Chapter 1

The long nights seemed reluctant to abandon the city. For a few hours each day a gray light of dawn or dusk filtered through the dirty white cloud ceiling and spread over things like the dim reflection of a distant glacier. Even the snow, which continued, to fall, lacked brightness. This white, silent, weightless shroud stretched out to infinity in time and space. By three o’clock it was already necessary to light the lamps. Evening deepened the hues of ash, deep blue, and the stubborn gray of old stones on the snow. Night took over, inexorable and calm: unreal. In the darkness the delta resumed its geographical form. Dark cliffs of stone broken off at right angles lined the frozen canals. A sort of somber phosphorescence emanated from the broad river of ice.

Sometimes the north winds blowing in from Spitsbergen and farther still – from Greenland perhaps, perhaps from the pole. across the Arctic Ocean, Norway, and the White Sea – gusted across the bleak estuary of the Neva. All at once the cold bit into the granite; the heavy fogs which had come up from the south across the Baltic vanished and the denuded stones, earth, and trees were instantly covered with crystals of frost, each of which was a barely visible marvel composed of numbers, lines of force, and whiteness. The night changed its aspect, shedding its veils of unreality. The north star appeared, the constellations let in the immensity of the world. The next day the bronze horsemen on their stone pedestals, covered with silver powder, seemed to step out of a strange carnival; from the tall granite columns of St Issac’s Cathedral to its pediment peopled with saints and even to its massive gilded cupola-all was covered with frost. The red granite façades and embankments took on a tint of pink and white ash under this magnificent cloak. The gardens, with their delicate filigree of branches, appeared enchanted. This phantasmagoria delighted the eyes of people emerging from their stuffy dwellings, just as millennia ago men dressed in pelts emerged fearfully in wintertime from their warm caves full of good animal stench.
Not a single light in whole quarters. Prehistoric gloom.
People slept in frozen dwellings where each habitable corner was like a corner in an animal’s lair: the ancestral stench clung even to their fur-lined cloaks which were never taken off or which they put on to go into the next room, to pry up a few floor boards in order to keep the fire going-to get a book-or to empty the night’s excretions at the end of the corridor onto piles of excrement likewise covered by the lovely frost whose every crystal was a marvel of purity. The cold entered freely through broken windowpanes.

The city, crisscrossed by broad, straight arteries and winding canals, surrounded by islands, cemeteries, and huge empty stations, sprawled over the tip of a narrow gulf on the edge of a white solitude ...
but the nights, unreal or studded with constellations, reigned implacable and calm, and during those nights alders armed with heavy Mauser pistols, carrying fifty lovely pointed bullets, a flask of brandy, four pounds of black brec4 twenty lumps of sugar, a well-forged Danish passport, and a hundred dollars sewed into the lining of their trousers, moved resolutely with long strides into that desel4 where nothing urns worse than meeting another man;
and women clutching their children by the hand, old men, cowardly men, all of them cringing against the great wind of the terror, deadlier still than the polar blasts, likewise entered that desert of ice led by traitors and spies, guided by hate and fear, sometimes hiding their diamonds, like convicts their money, in the secret and obscene folds of their flesh.

Seen from high above, from the red-starred airplane circling overhead every morning, the Neva looked like a thin white snake darting two thin blue tongues into the desert from its open mouth.
The half-empty slums were hungry. The factory chimneys no longer smoked, and when by chance one started smoking the women, huddling in their rags at the door of a communal store, watched that bizarre smoke climb with bleak curiosity. “They’re repairing cannons. They get extra rations ... – How much? How much? – four hundred grams of bread a day; yeah; but its not for us; it’s only for them. We know who works in that factory, the bastards ...”
Grimy red flags hung over the doors of old palaces, oxblood in color, built by Master Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who delighted in eighteenth-century Italian elegance with its gracious structures beribboned like shepherdesses. They had been mansions of empresses’ favorites, of the conquerors of the Crimea and the Caucasus, of great lords owning millions of souls, ignorant intriguing, and thieving nobles whom the Secret Chancellery subjected to torture one day before exiling them to the forests of the east. When guides from the Department of Political Education explained to simple folk who had come to the capital to attend government conferences that these palaces were the works of the architect Rastrelli, the visitors quite naturally heard “the works of one who was shot,” for in Russian rastrellanny means “shot.” The palaces and mansions dating from Napoleonic times, mote austere, with noble symmetrical pediments placed over mighty colonnades, bore the same red rags over their doors. The different periods of the Empire had thus marked the streets with imposing structures which might make you dream at night of the tombs of the Pharaohs of a Theban dynasty. But the ashes of this dynasty were still fresh in a bog in the Urals; and these tombs, those of a regime to be sure, bore signs: R.C.P. (b). SECOND DISTRICT COMMITTEE; R.F.S.S.R. PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION, ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES FOR BACKWARD CHILDREN; R.F.S.S.R. SCHOOL FOR RED COMMANDERS OF THE WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ ARMY. People were working in these dead palaces – dead because they had been conquered, uncrowned because they were no longer palaces. The machine guns squatting in the vestibules often in the shadow of huge stuffed bears who used to hold out frays for visiting cards, seemed like beasts of steel, silent but ready to bite. The noisy clatter of typewriters filled rooms designed for princely comfort; a coarse conqueror, Comrade Ryjik, was sleeping with his boots on in an elegant Louis XV room on the same divan where, eighteen months earlier, an old epicurean of the august race of the Ruriks amused himself by staring full of enchantment and despair at naked girls. Now this epicurean was stretched, out someplace else, no one knew where, in an artillery range, naked, with a bristly beard, and a hole clean through his head, under two feet of trampled earth, four feet of snow, and the nameless weight of eternity.

One flight up dossiers were filed in boudoirs which bad been divided into offices by unpainted wood partitions; an odd collection of requisitioned mattresses was laid out on the floors of the great reception rooms, transforming them into dormitories. Huge crystal chandeliers still tinkled weakly when trucks passed. Humbled captives, who in the old days might well have climbed the marble staircases of this very mansion with dignified steps under the impassive gaze of liveried footmen, now waited in the cellar to be transferred to the Special Commission. [1] Every once in a while the bored sentry sitting elbows propped on a dirty table at the door to the cellar stairs would get up, wearily shoulder the strap of his rifle, carried muzzle down, and go to open the padlock of this prison.
“All right!” he would say, not unkindly. “Financiers to the crapper, three at a time!”
With familiar shoves, be herded the heavy stumbling forms down the narrow corridor; they paused a moment at the sight of the dazzling snow in the courtyard ... Snoring came from the former kitchens, where the guardroom had been established.

Ryjik could no longer keep track of the time. His days had neither beginning nor end. He slept whenever he could, by day, by night sometimes at the beginnings of departmental committee meetings when the speaker was long-winded. At such times be would doze off in his chair, head thrown back, red-mustached mouth open; and his limp hands, draped across his knees, expressed in their sudden stillness an enormous weariness. For a long while the telephone – that bizarre little voice designed to capture the eat, that voice that made you think of insects scratching underground – had made him nervous and anxious. Now he dictated and received orders over the phone and he copied down telephone messages in his large schoolboy hand on the backs of cigarette boxes: “Transmit to Committees of Three: Complete requisition of warm clothing within twerty-four hours.” “Remove a barrel of herring from warehouse 12, cut back the men’s rations.” “Arrest the first ten hostages on the list transmitted by the Committee of Five ...”
He listened, his eyes wandering, dazed from the days fatigue, in front of the telephone table, dotted with the crumbs of black bread. “Hello, Gorbunov? Get me Gorbunov. Is the raid over?” The shapeless insect scratched away at the earth in its hole and somewhere far off an unknown voice answered brutally: “Gorbunov has a bullet in the groin; buzz off.” And the line went dead. Ryjik cursed. The bell rang again with joyful urgency: “Hello? Is that you, Ryjik? The Saburov Theater is giving away twenty tickets to The Little Chocolate Girl ...” The door had creaked behind him, he sensed a comforting but vaguely irritating presence: “Xenia?” “It’s me. Go to bed, Ryjik.” Xenia wore a grass-green soldier’s tunic and steel-rimmed glasses; the holster of an automatic hung from her belt. She was carrying a book Ryjik, in his great weariness, dreamed of two soft firm globes of flesh and a warm mouth. Xenia looked at him sedately: “Tomorrow at six. Department meeting.” He blushed. “Okay Good night.” He went down the marble staircase. A kind of senseless anger was brewing within him against this young woman who was so simple and frank around him that her very presence banished the idea that they could ever be, even for an instant face to face as man to woman, disarmed by each other and abandoned to one another.

In the deserted library, next to the great Dutch earthenware stove, two soldiers were playing chess in the glow of a candle. The chess board was a mosaic of rare stones incrusted lit an elegant little stand; the ivory men of Chinese design, fine-chiseled, detailed, and grotesque. Ryjik leaned against the stove to let the heat penetrate him and closed his eyes. What a job! And what if I’m tired of being strong after all? What if ...? In these moments of extreme weariness he repeated three unanswerable words to himself: “It is necessary.” His battery magically recharged itself. This weariness was only the day’s fatigue: sleep could dissipate it. The night reigned, magnificently silent over the snows, the square, the city, the Revolution.
“Bushed, Ryjik?” asked one of the players, advancing a pawn. (He was a dark little man with wisps of straw glistening in his unkempt overgrown hair.) “Me too. Milk was up to twenty rubles in the market today. Sugar was forty. I just got back from Gdov. It’s pretty, the countryl At Matveevka, get this, a cominissar bad gone through requisitioning cows and watches. The yokels nearly tore me to pieces. Our supply details are pillaging, running away, or getting massacred. But I did run into some decent guys with guts – from the wire factory ... They were sleeping in the station to play it safe. They were smart.”
The other player coughed into a dirty handkerchief and said, without raising his small, craggy, hard head:
“I’ve had it. My wife covered sixty versts by rail and eighteen on foot to get forty pounds of flour from the village. They confiscated them all when she got back. Now she’s got a fever. It may well be typhus. I can’t even put the kid into the children’s shelter, they’re dying like flies ... Check ...”
“Gorbunov has a bullet in his groin,” said Ryjik.
“He’s a hustler,” replied the dark man casually. “I saw him inventorying typewriters. He didn’t know the difference between inventorying and requisitioning. He was making off with everything, even cameras. I told him: ‘You’re a slob, we’ll never make a class-conscious citizen out of you.’ All he knows is how to spout about world revolution.”
Ryjik was warm now and murky second thoughts were stirring under his brow, in those dark corners where we tirelessly, pitilessly repress a strange multitude of desires, dreams, suspicions, violent impulses, stifled joys, and curbed brutalities. He told the men curtly: “You: stand guard at the prison from two o’clock until five; you: at the door,” and went out. The icy night refreshed his face, but he didn’t feel any better. People were standing watch in dark doorways in accordance with the edict of the Executive. The night had become cloudy, the snow no longer glistened: it was like walking through soft opaque ashes which muffled the sound.
*
Around 3 A.M., at the moment when night is so vast, calm, and profound it seems definitive, the telephone finally silent, Xenia, alone in the great, parquet-floored hail of headquarters, was writing a few lines on the back of a pass:
Revolution: Fire
Burn out the man of old. Burn yourself.
Man’s renewal by fire.
She held her twenty-year-old head in her hands as she sat pensive over these lines. Regeneration of man through the red-hot iron. Plow up the old earth, tear down the old structure. Recreate life anew. And in all likelihood perish yourself. I will perish. Man will live. Yet still a dull anxiety. Is that too the man of old resisting? Victory, smile into the void: Very well, I’ll perish, I’m ready. “Ready.” She said it out loud. The word came back to her from the silence and the limitless night with a long inner echo. She didn’t sense that there was anyone behind her.
Ryjik approached quietly, treading so lightly that the floor didn’t creak under his suede boots; slightly stooped, brow hot hollow-eyed, carrying a great simple decision within him. He placed his hand heavily on the young woman’s shoulder. The warmth of that shoulder passed instantly through all his nerves. To gain a few seconds, the infinity of a few seconds, he asked:
“Writing, Xenia?”
“Oh, it’s you!”
Without any surprise, not even turning all the way around, she nodded at the lines she had just scrawled.
“Read it, Ryjik. And tell me if it’s all right.”
“Burn out the man of old. Burn ...”
Ryjik straightened up, totally subdued.
“All right? All right? I don’t know. I don’t like romanticism. Empty phases. Everything is much simpler: Imperialism, class war, dictatorship, proletarian consciousness ... See you tomorrow.”
He turned on his heels, a solid block. The leather thong of his Nagan revolver slapped against his leg. He went through the black corridors with the dogged step of a sleepwalker threw himself on his bed in the dark, and passed out.
... That night only seven cars of food supplies arrived in the city. (One was pillaged.) Forty suspects were arrested. Two men were shot in a cellar.

Note
1. All-Russian Special Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage, established December 1917 and best known by its Russia acronym “Che-Ka” or Cheka. Replaced in February 1921 by the G.P.U. or political police. – Trans.

Next Chapter
Index

Conquered City by Victor Serge: Introduction

I dedicate this book to my
Comrades in France and Spain,
For we must try to rescue the
true face of the Revolution from
oblivion and legend;
This is necessary to purge
our strength,
to obey the highest necessity more
freely,
not to ask it to justify
our errors,
to better accomplish what
must be accomplished,
And so that man will be reborn
one day in every man.

V.S.

I'm a regular user and uploader to the website LibCom, and in addition to reading up on Labour history, revolutionary moments and the odd bit of theory I've been keenly working my way through the sites working class literature list. My reading list has grown quite a bit since discovering and adding to it. One book I was very eager to read was Conquered City by Victor Serge a Anarchist based in France and Spain, imprisoned several times who in 1917 became a Bolshevik and thought in the Russian Revolution, before becoming disenchanted with the Bolsheviks dictatorial turn. Conquered City was his fictional account of the first year of Bolshevik rule in the city of Petrograd. It was written at a time when Serge found himself increasingly under pressure from the Soviet authorities and had to emigrate back to France.

The Marxist Internet Archive had posted the first four chapters but had uploaded since 2004, the first four chapters were very intriguing, and being unable to find another online version of the book I went out and bought it. As luck would have it, my copy is the same as the one used for the Marxist upload and since the book is one of my favourites I've decided to write up the rest of the chapters. I've completed up to chapter 7 and I'm currently in the middle of Chapter 8. I'm uploading them on LibCom but don't see any reason not the repost them here too.

I'm doing this a chapter at a time so it will be awhile before I'm finished though hopefully not another ten years.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty


Download links:
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Epub
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The revolt at Radomir - Tico Jossifort

Commemorations of the First World War leave a lot out, they're also focussed on the nation doing the commeroting which is why in Britain the Eastern Front is mostly ignored. The only event that is talked about and discussed at length is the the Russian Revolution, specifically the second one which put Lenin in power as that led to the Russian Empire withdrawing from combat. Which freed up thousands of German troops to come have ago in France.

Oh and the disaster that was Gallipoli, but the rest of the conflict with Turkey is  mostly ignored as well.

But the actions of nations that didn't have a direct impact on Britain like Romania,Serbia, Austro-Hungary, Italy, China, Japan and Bulgaria are almost completely absent unless you're really into your military history. Here's a piece by Tico Jossifort that I feel details an important part of Bulgaria's history during this period.

The story of a little-known Bulgarian anti-war movement; including a 1918 mass mutiny and armed rebellion. This led to fraternisation with Russian troops, the collapse of the Bulgarian war effort, the abdication of the King and a potential revolutionary opportunity.

The Leninist author attributes the movement's failure largely to the non-Bolshevik conceptions and strategies of the social-democratic and peasant leaders. The rebels faced ruthless state repression; but it appears that, rather than poor leadership, it was the limitation of the struggle to the military terrain and the eventual acceptance of the compromises of political leaders by the mass of rebels that was the real defeat.
'RADOMIR' is a tragic event which occurred in Bulgaria just before the end of the First World War. This had been preceded on two occasions by a dress rehearsal which Bulgaria could well have done without , the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, wars whose only purpose was to serve as the prelude to the Great War. The Social Democratic Parties of the region had proclaimed:

Let us liberate ourselves from particularism and narrowness, and abolish the frontiers which divide people of similar language and culture, yet who are in part united on the economic plane; let us finally sweep away all forms of foreign domination, and decide our own destiny.

This was no more and no less than the hoped-for Balkan Federation already advocated by these parties. But far too many interests were involved, and the solidarity between neighbours and the 'little' people was not strong enough to resist the intrigues of the great and powerful. Only the result of three wars can explain the horror and despair of the Radomir mutineers.
But if we consider what followed, for the history of this little country did not slop then, we are forced to acknowledge the following - the Russian Revolution of 1917 was preceded by that of 1905, but not by a mutiny of the size of that of Radomir in the army. In Russia, the contradictions became explosive because of their scale - a huge country with a strong concentration of industries and of workers. It was a peasant activist (an agrarian) who led the mutiny of Radomir, not a militant worker. At that time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, every Eastern European country had a strong majority of peasants. The Chinese revolution should be considered as a rising of the peasant masses. Bulgaria was thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, on an arch separating the two worlds, Asia and Europe. Was it the contradiction between the city and the country which was working itself out at this point?

'Revolution in this Feeble and Undeveloped Country has Driven Them Insane': The Battle of Dobro Pole

In the autumn of 1918, several signs of discontent were apparent on the southern front of the Bulgarian army. Following the battle of Dobro Pole (which means Pleasant Field) and the severe losses sustained in the ranks of the army, a ministerial reshuffle brought to power Alexander Malinov, who opposed the government from the right. How did this happen?
Already before the outbreak of war, Bulgaria had been assiduously courted by the two sides: by the Entente bloc, whose principal members were France and Britain, and by the Central Powers, whose two main members were Germany and Austria (the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
From the start, the two main opposition parties, the Social Democratic Workers Party (Socialist Tesniak) and the People's Agrarian Union, had advocated the strictest neutrality in the war. However, the dominant classes in the Balkans were far too tied materially and financially to the belligerent blocs to allow the region and the countries within it to stay out of the hostilities. The ordinary people were also greatly apprehensive. Rumours circulated about the intention of the government to contract loans that effectively constituted a barely-concealed bribe by the `generous' lenders, Germany and Austria. Other similar gossip circulated concerning the projected construction of railway lines or concessions for the exploitation of coal mines behind the back of Parliament, which led to protests from the opposition.
On 1 August, the entry of Japan into the war extended the theatre of operations to the whole of Asia. Tensions continued to rise, and on 10 November 1914, the leader of the Tesniaks, Blagoev, put forward the idea that the Bulgarian Parliament should propose to the other Balkan parliaments the formation of a Balkan Federation, of which more anon. In the summer of 1915, the Radoslavov government entered into secret negotiations with the Central Bloc powers of Europe. Following these events, contacts were established, with the support of the Palace, between the government and the Agrarian Union. A meeting was organised with representatives from the entire opposition. In reality, these soundings served to test the feelings of the deputies after the secret conclusion of the convention for friendship and union which simply announced the entry of Bulgaria into the war. Shortly afterwards, the royal mobilisation decree was issued. The dice had been thrown...
The left-wing socialist Tesniaks issued a leaflet at that time which asserted that nothing should divide the Balkan peoples, and that the capitalist and dynastic interests of the ruling classes and dynasties were responsible for hurling them into a fratricidal war. A little earlier, the Agrarian Standard, the paper of the Agrarian Union, declared that a single duty rested on Bulgaria and its government: to avoid all involvement in the war. It demanded that Bulgaria should 'stop the house from burning down', and that it ought to avoid any action that went against its well understood interests: 'We condemn every rash act of the government.'
This was obvious to everybody. An overwhelming majority of the population shared this view. The open wounds from the time of the two fratricidal wars between neighbouring peoples had not healed, leaving unhappy memories. The government, however, completely devoted as it was to its king and unable to tolerate the open and frank way that a peasant spoke to him, shed its democratic facade. It dragged the leader of the Agrarian Union, Alexander Stamboliski,[1] before its courts, and condemned him to life imprisonment.
A day of general mobilisation took place on 11 September 1915. The call-up to the colours started with 530 000 soldiers, and others were to follow. They were sent to the southern front, and later went to fight in the north. The memories of the war of 1912 between 'allies' remained in their heads. Against these unhappy memories what effect could the hymns to 'Greater Bulgaria' in the press have? How straight was the road which ran from the town crier in the village to the printed press! However, this time, leaflets, proclamations and manifestos against the war were numerous.

The Tesniak Manifesto Resolution

On 14 December, the Tesniaks submitted a parliamentary motion in three parts. The first part proposed a letter to the parliaments of all the Balkan countries iriviting them to conclude a treaty for union and common defence, the second aimed to contact the governments of the neutral countries calling for a bloc for peace to be formed which would be able to pressure the belligerents to suspend hostilities, and the third called for the suspension of the military mobilisation. When advocating these proposals, the Tesniaks did not hesitate to call for a defensive alliance of the Balkan countries aimed against any invader who threatened their integrity.
Although this memorable act had no effect, the Tesniaks had bravely raised themselves well above the rival right-wing Socialists in their understanding of what was at stake, about the threat which weighed on the little Balkan countries and the measures which had to be taken against the danger that the war posed for them. For the Tesniaks, it was not a question of issuing naive platonic appeals for peace and for concord against discord, which were merely a source of hatred that was being vigorously stoked by the bourgeois chauvinists; the Tesniaks pointed to the key question: federation. They demanded of the Balkan peoples, exhausted by fratricidal wars, that they overcome the effects of the poison of bitterness and resentment, and rise to the occasion.
The Right Socialist Ivan Sakasov showed the irresistible ascendancy of social chauvinism in the Social Democratic parties of the Second International, including his own party:

If we could here, in our own country, or in Germany or France, raise ourselves above the national idea, then perhaps we could throw away our rifles, or better still turn them on the caste that has brought us to this bloody horror; but it is evident that we are children of the soil of sin and, by education and through our psychology, we have submitted to this great idea, and we will be unable to maintain for long the socialist politics which we hitherto have been practising.

The Tesniak Manifesto was a step forward, a victory over evil, that is to say the forces for war, but it remained only an idea. It clearly defined the danger, identified the causes and the protagonists of war and the means of removing the threat, but in order to move from ideas to practice, other parties had to be moved by the same desires. It was precisely this which was lacking, and the parties representing the working-class movement in the Balkans were not able to prevent the involvement of the peninsula in the general melee.

'Some Are Dying, Others Are Getting Rich'

After a while, the social and economic effects of the war started to emerge. The militant Agrarian Raiki Daskalov declared:

The impoverished people desperately cry out and are heard as far as the front line. A deep injustice has occurred. The farmyards and granaries of the peasantry have been forced open. What they have found they have taken. Women and children have been exploited. They have had to grow sugar beet, but they got no sugar; their milk was taken, but they never saw cheese; commandos armed with authority have plundered the countryside. Some are dying, others are getting rich, and a whole people is being reduced to rriisery. And new millionaires have sprung up. As for our allies, their appetite is limitless. They've taken everything, and the country has become a colony exporting primary products to Germany.

'The king is far away and God is on high', said the popular saying, which spread by word of mouth. Women, children and the elderly openly complained to soldiers on leave. Limited to start with, such complaints ended up by being spread in thousands of letters sent to the soldiers, and their confidence soon became a threat. To be sure, at the start they were only complaints, but with the increasing suffering and misery the tone rose and became angry: 'The soldiers are defending the rich, and the people are dying of hunger! The war is a swindle!'
Meanwhile, Stamboliski had been condemned to life imprisonment, but his morale was unaffected. He had numerous contacts with the militants of the Agrarian Union, and he wrote articles and pamphlets in which he denounced the behaviour of the Right Agrarians who flirted with the government.
At the same time, numerous Tesniaks, including Dimitri Blagoev, G Kirrov, Christo Kabakchiev, Vassil Kolarov and George Dimitrov, were working energetically across the country. Large numbers of protests against the war flared up throughout the country.
The war continued to grind on, and the abuses perpetrated by the requisition campaigns aggravated the social tensions. Their political repercussions led to a move to the left within the Agrarian Union. The Green deputies took more notice of the protests of their leader. Their socialist friends became implacable in their denunciation of the chauvinist policies carried out by the Second International. Their leader, Blagoev, did not hesitate to announce the imminence of revolution, and to declare that this was possible even during hostilities.
The Agrarians resumed the publication of their paper, The Agrarian Standard, in the summer of 1917. At the same time came the first reverberations of the Russian Revolution.
However, repression was intensified, the anti-militarist papers were seized by the post office, and the soldiers were searched, but these measures were unable to impede the rise of discontent in the country. In some areas, women staged bread riots. Leaflets spontaneously written on odd sheets of paper were passed from hand to hand. Thus in the Fifth Division, the tone of such writings became both moving and angry: 'We have arms, and in each battle we lose thousands of victims. But if we let ourselves be sacrificed, what happens? Let us, dear comrades, kick out those who sell our dear country. For a free Bulgaria. Long live our protector, Alexander Stamboliski!'
On 5 October 1915, the soldiers of the Twenty-Seventh Brigade at Chepino, members of the Social Democratic Party (Tesniaks) and a member of the Agrarian Union, with among them many young soldiers from Slavitsa (the birth place of Stamboliski), mutinied. Most of them were shot.
Ten months later, on 21 December 1916, there arrived at the First Brigade in the Sofia region an alarming despatch announcing that the soldiers of Dragoman's Twenty-Fifth Brigade had mutinied, declaring that they would not cross the Danube to invade foreign soil. The Forty-Second Regiment joined in the mutiny, and 80 soldiers demonstrated by firing their rifles in the air. Like lightning the agitation reached the Twenty-First, Thirty-Fifth and Thirty-Sixth Regiinents, and finished by hitting the Doxodovski Regiment.
These mutinies were followed by trials, with tragic results. The organiser of the mutiny in the Dragomanski regiment, Yossef Belcher, committed suicide. The ferocious repression did not extinguish the spirit of revolt, which had been brought to a head by the sentiment of despair and by the realisation that this was an impossible situation. And then there was added the extraordinary influence of the Russian Revolution of February 1917, and on the Seret River front in Romania, Bulgarian soldiers were face to face with Russian soldiers.

What's a Revolution?

'What's a revolution?', asked the soldiers who had never heard the word before. Their comrades laughingly explained. If the idea was rather unclear, if there was still difficulty imagining it, everyone sensed that something big, very big, had happened.
Docile until yesterday, the soldiers no longer wished to obey their officers. Links of friendship grew between the two enemy camps, all the more so as those who faced them were the 'bratushki' - little brothers. The soldiers became bolder, running frequently into no man's land to offer now bread, now brandy. And the episodes of fraternisation multiplied, and went beyond the Seret which separated the Bulgarian from the Russian army.
To stop this pernicious wave of fraternisation, the soldiers of the ThirtyFifth Regiment were arrested and tried, and their sentences were publicised. This repression could not prevent the meetings between the soldiers from occurring. They mingled and exchanged letters, leaflets, appeals and photos. They joined together and partied. After meetings between the Bulgarian Parade Regiment and the Siberian Sharp-Shooters Regiment a truce was established that lasted 100 days.
The spirit of peace and fraternisation spread and reached other units such as the Thirty-Fifth, Seventh, Nineteenth, Fifty-Third and Forty-Eighth Regiments. It even reached units on the southern front. Influenced by this agitation, which quickly reached the rear areas, a delegation of agrarian deputies went to General Gerov, the Chief of Staff. Stamboliski later revealed that the object of this had been to encourage a coup d'etat.
Meanwhile the October Revolution had erupted in Russia. The Tesniak paper wrote:

At this critical moment, the Bulgarian workers - the most alert part of the Bulgarian people - have the duty to raise their voices and follow the example of their Russian brothers. This struggle has to take place. Its outcome is not in doubt; in spite of obstacles, in spite of casualties, whatever they may be, the result of this struggle will be the triumph of the people over their oppressors and plunderers, the triumph of democracy over the monarchy, and the triumph of revolutionary socialism over the political and economic yoke. The dawn of socialism and liberty is at hand.

This Tesniak manifesto was one of support, encouragement and agitation, but it did not call for a revolt or an uprising.
The news of the Russian Revolution badly affected the atmosphere on the two fronts. A hail of capital sentences hit the soldiers. On the southern front, the situation continued to deteriorate, and the provisioning of the forces got worse. Morale was at its lowest. The Chief of Staff, General Gerov, did not hide the fact. In his report of 12 June 1918, he put forward his hope that political compromises would calm public opinion without affecting the army. To give room for manoeuvre, an old leader of the Right Opposition, Alexander Malinov, was named President of the Council.

The General Revolt

The decisive battle of Dobro Pole opened at six o'clock in the morning of 14 September 1918. On the Bulgarian front were positioned the Second Division from the town of Plevain, and several other regiments, including the Tenth and the Thirtieth. Facing them, the armed forces of the Entente were greatly superior in numbers and armaments - 57 000 against 15 000 Bulgarians. The confrontation continued for two days, and culminated in hand-to-hand fighting. In total, the Cheinovo Regiment lost two-thirds of its effectives, and the Tenth Regiment lost 840 soldiers. The heavy losses suffered by the Bulgarian army units led to the opening of the front, and ended with a general mutiny among the units engaged. At the head of the uprising were to be found the Second and Third Infantry Divisions, who abandoned their positions and took the road back to the old Greek-Bulgarian frontier. In their retreat to the north, along the river Vardar, these units took the Fourth and Fifth Divisions along with them.
In a few days, 22-27 September 1918, the uprising involved every unit stationed in the Vardar plain up to the Bitolia region. Some were driven by a desperate desire to get peace somehow or other, while others, aware of the tragic limitations of their choice, could see no other way than to turn their revolt into an uprising against all those who were politically responsible for throwing the country and army into this adventure. The desertion which occurred at Dobro Pole became a rising against the instigators of the war. The Bulgarian 'Tommies' of Dobro Pole did not throw down their arms, but turned them against their Ieaders.
The rebels regrouped after leaving the front line or during the course of their retreat to the rear. A new army was formed, for good or ill, in great haste. The result of this haste, the outcome of despair, weighed heavily on the troops, and was felt in the battles that followed.
Meanwhile, the Headquarters, which was well informed about the events at the front, prepared its defence. The Reserve Officers School was mobilised. However, a contretemps ensued: the officer cadets at Kustendil rebelled. The King met urgently with high state officials. The Council unanimously called for an armistice. However, Ferdinand, puffed up with pride, had other plans, which threw the members of the government into despair, and as a result nothing was decided.
Negotiators hastened to Salonika. The US Embassy was contacted. The generals consulted were of the same opinion: they were all for an armistice. The next day, the President of the Council, Malinov, sent three urgent letters to the King asking for an agreement on the laying down of arms. The pace of events quickened; Stamboliski, yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment, and whose release was now announced, demanded of the Minister of War, Savov, the release of all the other political prisoners whom he had met in his cell. The meeting of the prisoner with the minister only served to sound out the situation - the first approach between the two opposing camps, both engaged in a subtle game.
There was much to play for in the meeting with the King which followed soon after (and the details of which were only published later by the head of the government). A bargain was offered: the King informed his Agrarian opponent that he would consent to an armistice, but in return Stamboliski would meet the mutineers. Stamboliski had won immense prestige among the soldiers during the period of hostilities. It seemed that from now on the road to an armistice was open. A negotiating delegation was set up. The Agrarian leader showed no hesitation. It was an act of great cunning to include the Agrarian with the Tesniaks, of whom a certain number, among them George Dimitrov, were still in prison.
On 26 September, the Agrarian leader, accompanied by his friend Raiko Daskalov, deputies and ministers, among whom was Minister General Savov, left for the town of Radomir to pacify the soldiers and put an end to the mutiny. The results were far from being determined in advance. Did the opposing side, that is to say the Entente, want to end the war?

The Proclamation of the Republic

The first contacts with the mutinous soldiers went badly. It was on the next day that things started to move on the initiative of Daskalov, who peremptorily proclaimed the republic and the deposition of the Tsar and his government. This was the start of the glorious and tragic story of the Republic of Radomir.
The telegram issued by the new Chief of Staff declared that only a republic could save Bulgaria from foreign enemies and internal conflicts. Stamboliski acquiesced and agreed to become the Provisional President of the Republic. The commander of the new rebel army, Daskalov, recommended 'that the soldiers organise themselves into units and choose their officers'.
The news of the revolt and the long march of the rebels on the capital reached the mining town of Pernik, 30 kilometres from Sofia. Hlachev described the agitation among the workers in this town. Daskalov appealed to them: 'The banner of revolution is raised, it is the flag of the republic. These are your ideals, come and join this uprising.'
But two MPs brought the reply of the Tesniak Central Committee from Kabakchiev. And this reply was 'Neutrality'.

The Evasion

This was the official response of the Tesniaks. From then on it was the end of the revolution. A year later, their leader Blagoev described the exchange he had had with the Agrarian spokesman, Alexander Stamboliski: 'He said to me: we will not take power with any party other than yours. You are strong in the towns, and ourselves in the country; together we will take power, what do you think?'
Blagoev replied: 'The Tesniak Party cannot take power with the Agrarian Union because the two parties are different.'
Stamboliski: 'No, we are not very different from you; I accept all your programme except one point, that of the small-holders: we will not touch them.'
Blagoev: 'Maybe, but even so our party will not take power with yours. But if you accept our party's programme...'
And later Blagoev argued: 'Nearly everyone in our party was with the colours, dispersed on every front. Behind the lines there was nothing, the branches only had a handful of members. And in the capital it was the same if not worse... It was clear that the Central Committee had no physical possibility of taking charge of this revolution.'
Manifestly, this was not the real reason. Much later, in 1948, George Dimitrov, who, it should be said, had taken part in these events, put forward a judgement, a little short but not without truth: 'The main reason [for the abstention of the Tesniaks] lay in the doctrinal side, in the non-Bolshevik conception, in the methods and traditions of Tesmak socialism.'
Why, after Radomir, did the Tesniaks, bitter enemies of the war, carry on with this seemingly inexplicable abstentionism? In reality, this historical impasse was the logical consequence of the politics of the revolutionary wing of the young Bulgarian Social Democratic Party. Barely emerged from a centuries-long oppression, with capitalist development hardly started, Bulgaria clashed with other powers endowed with military resources and modern production; the running together of the wars of liberation with the imperialist wars did not help. The bourgeoisie was clever enough to turn the euphoria of the wars of liberation to its profit and to exploit them for its own enterprises of conquest. The fact that the Tesniaks found themselves on the divide between two worlds, that of the Second International and that of the Bolsheviks, did not help their development. Already before the war, Blagoev considered the Bulgarian pupils of Lenin to be 'anarchist extremists'. It was the same type of criticism that the Second International and the Mensheviks made of Lenin and his protagonists, the term 'anarchist' signifying a mismatch between means and ends (socialism or the coming to power of the working class) and an estimation of the objective conditions which would enable them to come to power. For Russia, it would mean that conditions were not sufficiently ripe for the proletariat to come to power by revolution. Now, in the polemic between the Menshevik Plekhanov and Lenin, Blagoev tended towards the former, even if in the course of the war the cards ended up shuffled about.
So we can now understand the sense that Dimitrov gave to his criticism of the neutrality that the Tesniaks wanted to observe during the revolt at Radomir and after by using the expression of an excess of doctrinairism or dogmatism.
None of this helped the Tesniaks to clarify their relations with the peasant world. They never found a common language with the Agrarians. Not only before the revolt at Radomir, but above all afterwards, the workers' movement and the peasants movement were unable to march together. And as a result, the bourgeoisie defeated them separately.[2]
Until the end of the century, the peasant question remained a stumbling block for every tendency in the workers' movement. Nevertheless, in Bulgaria the principle of cooperation very soon became popular in an agricultural sector based upon tiny properties. It continued to obtain excellent results, in spite of the obstacles inherent in a sclerotic socialism, not to mention the lamentable setback represented by the agricultural complexes dreamt up by the neo-Stalinist Todor Zhivkov.
But let us return to Radomir. The core of the insurgent army of 10 000 men was organised in five divisions. On 28 September, at about 10 o'clock at the Zaharna Works railway station on the site of an old factory, a train arrived from the front, the majority of those on board being wounded. A whole detachment from the military school armed with machine guns waited for them. The start of a dialogue was enough for the officer cadets to open fire immediately. There were hundreds of victims in the carnage. A commission of enquiry subsequently sought to establish the responsibility for this bloody incident.

The Carnage

On 29 September 1918, the leader of the rebel army and the mutineers were already in the village of Vladaia, very near to Sofia. But Stamboliski was not with them. He told the authorities that he had escaped from his captivity by the rebels while his friend Raiko Daskalov had been forced to declare himself their military leader. A curious and ambiguous situation ensued, in which the state power did not dare to arrest the agrarian ex-prisoner, but was able to force him via the telegraph to renounce his new title of President of the Republic, and to call on the insurgents to surrender.
The country held its breath, awaiting the imminent battle that would clarify the deeply confused and uncertain situation. The attack of 29 September was the culminating point of the engagement. Thanks to the superiority of the opposing force both in number and armament massed against them, the rebels were finally swept away. In spite of the determination of the insurgents, their attempt to break the line of defences failed. After the battle, some attempted to hide by discarding their uniforms, while others tried to return to their villages or took to guerrilla warfare for many a long year. Three thousand rebels were captured, most of them wounded, and the rest exhausted and in a piteous state. Dozens of the defenceless wounded were finished off without pity. Before a parliamentary enquiry in 1922, when the Agrarian Party was in power, witnesses told of episodes of ferocious carnage.
By 2 December 1918, the rebellion had been definitely put down. But the country was still in a state of war. Everyday life in the country seemed to be suspended by the feeling of uncertainty. The threat of seeing the King topple the government with the help of German Army units bothered numerous ministers. Worried, the government expressed the hope that units of the French Army would soon enter Bulgaria.
Events moved quickly. The King called upon the commander of the capital, General Protogerov, to arrest the members of the government in a coup d'etat. After briefly agreeing, the general went into hiding; the King, having played his last card, was obliged to abdicate, and that was the end of his reign.
Negotiations began, leading to the armistice. Following the defeat of the rising, 10 000 soldiers were imprisoned. Kolarov later reported on the penalties suffered by the survivors of the revolt. Lenin denounced the conditions of the armistice on 8 November:

Take Bulgaria. You would have thought that a country like Bulgaria could hold no terror for the Anglo-American imperialist colossus. Nevertheless, the revolution in this small, weak, absolutely helpless country caused the Anglo-Americans to lose their heads and present armistice terms that are tantamount to occupation."

The Radomir revolt was no vain adventure. It forced Bulgaria out of the conflict, deposed King Ferdinand (even if the monarchy survived), and contributed to ending the war.
NOTES
1] Alexander Stamboliski (1879-1923) led the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union from 1906. The BANU did well in the general elections in August 1919, and Stamboliski became Prime Minister. General elections in March 1920 and April 1923 saw the BANU increase its vote, but the government Ied by Stamboliski was overthrown by a right-wing coup in June 1923, and Stamboliski was assassinated by Macedonian nationalists at the same time.
2] The Bulgarian Communist Party did not go to the assistance of Stambolisky's government when it was faced with a right-wing coup in 1923, on the grounds that the BANU was just another bourgeois party. The party subsequently suffered repression, which was intensified after some of its members attempted to assassinate the government by blowing up Sofia Cathedral during an official funeral in 1925.
3] VI Lenin, 'Speech on the Intemational Situation', Collected Works, Volume 28, Moscow, 1977, p157.
Source; Revolutionary History, Volume 8, no 2; Porcupine Press/Socialist Platform Ltd, London, 2002.

Originally from Libcom
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1919: The Calais mutiny

A short history of the strike and mutiny of British troops stationed in France following the end of the First World War which won concessions and helped speed up demobbing.

As the end of World War I was nearing, the British Army was being used more extensively in France, as the French military had largely disintegrated due to widespread mutiny. However, as time progressed, British soldiers were proving equally unwilling to fight and to obey.

A court martial following the Etaples Mutiny on September 22, 1918 sentenced five youths aged seventeen to nineteen to ten years imprisonment for acts of indiscipline. This led to further agitation for their release. There was a growing campaign against the censorship of news from home and soldiers at Calais elected delegates who also acted as distributors for the then prohibited Daily Herald. There were also demands for instant dismantling of the Val de Lievre workshops.

The stability of the Army on the Continent was affected by the mass industrial unrest back home. In France, in the war zone, official brutalities were rife. One example was at the prison at Les Attaques, where men were detained for trivial offences such as overstaying their leave by a few hours. Prisoners were only supplied with one blanket, during one of the severest winter for decades. They were flogged and manacled for merely talking to each other.

At the end of January 1919, the men of the Army Ordnance and Mechanical Transport sections at the Val de Lievre camp called a mass meeting which decided to mutiny. Conditions in the camp were bad, and reports of several incidents had already found their way into the newspapers.

The Calais mutiny began after agitation for demobilisation*. It coincided with the arrest of Private John Pantling, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, while delivering what the authorities described as a 'seditious speech to an assembly of soldiers.'

On pay night the men at Val de Lievre smashed open the jail and let Pantling out. The authorities tried to recapture him. When this failed, fresh military police were brought in. They arrested the sergeant of the guard for failing to prevent the prisoner's 'escape'. Anger was now rising. The Commanding Officer - by now a very frightened man - released the sergeant, and called off the attempt to recapture Pantling. He also agreed to a meeting with the men to discuss their grievances. The next day many concessions were made, including shorter hours.

While this was taking place there was a distinct hardening of the attitude of the officers. The soldiers spent the weekend organising the other camps into Soldiers Councils. On Sunday the officers struck back and rearrested Pantling. The news spread quickly. On Monday the newly organised Soldiers Councils called a strike. Not a single man turned up for reveille. The sentries were replaced by pickets. That same morning, at another camp in nearby Vendreux, over 2,000 men came out in sympathy. Later that morning they marched to the Calais camp as a gesture of solidarity. After a mass meeting both camps marched behind brass bands towards the headquarters, where Brigadier Rawlinson was stationed. By now the mutineers totalled 4,000. The headquarters were quickly surrounded and a deputation entered. They demanded the release of Private Pantling. The authorities capitulated and promised that he would be back in his camp within twenty-four hours.
On Tuesday morning he was returned. But by now some 20,000 men had joined the mutiny and the strike was spreading French workers were cooperating and a total embargo was placed upon the movement of British military traffic by rail. In fact the rail stoppage was a significant factor in the escalation of the struggle. 5,000 infantrymen due to return home, finding themselves delayed, struck in support of their own demand for immediate demobilisation.

In an attempt to intimidate the mutineers General Byng and fresh troops were sent for. Unfortunately Byng made the mistake of arriving before his men. His car was immediately commandeered by the mutineers and replaced by a modest Ford. Byng's troops were delayed for a further two days by Lhe blacking of British transport. When they arrived machine guns were placed at strategic points, such as food stores and munition dumps. Byng's troops, in the words of a participant, were 'bits of boys who were sent out just as the war ended.'

Fresh from the growing unrest at home, they were even more reluctant to be in khaki than the Calais mutineers themselves. They started fraternising with them and before long had joined the mutineers. The strike continued.

Some barrack room lawyer pointed out that Pantling could be rearrested at any time. It was decided that it would be to his advantage to be court-martialled whilst the soldiers were still in control. His acquittal would then be binding and he would be safe from further arrest. Reluctantly, the officers had to agree.

The strike was now total. It was led and coordinated by the strike committee, which now took the title of 'The Calais Soldiers' and Sailors' Association.' Their method of organising was strictly democratic. Each hut or group of huts elected a delegate to the Camp Committee. These committees then sent delegates to the Central Area Committee. By-passing the officers, these committees issued daily orders from the occupied Headquarters.

The quality and quantity of the food increased. The food surplus served to confirm the rumour that officers had secretly been selling food to French businessmen. S.C.A. Cannel, who was working as a clerk at the Ordnance Depot testified how “our food was being "flogged" to French people. In fact, I saw with my own eyes, clothes baskets full of bully, cheese and bacon going out of the camps at night.”

Eventually a conference was arranged, at which major concessions were won. But the mutiny was drawing to a close. On the evening of the conference, whilst most of the soldiers were attending a local cinema, a surprise vote was taken. The result was acceptance of an officer's ultimatum to return under orders. These men then had to face the wrath of their comrades, who returned to discover that the mutiny had virtually collapsed.

During the mutiny contacts had been made with French workers, and with allied forces on the Rhine. Troops at Dunkirk were also ready to come out, and there was little doubt that they would have found support amongst workers and troops back home. Had the movement continued it could clearly have developed a revolutionary character. A further significant sign that the army was crumbling was when women of the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary stayed away from work, in solidarity with the Calais strike.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Clyde strike had also collapsed. This played a part in lowering the morale of the Calais mutineers, who drew back from a course of action leading to revolution.
This incident had shaken the authorities to the core. British troops had shown they were capable of highly sophisticated forms of struggle, forging important links with other sectors of the army and with the civilian population. Although the strike was over, the authorities never felt strong enough to victimise the strike committees or to re-impose the old type of military discipline. Soldiers were free to return to camp whenever they felt like it, and to enter cafes and the like during 'prohibited' hours, without fear of disciplinary action. The food was improved. New huts were erected. Weekend work was abolished. The Calais Area Soldiers' and Sailors' Association continued to meet and applied for representation on the newly formed Soldiers', Sailors' and Airmen's Union.

The mutiny had ended on January 30 1919. Within three months demobilisation began in earnest - only just in time to avert another wave of mutiny. The lesson that the military machine could be beaten had been learnt. Churchill commented at the time that “if these armies had formed a "united resolve", if they had been seduced from the standards of duty and patriotism, there was no power which could have attempted to withstand them.”

From Mutinies, by Dave Lamb, which is extensively footnoted
* Demobbing is short for demobilisation: being permitted to leave the army and return to civilian life

Originally posted on  LibCom.org
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1919: The Southampton mutiny

The fighting ended in 1918 but soldiers grievances and the drive for further militarism sadly did not, as a result mutinies and rebellions among the European armies actually increased while waiting for demobilisation. Here's a brief section on one of these mutinies.

A history of the militant rebellion of British troops in Southampton following the end of the First World War. Amidst the widespread dissatisfaction, the men were highly reluctant to return to Europe after the end of the conflict.

Following the massacre of World War I, a reminder of the strength of ordinary soldiers came from Southampton, in the middle of January 1919, when 20,000 soldiers went on strike and took over the docks. Robertson, Commander in Chief of the Home Forces, sent General Trenchard to restore military authority. Trenchard had witnessed several mutinies in the French Army and was quite prepared to employ the most ruthless measures. Nevertheless he underestimated the men as he approached the dockgate and attempted to address a reluctant audience. A chorus of boos and catcalls accompanied his remarks. The meeting came to an undignified end when a group of men took hold of him and gave him a going over before ejecting him. Said Trenchard:

"It was most unpleasant.. . It was the only time in my life I'd been really hustled. They said they did not want to listen to me. They told me to get out and stay out."

Smarting from his minor injuries and major wounds to his pride, Trenchard acted with the vengeful cunning which had preserved his military caste for generations. Indifferent to the grievances of the soldiers - many of whom had seen active service - he saw only a mutinous rabble to be put down by force. Fully aware that the mutineers were not armed he phoned a request to the garrison commander at Portsmouth for 250 armed men plus an escort of Military Police. In spite of fierce objections from Southern Command, Trenchard made it perfectly clear that if necessary he would initiate a blood-bath. 

The following morning Trenchard returned to the quayside and waited for the troop train from Portsmouth. Only when the unarmed mutineers had been surrounded by armed troops with their safety bolts in firing position did Trenchard make a second attempt to address the troops. And even then he was told to 'drop dead' by a sergeant, who was promptly arrested. Following this incident the mutiny collapsed. 170 soldiers were personally selected as ringleaders by Trenchard, fifty three of whom were confined in a nearby troopship.

The docks were now quiet but a few score soldiers had barricaded themselves in their billets. Hose pipes were commandeered and after half an hour Trenchard's riot squad had captured about 100 soaked and shivering men who were then forced to stand in the January frost outside Trenchard's office until the latter had satisfied his desire for vengeance. 

A few weeks later, in early February, Trenchard was called in by Churchill, then Minister for War and Air, and was congratulated on his 'masterly handling of the Southampton riots' and appointed Chief of the Air Staff. (Duel of Eagles by Peter Townsend, Weidenfeld &: Nicolson, 1970, pp 47-8)

Unrest amongst the troops merged with unrest in industry. By February 1919 large numbers of soldiers were refusing to return to the Continent. Civil disturbances in mining areas, which under normal circumstances would have been quelled by a show of force, presented grave problems to the authorities, since it was not clear whether the troops could be relied upon. Eventually the Army Council decided that there was a Guards division that could be trusted and issued instructions for them to be brought back from the Continent. The Guards were used on a number of occasions, for example to disarm the Durham Light Infantry at Colchester, when they refused to embark for Russia.

How near was Britain to a full scale revolution during these weeks? This must remain a matter for speculation. The Army was in disarray: soldiers and sailors councils and demobilisation clubs were being formed. Delegates from various camps were beginning to combine their efforts and resources. The number of strikes in Liverpool and Glasgow were increasing. There were riots in Glasgow and troops sent to occupy the streets were beginning to fraternise with the strikers and demonstrators. There were riots in Belfast and a national railway strike was imminent. From August 1918 until mid-1919 even the police force was affected by militant strike action.

Edited by libcom from Mutinies by Dave Lamb

Originally posted at LibCom.org

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1918-1930: Mutiny and resistance in the Royal Navy

The telly's been crammed with guff about WWI a lot of it attempting to glorify one of the greatest mass slaughters in history. In an attempt to counter some of the King and Country rot that's been spewing out of every media pore I'm sharing articles I have on resistance to the War.

For today here's a history of resistance within the Royal Navy, the French, Russian and German navies were also centres of resistance and revolt in this time.

A short history of mutinies and rebellions in the British Royal Navy and Marines from the end of World War I, Russian Revolution and up until 1930.

Whilst the mutinies in the German and French Navies in the First World War have been well documented little information is available concerning the British Royal Navy. There was, however, considerable talk of mutiny at Portsmouth, in the summer of 1918. The threat was serious enough for Lionel Yexley, an admiralty agent,[1] to write a report warning the Admiralty of impending trouble. This was only averted by immediate improvements in pay and conditions. Demands for 'lower deck' organisation were taken seriously. Agitation for trade union representation was spreading throughout the Navy.

The material conditions of the sailors certainly justified a mutiny. Between 1852 and 1917 there had only been one pay increase, amounting to a penny a day, in 1912. Wartime inflation had reduced the sailors' nineteen pence a day to a mere pittance. Another twopence a day was granted in 1917, plus a miserable separation allowance of ten shillings and six pence a week, for wives. Following a series of mutinies in 1919 pay increases of over two hundred per cent were granted.

After the Russian Revolution the British Navy was sent into action against the Russians. It proved ineffective, but this ineffectiveness had less to do with the efforts of the Bolsheviks than with the unwillingness of the British seamen to fight. The extent of these mutinies can be measured by reference to the following comment made in the House of Commons by G. Lambert MP, on March 12 1919:

'...undoubtedly there was, at the end of last year, grave unrest in the Navy... I do not wish to be violent, but I think I am correct in saying that a match would have touched off an explosion.'[2]
Shortly after the armistice with Germany the crew of a light cruiser, at Libau on the Baltic, mutinied. Many other ships were sent home from Archangel and Murmansk after similar experiences. In spite of a propaganda campaign against Russia it was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain reliable crews. Refusals to weigh for Russia were a regular occurrence at Invergordon, Portsmouth, Rosyth, Devonport and Fort Edgar.

Many labour historians have written about the refusal of dockers to load the 'Jolly George' with an arms consignment for Poland in May 1920. But we have heard virtually nothing about far greater challenges to authority in the armed forces. For example, early in 1919 a group of dock workers discovered that the destination of a large cruiser being refitted at Rosyth was Russia. Together with some members of the Socialist Labour Party they leafleted the crew, who refused to sail. In fact the crew stayed put for three weeks, although isolated in mid-stream, until their demands were met and they were paid off at Portsmouth.

In January 1919 there were mutinies on the mine-sweepers at Rosyth. On January 13, 1919 there was a mutiny on the patrol boat 'Kilbride' at Milford Haven, where the red flag was hoisted. This was an uneasy year for the Admiralty. On October 12, 150 seamen had broken out of their ships at Port Edgar on hearing that they were due to return to the Baltic. The First Destroyer Flotilla was prevented from returning to the Baltic war. Eventually half the ships sailed on August 14, their crews made up from Atlantic Fleet battleships. Although most of the mutineers were arrested, some 44 men made their way to London to present petitions at Whitehall. They were arrested at King's Cross and sent to Chatham Barracks.[3] Between October 12 and November 21, 1919 some 96 offenders had been arrested and punished, ten by imprisonment.[4] It should be remembered that the government had repeatedly pledged that only volunteers would be sent to fight against the Russians. It is clear that this was not the practice employed by the Admiralty. Those who did not intend to 'volunteer' had little choice but to mutiny and face the consequences.

 By November 1919 discontent had spread to the aircraft carrier 'Vindictive' (pictured, right) in Copenhagen. A marine detachment was called in to disperse a group of seamen demanding leave. Two men were arrested. Later two stokers were caught trying to stop the fan engines. They were each given five years. The following morning virtually no one turned up for duty. This provoked Captain Grace to arrest five more alleged 'ringleaders'. They were condemned to 90 days hard labour before a dishonourable discharge. Another six were arrested, but resistance continued. The next morning 14 crewmen were still refusing duty and were arrested. That evening another two arrests were made.[5]

Meanwhile the crews of the minesweepers operating in the Baltic declared they had had enough. There were incidents aboard the flagship 'Delhi', in December, when only 25% of the crew responded to a command to return to Biorko in the Gulf of Finland.

There was a further naval mutiny in Russia, that of the gunboat 'Cicala' in the White Sea. Death sentences were imposed on the 'ringleaders'. The fact that these were later commuted to one year's imprisonment reflects the continuing strength of the sailors' movement.[6]

Mutinies in the forces of intervention were not confined to the Navy. There was a large mutiny in a Marine battalion at Murmansk. The 6th Battalion of the Royal Marines, formed in the summer of 1919 at a time of unrest over demobilisation, were originally intended to police Schleswig Holstein. But, at short notice, the Battalion had been diverted to cover the evacuation of Murmansk. They were sent to the Lake Onega region, a further 300 miles south of Kem. In August 1919 two companies refused duty: 90 men were tried and found guilty of mutiny by a court martial. Thirteen men were sentenced to death and others to up to 5 years imprisonment.

None of the death sentences were actually carried out. The 90 mutineers were shipped to Bodmin prison, where they continued their resistance to arbitrary authority. (In this they were acting in the best traditions of the Royal Marines. In December 1918 some Marines had been involved in a mutiny inside Bodmin prison which had resulted in three death sentences, later commuted to five years penal servitude.) Continued resistance paid off. The ninety men arrested after the Murmansk incident had their sentences reduced as follows: the 13 sentenced to death were commuted to five years, but 12 were released after only one year, and the other after two years. Twenty men, originally given 5 years, were released after six months. 51 men sentenced to two years were also released within six months.
In recognition of the fact that their officers had acted contrary to Army instructions in employing young and inexperienced lads at the front, the remainder of those arrested were either released or had their sentences commuted to 6 months. Following the announcement, on December 22, nineteen of these acts of 'clemency' the First Lord of the Admiralty told the Commons that 'bad leadership' was a factor behind the mutiny. He even hinted at the possibility of disciplinary measures being taken against several officers.

Many other mutinies occurred in North Russia. One took place in the 13th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, which ended with death sentences being passed on two sergeants whilst the other mutineers were cowed by White Russian machine gunners called in by the English officers.
News of these mutinies was suppressed. They highlighted the reluctance of British sailors to fight against Russia when the government was theoretically committed to a policy of peace. Contrary to what the people were being told, and at the very moment when the hysteria surrounding the Armistice was at its height, the Foreign Office and Admiralty were finalising their arrangements for intervention in Russia.

The Navy was not only required for the anti-Bolshevik crusade and to defend Britain's imperial commitments. It was also needed to quell internal disturbances. Towards the end of the 1914-1918 war seamen were trained in the noble art of 'blacklegging' in the event of strikes by railwaymen or power workers. 'The battleship Vanguard', says Walter Kendall, 'was sent to the Mersey to command Liverpool during the Police strike of August 1919'.[7]

Resistance in the Navy continued between 1919 and the time of the large Invergordon mutiny of 1931.[8] In 1930 there were no fewer than six major movements within the Navy against conditions of work and the arbitrary injustice of naval discipline. The 'Revenge' (pictured, right), 'Royal Oak', Vindictive', 'Repulse', 'Ramillies' and 'Lucia' were all affected.
Edited by libcom.org from Mutinies by Dave Lamb

Footnotes
1. Lionel Yexley, euphemistically referred to as a 'naval correspondent' (see Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969, p. 191) was the editor of a lower deck journal called The Fleet. Yexley had amassed a lot of information about underground naval organisations and his statement that such organisations had existed for ten years was confirmed in Brassey's Naval Annual of 1919. These incidents are also referred to by Geoffrey Bennett in Cowan's War (London, Collins, 1964), p. 198. See also Kendall, op. cit. , p. 190
2. Hansard, March 12, 1919
3. Bennett, op. cit., p. 198
4. Ibid., p. 199
5. On December 29, 1919, following a series of acts of militancy, a review of the sentences of those convicted of naval mutiny was announced by the First Lord of the Admiralty. Sentences of up to two years were halved. So were one year sentences. The men serving such sentences had their medals restored. Even the two sailors caught trying to sabot the fan engines of the 'Vindictive' had their convictions reviewed after two years.
6. Bennett, op. cit. , p.203
7. Kendall, op. cit., pp. 191-2
8. Wintringham, op. cit., p. 328

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The Speculator Miners last Letters

The Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine disaster of June 8, 1917 was the most deadly mine disaster in the history of the United States. Nearly two hundred miners died most from asphyxiation. Utah Phillips reads some of the trapped miners letters. 



First letter

Dear wife, this may be the last message you will get from me. The gas broke about 11:15 pm, I tried to get all the men out, but the smoke was too strong. I got some of the boys with me in a drift and put up in a bulkhead. If anything happens to me you better sell the house and go to California and live. You will know your Jim died like a man and his last thoughts were for his wife that I love better than anyone on earth. We’ll meet again, tell mother and the boys goodbye,
With love to my wife and may God take care of you.
Your loving Jim
Jay D Moore

Second Letter

Dear Pat, well we are waiting for the end, I guess it won’t be long. We take turns rapping on the pipe so if the rescue crew is around they will hear us. Well my dear wife try not to worry, I know you will but trust in God everything will come out alright. There’s a young fellow here Clarence Marthy, he has a wife and two kiddies, tell her we done the best we could but the cards were against us.
Goodbye loving wife

Third Letter

All alive but air getting bad, one small piece of candle left, think it is all off.

Fourth Letter (written on the cover of the book)

In the dark.