that would permeate
the language of the anti-Bolshevik underground throughout the civil war:
gosudarstvennost, or 'state-mindedness'. This term was open to broad interpretation

and was generally used as a tool to attack socialism and excuse conservative and even
reactionary politics. In 1917 the Union of Landowners and the Union of Public

Figures used such terminology to attack one man above all others: Viktor Chernov.
As S. A. Kotliarevskii, member of the Union of Public figures and future National
Centre affiliate put it, `He [Chernov] was a kind of symbol of the destruction of state-

mindedness in Russia. '4 Of course, the formation of these groups can be seen as part

of the rising tide of patriotic fervour that preceded the Kornilov Affair. The Union of

Public Figures met only once more prior to the Bolshevik takeover, in September, in

far more gloomy circumstances and with far fewer attendees. The dominating theme

this the destruction of the army and the gathering was addressed by
of meeting was
Generals Brusilov and Ruzskii on the subject.' After the October Revolution these

1Mel'gunov, S. P. (ed.), `Sovet obshchestvennykh deiatelei v Moskve 1917-1919gg. (Pokazaniia N.

N. Vinogradskago v dele "Takticheskoe tsentra")', Na Chuzhoi Storone No. 9 (1925) (hereafter
`Pokazaniia N. N. Vinogradskago'), p. 92; MeYgunov, S. P. ` "Natsional'nye tsentra" v Moskve v
1918g. (Iz pokazanii S. A. Kotliarevskago po delu "Takticheskago Tsentra")', Na Chuzhoi Storone
No. 8 (1924) (hereafter `Iz Pokazanii S. A. Kotliarevskago'), p. 126.
2 Mel'gunov (ed.), `PokazanniaN. N. Vinogradskago', p. 92.
3 Mel'gunov (ed.), `Iz Pokazanii S. A. Kotliarevskago', p. 126.
in
4 ibid., p. 127. SeeRosenberg,Liberals the Russian Revolution, p. 210 for the Union of
Landowners and the attacks on Chernov.
5 Mel'gunov (ed.), `Pokazaniia N. N. Vinogradskago', p. 93.

40
organisations halted any kind of activity and lost a number of influential members.
However, it was the rekindling of the Union Of Public Figures in
particular that
influenced to the formation of the Right Centre.

The Union of Regeneration, of course, had no roots in the conservative forces

uniting around General Kornilov and the kind of `state-mindedness' that would lead
Russia to a one-man dictatorship. The groups described above had no common cause

with the future members of the UR. Prior to October, moderate socialists supported
and participated in the existing state order and had no need for any inter-party

combinations, save for the one headed by Kerensky. After the October Revolution
they were, however, involved in the Committee to Save the Fatherland and the
Revolution, which named Avksent'ev as chairman of the republic. The Committee
itself was chaired by Gots and it contained representatives from the Edinstvo group of
Mensheviks and the Petrograd City Duma, as well as SRs and Popular Socialists.'
After the demise of this group and the other attempts in November to oppose the
Bolshevik take-over, the PSR was to change tack and redefine its attitude to the

mistakes of 1917 at its Fourth Party Congress, held from 9 to 18 December. The

participation in coalition with the bourgeoisie and in inter-party groups was banned

and the party now rested its hopes on the forthcoming convocation of the Constituent

Assembly, in which the party would have a majority, and could therefore perhaps
hope to fight the Bolsheviks from a legal and public platform. At the same time,
however, the military tradition of the PSR was not forgotten and a military

organisation was elected, led by G. Semenov. This organisation prepared forces in the

capital for the defence of the Constituent Assembly, and Semenov intended to go as
far as a military rising against the Bolsheviks if necessary. This option was, however,

considered to be somewhat premature and over-zealous by the Central Committee and

only a directive against an uprising prevented Semenov, who was something of a

loose cannon, from taking radical action in January.'

6 Golinkov, D. L. Krushenie antisovetskogopodpol is v SSSR. Moscow: Izd. Pol. Lit, nd

1977, Vol. I (Hereafter Krushenie podpol'ia), p. 15. Vladimirova, God sluzhby
edition, antisovetskoe
`sotsialistov' kapitalistami, p. 21. Vladimirova incorrectly names Avksent'ev as chairman of the
Committee.
7 Semenov (Vasil'ev), G. Voenniaia i boevaia Rabota Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionnerov za 1917-
Gosizdat, 1922 (hereafter Voenniaia i boevaia Rabota), pp. 10-13. It should be
1918gg. Moscow:
Semenov figure and possibly an agent provocateur working for the
noted that was a very shady
false testimony linking the PSR with Fania Kaplan
Bolsheviks, as he gave what was almost certainly a
Lenin's life in 1918, and his actions during the summer of 1918 point to a
and the attempt on

41
 The activity of the Kadets in the aftermath
of the revolution was hampered by
their traditional concern for legality. ' It was naturally far easier for the
members of
the PSR, with its heritage as a radical anti-authority group with terrorist connections,

to contemplate armed struggle, at least in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik

assumption of power and before the new tactics agreed at the Fourth Party Congress.
The Kadet Party was, in fact, rather inactive as a whole after October, being locked
as
it was in debates over whether a `conciliationist' shift to accommodate the left or
an
alliance with the reactionary right was the best course of action. Already in November
representatives of the Kadef Party were attempting to establish contact with moderate
socialists, such as the Menshevik A. N. Potresov, although at this time these attempts
were fruitless. ' However, the relative passivity of right-wing socialists and liberals of

all persuasion was to change with the coming of the new year.
Two events at the beginning of January shocked the anti-Bolshevik camp into

action and precipitated the formation of underground organisations: the dispersal of

the Constituent Assembly and the murder of Kadets F. Kokoshkin and A. Shingarev.
These events affected left- and right-wing circles in different ways, but with similar

results. The Kadet Party was shown emphatically that the concern for legality that had
it
often paralysed was no longer applicable and that in
a change tactics was required.
SRs and Popular Socialists, meanwhile, now became convinced that open legal

opposition was impossible and that the kind of anarchy that resulted in the murders

could easily threaten them. Chaikovskii wrote at the time of the convocation of the
Constituent Assembly that it was time for parties of the left to form a centre to oppose

the Bolsheviks. 1°Avksent'ev and future UR member P. Sorokin were fellow prisoners

of the two Kadets in the Peter and Paul Fortress and it is clear that the murders had an
Sorokin's attitude to the Bolshevik regime, as they probably had also on
effect on
Avksent'ev. " The left and the right had few options before them. It seemed that an

to the was pointless after all, as Zenzinov put it, the streets had
appeal masses -

duplicitous nature. See Lyandres, S. `The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the
Evidence.', Slavic Review Vol. 48 (1989), pp. 432-448.
8 On Kadet concern for `legitimacy' and the difficulty in reconciling this with working with the
Committee to Save the Fatherland and the Revolution, seeRosenberg, Liberals in the Russian
Revolution, pp. 268-270.
9 Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, p. 37.
lo Mel'gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii, p. 47.
'I Sorokin, P. Leaves from a Russian Diary. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1924 (hereafter Russian

Diary), pp. 121-126.

f

42
hardly teemed with crowds (as SRs had
clearly expected) supporting the Constituent
Assembly. 12It was as a consequence
of this lack of options and a fear for safety that
the underground formed.

The Right Centre

The twin shocks of January further divided the Kadet Party. P.

Novgorodtsev, acting
as chairman of the Central Committee, began to argue for strengthening the
party's
ties with the right and for supporting General Kornilov (who, together
with General
Alekseev, had formed the right-wing anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army
on the Don).
This inevitably drew him into conflict
with the `conciliationists' such as Astrov,
Vinaver and Lev Krol, who favoured accommodation the left. 13 Through
with
Novgorodtsev, the Central Committee established ties with the Union of Public
Figures, which itself had links Trade and Industry
with circles through S. N.
Tret'iakov and A. A. Cherven-Vodali and with the Union of Landowners via V. I.
Gurko. 14Other members of the Union of Public Figures gathering in late January
and
early February were Baron V. V. Meller-Zakomel'skii, I. I. Shidlovskii, V. M.
Ustinov, N. A. Berdiaev and V. N. Chelishchev. Sources on the origins of the Right

Centre are sketchy and the most detailed accounts of them in Soviet historiography

make heavy use of Cheka files published in 1920 and recently reprinted. " However,

the testimony of members of the anti-Bolshevik underground must be treated with

care; many are tainted by the wish not to implicate others, and clearly individuals go
to great lengths to minimise their own contributions. Nevertheless such first-hand

accounts provide an excellent source on the subject. In general, the Union of Public
Figures was composed of Kadets, academics and the occasional representative from

the co-operatives, seen by the core of the union as representatives of the 'left'. Astrov

12Zenzinov, V. `Bor'ba rossiskoi demokratii s bol'shevikami v 1918 goda. Moskva-Samara-Ufa-

Omsk. Vospominanii', in Trukan, G. A. Rossiia Antibol'shevistskaia: iz belogvardeiskikh i
emigrantskikh arkhivov. Moscow: Intstitut Rossiskoi Istoriia RAN, 1995 (hereafter Zenzinov,
`Bor'ba'), pp. 12-13.
13Rosenberg,Liberals in the Russian Revolution, pp. 283-284.
14Mel'gunov (ed.), `Iz pokazanii S. A. Kotliarevskago', p. 127.
15Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, pp. 100-129; Ioffe, Kolchakovskaia aventiura, pp. 39-56;
and Golinkov, Krushenie antisovetskaia podpol ia, pp. 104-108,123-130,175-183. These sources
contain some detail on the activity of the underground between February and July 1918. The best
Cheka material on the subject is Krasnaia Kniga VChK Vol. 2. Moscow: Iz. Pol.Lit, 1989
source of
(hereafter Krasnaia Kniga VChK).

43
also attended meetings, although he was not
an influential member. At discussions
over the organisation's `orientation' that is, whether it
should be pro-Allied or pro-
German, a majority supported
making overtures to Germany, indicating that the
strongly pro-Allied Astrov was not prominent at this point. i6
Hitherto, the point at which the `Nine' formed has
not been established. This
group, a forerunner of the Right Centre, included three representatives
each of the
Kadet Party, the Union of Public Figures
and the Union of Trade and Industry.
According to Rosenberg, the `Nine'
originated in January-February 1918, with
Astrov, N. N. Shchepkin and M. V. Sabashnikov
representing the Kadets. However, it
is likely that there was an earlier version
of the organisation, in November 1917, with
the same Kadets but with different members of the Union of Public Figures
and the
Union of Trade and Industry. " It is also likely that this
earlier group was far more
`conciliationist' in view, as the later group was dominated by Novgorodtsev,
who (as
mentioned above) was more keen on establishing ties with the reactionary military. In

any case, the `Nine' cemented relations between the non-socialist groups, and it is

quite clear that Novgorodtsev played a major role in this. By early March the `Nine'
had expanded, linking with other members of the Union OF Public Figures who had

continued to meet, and it had formed the Right Centre, the first significant anti-
Bolshevik underground group. During February meetings of the Union of Public
Figures had concentrated on the Brest-Litovsk negotiations and their implications for
Russia. This manifested itself in terms of the orientation of the group, as mentioned

above, the possible structure of a future non-Bolshevik government, and such matters

as regional autonomy. 18A number of academic members of the Union of Public

Figures, led by Kotliarevskii, made reports on the peace conditions and the

consequences of the loss of Ukraine. The general fear of the dismemberment of the

old Russian Empire led all members of the Union of Public Figures and the other

to oppose the peace negotiations, and the Right Centre can be seen as the
groups

16Me1'gunov (ed.), `PokazaniiaN. N. Vinogradskago', pp. 94-95.

17Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, pp. 288- 289. The group also contained
Kotliarevskii V. A. Stepanov, who presumably represented the UPF although two
Novgorodtsev, and
Kadets. loffe also places the origin of the `Nine' around February, see
were prominent
39. Dumova gives November 1917 as the origin of the `Nine', with the
Kolchakovskaia aventiura, p.
being: Astrov, N. N. Shchepkin, Sabashnikov (Kadets); `Belorussov' (the publicist
full membership
D. M. Shchepkin (UPF); M. M. Fedorov, M. V. Chelakov, A. A.
A. S. Beletskii), S. M. Leont'ev,
Industry). See Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, p. 38.
Cherven-Vodali (Trade and
18MeYgunov (ed.), `Pokazaniia N. N. Vinogradskago', p. 95.

44
 response of all centre-right organisations to this fear. In addition to the
previously
mentioned Kadets and members of the Union of Public Figures, the Union
of
Landowners was represented in the Right Centre by A. V. Krivoshein,
M. A. Ershov,
V. I. Gurko and I. B. Meisner. 19Others,
who attended on a personal basis rather than
as representatives of this or that `public' group, were P. B. Struve and the brothers G.
N. and E. N. Trubetskoi.
The dominating figures in the Right Centre
were Novgorodtsev, Krivoshein,
Gurko and Leont'ev. 2° It is significant that Novgorodtsev
was the most important
Kadet in the organisation and that no other Kadets
are mentioned as being of
importance in first-hand accounts. The other members the Right Centre dominated,
of
and their right-wing pro-German views soon prevailed over those of the Kadets, who
considered that the only future for Russia lay in union with the Allied powers." The
Germanophile and reactionary tendencies of the Right Centre
resulted in the
formation of a counter-balancing `Left-Centre', as well as the departure in May
of
almost all prominent Kadets (as detailed below). The Right Centre, then, sacrificed its
purpose as a unifying force to its 22
pro-German orientation. However, this orientation
was fruitless. Any beliefs that Germany could be persuaded either to act in unison
with the political right and occupy Russia, crushing Soviet power in the process, or to
grant representatives of the Russian intelligentsia a say in the governing of Ukraine,
were misguided. The efforts of Miliukov to represent the Right Centre in Ukraine

came to nothing and the old party leader was further estranged from his fellow Kadets
as a result of his `German 23
phase'. As Kotliarevskii put it, it was clear that, having
participated in the coup in Ukraine which overthrew the Central Rada, replacing it
with the puppet regime of Hetman Skoropadskii, Germany was little interested in the

views of representatives of `Russian society' and merely met with them to inform

19Krasnaia Kniga VChK, p. 30.

20Me1'gunov (ed. ), `Pokazaniia N. N. Vinogradskago', p. 96; Krasnaia Kniga, p. 30.
21Mel'gunov (ed.), `Iz pokazanii S. A. Kotliarevskago', p. 129. The Kadets also argued with the other
representativesover the voting rights of zemstvo representatives in future self-governmental
institutions, which the Kadets opposed.SeeMel'gunov (ed.), `PokazaniiaN. N. Vinograskago',
p. 96.
22The Right Centre also lost much of its officer following due to a disagreementover military tactics.
According to Gurko, the members of the Right Centre planned an armed uprising in the city of
Moscow itself. This caused many officers to abandon their affiliation with the Centre in favour of the
Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom, led by Boris Savinkov, whose schemeto start
in
revolts several towns outside of Moscow and then converge on the capital was seen as more likely to
succeed. See Gurko, V. I. `Iz Petrograda cherez Moskvu, Parizh i London v Odessu, 1917-1918gg. ',
Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, Vol. 15 (hereafter `Iz Petrograda'), pp. 10-11.

45
them of developments. 24As regards the possibility of further German intervention
on
the anti-Bolshevik side, Kotliarevskii held negotiations with Father K. Riezler,
one of
Ambassador Mirbach's most influential advisors,
who, in July, was to narrowly
escape being assassinated along with Mirbach by Left-SRs Bliumkin and Andreev.
Riezler informed Kotliarevskii that the hopes of the Right Centre
were illusory. The
right in Russia was seen as politically weak and too many Kadets were pro-Allied
-
why would Germany destroy the Bolsheviks and then hand power over to them?
Unfortunately for the Right Centre, the German government, Riezler
said, would
preserve what it saw as neutrality with regard to the political struggle in Russia." The
Right Centre itself was of little import, then, save as a forerunner of the National
Centre. The most significant underground anti-Bolshevik organisations were to be

stridently pro-Allied in their response to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

The Union of Regeneration

In 1918 Miliukov described the Kadet Party as a `bridge between right and left', and

perhaps, from his increasingly right-wing perspective, it was genuinely attempting to

be so. However, the only group that could justifiably lay claim to such a role was the
Union of Regeneration. By the time of its formation in April 1918, Moscow had

replaced Petrograd as the centre of Russian political life. All major political parties
had transferred their Central Committees to the sprawling city by the end of February.
The UR was born out of the need to create a more progressive inter-party public-

minded group than the Right Centre, and thus is occasionally referred to as the `Left

Centre' 26It appears likely that this was its intended name in February 1918, when the
.
Right Centre was forming and appeared to comprise all bourgeois elements in
Russian society (including the Kadet Party). It was natural for socialist elements in

society to form their own organisation. However, the lack of Kadet influence that was

23On Miliukov's `German phase', seeDumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, pp. 108-111.

24Mel'gunov (ed.), `Iz pokazanii S.N. Kotliarevskago', p. 130.
25Mel'gunov, loc. cit.
26Alexander Kerensky, for example, whilst in Britain and France in 1918 referred to the UR as the
`Left Centre' whilst attempting to persuade the Allied to it
governments render assistance. He also
UR the Left Centre in synonymous terms in a letter to the Kadet V. A. Maklakov,
referred to the and
his former Ambassador to France. Hoover Institution, Maklakov Collection, Box 8, File 17, p. 1. Boris
Savinkov was invited to join the `Left Centre', but it
refused as was `only of the left'. See GARF f.
5831 (Savinkov), op. 1, d. 578.

46
apparent by March would seem to explain why
representatives of the party Central
Committee joined those of the PSR
and Popular Socialist party in negotiations in
March. The initiative would appear to have
come from the Popular Socialists: as one
of its founding members, V. A. Miakotin stated, his party wanted the full Central
Committees of the Kadet Party
and the PSR to meet with theirs in negotiations. This,
however, was `not accepted', according to Miakotin. 27It is
not clear which of the
other parties refused such a meeting but it is likely that neither would be
able to
contemplate this. Neither the Kadet Party nor the PSR were as homogeneous the
as
much smaller Popular Socialist Party, which had not suffered the same kind
of
internal wrangling as the others in 1917. In
addition, the mere notion of Viktor
Chernov sitting around a table with Novgorodtsev
and discussing the future of the
Russian state is almost preposterous. It was therefore decided
that only
representatives of the three party Central Committees would hold the negotiations.
However, these meetings (held in March in the Moscow flat Dr. I. N. Kovarskii
of
and attended by members of the Constituent Assembly factions of the three parties)

were lengthy and frustrated the Popular Socialists. The predilection of the Russian
intelligentsia to indulge in endless debate resulted in a complete lack of solid results

and without the central committee of any party being convinced to work out a joint
28
programme of action. According to Mel'gunov, the negotiations between the SRs

and Popular Socialists were harmonious, as were those with representatives of

Edinstvo, although it proved impossible to find a position on the 1917 Constituent

Assembly that the SRs and Kadets could agree upon. The results of these negotiations

were published in the 11 -April edition of the Popular Socialist organ Narodnoe

29
slOVO.
The creation of the TJR was made possible by the patience and persistence of

the Popular Socialist Party. The decision was made by prominent Popular Socialists

such as Miakotin and Chaikovskii that people could join the organisation on a
`personal' basis. For many who joined, there remained no place in their own party

anymore. Prominent SRs such as Avksent'ev and Breshko-Breshkovskaia were no

27Miakotin, `Iz nedalekagoproshlago I' p. 180. Mel'gunov also suggeststhat the UR was initiated by
,
the NS party. See N. V. Chaikovskii, p. 50. Chaikovskii consideredhimself to have been one of the
founders of the UR, in an unfinished autobiography held in GARF, f. 5805, op. 1, d. 1, p. 5.
28Mei'gunov, loc. cit.
29Mel'gunov, S. P. `Istoriia "Soiuza vozrozhdeniia Rossii": Spravka S. P. Mel'gunova', in Krasnaia
Kniga VChK Vol. 2 (hereafter `Spravka Me1'gunova), p. 80.

47
f
longer elected Central Committee
members, their conduct in 1917 in supporting
Kerensky, often at Chernov's expense, having been too for
much the party faithful.
As for the Kadets, members such as N. N. Shchepkin had been talking
of establishing
ties with the moderate left since the summer of 1917. Now, wishing to
participate in
anti-Bolshevik conspiratorial groups and marginalized by their party's association

with representatives of the right, the UR was his natural destination. The origins of
name `Union of Regeneration' are unclear, although the testimony of a Union of
Public Figures affiliate, N. N. Vinogradskii, indicates that in February
members of all
anti-Bolshevik organisations were talking of the need to unify their forces under the
banner of `the regeneration of Russia'. 30It is likely that this phrase was incorporated
into the name to appeal to socialists and Kadets alike, as an alternative to the more

overtly doctrinaire `Left Centre.

Quite a wide range of political representatives attended the negotiations that

resulted in the formation of the UR. The main Kadet representatives were Astrov and
N. N. Shchepkin. In fact, although other Kadets appear in literature as members of the
UR, in truth only these two mattered - all liberals followed their example, and it was

they who had to be won over by the socialists if the union was to remain intact. 31The

entire Popular Socialist Central Committee sanctioned the negotiations and its leaders

can all be considered to have entered the UR, with Miakotin becoming the chairman.
Other socialist groups such as Edinstvo and A. N Potresov's associates had

representation at the negotiations and were essentially co-opted into the UR. Different

groups of Right-SRs were involved in the talks, including those close to Avksent'ev,

and the political friends of so-called `Volnarodtsev', A. A. Argunov. B. N. Moiseenko

also joined shortly after the talks began and was an important link to the military wing
PSR leader its in Moscow, V. M. Zenzinov. 32These SRs
of the and the of activity

were essentially of one single persuasion, however - they supported the war and

to fight the Bolsheviks and the Germans in common cause with the Allied
wished
However, in jöining an inter-party organisation they were in breech of the
powers.
directive of the Fourth Party Congress and did so not only without party sanction, but

3oMel'gunov (ed.), `PokazaniiaN. N. Vinogradskago', p. 96.

31Miakotin mentions that N. K. Volkov `and two others' joined the UR but thesemen played no
in developments. See `Iz nedalekago proshlago I', p. 180.
serious role any political
32ibid., pp. 180-181; Zenzinov, `Bor'ba', p. 22; Potresov's group of Mensheviks, which had issued its
declaration in 1918, called itself the `Group for the struggle for the independenceand
own earlier
democratic order of Russia'. See Mel'gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii, p. 50.

48
also without informing the party hierarchy. 33The negotiations which resulted in the
formation of the UR in mid-April were brief
and had tangible results, but although
Miakotin credits the `calmness and persistence' his
of old party leader Chaikovskii,
the UR was by no means a solid organisation. "
The negotiations were successful because the delegates, freed from
all party
dogma by their own decision to ignore party discipline and
enter on a personal basis,
were able to make compromises for the sake of agreement that would never have been
agreed upon by other party. members. As Argunov put it, the UR was a `bloc', and

cannot be seen to have had the strength of a party organisation.3s The union's
strengths lay only in its connections, which existed because of 'the personal ties of
various members. The Kadet members were a potential link with the Volunteer Army
of General Alekseev, and were vital in giving the UR a link to more conservative
forces within Russia. The SRs had connections with other PSR organisations such as

the military wing. The Popular Socialists, in particular Chaikovskii, provided a

potential source of support from the co-operative network. The small number of
Menshevik members broadened the base of the union and were more familiar with the
desires of the workers. Also some of the most significant figures who entered the UR
had been deputies in the Duma or had been elected to the Constituent Assembly and,

as such, the UR could claim to have connections, however weak, with all democratic

institutions in Russia, both Soviet and non-Soviet. 36The `personal basis' of the UR
it
gave strength in one way, then, it
as unified, at least in name, a wide selection of

politically active and influential figures. However, that union was shaky, as serious
issues had been fudged. In particular, the SRs tried time and again to convince other
delegates of the sovereignty and efficacy of the 1917 Constituent Assembly. This was

not recognised in the programme of the UR, worked out at the first full meeting of its

membership. That in
programme was, summary:

1) Recreation of `Russia's State Power' and `broken down statehood', on a

democratic basis and in accordance with `the people's will'.

33Mel'gunov, `Spravka Mel'gunova', p. 80; Krasnaia Kniga VChK, p. 33.

34Miakotin, V. A. `Iz vospominanii', in Titov (ed.) Nikolai Vasil'evich Chaikovskii, p. 258.
35Argunov, A. Mezhdu dvumia bol'shevizmami. Paris: Union, 1919, p. 4.
36Both Astrov and Shchepkin had been elected Duma deputies, as had Avksent'ev, who had also been
Chairman of the Peasant's Soviet in 1917. He, and most SRs who joined, had been elected to the
Constituent Assembly, as had several Popular Socialists, Chaikovskii representing Viatka.

49 B
Ltd ßtß
UNIV.
 2) Reunification with Russia
of those regions `violently seized from her' and
her defence from exterior enemies.
3) The reunification of Russia to be brought
about in close agreement with
Russia's allies, as Russia creates a new army
and continues her struggle
against Germany.
4) This `new power' created to conduct the struggle lean for
will support on
organs of local self-government and will, with the liberation of Russia, call a
Constituent Assembly to establish a future government.37

According to Miakotin, however, the 1917 Constituent Assembly to have

was seen
been elected under `abnormal conditions' and could never have any authority. "

The formation of the UR was, then, concluded quickly. The full membership

at this early stage was: N. I. Astrov, N. N. Shchepkin, N. K. Volkov (Kadets); N. D.

Avksent'ev, A. A. Argunov (PSR); A. V. Peshchekhonov, A. A. Titov, N. V.
Chaikovskii, V. A. Miakotin (Popular Socialist Party); A. N. Potresov (Right
Menshevik). "

Had, however, any real achievements been made? The programme agreed

upon was vague and the decision to allow membership on a purely individual basis
rather than as delegated representatives of the UR's constituent elements meant that in
future it would be easy for members to alter their initial positions. In particular, the
issue of the 1917 Constituent Assembly was far from over for the SRs and this issue

would return to haunt the UR at the most crucial stages in its future. In April, though,

the mood of the UR was optimistic and it broadened its scope, attracting new

members both in Moscow and in the former capital.

The UR in Petrograd

Between April and May 1918, the UR was to become a significant threat to the
Bolshevik regime, as it swelled in number, established connections with cultural

activists and increased its propaganda work. Those who entered shortly after the

37Miakotin, `Iz nedalekagoproshlago I', p. 181. See also Argunov, Mezhdu dvumia bol'shevizmami,
p. 4 and Mel'gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii, p. 51.
38Mel'gunov, loc. cit.
39Miakotin, `Iz nedalekagoproshlago I' p. 181; Mel'gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii, p. 50; loffe,
,
Kolchakovskaia aventiura, p. 41.

50
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succeeded in restoring the King’s authority in the southern
provinces.
It was the avowed intention of the new Governor-General to
abandon the system of wholesale proscription pursued by Alva, and
to try and win back the Netherlands by conciliatory measures.
Nevertheless, his attention was at first
Military events of
necessarily directed to military affairs. In the the year 1574.
north the cause of the patriots prospered. On the Taking of
21st of February, 1574, Mondragon, who had Middleburg, Feb.
held the important town of Middleburg, was 24.
Defeat of Mooker
forced to capitulate, and thus the whole of the Heyde, April 14.
island of Walcheren, which commands the two Siege of Leyden,
mouths of the Scheldt, was finally lost to Spain; Nov. 1573–Oct. 3,
while the town of Leyden, which had been 1574.
invested since November, 1573, still held out for
the Prince of Orange. These successes in the north were, however,
neutralised by the terrible disaster of Mooker Heyde on the Meuse
(April 14, 1574). Here Louis of Nassau, as he attempted to force his
way to join his brother at the head of a motley body of French and
German mercenaries, was completely routed by the Spanish general
Sancho de Avila. Louis himself, with his brother, Count Henry, and
Duke Christopher, son of the Elector-Palatine, were among the slain.
The death of Louis, ‘the Bayard of the Netherlands,’ was a serious
blow to William, who had now lost three brothers in the field;70 and
Requesens, having with difficulty quieted a serious mutiny of the
victorious troops, ordered the reinvestment of Leyden (May 26,
1574), which had been suspended owing to the advance of Louis. In
the opinion of Requesens, religion had but little to do with the
rebellion. He accordingly offered a general amnesty to all, with a few
exceptions, who would return to Mother Church. But although this
view of the Grand Commander was correct enough with respect to
the original causes of the revolt, matters had changed, at all events
in the northern provinces. There religious and political discontent
were fast becoming identified, and already in the summer of 1572,
William had complained of the cruelties exercised by the patriots on
priests and monks. The offers, therefore, of the Governor-General
were rejected, and with the cry, ‘Rather Turks than Papists, better be
drowned than taken,’ the citizens of Leyden prepared to hold out to
the last gasp. All hopes of succour by land had been destroyed by
the defeat of Mooker Heyde. Nevertheless, the sea remained. This
was indeed fifteen miles away; but the dykes were cut; and, after a
long and anxious delay, the wind shifted to the north-west; two
furious gales on the 18th September and the 1st and 2nd of October
helped to heap the waters of the ocean on the land, and enabled the
fleet of Admiral Boisot to approach. The Spaniards, with Valdés their
commander, fled at the advance of this new enemy, and the city was
saved (October 3).
The relief of Leyden, the most brilliant success of the war—a
success commemorated by the foundation of the University—proved
conclusively that although the Spaniards might conquer by land,
they were no match for the ‘Sea Beggars’ wherever a ship could
float. While this memorable siege had been proceeding, Requesens
had been attempting to conciliate the southern provinces. On the
7th of June, an assembly of the Estates of
Meeting of Estates
Brabant had been held at Brussels. The King’s of Brabant. June
pardon, above mentioned, was published, and 1574.
the abolition of the Council of Blood and the tax
of the tenth penny promised. The Estates, not satisfied with this,
demanded the departure of the Spanish troops, the exclusion of
foreigners from office, and the restoration of municipal privileges to
the cities, while they were niggardly in their offers of money.
Requesens had no authority to grant these demands, and the
attempt at complete restoration of the King’s authority in the south
had to be postponed. The alternative was to make peace with
William and the northern provinces. To this end, negotiations had
begun as early as the previous autumn, and finally in March, 1575, a
conference was held at Breda. The commissioners who had been
appointed by the Estates of Holland and Zealand demanded the
dismissal of the foreigner, the summoning of the
Conference at
Estates-General from all the provinces, and the Breda. March–July
toleration of Calvinistic opinion. The royal 1575.
commissioners offered to dismiss the foreign
soldiers, if the Prince would disband the German and other foreign
mercenaries in his service, and they consented to the summoning of
an Estates-General. They, however, asked that in return for the
guarantee of the King’s sign-manual and the pledge of the Emperor
that the royal promises should be kept, the Prince should give
hostages and surrender some of the most important towns he held.
William was not likely thus to deprive himself of effective means of
resistance, and an agreement was highly improbable on such terms,
even if the religious difficulty had not presented an insurmountable
obstacle. The utmost that the royal commissioners would offer was
that those, who would not return to the Catholic Church, should be
allowed to sell their property and leave the country. Requesens,
despairing himself of peace on such conditions, had made the
curious suggestion to Philip that he should surrender the
Netherlands to some other ruler, who would not have the same
scruples with regard to toleration. ‘They might be exchanged for
Piedmont with the Duke of Savoy or be granted to Philip’s second
son.’ ‘To my son—never,’ wrote Philip on the margin of the despatch.
‘I would rather he were a pauper than a heretic.’ And in his answer
to Requesens he suggested the advisability of adopting Alva’s last
advice to burn all the cities which could not be held; then after
secretly tempting the adherents of the Prince to win pardon by
assassinating their master, he relapsed into one of his long periods
of silence. Under these circumstances peace was clearly impossible.
The negotiations were broken off in July, 1575, and Requesens with
a heavy heart, a mutinous soldiery, an empty exchequer, and a
ruined credit, prepared for further operations.
Meantime, steps had been taken by Holland and Zealand to form a
union and to reorganise the government. There had been a
tendency of late on the part of the burgher aristocrats to place
restraints on the authority of the Prince. But he
Increased
refused to accept the responsibilities of rule authority given to
under such conditions; and accordingly, in June, the Prince of
1575, he was intrusted with absolute power in all Orange.
matters concerning the defence of the country,
subject only to the power of the purse, which was reserved to the
Estates. The magistrates and other officials were to be nominated by
him out of a list supplied by the Estates. The Estates also demanded
that he should suppress the open exercise of the ‘Roman religion.’
William, however, insisted on substituting for these words ‘any
religion at variance with the Gospel.’ The clause, even as amended,
showed very clearly that the religious question was coming more
and more to the front, and the difficulty of any compromise on this
question, not only with the King, but with those southern provinces
where Catholicism was strong. In October of the same year, the
Estates of Holland and of Zealand took a still more decisive step.
Hitherto they had declared themselves the loyal subjects of King
Philip; they now resolved to forsake the King and seek the
sovereignty of some other prince. But their efforts were not
successful. Elizabeth, to whom they first offered the sovereignty,
played her usual game. She listened graciously to their offers; she
allowed them to purchase arms and levy soldiers at their own
expense in England; but on the question of the sovereignty she
reserved her decision ‘until she had done all in her power to bring
about an arrangement between them and their King’ (April, 1576).
An offer made at the French court to the Duc d’Alençon was no more
successful; and while these fruitless negotiations were being
pursued the patriots suffered a serious reverse in the north of
Zealand. Of the three islands, Tholen, Duiveland, and Schouwen,
which lie between the northern outlet of the Scheldt and the Meuse,
the last had remained in the hands of the Spaniards. In September,
1575, an attack, led by Mondragon and supported by the fleet, was
made thence on Duiveland, which was taken in October. A landing
was then effected on Schouwen, and the town of Zierickzee was
besieged, to fall in the following June, 1576. By
Mondragon
this brave exploit of Mondragon the island secures the islands
province of Zealand was cut in two, and the of Duiveland and
northern outlet of the Scheldt commanded. Schouwen. Oct.
In the midst of this transient success, 1575–June, 1576.
Requesens died suddenly of a fever aggravated by the anxieties of
his post (March 5). Philip allowed several months
Death of
to slip away before he finally decided on his Requesens, March
successor. Meanwhile, the Council of State 5, 1576, followed
carried on the government. Of the old members by an interregnum
there remained only the Duke of Aerschot, Count of eight months.
Berlaymont, and Viglius. To these, several
Netherlanders and one Spaniard, Jerome de Roda, were added;
while Count Mansfeld, a German, was intrusted with supreme
military command. Although the Council of State was thus formed
almost exclusively of natives, its administration was still very
unpopular. Aerschot was secretly a partisan of William. The other
two original members had been associated with Cardinal Granvella,
and Berlaymont had besides been one of the judges of the Council
of Blood. In spite of the desire of the majority for a thorough change
in policy, the Council was divided, wanting in capacity, and absolutely
devoid of funds. Above all, it failed in maintaining the discipline of
the Spanish troops. No sooner had the town of Zierickzee fallen
(June 21), than the soldiers, furious on account of the arrears of
their pay, mutinied once more, deserted Mondragon, and left
Zealand for Brabant (July 15). The mutiny spread rapidly, and Alost
in Flanders was seized. The indignation and fear thus aroused led
the Estates of Brabant, then sitting at Brussels, to take measures of
self-protection. On July 26, they forced the
Revolt of Spanish
trembling Council of State to issue an edict soldiery. July 1576.
against the mutineers. They then threatened the
Spaniards in the city, levied troops, and finally, on September 4,
arrested the members of the Council themselves. This only served to
further irritate the soldiery. The officers, already jealous at the
appointment of Mansfeld, now with few exceptions made common
cause with their mutinous troops, more especially Sancho de Avila,
who was in command of the citadel of Antwerp. Many of the German
and Walloon mercenaries joined, while De Roda, flying from Brussels
to Antwerp, declared himself the only representative of the King and
openly supported d’Avila. The mutineers now held the citadels of
almost every important town in the south, with the exception of
Brussels, and in many cases obtained possession of the towns
themselves, which they treated with great cruelty. Meanwhile,
Orange had seized the opportunity to try and win over the southern
provinces. Although the religious divisions between the north and
south had of late become accentuated, all were at least united in
their desire to drive out the foreigner, more especially the foreign
soldiery, and to reassert their political privileges. William, appealing
to this common motive, urged them to sink all differences, and with
one heart and will to work for the liberation of their country. Inspired
by his stirring words, delegates from the Estates of the southern
provinces appeared at Ghent, in the middle of October, to confer
with the representatives sent by the Estates of the north. Hardly had
their conference commenced when the violence of the mutineers
reached its climax. On the 4th November, the troops at Alost
marched upon Antwerp, joined hands with the garrison under
d’Avila, overcame the German and Walloon regiments which had
been sent by the Estates of Brabant to hold the town, and with the
cries, ‘St. Iago, Spain, fire, murder, and pillage,’ wreaked their
vengeance on the city. Catholics and Protestants,
The mutineers
native and foreign merchants, women and sack Antwerp. Nov.
children, the poor as well as the rich, were 4, 1576.
attacked without discrimination. Eight thousand
persons were massacred; the finest buildings were burnt; property
to the value of twelve millions was destroyed or seized; and
Antwerp, the richest city of the Netherlands, and ‘one of the
ornaments of Europe,’ became ‘the most forlorn and desolate city of
Christendom.’
 The sack of Antwerp served, at least, the cause of William. On the
8th of November, the Pacification of Ghent was signed by the
delegates of the northern and southern provinces assembled at that
city. By this famous treaty, it was agreed that the
Pacification of
Spaniards should be at all hazards expelled from Ghent. Nov. 8,
the Netherlands, and that an Estates-General 1576.
from all the provinces should be summoned to
take measures for the common safety and future government. The
Prince of Orange was to continue lieutenant, admiral, and general
for his Majesty in Holland and Zealand. There should be freedom of
trade and communication between the provinces. All prisoners
should be released, and all confiscated property restored. The
placards and ordinances against heresy should be suspended until
the Estates-General had decided on the matter. No attack, however,
should be made on the Catholic religion outside the provinces of
Holland and Zealand, and if the property of prelates and other
ecclesiastics in the north were alienated, it should not be done
without compensation. Lastly, no province was to have the benefit of
this treaty until it had given its adhesion. The Pacification of Ghent
was received with enthusiasm by the whole of the Netherlands; and,
although the religious difficulty was postponed rather than solved,
there seemed a reasonable prospect that both Catholics and
Protestants would at last unite, on the basis of mutual toleration, to
throw off the Spanish yoke. The Pacification was at first followed by
encouraging results. On November 11, the Spanish garrison
surrendered the citadel of Ghent. That of Valenciennes was bought
from the German soldiery, and at the same time
Successes of the
the islands of Schouwen and Duiveland were Patriots.
abandoned by Mondragon. All Zealand, with the
exception of Tholen, was again free from Spanish rule. Shortly after,
Friesland and Groningen were regained by the national party; and in
January, 1577, the Pacification of Ghent was confirmed by the Union
of Brussels, an union which was numerously signed in every
province except that of Luxemburg.
 Meanwhile, the new governor had arrived. One day before the
Antwerp massacre, and four days before the publication of the
Treaty of Ghent, Don John of Austria, the
Don John of
illegitimate son of Charles v., rode into Austria arrives at
Luxemburg, having crossed France in the Luxemburg. Nov.
disguise of a Moorish slave. Philip had at last 3, 1576.
made up his mind to bow before the storm. He
hoped that by a show of conciliation, and by restoring the
government to the condition in which it had been at the death of
Charles v., he might secure the authority of the crown and the
exclusive exercise of the Catholic religion, and yet recover the
obedience of the Netherlands. Don John appeared well fitted to carry
out this policy. The great, though somewhat undeserved, reputation
he had gained by the suppression of the Moorish rebellion in
Granada and by the victory of Lepanto, his imperial descent, his
fascinating manners, had made him universally popular, and he
started on his errand with all the enthusiasm of a darling of fortune
and of a young man of twenty-nine.71 His ambition was not bounded
by the Netherlands. He dreamt, after a rapid settlement of the
difficulties there, of either marrying Elizabeth of England, or of
overthrowing that heretic Queen and ascending the throne as the
husband of her rival Mary Queen of Scots. He was soon, however, to
be rudely awakened. He did not even dare to leave Luxemburg, and
was forced to content himself with negotiating from thence with the
States-General. This assembly, warned by the Prince of Orange not
to trust to promises, demanded the following concessions as the
price of their obedience (December 6, 1576): the Spanish troops
must be removed at once; all prisoners must be released; and the
Treaty of Ghent must be confirmed. One at least of these demands,
the dismissal of the Spanish soldiery, Don John was willing enough
to grant. Yet in pursuance of his scheme of invading England, he
wished that they should go by sea, and that ships should be
provided for the purpose. The Estates, ignorant of this design,
suspected some future attempt on the Netherlands, and insisted on
their departure by land. Philip peremptorily ordered an
accommodation, and Don John, forced to
The Perpetual
abandon the projected invasion of England, Edict. Feb. 17,
signed the Perpetual Edict on February 17, 1577. 1577.
The Spanish soldiers were to depart by land; all
prisoners were to be released on both sides; all privileges and
charters were to be confirmed, and the Estates-General were to be
convened as they had been in the time of Charles v. On these terms
the insurgent provinces promised to recognise Don John as
Governor-General, to surrender the citadels which they held, to
disband their own troops, and to take an oath to maintain the
Catholic religion.
The Spanish soldiery departed at the end of April, and Don John,
entering Brussels on May 1, met at first with such success in his
policy of conciliation, that he seemed likely to
Don John enters
add the pacification of the Netherlands to his Brussels. May 1,
other laurels. But, apart from the intrinsic 1577.
difficulty of the attempt, there were two fatal
obstacles in his way—the wariness of his enemy, William the Silent,
and the suspicions of his master. William had been disconcerted at
the signature of the Perpetual Edict, which had been done without
his approval, or that of his deputies. He had not expected that Don
John would be so compliant, or he would have raised his terms.
From letters which he had intercepted, he had
William rejects the
good cause for distrusting the sincerity of the Perpetual Edict.
Spaniard, and he knew that peace on such terms
would mean his own ruin. He had accordingly refused to recognise
the Edict, or to publish it in the provinces of Holland or Zealand, and
he now proceeded to take measures against it. He turned to the
lower classes and excited their opposition; he entered into
negotiations with England and France, and even plotted to secure
the person of Don John. On the other hand, Don John listened to
schemes for the assassination of the Prince, while he wrote to Philip
abusing the Netherlanders as ‘drunkards and wine skins,’ and urging
him to prepare for war. Finally, on July 10, the Governor-General
despatched his secretary Escovedo to Madrid to represent his views
to the Spanish King. Unfortunately, Philip had meanwhile conceived
a profound jealousy of his half-brother. He suspected him of some
design on the government or crown of Spain, a
Philip’s suspicions
suspicion which was studiously fostered by of Don John.
Antonio Perez, his minister and confidential
adviser. The representations of Escovedo were therefore
disregarded, the urgent solicitations of Don John for counsel or
assistance were left unanswered for more than three months, and in
the following March, Escovedo himself was assassinated by the
orders of Perez, and with the connivance of the King.
The brilliant dreams of Don John had indeed been rudely
dissipated; and when, on September 23, William of Orange, after an
absence of eighteen years, entered Brussels, the capital of Brabant,
it seemed as if the whole of the Netherlands
Causes of disunion
would soon be lost to Spain. But the near in the Netherlands.
prospect of success served only to revive those
feelings of disunion and personal jealousy, which had been
temporarily laid aside under the pressure of Spanish tyranny. The
northern provinces, it must be remembered, had only lately been
united to those of the south. Of the southern provinces, those which
lay closest to Holland and Zealand were inhabited by a people of
kindred race indeed, but who spoke a different dialect, the Flamand;
while in the more southern and eastern provinces, the infusion of
Romance blood was strong, and the common language French.
These differences of race and past history were illustrated in the
religious leanings of the people. In the north, the Protestant, in the
south, the Catholic religion predominated, and now that the fear of
Spain was declining, a narrow spirit of intolerance began to be
displayed on either side. To these causes of disunion we must add
the oligarchical jealousy of the southern nobles, mostly of the
Catholic persuasion, at the growing importance and the democratic
leanings of the Prince of Orange—a jealousy which led to the
strange idea of offering the office of Governor-General to the
Archduke Mathias, the brother of the Emperor Rudolf, subject to the
fuller approval of King Philip. The adroitness of
Archduke Mathias
William, however, enabled him to turn this move elected Governor.
of his opponents to his own advantage. He Jan. 18, 1578.
openly supported the candidature of the
Archduke, who was elected Governor-General on the 18th of
January. Meanwhile, the revolt of Ghent against the newly appointed
governor, the Duke of Aerschot, one of those who had called in the
Archduke Mathias—a revolt secretly approved of by William—showed
that the latter had the support of the lower classes. And Mathias,
afraid of opposing so popular a man, not only confirmed his election
as ‘Ruwart’ of Brabant, an office generally held by the heir of the
ruling prince, and as Stadtholder of Flanders, but acknowledged him
as his lieutenant-general, and promised to rule with the consent of
the States-General and of a Council of State. At the same time, by
the New or Nearer Union of Brabant, the Catholics and Protestants
engaged to respect and to protect each other against all enemies
whatsoever.
Yet while William had been thus dealing with those factions which
threatened to ruin his cause, the Spaniards had been again
preparing for war. Philip, at last aroused from his strange apathy,
had ordered the Spanish veterans to return from Italy. Reinforced by
these troops, which were led by Alexander of Parma, and by others
from France under Mansfeld, Don John marched against the ill-
disciplined army of the States, and, aided by the skilful generalship
of Alexander, inflicted a disastrous defeat on
The defeat of
them at Gemblours, near Namur. The victory Gemblours. Jan.
secured the valley of the Sambre, forced William 31, 1578.
and the Archduke to abandon Brussels, and went
far to ruin the cause of liberty in the southern provinces. In the
north, however, the reverse of Gemblours served rather to advance
the interests of William. In March, his brother, Count John, was
elected governor of the important province of Guelderland; and in
May, the adherents of the Prince succeeded in overthrowing the
Catholic magistrates of Amsterdam, and thus securing the capital of
Holland, as well as Haarlem, for the Protestant cause.
Meanwhile the Catholic nobles, disappointed in their expectations
of Mathias, turned to Francis, Duke of Anjou, the brother of
Henry iii. of France. Never since the days of
Duke of Anjou
Coligny’s brief supremacy, had Catherine appointed
altogether abandoned the idea of taking defender of the
advantage of the disturbed condition of the liberties of the
Netherlands to extend French influence in the Netherlands. July
1578.
Walloon provinces of Hainault, Artois, and French
Flanders. At this moment, she would probably have preferred to gain
her end by friendly negotiations with Philip, and possibly by a
marriage of one of her sons with a Spanish princess. But Anjou was
little pleased with his position in France; he was attracted by the
hope of carving out a new principality for himself; and, accepting the
offer, arrived at Mons, in Hainault, in July 1578. William, although
unwilling to see French influence predominant in these parts, did not
deem it politic to oppose Anjou, and hoped that the enterprise might
excite the jealousy of Elizabeth, who, while she coqueted with the
Duke as a suitor for her hand, was determined not to see the Low
Countries under French control, and had already promised some
help to William. The Duke of Anjou was accordingly recognised as
‘the defender of the liberty of the Netherlands against the tyranny of
the Spaniards.’ He was assured of the offer of the sovereignty should
the Netherlands find it necessary to throw off the supremacy of
Spain. Meanwhile, he promised to make no alteration in the
government of the country, and to hold all conquests he might make
for the States (August 20). Before these confused negotiations had
led to any definite result, Don John, worn out by disease, and sick at
heart at the failure of his magnificent schemes, at the neglect shown
to him by King Philip, and at the murder of Escovedo, had passed
away. He died in his camp at Bouges, near Namur, on the 1st of
October, 1578, at the age of thirty-one, having appointed his
nephew, Alexander of Parma, as his successor.
Death of Don
Although there is no probability in the rumour John. Oct. 1, 1578.
that he was poisoned by the orders of Philip, the Succeeded by
suspicion and neglect with which he had been Alexander of
treated at least contributed to his death. Parma.

Alexander of Parma, who succeeded Don John as governor, was

the son of Ottavio Farnese and Margaret of Parma, the first Regent
during the reign of Philip ii. He had been brought up in Spain with
his cousin Don Carlos, and his uncle Don John of Austria. His love of
adventure and of military exercises had in earlier days shown itself in
an inordinate passion for duelling; but the war against the Turks
gave him a more honourable field, and at the battle of Lepanto he
had distinguished himself by the most remarkable personal bravery.
Now at the age of thirty-three, he was more than the equal of his
uncle, Don John, as a soldier, and infinitely his superior as a
diplomatist and a statesman. Great, however, as were the abilities of
the new governor, it must be remembered that the position of affairs
at this moment gave him opportunities which had been denied to his
predecessors. The racial and religious differences between the
northern and southern provinces were becoming daily more
accentuated. In the southern and western provinces disunion was
rapidly spreading. The decisions of the States-General, especially
with regard to taxation, were little observed. The soldiery were ill-
paid, ill-disciplined, and mutinous; the intolerance of the Catholics
and Calvinists was becoming more pronounced; the social and
political rivalries were daily forcing themselves more prominently to
the front and threatening civil war or anarchy. William had of late
been forced to lean on the lower classes, and he was not able to
keep them in control. In Ghent, especially, the turbulence reached its
climax under the demagogue Imbize, supported by John Casimir of
the Palatinate, an ambitious and weak prince, who had just arrived
with a motley force of German mercenaries and English soldiers,
sent by Queen Elizabeth. The rise of this fanatical party not only
excited the indignation of the Catholics, or ‘Paternoster Jacks,’ who
still represented the majority in the southern provinces, but also
alienated many of the ‘Malcontent’ nobles, who had hitherto
supported the national cause. Of these divisions, Alexander was
quick to take advantage. Partly by conciliation, more successfully by
bribery in money, or in promises of advancement, he succeeded in
reconciling many of the nobles. Among these, we may especially
note Egmont, the degenerate son of his father, and Champagny, the
brother of Granvella, while Parma even approached William himself
with brilliant offers if he would but desert the cause.
The most signal result of Alexander’s diplomacy was seen in the
Union of Arras (January 6, 1579), between the Walloon provinces of
Artois and Hainault, and the towns of Lille, Douay, and Orchies in
French Flanders—a League which, in the following May, came to
terms with Alexander, on condition that the foreign troops should be
dismissed, and the provincial privileges respected. In answer to this,
the northern provinces of Guelderland, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht,
and Friesland formed the Union of Utrecht (January 29). The object
of the union was declared to be the
Union of Arras,
strengthening of the Pacification of Ghent. The Jan. 6, answered
allegiance to Spain was not thrown off, but the by the Union of
provinces bound themselves to protect each Utrecht, Jan. 29,
other against all force brought against them, 1579.
either in the name of the King or of foreign
Potentates. Each province was, while renouncing its right of making
separate treaties, to retain its especial liberties and privileges, and to
decide on the religion it should adopt, although individual freedom of
conscience was to be allowed; the Roman Catholic provinces were
asked to join on the same terms. The Confederacy was to be ruled
by a General Assembly formed of deputies from each provincial
assembly. It was to have a common currency, a common system of
taxation, and an executive Council, responsible to the General
Assembly. This famous document was originally only signed by five
of the northern provinces, but the other two—Groningen and
Overyssel—subsequently joined, as well as the towns of Ghent,
Bruges, Ypres, and Antwerp. Although the Union was originally
intended to be temporary, it became the basis for the future federal
constitution of the Seven United Provinces, as the Union of Arras
formed the germ of the future reconstituted Spanish Netherlands.
While the inevitable cleavage between the north-eastern and
south-western districts was thus appearing, Parma made notable
advances in the central provinces. In the summer
Success of Parma
of 1579, Maestricht, on the Meuse, fell after a in south-western
four months’ siege, and Mechlin was provinces and in
treacherously surrendered by De Bours. In May the north.
of the following year, the famous Huguenot, De
la Noue, was taken prisoner near Ingelmunster. Even in the north,
Count Renneburg had betrayed the town of Groningen, and John of
Nassau, the brother of William, disgusted at the people’s lack of
patriotism, and at their want of discipline, abandoned his
Stadtholderate of Guelderland and retired into Germany.
Encouraged by his success, in June, 1580, Philip took the decisive
step of publishing a ban against the Prince of Orange. He was
declared a traitor and a miscreant. All loyal
Philip publishes the
subjects were forbidden to communicate with Ban against
him, or to give him food or shelter, and a purse William of Orange.
of twenty-five thousand crowns of gold and a June 1580.
patent of nobility were offered to any one who
would deliver him into Philip’s hands, dead or alive. Philip in this had
acted by the advice of Granvella, who declared that William was a
coward, and that the fear of assassination would either cause him to
submit, or ‘die of his own accord.’ Nevertheless, though the ban may
well be called the death-warrant of the Prince, he was not in the
least dismayed. In the Apologia which shortly
William publishes
appeared, William boldly defied his enemy. He his Apologia, and
asserted that Philip had murdered his son Don enters into
Carlos, his wife Elizabeth, and the Emperor negotiations with
Maximilian. He declared that as Philip’s claim to the Duke of Anjou.
rule the Netherlands was forfeited by his tyranny,
he was no longer their legitimate king, nor he himself a rebel.
Finally, professing that he would gladly endure perpetual banishment
or death if he could thereby deliver his people from their calamities,
he placed himself in the hands of God, ‘who would dispose of him
and of his goods as seemed best for His own glory, and his
salvation.’ Nor did William content himself with words. He had long
been convinced that, unless foreign help could be obtained, the
southern provinces, at least, were lost. Duke Casimir had, by his
incapacity, done the cause more harm than good, and had left the
country without even paying ‘his 30,000 devils’ of German
mercenaries. The Archduke Mathias was evidently not the man to
strengthen any cause, and further help Germany would not give.
France alone remained. Accordingly negotiations were again
reopened with the Duke of Anjou, who, in 1579, had left the
Netherlands for England, enticed by the hope that Elizabeth, if she
could only see him, might accept his hand. Certainly the personal
appearance of the Duke was not likely to further his suit, for
although he had the gracious manners of all the Valois princes, and
was ‘a good fellow and a lusty prince,’ he was of puny stature, his
face was pitted by smallpox, and he had an enormous nose. The
virgin Queen was, moreover, playing with him. To marry Anjou and
assist him in the Netherlands without a definite promise of French
assistance, would be to incur too rashly the enmity of Philip ii., and
Henry iii. would not promise; to allow him to conquer the
Netherlands for France was not to be endured. She had raised her
lover’s hopes, only to draw him out of Flanders, and there was no
alternative but to keep him dangling on as her suitor, and nothing
more. Anjou was accordingly dismissed with fair promises, and, in
the hope of securing his bride, eagerly accepted the offers of the
States.
By the Treaty of Plessis-les-Tours (September, 1580), which was
ratified in the following January, the Duke was granted the
hereditary sovereignty over the Netherlands. He was always to
reside in the country, to appoint no foreigner to office, not to
attempt any alteration in the government, nor
Sovereignty over
interfere with the privileges of the provinces; he the Netherlands
was to procure the assistance of the King of conferred on the
France, but to permit no incorporation of Duke of Anjou by
territory with that country. Any violation of these Treaty of Plessis-
les-Tours. Sept.
conditions was to cause an immediate forfeiture 1580.
of his sovereignty. On the 26th of the July
following (1581), the Estates finally renounced their allegiance to
Philip, and the Archduke Mathias left the Netherlands in October,
though Anjou was not finally accepted till February, 1582. The
northern provinces were most unwilling to receive this foreign ruler.
In July, 1581, William had already, after many refusals, accepted the
title of Count of Holland and Zealand, with the sovereignty during
the war. These provinces, therefore, only consented to acknowledge
the Duke of Anjou on the express terms that no alteration should be
made in the practical supremacy of the Prince of Orange. Thus to all
intents the Netherlands were now divided into
Triple division of
three divisions: the western provinces, which had the Netherlands.
again submitted to Spanish rule; the north-
eastern under William; and the central, which acknowledged the
sovereignty of the French Prince. The policy of William in the matter
has been severely criticised, and certainly the previous conduct of
Anjou in France (cf. pp. 418 and 423) was not of very hopeful
augury. Yet, although a desperate remedy, the French alliance was
not altogether a bad idea. There was some hope that a Catholic
sovereign who would consent to tolerate the Protestants, might
unite once more all the elements of opposition to Spain. Catherine
and King Henry iii. were at this time half inclined definitely to adopt
an anti-Spanish policy (cf. p. 426); while, if the English marriage had
also come about, Coligny’s idea of a great coalition against Spain
might have been realised at last. Unfortunately, all turned out for the
worst. Elizabeth, after sending for Anjou once more, and even
exchanging betrothal rings with her lover, declined to take the
decisive step, and Anjou finally left England for the Netherlands.
There the Flemings and the French quarrelled; religious intolerance
added to the discord; the successes of Parma continued; and Anjou,
irritated by the restraints imposed upon him, rashly and foolishly
attempted a coup d’état. He succeeded in some
‘The French Fury.’
of the smaller towns, but failed at Bruges; while Jan. 16, 1583.
at Antwerp, the citizens rose and cut down
nearly 2000 of his soldiers (January 16, 1583). Anjou, with
shameless effrontery, attempted to throw the blame upon his
subjects, while he intrigued with Parma, and offered to join him in
return for the cession of certain towns on the French frontier. Even
then, William did not think it wise to irritate the French. Negotiations
were continued after the departure of the Duke for France (June
28), and were only ended by his death in the June of the ensuing
year. Before that event, Parma, taking advantage
Anjou leaves the
of the confusion and distrust caused by ‘the Netherlands. June
French Fury,’ partly by arms, partly by bribery, 28, 1583.
recovered nearly all the central provinces except
Flanders, and even there Bruges was surrendered through the
treachery of Chimay, the son of the Duke of Aerschot.
One month after the death of Anjou, William of Orange was
assassinated. The ban had been his death-warrant. No less than five
attempts had been made, of which one had been
Assassination of
nearly fatal to the Prince, and by the anxiety it William of Orange.
caused, contributed at least to the death of his July 10, 1584.
wife, Charlotte of Bourbon. Finally, on the 10th of
July, 1584, when fifty-one years of age, he was shot at Delft by
Balthazar Gérard, a fanatic of Franche-Comté, who had long looked
upon himself as predestinated to do the deed.
The great man, who thus passed away, is a good example of the
chastening influence of a life of responsibility and danger. The
troubles of his country, and the anxieties they brought upon him,
had weaned him from the extravagance and dissipation of his youth
and had deepened his character. A Catholic by birth rather than
conviction, his adoption of Lutheranism, and subsequently of
Calvinism, were probably in part due to political interest; and
although there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his ultimate
beliefs, his past experience led him to realise, as few of his
contemporaries did, the value of toleration—a belief which cost him
the support of some of his more fanatical followers. Few would deny
that he was ambitious, but his repeated refusal to accept the
sovereignty offered to him—a refusal which some think mistaken—
proves at least that he knew how to keep his personal interest in
control. That he was no great general, and that he was deficient in
military courage, may be true; yet, if it be remembered that he
commanded mercenaries who were not to be trusted, or civil levies
which could indeed defend a town, but were scarcely fitted to meet
the veterans of Spain in the open field, we shall probably applaud his
wisdom in avoiding pitched battles. It is, however, as a statesman
and a diplomatist that he excelled. Absolute straightforwardness is
difficult in diplomacy, but William was infinitely more straightforward
than the shifty Elizabeth, the Machiavellian Catherine, or the
treacherous Philip; while his constancy under reverse, in spite of a
constitutional tendency to depression, justly entitles him to his
motto, ‘Je maintiendrai.’ The extravagant denunciations of the Prince
by his enemies may be taken as a measure of his ability; the number
of his devoted followers, of his personal fascination; the future
glories of the ‘United Netherlands,’ as an incontestable proof of the
greatness of the man who is justly called their ‘Father.’ Nevertheless
it is improbable that William, had he lived, would have won back the
south-western provinces. The cleavage, as we have seen, had
already begun—a cleavage which future history has proved to be
deep and permanent—and the success of Parma in the south-west
seemed already pretty well assured. No doubt William hoped for an
alliance with the Huguenots and with Henry of Navarre, who, by the
death of Anjou, had become the heir to the French crown, an idea
which explains his marriage with Coligny’s daughter.72 He seems
even to have looked for a coalition of all Protestant powers. But
Henry had enough to do at home, and Elizabeth was a broken reed;
while the quarrels between the Lutherans and Calvinists, and the
advance of the Catholic Reaction, would probably have prevented
effective help from Germany. William had laid the foundation of the
independence of the Seven United Provinces, and had he lived he
would not in all probability have done more than antedate by a few
years the recognition of that independence.
‘Had William been murdered two years earlier,’ said Philip, ‘much
trouble might have been spared me; but it is better late than never.’
His second son, Maurice, who was elected
Maurice elected
Captain-General of Holland and Zealand, and Captain-General of
head of the Council of State, which was Holland and
appointed provisionally, was only seventeen; Zealand.
Hohenlo, the son-in-law of William, who was
appointed commander-in-chief, was a drunkard; while Treslong, the
admiral, quarrelled with the Estates, and was superseded by Justin,
an illegitimate son of William, a man of no experience. Of the
confusion which naturally ensued, Parma made good use. The most
important towns in the South, which remained unsubdued, were
Dendermonde, Ghent, Brussels, Mechlin, and Antwerp, all of them
lying on the Scheldt or its tributary the Senne.
Success of Parma.
Alexander offered good terms; he promised to
respect their privileges, to make no inquiry into conscience, and to
free them from foreign garrisons. Many of the old adherents of
Orange deserted the cause in despair, and by the end of July, 1585,
all these towns had surrendered or had been taken, with the
exception of Antwerp. Against that important place, Parma now
concentrated all his efforts. The enterprise was a
The siege of
difficult one; Parma had no fleet; Philip, at this Antwerp. Aug. 17,
moment occupied with the affairs of the League 1585.
in France (cf. p. 428), gave him scant assistance;
and, had the citizens of Antwerp followed the example of those of
Leyden in the year 1574, and completely flooded the country, he
could scarce have approached the city. For this sacrifice, however,
they were not prepared, and the half-measures which they adopted
did more harm than good. Parma accordingly was able to reach the
Scheldt to the seaward of the town, and began a bridge which
should cut off all communication with the sea. The besieged, when
too late, made energetic attempts to defeat his purpose, and once,
by means of the dread fire-ships, nearly succeeded in breaking
through the barrier. But Parma was not to be baulked. In spite of all
their efforts, the bridge was completed, and, after a six months’
siege, St. Aldegonde the Burgomaster, surrendered (August 17). The
victory was not tarnished by any outrages. An amnesty was
proclaimed, though the city had to pay a fine; all religions except the
Catholic were proscribed, but those who would not conform were
allowed two years’ grace. But if the capitulation of Antwerp raised
the military fame of Parma to the highest pitch, and practically
secured Brabant to the Spaniards, the actual gain was not very
great. Ostend and Sluys still held out, and although they were
subsequently won (Sluys in August 1587), the Dutch succeeded in
permanently holding Flushing and the entrance to the Scheldt. By so
doing, they not only destroyed the commercial importance of
Antwerp, which depended on her communication with the sea, but
contributed to the decline of the industries of the other great
Flemish cities. Amsterdam now took the place of Antwerp; the
Scheldt was closed to Flemish commerce, and never till our day,
when that river was finally declared open, did Antwerp become
again that entrepot for trade, for which her geographical position so
well fits her.
While this memorable siege had been progressing, the sovereignty
over the Netherlands was going a-begging. Two parties had now
arisen there: those who based their hopes on French assistance, and
those who looked to England. The French party
Sovereignty
were at first successful. Undismayed by the refused by Henry
treachery of Anjou, and in spite of the opposition III., Oct. 1584, is
of the Province of Holland, they offered the offered to
sovereignty to Henry iii., ‘upon conditions which Elizabeth.
should hereafter be settled,’ October, 1584. So
brilliant an offer was indeed tempting, and, had the hands of Henry
been free, he probably would have accepted it. But the last of the
Valois was in the toils of the Catholic League. After much hesitation
he had, in July, 1585, submitted to its dictation (cf. p. 429), and
accordingly he declined the proferred dignity.
Disappointed in their hopes of French assistance, the
Netherlanders turned to England. Elizabeth had received with
satisfaction the news of the refusal of the sovereignty by the French
King. Well aware of the designs of Philip on England, she was
anxious to save the United Provinces from reconquest by Parma, and
was willing to aid them with men and money. Nevertheless, with her
usual parsimony, she was determined to obtain good security for
repayment, which should take the form of cautionary towns, while
she feared to accept the sovereignty lest such a step might pledge
her too deeply to a definite anti-Spanish policy. This was, however,
just what the Netherlanders most desired. The negotiations
therefore, which had begun before the fall of Antwerp, were long
protracted, and it was not until November, 1585, that the
Netherlanders finally consented to her terms. The Queen engaged
herself to maintain a permanent force of 5000 foot and 1000 horse
in the provinces at her own charges; for the
Elizabeth declines
repayment of the expense thus incurred, Brille the sovereignty,
and Flushing were to be placed in her hands, to but despatches the
be garrisoned by an additional contingent; she Earl of Leicester.
was also to have the right of nominating two Dec. 9, 1585.
members of the Council of State of eighteen, to
which the administration of affairs had been intrusted after the
death of William the Silent. The Earl of Leicester, the favourite of the
Queen, was appointed commander of the forces; the governorship
of Flushing was intrusted to his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and that
of Brille to Sir Thomas Cecil, son of Lord Burleigh.
On the 9th of December, the expedition sailed. The Netherlanders
were not, however, yet satisfied. Anxious apparently to compromise
the Queen still further in their cause, they offered the post of
Governor-General of the United Provinces to Leicester, with supreme
military command by land and sea, and supreme
Leicester accepts
authority in matters civil and political. He was to the office of
swear to maintain the ancient laws and privileges Governor-General.
of the country, and to govern with the assistance
of the Council of State; he might, however, summon the States-
General at his will, and was to enjoy the right of appointing to all
offices, civil and legal, out of a list presented to him by the states of
the province where the vacancy should occur. The Earl not only
accepted the brilliant offer, but, elated by the magnificent reception
he received, was even heard to say that his family had been wrongly
deprived of the crown of England.73 By this conduct the
susceptibilities of Elizabeth were aroused. As a
Indignation of
Queen, she was angered at ‘the great and Elizabeth.
strange contempt’ of her subject who had dared
accept the ‘absolute’ government without her leave; as a woman,
she was jealous of her favourite who looked for honours from other
hands than hers; as a diplomatist, she feared that this rash act of
Leicester would destroy her game, and that Philip would strike at
England. She therefore peremptorily commanded him to make
‘public and open resignation’ of his office. For two months the Queen
was implacable. At last, however, a most secret letter from her
‘sweet Robin’ salved her woman’s pride. Burleigh and Walsingham
warned her of the fatal results of her capricious conduct; and she
consented that the Earl should, provisionally at least, retain the
authority of ‘absolute governor’ (April 10). We even find her
subsequently declaring ‘that she misliked not so much the title, as
the lack of performance’ of their promises by the Dutch.
The quarrel between the Queen and her favourite was at an end;
not so its consequences. The authority of the Earl had been
discredited by the humiliating position in which he had been placed
by his own vanity and rashness, and by the pique of his mistress.
The suspicion and disgust thus engendered among the
Netherlanders were increased by the reports of negotiations
between Elizabeth and Parma—reports which
Leicester loses the
were but too well founded; for as the projected support of the
invasion of England became more certain, the ‘States’ Party.
efforts of the Queen to avert the blow by
peaceful negotiations increased. Nothing could have been more
unfortunate than the policy thus adopted. Philip’s object was simply
to gain time until he should be ready for his great stroke; and,
although Elizabeth hoped to include the Netherlands in any peace
she might make, her previous conduct certainly gave no security
that she would refuse to sacrifice their interests if necessary. These
apprehensions were naturally most acutely felt by the ‘States
Party,’—that is, by the governing classes, who were represented in
the Provincial Estates, and in the States-General—men like Paul
Buys, the ex-advocate, and John Van Olden Barneveld, the advocate
of Holland. This party had hitherto taken the lead in the struggle
against Spain, and, although still in favour of the English alliance,
were unwilling to see their country made the victim of a woman’s
pique, or of a faithless Queen’s diplomacy.
Leicester leans on
Leicester, stung by their reproaches, with that the democratic
vanity and love of flattery which were his chief party.
faults, accordingly turned to the people and
adopted a democratic policy which was still more distasteful to the
official classes, and to the patrician burgher families. In violation of
the law that no person should hold office in any province of which he
was not a native, he raised three creatures of his own to power:
Deventer, a native of Brabant, was appointed burgomaster of
Utrecht; Daniel de Burgrave, a Fleming, was made his private
secretary; and Regnault, another Fleming, a renegade who had once
taken service under Granvella and Alva, was placed at the head of
the new Finance Chamber—a chamber which Leicester erected with
the hope of putting a stop to frauds on the revenue, and of finding
‘mountains of gold.’ The merchants were further irritated by the
refusal of Elizabeth to remove the staple for English cloth from
Embden, in East Friesland, to Amsterdam or Delft, and by the
prohibition of all exports to Spanish territories—a measure which did
far more harm to Dutch trade than it did to that of Spain, and which
was so unpopular that it had shortly to be rescinded. A Calvinist
himself, the Earl gladly adopted the views of the democratic party in
religious matters. Declaring that the Papists were favourers of Spain,
he banished seventy from the town of Utrecht and maltreated them
elsewhere; while with the object of declaring Calvinism the state
religion, he summoned a religious synod at the Hague. By this
conduct he abandoned the principle of toleration which William the
Silent had ever advocated; he threatened the compromise laid down
at the Union of Utrecht (cf. p. 358) whereby each province had been
allowed to settle the religious question for itself, and he alienated
the best statesmen of the day, men who objected to Church
influence in secular affairs, who feared the intemperate zeal of the
Calvinist ministers, and wished to avoid the establishment of a
theocracy after the fashion of Geneva. The adherents of the Earl did
not stop there; they denied the authority of the States-General and
of the Provincial Estates, and declared that sovereignty resided in
the people. In pursuance of these theories the government of
Utrecht, where Leicester generally resided, was revolutionised, and
Paul Buys, one of the most prominent of the burgher party—seized
with the tacit acquiescence, at least, of Leicester—was kept six
months in prison without trial. Thus the Earl, instead of uniting all
parties in common opposition to the Spaniard, had become a
partisan, had made enemies of those who had been the most
strenuous advocates of the English alliance, and deepened those
provincial, class, and religious differences which henceforth were to
be the chief bane of Holland. Nor was Leicester more fortunate in his
relations with his own subordinates; he
Leicester quarrels
quarrelled with Sir John Norris, who had been in with his
command of the English contingent before his subordinates.
arrival, with the knight’s brother Edward, and his
uncle the treasurer, and with Wilkes, one of the English members of
the Council of State. Although Leicester was not altogether
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