The VSVR 1895-1900 (Part 2)
Just as it had in the Eastern War the VSVR did not mobilise its vast reserve army in order to face the Russians – instead they would rely entirely upon the Red Army and a swift advance. This in turn gave the Russians an advantage if their pitifully weak standing army could only slow down the Red Army advance long enough for the peasantry of the Russian heartland to be readied for war.
Therefore the VSVR plan for war was to launch three large offensives to take Riga (the primary Baltic port of the Russian Empire), Minsk and Kiev. It was hoped that the loss of these invaluable cities would force the Tsar to give in. The Russian plan was more complicated. They were to launch an attack on Finland, in hopes of panicking Cologne and forcing it to send troops to the aid of the Finns. At the same time the Russian standing army was to concentrate on stopping the advance on Minsk (hoping to leave the Southern and Northern armies exposed as they advanced deeper into Russia. Whilst in the South the Red Army would be allowed to advance up to Ukraine the Tsar could not afford to lose it and the Russian Army had to be ready to defend it. After the Russian reserves were readied they would strike at two points. The most powerful strike would come in the centre of the front (where the Red Army advance should be at its weakest) and the second at the Ukraine. The Russians hoped these attacks would allow them to push back towards the VSVR border whilst the Northern Red Army Group would either leave itself ever more exposed by advancing North or simply turn back.
However the Russian Generals seemed to have failed to factor in the complete inability of their armed forces to defeat smaller and worn out Red Army units. The Central Army Group under the leadership of the Red Army’s greatest rising star – Trotsky – smashed through the Russian standing army formations that stood between them and Minsk with ease. By September they had arrived in Belorussia and on orders from Schlieffen back at HQ Trotsky halted the advance in order to allow supply lines to catch up and the territory he had advanced over to be occupied.
During the Autumn the full force of the Russian reservist counteroffensive was unleashed upon Trotsky’s forces around Minsk. In total the Russians managed to deploy around ¼ of a million men in the attack between late September and the end of November. Whilst Trotsky initially had just over 100,000 men (exhausted from their advanced in the Summer) although this force was bolstered over the course of the campaign by a trickle of reinforcements from the Northern Army Group and troops behind the front lines.
In the end the Russians were forever forced back, suffering horrific casualties they instead repositioned their armies to march southwards – towards the Ukraine.
On other fronts things had not gone quite so well as in the centre. In the North the VSVR and Danish forces faced very little resistance. After Riga fell as early as September most of the Red Army units on this front started to move southwards to bolster the defence of Belorussia and the advance towards Ukraine. This left the front to the Danes who were slow to advance.
In the south logistical problems were more severe and whilst Trotsky had steamrollered his way to Minsk the General in charge of this advance was more cautious and less capable. Advancing slowly he was often unwilling to make bold moves that would totally break Russian formations – meaning that they could keep him back from Ukraine. However, with the help of reinforcements, the Red Army did arrive at Kiev in early December only to face a large assault from the Russian Army.
Elsewhere much had happen in the past six months. Most notably in Finland.
In June 1896 25,000 Russians marched into Finland. Under the command of Enewald just 6,000 Finns were ready to face them. The Finns would either have to withdraw from their major cities along the South Coast or face the Russians down in a death or glory battle.
Enewald being Enewald he chose the bold option and went to face the Russians just 3 miles East of Helsinki. The Battle of Helsinki has since gone down as one of the most defining moments in the history of the Finnish nation. Faced with impossible odds against and vastly superior invading army the Finns deployed everything in one engagement gambling their entire nation on its success. And they were not to be disappointed. The vicious Finnish General ruthless routed the Russians and captured a large portion of their army. At the end of the Battle the Russians were fleeing from Finland. 7,000 Russians had been killed, 8,000 had been captured and just 2,000 of Enewald’s own men were left alive. Rather than adhere to the Geneva Convention Enewald had the all 8,000 Russian captives summarily executed.
These victories were not to last forever. In the Autumn, as the Russian reservists came into play, another Russian Army – this time slightly smaller than before – invaded from the North. By December all the Finns had left were the cities of Turku and Helsinki – both of which were under siege.
In September the CSR had invaded Egypt. Unfortunately the CSR’s army was actually marginally smaller than Egypt’s (although much more advanced) meaning that the CSR had to call in for Red Army aid. The Red Army units deployed in Anatolia and the Balkans then invaded Syria – smashing the Egyptians at Damascus whilst troops from Africa attacked the Sudan. At the same time the CSR invaded from Libya.
Yet the most important outcome of the invasion of Syria was a piece of incredible diplomatic manoeuvring by Eduard Bernstein. The Central Committee agreed that war with the British would be a disaster and that the Russian alliance with Britain was the greatest weapon the Tsar had in his arsenal. It was therefore vital for the Republic to ensure peace. The British also supported the CSR – a nation they had economic interests in preserving. Bernstein, somehow, convinced the British to ally with the VSVR on a temporary basis. The British would invade Egypt alongside the Comintern forces, in return getting Eritrea (and valuable ports on the Red Sea), and promise not to fight alongside Russia in its clearly aggressive war. The British had no real desire to fight the VSVR and agreed to this deal.
Back on the front of the Finnish War (as it was being dubbed) the end game seemed to start to come into play as December turned into January. At the very turn of January 20,000 Red Army soldiers were landed in Southern Finland and quickly helped Enewald throw the Russians back across the border. Meanwhile the Russian Army sent everything it had into saving Kiev. They attacked the Red Army forces siegeing the city with some 80,000 men – the VSVR had just 25,000 in the siege and seemed certain to face defeat.
Trotsky, reacting quickly to pleas from his Comrades to the South, sent the bulk of his forces South to save the assault on Kiev. At Slutsk the Russians deployed a huge army with the simple aim of preventing Trotsky’s men from reaching Kiev but failed miserably. In late January Trotsky arrived at Kiev and now faced with the odds stacked against them the Russians withdrew.
On February 16th Kiev finally fell. On February 25th, with Finland free, the Russian Army beaten and much of Western Russia occupied the Tsar agreed to a peace treaty in which the Northern half of what was once the Congress of Poland was ceded to the VSVR (a 90% peasant region). Trotsky himself called the Treaty ‘’a sham deal drawn up by men who were either reactionaries or fools’’. However Trotsky was elevated to hero status within the VSVR for his actions during the much publicised conflict and both Lenin and Schlieffen clamoured for his political support for their factions. However Trotsky chose instead to travel to Latin America where he planned to end the war with Argentina (which had fallen out of the public consciousness) and from then on assist the Marxist insurrections in Latin America.
Trotsky arrived in occupied Buenos Aires in April 1897 by which time the Argentine Army was virtually destroyed (trapped near the Brazilian border by communist rebels, Red Army units and Chilean troops). Barely two weeks after Trotsky’s arrival they were finally defeated and peace proclaimed. Chile annexed the Pacific coast territories of Argentina whilst a new government was set up in Argentina based around the People’s Party in the VSVR. After the Treaty Trotsky took up a semi-official role as the Comintern delegate to the Americas. Essentially this allowed him to assist in the affairs of Cuba, Chile and Argentina whilst leading the Marxist insurrections in Peru and Ecuador.
Elsewhere the war with Egypt dragged on at low ebb until March 1898 when the CSR was allowed to annex the remnants of Egyptian Syria whilst the British seized Eritrea.
Back in the VSVR political tensions started to grow. Yet under Liebknecht the Marxist Bloc was stronger than it ever had been. Whilst Lenin did recover from his leg injury caused by Luxemburg’s assassin he never truly returned to the energetic figure of 1895 and before. He was just a shade of his former self – this allowed Liebknecht to keep a hold over the coalition in a way Luxemburg had struggled to do. Liebknecht also shifted the Luxemburgists further to the Left. He increased support for foreign revolutionary groups whilst he employed large scale state controlled stimulus packages in Wallonia and Africa in order to combat the problem of unemployment. Yet unemployment remained dangerously high. The coalition might have been stable but outside of the Marxists tensions were heating up.
Bernstein, once a close ally of the Luxemburgists, was now growing increasingly concerned by the deterioration of relations with all foreign powers except for Britain – the only state the Marxists seemed to care about appeasing. Indeed in late 1898 a Red Army cavalry unit actually crossed the border into France briefly to assist a group of communists in capturing a town. Had France not been so weak this might have led to war.
Whilst both the Revolutionaries and True Germans had thrown their support behind the Finnish War with the Russians both had quickly returned to their anti-government ways after peace was declared. The Revolutionaries encouraged work slow protests in the countryside and even violence if any state grain collectors attempted to use force to either speed up work or force the peasantry to sell any more grain than they wished to at the price offered by the state.
But perhaps more worrying than the Revolutionaries were the True Germans. Their support for German values, nationalism, misogyny and dissatisfaction with Marxism had proved to be very popular with a large section of the VSVR’s population. They were fast growing in strength in Bavaria, the former Prussian territories and amongst the German speaking minority in Wallonia (around 20% of Wallonians spoke German as a first language by the end of 19th century). Whilst Nicolas Bismarck himself did not approve of the use of violence to achieve political ends it seemed that most of his faction did. True German thugs roamed across cities such as Berlin, Silesia, Munich, Nuremburg and Arlon searching out Marxist and Anarchist groups. Indeed the growing strength of the True Germans in Wallonia (a traditional Anarchist heartland and one of the few areas where they were still dominant) led to the latest reforming of the Young Anarchists. Yet this time instead of an anti-government organization it was essentially a group of angry young men dedicated to fighting other angry young men with different views. Marxist groups too took to the streets. Liebknecht was desperate to defuse the situation and employed the police force heavily to try to keep the peace but this only infuriated violent groups more.
Perhaps most worrying of all about the True Germans was the anti-Semitic undercurrent. There was a general feeling amongst some groups in the VSVR that Jews were disproportionately successful when compared to other ethnic groups. It was true that Jews made up a significant part of the People’s Party’s upper ranks with Jews making up about 8% of the VSVR population they supplied 17 members of the Assembly (there was no particular correlation with factions however). Jews in Central Europe had a long history of persecution and in Russia pogroms were still rife (a large portion of the Russian leftist emigrants in the VSVR were of Jewish origins). For a faction reacting against Marxism and Anarchism it was easy for True Germans to beat the patriotic chest and call for Germany for the Germans. That being said the anti-Semitic undertones inherent in the movement were never supported by its leadership.
In Latin America Leon Trotsky further advanced his name with a major success in Peru. Peru had long been ruled by a post-colonial clique of landowners who reigned under an oppressive government. It was therefore easy for Trotsky and the PCP to raise support amongst the peasantry. However most crucial of all was the support of Peru’s small urban workforce (around 4% of Peruvians were factory worker) who held the key to toppling the government in Lima. By the time Trotsky had arrived most of the East of the country was a no go zone for the government but Trotsky organised the Peruvian communists in a much more effective manner. By late 1897 the roving bands of Marxist peasants were now well armed peasant armies directly combating the government army whilst the small urban proletariat was becoming increasingly militant. In March 1899 a revolt in Lime forced the President to flee the capital and move North to try t retake the city with the army. However Trotsky stuck quickly – bringing the full force of his peasant army against the government troops and destroying them. Most of the government’s leadership was with this army so with its defeat and their capture the revolution was effectively a success. The People’s Republic of Peru was born and Trotsky quickly returned to the VSVR.
For on June 9th 1899 Vladimir Lenin suffer a catastrophic stroke and died shortly after. The man who had spent 11 years as Chairman of the VSVR (more than any other) and been a major player in the Republic’s politics for almost 3 decades was now dead. Whilst the Republic mourned amongst the Marxist-Leninsts there was no obvious replacement. Ernst Thalmann seemed the clearest cut man to take the job, being Lenin’s deputy for around a decade now, yet many feared that Thalmann lacked the strength of personality to take over from Lenin. Clara Zetkin’s supporters advocated a union with the Luxemburgists to create a single Marxist faction, however many preferred to remain separate in order to espouse their more radical views. Finally the recently returned and extremely popular war hero Leon Trotsky offered something new. Thalmann seemed to offer a continuation of Lenin, Zetkin a shift to the right and union with the Luxemburgists, Trotsky offered a new wave of radicalism. Radicalism in foreign affairs, radicalism in internal affairs. More than any other faction the Marxist-Leninsts were obsessed with the international revolution and Trotksy campaigned for the faction’s leadership upon demands for the complete annihilation of the Habsburg Empire and the overthrowing of the French Republic by the Red Army. Here was a man determined to destroy any and all enemies of socialism, mo matter the cost. On top of this Trotsky could rely upon the backing of the Militarists and there were even talks of a union with that faction (Schlieffen was soon to retire and there was no one within the Red Army willing to replace him as a political figure).
In the end it took the more popular Thalmann stepping aside for Trotsky to be granted the leadership. Even then there was a strong reaction against the man who was considered rude and dangerous in equal proportion by many. Thalmann angered a large portion of the faction for not trying to prevent Trotsky taking charge; however the German believed that the international revolution could only be achieved if a man like Trotsky was holding the reins of power.
The VSVR was now the single greatest power on earth. Economically it dwarfed every other power aside from Britain whilst in terms of international prestige again only the British could compete. Although a lack of a powerful navy or an army in the scale of the Chinese of British Indian armies meant that it was the third largest military power on earth this seemed to be more than enough to defeat Europe.
The election of 1900 would be an important one. As the Republic celebrated its 50th anniversary as the greatest power on earth several options were open to it. A continuation of the comfortable Marxist rule of the Luxemburgists, a violent and continuous revolution under the Trotsky led Marxist-Leninists, a peasant friendly Republic under the Revolutionaries, a Germanic one under the True Germans, a smaller state under the Anarchists or peaceful coexistence under the Democrats.
The Comintern on January 1st 1900.