File No. 861.00/1671
The Consul General at Moscow ( Summers ) to the Secretary of State 1
[Received April 25, 7.40 a.m.]
402. It is becoming more and more evident that the purpose of the German advance in the south may be not only to secure the natural and industrial wealth of the Ukraine and the Donets Basin but also the occupation of Rostov, Tsaritsyn, and possibly Astrakhan, and a junction with the Turks in the Caucasus. Besides far-reaching secondary results bearing on the situation in Persia and Mesopotamia, Turkestan, and even India, the successful execution of such a movement will place immediately at their disposal mineral oil and the grain and vegetable oil stores of the Kuban region which can be shipped from Novorossiisk by Tuapse and Batum through the Black Sea to Danube. The complete overthrow of public order in the Caucasus and the resulting activity of the Mohammedan elements in preventing supplies reaching the Georgian and Armenian units are enabling the Turks to advance from the south. The Bolshevik suppression of the nationalist movement on the Don, culminating in the death now reported of Kornilov, and the purely nominal resistance offered by these same Bolshevik forces to the Germans, are at the same time enabling the latter to carry out their advance through southern Russia with a minimum of military effort. Reports agree that, although this advance is being effected almost solely by German troops, the work of the Austrian and Ukrainian units being confined to the service of the rear, the number of these troops is almost incredibly small. A detachment of hardly more than 50 men is reported to have taken Nikolaev, city of 100,000 including over 30,000 workmen.
Viewing the situation in the south it seems certain that the readiness of the Germans to undertake so extended a movement with so few troops is based on complete confidence in the ineffectiveness of the Soviet government against them. The Germans can not count on the active support of the Polish troops, which have flatly declined to go to the western front, do not care on the other hand to fight the Russians, and are therefore remaining in large part neutral. Secondly, the political situation in the Ukraine is developing unfavorably to the Germans as their efforts to reestablish the old order and their intensive requisitions are accentuating the naturally pro-Russian [Page 627] resolutions of a population which was driven temporarily into the Austrian-German camp by the Bolshevik attack on the Ukraine. At a recent election in Kiev the Russian list carried against Ukrainian which stood for an Austrian orientation. The Bolshevik organization at Minsk reports to Moscow:
This whole territory is covered by a network for requisitioning organs which affront the local commandants; their troops systematically and mercilessly confiscate every article of food or clothing. The whole of loading, packing, and transport of the requisitioned goods is done by the local population and the carts and animals taken therefor are frequently not returned. Everything requisitioned is taken to Germany. The whole territory is on verge of catastrophic famine not only as to food but all kinds of supplies. No goods come from Germany. In the cities socialists, trade socialists [unions?], and other unions suppressed. Trade disbanded and old type customs reinstated. Socialist leaders arrested and principal ones deported to Germany for trial.
One of the most dependable liberal newspapers of Moscow writes:
The present Ukrainian cabinet principally composed of Social Revolutionists finds no support with any section of the population. The peasants are discontented with it because it brought in Germans into the country where they are requisitioning all the grain and other food products. The workmen detest it because of number of their effectives who have been executed by the German troops. The educated classes reject it because they can only support a coalition ministry on record that is one not altogether the socialist parliament [sic]. If they are forced to support it, it is for the simple reason that if the present cabinet falls it would be necessary whether they wished or not to form a coalition ministry which would inevitably take on a national character and would not tolerate the seizure of the Ukraine by Germany.
If the growing popular discontent in the Ukraine and the disposition of the Polish troops to side rather against than with Germany could be translated into action, obviously the Central powers would have the utmost difficulty in handling present lines of communication and an advance eastward would probably be quite out of the question, but, in the general opinion, they may have to be realized [resigned?] until there is a different government in Russia. As much as the population has come to hate Germany they hate the Bolshevik even more [and] unless driven to desperation they will hastily [hardly] attempt concerted armed opposition to Germany in the absence of a more stable and trustworthy government in their rear upon whose sincere and active support they could count. The Polish troops are in the same situation. It is plain that they can not openly oppose the Central powers while the Russian Government by whom support would be a military necessity remains practically inert [Page 628] against the Germans and is in the view of many of the Poles actually sold out to them.
- Sent via the Consulate at Vladivostok.↩