War & Revolution in Asiatic Russia

Front matter

BY M. PHILIPS PRICE (Special Correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian")

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1

First published in 1918

Preface

PREFACE

In November 1914 I came to Russia, as special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Up to March 1915 I was engaged in Petrograd and Warsaw, and then spent three months in the rear of the Russian army in Galicia. After the disastrous retreat of the Russians from Lemberg I made my way back to Petrograd. The difficulty of carrying on press correspondence from the European fronts in Russia was very great. It was impossible to report the true state of affairs. The persecution of the Ruthenes and the pogroms of the Jews, which I witnessed during the retreat, had to remain unrecorded. A rigid censorship made the task in which I was engaged a hopeless one. And yet I could not write and say that all was well, or join the chorus of those who conceived it their duty to hide the truth. Rather than bury my conscience in Europe I decided to betake myself to Asia. When I arrived in the Caucasus, that "gateway" into Central Asia, the whole of the Middle East was before me. No one had worked out the story of what was happening there while Europe was seething. I therefore spent the latter half of 1915 and the whole of 1916 in the Caucasus, making journeys into the neighbouring regions of Persia, Greater Armenia, and the Black Sea coast. While I was on these journeys I kept a careful diary of all that I saw, and sent frequent dispatches to my newspaper. Part II of this volume is made up out of my diary and out of articles which appeared during these months in the Manchester Guardian. During the summer and autumn of 1916 I was doing relief work among refugees in the Trans-Caucasus and the neighbouring regions of Turkey. While on this work I travelled through a large part of the province of Fars and Lazistan, both of which little-known regions I describe in Chapters VI and VII. Part I is a short history of the Caucasus campaign which I compiled during the winter of 1916, while living in Tiflis. In the Introduction I try to connect the great events that were taking place in the Middle East with the past history of Central Asia, and to sketch the lines along which an international settlement might be made. I was just completing this when the Russian Revolution broke out, and I became a witness of its effects in the Asiatic provinces. In Part III, I lead up to this theme. I show in Chapter IX the real state of Asiatic Russia, as I saw it in the months preceding the Revolution. In Chapter VIII I show how the Russian reaction was in part responsible for the disastrous state of affairs in Armenia, and was contributing with the Turkish Government to bring that unhappy country to the verge of ruin. In the last Chapter, I describe the Revolution in Asia and the dawn of the new era which Russia has now made for the people of that continent.

M. PHILIPS PRICE.

Petrograd. May 19, 1917.

Note.—A chapter on "Persia and her Future" will be included in later editions after the war or when there is no Censor to be consulted.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

If we look at a map of the old hemisphere, we shall be struck with two important facts. We shall first observe that what is known as Europe is a westerly projection of the much greater continent of Asia; and secondly that there are two passages between these two portions of the continent. One of these passages leads from the deserts of Central Asia across a wide plain into Central Europe and covers what is known politically as Russia; and the other, a narrower one, leads from the plateaux in the heart of Asia across a projecting promontory, known as Asia Minor, into south-eastern Europe. These two passages are separated from each other by a depression filled with water, which is the Black Sea. People in the heart of the continent, if they wish to move west, must cross by one or other of these two passages. For the sake of convenience let us call them the gateways between the two portions of the continent.

Now if we think of the great events of human history that have helped to build up modern Europe, such as the rise of Greek civilization, the birth of Christianity, the fall of Constantinople and the invasion of Russia by the Tartars, we shall see that they have all taken place either in or near these two passages. It would seem in fact as if from the earliest times action and reaction, movements and counter-movements, have been going on between the peoples of Europe and Asia. What has caused this continuous unrest? One may attribute it perhaps to religious impulses, like that which inspired the Arabs, or to abstract ideas, which aimed at giving to mankind a uniform political and legal system, such as those which moved the Romans. This explanation will only suffice if we assume that the impulses which lead man to change his modes of thought and his habits of life, come direct from the "free spirit", untrammelled by the chains of material existence. If that is so, then these spiritual movements cannot be traced to peculiarities of climate or geography. But if on the other hand they are connected with the material side of life, then the structure of continents, their temperature, soil and climates, must influence the human types that live there, and must affect the forms of society and the different political and religious movements that take place there.

Now Central Asia is a huge expanse of alternating high plateau and low plain, divided by great ranges of mountains. The climate of one part of it is widely different from that of another. Physical obstacles have prevented the people of Asia from uniting in one common political system. The history of Central Asia from the Islamic renaissance to the Mongol Empire may be regarded as an attempt to create this unity. But the caprices of nature have always frustrated the ideals of man. The rulers of the Bactrian oases could subject their own neighbours, but they could not make their influence felt beyond the Pamirs or the Tian-shan. The Bedouin shepherds of Arabia, inspired with the simple faith of Islam, were ignorant teachers and but transitory rulers of the refined Persians of Isfahan. Two separate types of humanity can be observed in Central Asia from the earliest times down to this day. There are the inhabitants of the oases, who live a sedentary life, and are able with little labour to satisfy their material needs. On the other hand the nomads of the mountains and deserts are obliged to resort in years of drought to raids on their neighbours' territory, or else to go hungry. Such extremes of severity and luxury have produced these two types of men; one the submissive peoples of the oases, prone to abstract thought, with their schools of philosophy and their mystic sects; the other, predatory by instinct, and from time to time sending forth hordes of invaders with their tyrant emperors.

For these reasons a stable political system in Central Asia has been hitherto impossible. Hungry nomads to this day periodically invade the fertile oases; and in earlier times they often banded together and pushed their migrations far into the West. The Mongols, Tartars and Osmanlis, whose movements had such a profound effect upon Eastern Europe, are all examples of this process. Following the lines of least resistance, they passed through the two gateways between Europe and Asia, the Russian plain and the Asia Minor plateau.

The reverse movement from West to East has also been taking place. Europe for the last hundred years has slowly, but systematically, penetrated western Asia and established its economic influence there. Now the western peninsula of the Europeo-Asiatic continent has to a large degree acquired a common standard of culture and ideals, and has been saved from the instability which results when fierce nomads live, as in Asia, beside defenceless oasis-dwellers. Protected from these hordes in the middle ages by the races which inhabited the Russian plain and the Asia Minor plateau, European man commenced his political and cultural development as soon as the Reformation had cast off the shackles of ecclesiasticism, and set free the spirit of reason and enquiry. Assisted by an even climate and a soil of moderate fertility, he learnt early to develop the material side of civilization, and to conquer nature by the arts and crafts. Accumulations of energy stored up in the form of capital were then exported abroad. The tide of human movement turned to Asia once more, and Europe began to swing back the pendulum, which the Turanian hordes had pushed towards her in the middle ages. Again the "gateways" between the two halves of the continent became the scene of race-movement and political struggle. The first move was made by the Slavs, who began their migrations eastwards as far back as the 11th century. They took as their sphere the northern gateway, or the Russian plain. To the lot of the Western Powers, some centuries later, after the decline of the Ottoman Empire, fell the southern gateway. Then began the competition between the Powers of Europe over the Balkans, and over railway concessions in Asiatic Turkey. All these movements and conflicts were indications of Europe's "Drang nach Osten".

Besides the eastern and western movements through the two "gateways" of Europe and Asia, one can also trace all along the centuries a movement from North to South. For many centuries the nomad races from the Russian plain have passed across the narrow isthmus of the Caucasus, which connects the northern with the southern gateways. In very early times the Parthians invaded Persia by this route, and established their dynasty there. So also in the middle ages did the Scythians and Alans. In recent times the Russians have done the same, penetrating North Persia and Armenia by way of the Trans-Caucasus. These movements may be attributed to the natural tendency of a people, living in a temperate or sub-arctic region, to establish commercial relations with the peoples of sub-tropical countries.

Thus we observe three principal trends of race movement in the regions that lie between Europe and Asia. There is first the movement from Asia to Europe (now at an end); then there is the movement from Europe to Asia, which is taking place at the present day; and, thirdly, there is the movement from the Russian plain into the southern gateway across the isthmus of the Trans-Caucasus. In all these we can trace the effect of economic necessity. The exchange of sub-arctic timber and cereals for southern cotton and fruit establishes a close relation between the Russians and the people of the Middle East. The existence also of undeveloped regions in the southern "gateway" gives the financial interests of Europe the opportunity to export capital and acquire spheres of exclusive economic rights. As a result the financial groups of Europe have contended with each other for this Eastern booty, while the proletariat, not yet organized sufficiently to control the production of wealth and the application of capital, has become the victim of wars for "spheres of influence". It is no accident, therefore, that this great war has been fought not only on European battlefields, but far away in Mesopotamian deserts, Armenian plateaux, and Persian oases. For in these regions lie the prizes for the financial "interests" of London, Paris and Berlin. In these Eastern dominions also the now vanished Court of the Romanoffs hoped to find governorships and vice-royalties for Grand Dukes. Thus in that region of Asia lying in a triangle between the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf, all the conflicting interests of East and West meet to-day, just as they met during the migrations of the nomads in the middle ages. In the struggle that has ensued, the Caucasus campaign has played no mean part.

In order more clearly to understand the political problems of the Middle East, let us consider a little more in detail the geographical and ethnological characters of these regions. Asia in its main physical features consists of a system of mountain chains and parallel plateaux running from the Far East of the Chinese Empire to the threshold of South-East Europe. In its most westerly limit this great plateau is narrowed down to the area between the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf: but owing to compression in this comparatively small space, the plateau is puckered and folded into a number of regions varying greatly in altitude and consequently in climate. Each climatic zone and geographical region possesses its corresponding human type, and hence we find between the Caucasus mountains and the Levant a most varied assortment of human beings, each type with its own culture and social habits. The region with the lowest altitude of all is found along the coast of the Black Sea and the Levant. The whole of this region has a uniform sub-tropical climate, producing the same kind of vegetation and the same human type all along its sea-board. Shut in by high ranges of mountains, this narrow strip of coast-line is protected from the cold plateau winds, and moistened by the soft sea breezes. The produce of the tiny maize-fields, perched up amid forested slopes, and the fruit of the terraced vineyards, which surround the red-tiled houses, are brought along narrow by-ways to the cool bazaar towns, from which they are transported by ship to the West. Thus the inhabitants of this coast are by nature a race of small cultivators of sub-tropical produce, merchants and mariners. From the earliest times the waves of Greek civilization have lapped along these shores, and the people, though their racial origins are various, have turned their eyes in each successive generation to the mother-cities of Athens and Constantinople. Their commercial life brings them into constant contact with the maritime peoples of the West, and tends to make them keen business men. Their great historic past, and their position on a sea highway, have made them politicians with imperialist leanings. The sub-tropical climate also in which they live, and the moderate degree of leisure which most of them can enjoy, have been favourable conditions for controversial and speculative thought.

Behind the ranges bordering the sea-coast the country opens out into the wide table-land of Anatolia, varying from 2,500 to 4,000 feet above sea-level. The tempera- ture of this region is continental and extreme, ranging from the heat of the sub-tropical zone in summer to the cold of the sub-arctic zone in winter. Irrigated oases are found in many parts of the plain, and grazing areas in the mountains. But the difference between life in the mountains and life in the plateau plains is not so sharp as it is in the regions farther to the east, in Armenia and Persia. This is largely due to the more broken structure of the table-land, the pastoral country being interspersed among the land suitable for oasis cultivation. Thus the people of Anatolia are roughly speaking of one type. They are village-dwellers and corn-growers at one time of the year, and tent-dwellers and cattle-grazers at another. There is not that strong permanent distinction between shepherd and agriculturist which is found farther to the east. The political history of Anatolia has been largely determined by the fact that it is situated at the converging points of ail the land routes between Central Asia and South-East Europe. It has thus become the channel for race movements of all kinds. Invading hordes of nomads shook the foundations of its society at one time, while at another wandering bands of Dervishes inspired it with the ideas and thoughts of the Madrasas (colleges) of Isfahan and Tabriz. Periods of disturbance alternated with periods of reconstruction, during which the invading elements became modified by the native elements of the plateau. Fierce Tartars were tamed by a few generations of life on the quiet upland pastures of Angora; the human driftwood that crossed the plateau has been gradually converted by agricultural pursuits into materials for a military Empire. Anatolia has received from the earliest times the outpourings of Europe and Asia; but she has always reduced them to her one single type of humanity—agricultural, pastoral and military.

Coming to the regions to the east of Anatolia, we observe a considerable rise in the table-land. Here the table-lands lie at an average height of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, and the mountain ranges from 7,000 to 10,000 feet. The cause of these high altitudes is the large outpourings of volcanic detritus, which has raised the level of the land by some 1,000 to 2,000 feet, leaving on either side, to the east and west, the lower levels of the Persian and Anatolian table-lands. The climate of Armenia is in the main sub-arctic. The long cold winters render wheat and barley the only cereals that will endure the atmospheric conditions. Irrigation is less necessary than in Anatolia, for the rains of the short summer months generally provide for the needs of vegetation. The severe climate of the plateau breeds a hard and vigorous race of agriculturists and shepherds. But, unlike Anatolia, Armenia has never been able to unite her nomad and settled populations. The regions suitable for pastoral pursuits are geographically quite distinct from the agricultural regions, and so two economic types have been formed and have become quite stereotyped.

The great mountain system of the eastern Taurus from Diarbekr to the Persian frontier is generally known as Khurdistan. It consists of parallel ranges and rugged valleys between 7,000 and 10,000 feet high, where the rigorous climate permits only sheep and cattle-grazing. In favoured spots barley can be grown; and those that occupy themselves with this, hibernate during the winter in underground houses. But over the greater part of these regions the natives live in tents and migrate to the lowlands in the winter. In the parallel range of the Ala-Dag, farther to the north, although this is not, strictly speaking, Khurdistan, the same conditions as those in the Taurus are repeated on a smaller scale. Throughout these two mountain regions the predominant population are of Iranian extraction and are known as Khurds. The climatic conditions under which they live are very severe. A great struggle for existence is necessary, to enable them to wring sustenance for their families from the land. Thus there is created a hardy and virile race, always ready for expansion, to relieve the pressure of population. Hence also its tendency to restlessness and to turbulent encroachments on its neighbours, which is so frequently observed among the Khurds.

The other region of the Armenian plateau lies at the lower levels of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet, where the country opens out into wide, sweeping downs, covered with layers of volcanic soil. Here the Armenians are found in numbers varying from 25 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the population. It is often imagined that the Armenians are a commercial people like the Greeks; but this idea is far from accurate. The Armenians are essentially agricultural, and their ancestors, from the dawn of history, have cultivated corn in the basin of Lake Van and the plain of Mush. In these regions life can only be sustained by hard work, and the Armenian peasant is forced to be more practical and industrious than his neighbours in the fertile oases of Persia. On the other hand Nature is not so hard upon him as she is upon the Khurd, whom she almost overwhelms in the struggle for existence. The soil of the Van and Mush plains can even produce sufficient to enable the people to support a leisured class and develop a culture of their own. There is no exuberance of luxury, such as in the Persian oases tends to produce all kinds of hot-house culture. But the numerous monasteries of the Van basin and the Mush plain testify to the cult of art and letters among the Armenians at a very early date. The Armenian's ideas of life have settled down into a simple creed—a practical form of Christianity. He has brought reason and logic to bear upon the problems of life, and in this respect he is not unlike the Bulgarian, whose mode of existence is very similar. Both these peoples differ markedly from the Greeks and Georgians with their acute intellect and passion for controversy. The separate development of the Armenian Church, and its steady refusal to unite with the Greek and Georgian Churches, is undoubtedly connected with the difference in temperament of the two peoples.

In the region to the east of Armenia and Khurdistan the land sinks into the lower levels of Persia. The mountain ranges that run across Anatolia from west to east, and are covered in part by the volcanic eruptions of Armenia, reappear with a slight south-easterly bend in Western Persia. The Iranian plateau is less sharply divided than Armenia by great ranges of mountains. True, the Elburz range on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and the Bakhtiari mountains along the northern shores of the Persian Gulf, form barriers against movements from north and south. But apart from these impediments, movements along the plateau are easy, and roads lead travellers south-east to India, north-east to Turkestan, west to Armenia, and south-west to Mesopotamia. Persia therefore, not less than Armenia, has been the track for races moving from the farther parts of Asia through the southern "gateway" into Europe. But while Armenia has been the scene of passing hordes, destroying and enslaving, Persia has succeeded in assimilating the invaders to herself, and passing the newly formed humanity on to the West. It has therefore played a very important part in the history of the peoples inhabiting the southern "gateway", and it is necessary to see what circumstances have brought this about. The climate of the Iranian plateau presents a marked contrast to that of Anatolia, and an even greater contrast to that of Armenia. The Central Asian table-land east of Armenia, as I mentioned above, tilts slightly south-east, causing the mountains and plains of Western Persia to lie between latitudes 30 and 39, i.e. some three or four degrees south of the latitude of Armenia and Anatolia. The levels of the plateaux lie from 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea, i.e., from 1,500 to 2,000 feet higher than those of the Anatolian plains, and 1,000 to 1,500 feet lower than those of Armenia. On the assumption therefore that altitude compensates for latitude, one would expect that the climate of Western Persia would be similar to that of Anatolia. But here another factor comes in. The farther one goes east across the Central Asian plateau, the less one feels the moistening influences of sea breezes. Thus the rainfall coming from the sea, which is precarious in Anatolia, is entirely absent over the greater part of Persia, while, owing to the more southerly latitudes, tremendous dry heat is experienced in the summer months. The little rivers flowing from the low mountain ranges of the plateau trickle down on to the plain, and would dry up in the parching desert, were they not instantly caught up by the thousand irrigation canals built by the natives to water their vineyards, melon-gardens and rice-fields. Conditions exist for intensive cultivation unknown in Anatolia and Armenia, and thus the cultivation of fruit and rice has become the great industry of the Persian oases. The unsurpassed excellence of Persia's sub-tropical produce has given rise to a great trade with the inhabitants of the Russian plain to the north. This has materially enriched its people and has enabled them, in spite of invasions and disturbances, to develop a high culture. Throughout all the ages, in spite of Mongol, Tartar and Arab invasions and devastations, Nature through the agency of the fertile oases has restored to Iran the damage inflicted on her by man, and has given the Persian that material wealth which has enabled him to build up a culture of undying fame. Every foreign race that has subdued Persia politically, has within a short period become culturally assimilated to her. The barbarian Hulagu Khan who overran her in the 13th century was the founder of the Ilkhan dynasty, which within a generation had accepted Islam and acquired Persian names. Iran has always been the creator of abstract ideas, philosophies, mysteries, and schools of thought, which she has sent forth to the East and to the West.

But the oasis-dwellers do not form the only element in the population. Like Armenia, Persia has been afflicted by race questions, though the results have been different. Both countries contain two races living side by side, one a settled, and the other a nomad population. What the Khurds in the upper Tigris valley are to the Armenians, the Lurs and Bakhtiaris on the edge of the Iranian table-land are to the Persians of the oases. But while in Armenia the nomad and settled populations maintain each its separate existence, in Persia there is continually going on a fusion of the one type with the other. The mountain tribes are constantly descending and raiding the plain; but instead of being resisted, as in Armenia, numbers of them adopt Persian customs and culture, and finally become absorbed as natives of the oasis. The Armenian climate on the other hand creates a stubborn people, that resists nomad invasions; hence the continual conflict between Khurd and Armenian, and the sufferings of the settled population. But living in the luxury of the oases, the Persian has lost all desire to fight invaders: he welcomes all, and conquers them by other means than force. The atmosphere of the isolated bazaar-town, with its cool Mosques and dignified Madrasas, calls forth the spirit of compromise in dealing with hungry tribes camped outside the gate. In Persia there has never been a government in the European sense of the word. Some tribal chief among the nomads, or some caravan-thief, collects followers and proclaims himself governor of a province. He becomes governor and perhaps Shah, and founds a dynasty. The people of the oases submit, and go on with their fruit-growing and mysticism. The Persian is always being conquered by the sword, but in turn always subdues the conqueror by his intellect.

North of the Persian and Armenian table-land we come to the isthmus between the Caspian and Black Seas. Along this isthmus runs the great Caucasus range, which rises like a wall out of the Russian plain on the north, and is bordered on the south by the rolling downlands of Georgia. The whole of this region forms the land-communication between the Russian plain on the one side, and the Armenian and Iranian table-land on the other. It is thus a sort of corridor or side-passage between the northern and southern gateways of Europe and Asia. The Caucasian isthmus is, geographically, very complex. The main range contains rocky valleys and secluded corners, where the racial drift of ages has been stranded, and can be seen to this day. A northern spur of the volcanic Armenian highlands, known as the Kars plateau, comes at one point (a little south of Tiflis) within a short distance of the main Caucasus range. South-east of the range also the land rises in the Kara Dag uplift on to the Iranian plateau. Between the Armenian and Iranian plateaux and the main range of the Caucasus there is an expanse of open plain and downland lying at levels of 1,500 to 2,500 feet. Protected by the great Caucasus range on the north from the winds of the steppes, and by the Kars plateau on the south from the cold of Armenia, this region, known as Georgia, is favoured with a mild winter and a hot summer. It has, moreover, an abundant rainfall, thanks to the proximity of the Black Sea and the absence of any large mountains to catch the rain-bearing winds from this quarter. The climate of Georgia is thus between the sub-tropical conditions of the Black Sea coast and the sub-arctic conditions of the Armenian plateau. The vine flourishes, along with cereals, without irrigation, on a rich and easily tilled soil. Forests on the hill-sides assist the husbandry of man. The Georgians, who are the most important representatives of the native races of the isthmus, are thus favoured by nature with an even climate and a good soil. They have in times past reached a high degree of wealth and culture. The absence of the unmeasured luxury of the oases of Persia has prevented them from developing an excessive esthetic tendency. The comparative ease with which they can gather the produce of their cornfields and vineyards contrasts with the difficulties besetting the Armenian peasants on the Van plateau. They are therefore a more easygoing people, with a gentler and more pleasant nature than the Armenians. A temperate climate and a condition of moderate ease, together with intercourse with the West, makes the Georgian very similar in type to the Roumanian, the Servian and the Little Russian. Some, however, of the Western Georgians (Imeretians, Gurians and Mingrelians) show a marked resemblance to the Greek cultural type. Living on the sea-board in constant contact with the Greeks, these people have developed the commercial instinct, and the political, controversial type of mind. But the inhabitants of the rolling hill-country between Kutais and Tiflis are more quiescent in temper. The impressions of nature around them, the sight: of waving cornfields, shady vineyards, forested hills and distant snow-mountains, have become woven into their lives, and have given them the strain of mysticism characteristic of the Slav. In some parts of Georgia, especially in the valley of the Rion, malaria is prevalent, and tends to weaken the vitality of the natives. The country inhabited by the Georgians is therefore very varied, and the human types are numerous. Nevertheless they are all united by one common tie, the Greek tradition of Christianity, which has made them look to the West for culture, and to the North for protection. The mutual sympathy between Slav and Georgian has played no small part in uniting these two peoples politically; and the Russian advance into the Caucasus was very materially assisted by the presence beyond the mountain ranges of a race of co-religionists. Thanks to the sympathy of Georgia, a voluntary union with the Russian Empire became possible, enabling the latter to extend its influence into the Trans-Caucasus and on to the Armenian plateau. The Georgians have always been a people in Asiatic surroundings, looking wistfully towards Europe. In earlier days they looked to Greece for their culture and religion; more lately they have become the political allies of the Eastern Slavs.