"revolutionary talkers," "German agents," and "Bolshevik treachery"—all these appeared in perfectly palpable forms long before the Revolution.
Take the desertions. The first news about the desertions in the Russian army which reached this country was sent by the correspondents in Russia shortly after the Revolution. And the explanation given suggested that the desertions were brought about by the extremists of the Revolution, who aroused dangerous illusions among the peasant soldiers, making them think that the division of the land was imminent. The uneducated soldiers (it was said), anxious to secure their share, dropped their rifles, deserted from their units and hastened back to their native villages.
I have no hesitation in saying that this explanation was not only misleading but untrue. It was equally false as to the facts about the desertions and as to the origin of desertion as a mass phenomenon. It was the first of a long series of grave and far-reaching misrepresentations. I see that Mr. Wilton, the Petrograd correspondent of the "Times," in his recently published book, admits that the desertions began to occur in the winter of 1916.[1] At the time, Mr. Wilton was, of course, silent about these facts. Not only did he conceal them from the British public, but the whole gist and tenor of his dispatches was such as to exclude the possibility of even a guess or a suspicion that there was anything wrong with the Russian army. But after the Revolution, he, in common with the majority of British and French newspaper correspondents, asserted that the disintegration of the Russian army began with the Revolution and with the renowned "Order No. 1."
Mr. Wilton states that the desertions began to occur in the winter of 1916. As a matter of fact, they had already begun in the autumn of 1915, and by the winter
- ↑ "During the winter 1916–1917, scurvy was very prevalent at the front. Desertions began to occur. Many companies were reduced by these causes to one-third of their normal strength."—"Russia's Agony," page 64.
