Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume III

Paris Peace Conf. 180.03101/10

BC–5

Secretary’s Notes of a Conversation Held in M. Pichon’s Room at the Quai d’Orsay, on Monday, January 20, 1919, at 10:30 a.m.

January 20, 1919, 10:30 a.m.

• Present
  • America, United States of
    • President Wilson.
    • Mr. R. Lansing.
    • Mr. A. H. Frazier.
    • Colonel U. S. Grant.
    • Mr. L. Harrison.
  • British Empire
    • The Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, Prime Minister.
    • The Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
    • Lt. Col. Sir M. P. A. Hankey, K. C. B., Secretary, War Cabinet.
    • Mr. H. Norman.
    • Capt. E. Abraham.
  • France
    • M. Clemenceau, President of the Council and Minister of War.
    • M. Pichon, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
    • M. Dutasta.
    • M. Berthelot.
    • Capt. A. Portier.
  • Italy
    • His Excellency Baron Sonnino, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
    • Count Aldrovandi.
    • Major A. Jones.
  • Japan
    • Baron Makino.
    • His Excellency M. Matsui.
    • M. Saburi.

Interpreter: Professor P. J. Mantoux.

(M. Noulens, French Ambassador in Russia, also attended by invitation.)

1. Allied Attitude to Russia M. Clemenceau said that he proposed to ask M. Noulens to make a statement to the Conference concerning Bolshevism in Russia.

M. Noulens said that he would confine himself to statements of facts. He would also present a few brief documents. Before our victory over Germany we had had a policy in Russia. He was quite aware of the gravity of the present situation, and perfectly ready to alter his own views in order to meet that situation. He would not, in the remarks he was about to make, allow himself to be influenced by any narrow sense of national interest. He felt that in order to save true democracy nothing was more requisite than close cohesion among the Allies. He felt that what he was about to say to the Conference would be backed by all the representatives of the Allied Powers at present in Archangel. The British, American, and Italian Ambassadors had witnessed the same facts, and had been brought into contact with the same doctrines, and they had all drawn the same conclusion. Everybody knew that the advent of Bolshevism had been followed by anarchy both in town and country. Though food existed in Russia, famine ensued. This much was common knowledge. He proposed to say nothing about the confiscation of private property, deposits in the banks, and the repudiation of State debts. What he wished to lay stress on was the extent to which persecution had affected large classes of the Russian people. Those classes might not be a majority of the inhabitants, but they were a considerable minority, comprising all the character and intellect in the country.

President Wilson enquired whether it must be understood that all but the intellectual minority were with the Bolsheviks.

M. Noulens said that what he wished to convey was that all the well-to-do classes, including the richer peasants and working men, were against the Bolsheviks.

Mr. Lloyd George enquired when M. Noulens had left Petrograd.

M. Noulens replied that he had left Petrograd on the 27th February, 1918. Since then he had been at Vologda until the 26th July, after which he had been at Archangel. He and his colleagues had met witnesses of the facts he was going to relate, coming from all parts of Russia. The well-to-do and intellectual classes throughout Bolshevik Russia were odiously ill-treated. They were reduced to the most servile and repulsive occupations. Their quarters were commandeered and placed at the disposal of the Bolsheviks, and even their clothes were taken from them. These things were done not as a result of random pillage, but by deliberate official order. Even before he left Petrograd, that is, before the signature of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,¹ while the Soviet Government was technically in a state of war with Germany, even at that time, naval officers had been handed over to the tender mercies of their crews. They were often tied to the masts of their ships, and in that posture made to direct the navigation. They were denied the exclusive use of their cabins. They were rated with the intellectual classes, and with them placed outside the law. He had with him the text of the Constitution laid down by the Soviet, published in the Isvestia on 19th July, 1917 [1918].² The phrase constantly used in this document was “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” He read from this document a paragraph requiring local Soviets to guarantee the absolute power of the labouring population, and to prevent by all means the restoration to any influence of the exploiting classes. To further this end, the working classes were to be armed and all other classes disarmed. A Red Army of workmen and peasants was to be formed to maintain this regime. As a consequence, M. Noulens said, all working men in all the towns he had visited were armed with rifles and other weapons, whereas if a bourgeois were found in possession of a revolver he would incontinently be shot.

Mr. Lloyd George asked M. Noulens what, in his estimation, the strength of the Red Army might be.

M. Noulens replied that he had no exact figures.

The figure of one million had been mentioned in the Press. This figure was certainly an absurd exaggeration. In any case, this Army was not composed of real soldiers, but of men driven by famine to take service. They did not want to fight, and they would certainly dissolve if faced by regular troops.

Mr. Lloyd George enquired whether there had not been fighting with the Red Army on the Archangel front.

M. Noulens replied that Archangel had been occupied by a French battalion, 872 strong, on the 1st August, 1918. The town was then held by 5,000 or 6,000 Red Guards. This force had not waited to be attacked, and had retired in one movement 125 versts. The town of Archangel had been kept in order by 100 men, though its population numbered about 100,000. The remaining 700 had gone in pursuit of the retiring Red Guards. The Red Guards had never turned on their pursuers; but the latter were not reinforced, the Bolsheviks had cut all the bridges behind them, the rainy season had supervened rendering the country impassable, and the pursuing troops had therefore been forced to retire. With 10,000 men at that time it would have been possible to march to Vologda and Viatka. At the present time General Ironside had only 10,000 men at Archangel. There were also 10,000 at Murmansk. If the Bolsheviks really had an army of 1,000,000, they could easily detach a force to wipe out General Ironside’s command; in fact, they only had about 15,000 to 20,000 men against him, who made no attempt to attack.

Mr. Lloyd George said that the figures supplied to him by the British Staff were 16,000 Allied troops at Archangel, faced by 5,000 Bolsheviks.

M. Noulens said that he believed the Bolsheviks to be really more numerous on that front, but if there were only 5,000, this fact reinforced his contention that they certainly had not under their orders an army of 1,000,000 men.

Mr. Lloyd George said that, according to figures supplied to him, there were 15,000 Allied troops at Murmansk, faced by no more than 3,000 Bolsheviks. He believed these figures must be correct, as a British commander was in charge of the whole force, and the figures were supplied to him by the British Staff.

M. Noulens said that if the Allies had been unable to attack hitherto, and were still unable to do so, it was by reason of the marshy soil. The country furnished no material for the repair of the broken bridges, but he understood that General Ironside proposed to repair them and to make a move in the winter.

From all the evidence available to him, he had formed the opinion that the Bolshevik troops would not fight the Allies.

He now wished to return to the subject of the treatment of the bourgeoisie. In the elections for the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks had exercised the utmost pressure on the electorate. Nevertheless, they had not secured a majority in the Assembly. In consequence they had broken up the Assembly and set up in its place a government of Soviets. What might be regarded as the present Parliament of Russia had been constituted in July 1918 by delegations from the local Soviets. According to the Constitution framed by that body, a number of classes of persons were disfranchised. He quoted article 65, which enacted that all persons profiting by the results of other men’s labour; all living on private income or trading for private interests; monks; spiritual servants of the Church; agents of the former police and constabulary; and members of the reigning house of Russia, were, even if otherwise eligible, debarred from voting or being elected. This, in fact, put all these classes outside the law.

Mr. Lloyd George said that the electorate in Russia was purely an electorate of peasants and workmen.

M. Noulens said that even such peasants as employed labourers or servants and did not do the whole of their work with their own hands were disfranchised.

Mr. Lloyd George enquired whether the bulk of the peasantry of Russia did not do all their work themselves.

M. Noulens said that a great many employed as many as two or three labourers. Properties in Russia were of considerable extent, and since the confiscation of the larger properties a great deal of land had gone out of cultivation. Not only was this form of persecution resorted to, but all Press organs representing moderate or even Socialistic opinion not acceptable to the Bolsheviks were ruthlessly suppressed. He quoted the Pravda, which, on grounds of national security, demanded the complete obliteration of all hostile factions, and rejoiced at the suppression of all but the Bolshevik Press. Hence it could fairly be said that the Bolshevik Government set up inequality as a principle. This principle could not be accepted by the Allied Governments, which had fought for freedom and equality. It might be asked how such a regime was able to persist at all. The answer was, by terror alone. The majority of the people were both disarmed and torpid. Without the protection of Lettish and Chinese mercenaries and highly-paid Red Guards the commissaries of the people would disappear. He proposed to cite a few cases of outrages which might fairly be described as systematic and official.

Last January Trotsky had threatened that, unless the people accepted the Soviet Government, that Government would be enforced by a terror unexampled in history. Mere denunciation of anyone as a member of the middle class or as an ex-officer was enough to warrant his imprisonment. Persons of these classes filled the prisons in Petrograd, Moscow, and Vologda, and they were fed with a little bread and an occasional herring. Many died of privation, and their bodies were often left among the living. At their own caprice the guards would shoot a dozen or so to make room for more. No form of trial was considered requisite. There were, in addition, exceptional occasions on which very considerable massacres were indulged in. He cited the case of Ouritsky, Minister of the Interior and President of the Commission for the Repression of the Anti-Revolutionary Movement. He was remarkable for his cruelty. He was assassinated by a student. The assassin was caught, and 500 officers were seized and despatched to Kronstadt, where they were either drowned or shot as a reprisal for the murder of Ouritsky. The assassin was still imprisoned and undergoing torture. His finger-nails and toe-nails were torn out in order to induce the betrayal of his comrades. He had so far refused to betray them and was therefore kept alive undergoing fresh torture. This was not an isolated case. At the fortress of Peter and Paul a company of professional torturers was maintained. He quoted a telegram received on the previous day from Commandant Boyard, Consul at Ekaterinberg, describing the devastated condition of the town and the miserable state of the population. On triumphal arches erected to celebrate the anniversary of the accession of the Bolsheviks to power were inscriptions reading: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” In fact, no man could work unless he employed himself in Bolshevik interests. He wished to remind the meeting that not only Russians were the victims in these excesses, but also Allied citizens. He instanced the case of Mr. Darcy,³ who died of cold and hunger in prison; and that of Captain Cromie,⁴ the circumstances of whose death were doubtless known to all present. Finally, he wished to point out that the Bolshevik Government was definitely imperialist. It meant to conquer the world, and to make peace with no Governments save Governments representing only the labouring classes. It stated openly that the only legitimate war was civil war. It would respect no League of Nations. Should we even be weak enough to undertake any agreements with such a Government, they would, on the very next day, send among us propagandists, money, and explosives. According to their open professions they intended to spread revolution by every means.

Mr. Lloyd George asked M. Noulens whether it was Lenin or Trotsky who really ran the Government.

M. Noulens replied that Lenin was the more popular of the two. He was the pontiff of the creed and Trotsky was the man of action.

(The meeting adjourned at mid-day).

(It was agreed that the next meeting should take place on the following day at 10:30 a.m.).

1. Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, vol. i, p. 442.
2. Ibid., p. 587.
3. Pierre Darcy, French commercial attaché at Petrograd.
4. British naval attaché at Petrograd.