The Penguin History of Modern Russia

by Robert John Service

  Temperamentally he was as hard as a diamond. Like Lenin, he came from a comfortable family and had been a brilliant student. Trotski’s real name was Lev Davydovich Bronshtein. He was a Jew from southern Ukraine, whose farming father sent him to secondary school in Odessa. His flair for writing and for foreign languages revealed itself early; but so, too, did a restlessness with the kind of society in which he had been brought up. He drew close to the clandestine populist groups which approved of terrorism. But by late adolescence he was a Marxist and by 1900 he was in Siberian exile. He made a dramatic escape by sleigh a couple of years later, joining Lenin in London and working with him on the émigré Marxist journal, Iskra. At the Second Party Congress in 1903, however, Trotski denounced Lenin for provoking the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

  In organization, Trotski had agreed with Menshevik criticisms of Leninist organizational ideas, which he predicted would result in a dictator placing himself in authority over the Central Committee. He meant this satirically, and was not to know that Stalin would one day realize the prophecy; but his hostility to Bolshevik divisiveness was sincere at the time. Trotski was already a distinctive figure among Marxists. While opposing the Bolsheviks on organizational questions, he stood close to them on strategy. His theory of revolution in Russia squeezed the schedule for the introduction of socialism to a shorter span of time than even Lenin would accept: in 1905 Trotski was calling for the installation of a ‘workers’ government’.

  It was in September of the same year that he distinguished himself as the firebrand deputy chairman of the Petersburg Soviet. Within the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party he refused to show allegiance to either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks; and, after returning abroad in 1907, he tried to unify the factions. Unfortunately Trotski was arrogant even when doing his best to reunify the party. Both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks thought Trotski was a windbag whose personal ambition mattered more to him than his radical political strategy. Yet they could not deny his talents. Trotski was a master of Russian literary prose, being incapable of writing an inelegant paragraph. His knowledge of the history of European politics and diplomacy was extensive. In 1912 he had covered the war in the Balkans as a correspondent for the Kiev Thought newspaper and therefore had an early insight into military affairs.

  Trotski returned from North America in May 1917 and was horrified to find the Mensheviks collaborating with the Provisional Government. Needing to belong to a party if he was to have any influence, he accepted Lenin’s invitation to join the Bolsheviks. His fluency of tongue and pen were a great asset. He was a handsome fellow, a few inches taller than the average Russian, and he had quick reflexes in dangerous situations. It was he who had saved the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov, despite their political differences, from being torn apart by a mob in midsummer 1917.7 Trotski himself spent weeks in prison after the ‘July Days’, but turned his detention to effect by writing Pravda articles that coruscated with contempt for the Provisional Government. On his release in late August, he had revelled in being the Bolshevik party’s spokesman in the Petrograd Soviet.

  His brilliance had been proved before 1918. What took everyone aback was his organizational capacity and ruthlessness as he transformed the Red Army into a fighting force. He ordered deserters to be shot on the spot, and did not give a damn if some of them were communist party activists; and in this fashion he endeared himself to Imperial Army officers whom he encouraged to join the Reds. He sped from unit to unit, rousing the troops with his revolutionary zeal. The hauteur of spirit which made him so annoying to his rival politicians was an asset in situations where hierarchical respect was crucial. His flair, too, paid dividends. He organized a competition to design a Red Army cap and tunic; he had his own railway carriage equipped with its own map room and printing press. He also had an eye for young talent, bringing on his protégés without regard for the length of time they had belonged to the Bolshevik party.

  The Red Army’s first task was to retake Kazan. Lenin still suspected Trotski of being weak minded, and wrote urging him not to worry if historic buildings were damaged. Trotski needed no urging. On 10 September the city was recaptured for the communists. Trotski was the hero of the hour. Lenin was delighted, and turned his attention to Red Army commanders whom he suspected of reluctance to press home their advantage. From Moscow he sent telegrams emphasizing the need to clear the Volga region of the Komuch forces.8

  The Red Army overran Komuch’s base in Samara on 7 October, and the Czechoslovak Legion retreated to the Urals and then to mid-Siberia before regrouping under the command of Admiral Kolchak, who initially recognized Komuch as Russia’s legitimate government. His loyalty lasted only a few days. On 17 November Kolchak’s officers organized a coup against the Socialist-Revolutionary administration, arresting several ministers. Kolchak was proclaimed ‘Supreme Ruler’ and the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries never again played a leading role upon the Russian national stage. Kolchak’s blood was up. He moved westwards from Omsk into the Urals, capturing the provincial centre of Perm in late December. The Red Army, the soviets and the party crumbled in his path. The Reds briefly counter-attacked and succeeded in taking Ufa, to the south of Perm; but Kolchak’s central group of forces were not deflected from their drive on Moscow.

  The last months of 1918 were momentous on the Western front in the Great War. The Allies had seen off the German summer offensive in France, and military disarray ensued for the Central Powers. On 9 November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. The German army had been defeated; and, for the Russian Communist Party, this meant that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk could be disregarded as obsolete. First and foremost, Lenin sought links with German far-left socialists and gave encouragement to the formation of a German Communist Party. Revolutionary opportunities beckoned. Within days of the German military defeat, Red forces were aiding local Bolsheviks to set up Soviet republics in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

  In Russia, violence intensified not only on the war fronts but also in civilian politics as Lenin widened the Cheka’s scope to suppress rival political parties. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were excluded from the soviets in June 1918 on the grounds of being associated with ‘counter-revolutionary’ organizations, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were arrested in large numbers. Many Kadets were already in prison. Lenin, Trotski and Dzierżyński believed that over-killing was better than running the risk of being overthrown. And so, as the anti-Bolshevik forces approached the Urals in the summer, the communist central leadership considered what to do with the Romanovs, who had been held in Yekaterinburg for some months. They opted to murder not only the former Emperor but also his entire family, including his son and daughters. On 17 July the deed was done. Lenin and Sverdlov claimed that the responsibility lay with the Bolsheviks of the Urals region, but the circumstantial evidence strongly points to the Central Committee having inspired the decision.9

  On 30 August Lenin himself got it literally in the neck. As he addressed a meeting of workers at the Mikhelson Factory in Moscow, shots were fired at him. His chauffeur Stepan Gil bundled him into the official limousine and drove him away. A woman standing nearby, Fanya Kaplan, was arrested. It is doubtful that she carried out the shooting since she was almost blind;10 but she was a sympathizer with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and may well have been involved in the plot in some form or other. Be that as it may, she was executed as the principal malefactor while Lenin convalesced at the government’s new sanatorium at the Gorki estate, thirty-five kilometres from the capital.

  The attempt on Lenin’s life was answered with the promulgation of a Red Terror. In some cities, prisoners were shot out of hand, including 1300 prisoners in Petrograd alone. Fire would be met by fire: Dzierżyński’s Cheka had previously killed on an informal basis and not very often; now their executions became a general phenomenon. Lenin, as he recovered from his wounds, wrote the booklet Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky, in w
hich he advocated dictatorship and terror.11 His confidential telegram to Bolshevik leaders in Penza on 11 August had contained the instruction: ‘Hang no fewer than a hundred well-known kulaks, rich-bags and blood-suckers (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people).’12 Another such telegram went to Petrograd in October 1919 at the time of an offensive by General Yudenich: ‘If the attack is begun, is it impossible to mobilize another 20,000 Petrograd workers plus 10,000 workers of the bourgeoisie, set up cannons behind them, shoot a few hundred of them and obtain a real mass impact upon Yudenich?’13

  Terror was to be based on the criterion of class. Martyn Latsis, a Cheka functionary, was in favour of exterminating the entire middle class; and even Lenin made remarks to this effect.14 The purpose was to terrify all hostile social groups. Lenin intended that even the regime’s supporters should be intimidated. His recommendation to the Penza communists had made this explicit: ‘Do it so that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, might tremble!’15 According to official records, 12,733 prisoners were killed by the Cheka in 1918–20; but other estimates put the figure as high as 300,000.16 Other prisoners were held either in prison or in the concentration camps that were sanctioned by official decrees in September 1918 and April 1919.17

  The premisses of Bolshevik policy were worked out quickly. The Food-Supplies Dictatorship which had been established in May 1918 was consolidated. The territory under Soviet control was divided into provinces and sub-divided into districts, and quotas of grain were assigned to each of them for delivery to the government. This system of apportionment (or razvërstka) was based upon the statistical evidence available, but Sovnarkom admitted that much guesswork was involved; and in practice the People’s Commissariat of Food Supplies grabbed grain wherever it could find it — and peasant households were often left starving. Sovnarkom had hoped to keep most peasants on its side. In June 1918 Lenin had decreed the establishment of ‘committees of the village poor’ (kombedy), which were meant to report the richer peasant families hoarding grain to the authorities;18 and in return they were to receive a hand-out from the requisitioned stocks. In reality the peasantry resented the entire scheme. Clashes with the urban squads were widespread and the kombedy fell into disrepute.

  By December the kombedy had to be abolished by Lenin, who also strove to prevent his local party comrades from forcing peasants to give up the land they had taken since 1917 and enter collective farms.19 Upon re-conquering Ukraine, communist leaders accompanying the Red Army independently introduced a policy of collectivization which it took the Central Committee months to reverse.20 Yet peasants were battered even by Lenin; for the state procurement of grain nearly quadrupled between the fiscal years 1917–18 and 1918–19.

  And yet the increase was never enough to feed the towns after the Red Army’s requirements had been met. Less than a third of the urban diet in the Civil War came from state-provided rations: the rest had to be obtained from the so-called sack-men who travelled from the villages and sold produce on street corners in defiance of the Cheka.21 The black market was an integral part of the wartime economy. So, too, was the determination of the workers to eke out their rations by selling hand-made or even stolen goods on the side. Monetary wages became virtually worthless as the currency depreciated to 0.006 per cent of its pre-war value by 1921.22 Sheer physical survival was everyone’s aim. Industrial production formally recorded in the official statistics declined precipitately: large-scale enterprises in 1921 produced a fifth of the total recorded for 1913.23 Key armaments plants and textile factories were the main enterprises kept going. Nevertheless the Reds took on the Whites primarily with inherited military supplies; and labour discipline in the factories and mines, despite the introduction of ever more severe legislation, was poor.

  Meanwhile peasant households in the villages had to endure immense exactions of grain-stocks, conscripts and labour power. Villages tried to seal themselves off from the towns and hoard their stores. Wherever possible, peasants kept back their cereal and vegetable crops for trade with peasants from nearby villages or for wages in kind in return for work done by the many workers who were leaving the towns. The rural economic sector survived the Civil War in better shape than the urban sector;24 but the reason for this was not the government’s competence but the peasantry’s ability to frustrate the government’s intentions.

  The Bolsheviks recognized the patchiness of their military, political and economic control over town and countryside. Their leaders in Moscow and the provinces aspired to a centralized party, a centralized government, a centralized army, a centralized security force. Discipline, hierarchy and decisive action were their common aims. Lenin, Trotski, Dzierżyński, Sverdlov, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin were generally in agreement: their disputes affected mainly matters of secondary importance. For instance, Bukharin and Kamenev disliked the licence given to the Cheka to execute in secret.25 Yet neither of them had a conscience about executions carried out after peremptory trials. What is more, no communist leader objected to the predominant economic orientation adopted since mid-1918. A strengthened campaign of industrial nationalization had occurred, and by 1919 all large factories and mines were owned by government. Grain requisitioning, too, was uncontroversial among the Bolsheviks. The Russian Communist Party became more militaristic in methods. Their members grew from about 300,000 in late 1917 to 625,000 in early 1921, and most of these Bolsheviks, old and new, fought in the Red Army.26

  The intensification of military hostilities softened the disagreements between Lenin and the Left Communists. It is not hard to see why. There was a surge of measures to bring the entire economy into the state’s control in the early months of the Civil War, and little reason remained for the Left Communists to cavil at Lenin’s industrial and agricultural policy. The utopian spirit prevailed throughout the communist party. Russia, according to the party’s leaders, was on the verge of creating a socialist society. At such a time the need for political authoritarianism was an article of faith. Soviets, trade unions and factory-workshop committees were instructed to reinforce centralism at the expense of electivity and consultation. Power in Moscow was the priority; and, as Sverdlov explained, this was unachievable unless a single institution controlled the state at each level. Everyone agreed that only the Russian Communist Party should and could fulfil this role. The party alone had the reliable personnel, the ideology and the esprit de corps.27

  There was no objection to this at the party’s lower levels. Provincial communist leaders had always been centralizers in theory, and their present sense of political isolation and military danger in their localities convinced them in practice that a fundamental overhaul of the political and administrative machinery was essential: they wanted greater central intervention because they needed the help. In the economy, too, their inclination had always been to nationalize. Local practicality reinforced this inclination. Every province which had serious shortfalls in supplies, whether in grain or coal or oil or machinery, sought Moscow’s assistance.28 Lenin had always taken it for granted that the guidance of the party was vital to the October Revolution’s consolidation. Now he and his leading administrators, including Sverdlov, opted to give institutional form to this. The party was to become the supreme state institution in all but name.29

  There was a reshuffling of arrangements in the capital. The Central Committee could meet only infrequently because most of its members were political commissars on the fronts or in cities outside Moscow. From January 1919 two inner subcommittees were introduced, the Politburo and the Orgburo. The Politburo was to decide the great questions of politics, economics, war and international relations; the Orgburo, serviced by an expanded Secretariat, was to handle internal party administration. Sovnarkom’s authority was permanently reduced in favour of the Politburo, which was chaired by Lenin and immediately began to give rulings on everything from military strategy against Kolchak to prices of shoes and eggs in Saratov. The Politburo became an unofficial gover
nment cabinet.

  Its founding members were Lenin, Trotski, Stalin, Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinski. On the whole, this was an effective body even though Trotski and Stalin usually had to be consulted by telegram. Lenin was good at coaxing his team to co-operate with each other. In the case of Trotski and Stalin he had his hands full. Stalin bridled at having to take instructions from Trotski as People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. They hated each other, but there was also a political edge to their clash. Stalin disliked the practice of employing Imperial Army officers, and he encouraged other Bolsheviks to complain about it. Thus was born a Military Opposition in the party. Trotski retorted that the Red Army could not function without experienced officers — and Lenin supported the policy at the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919.30 Trotski was anyway not wholly traditional in his military preferences. He attached a political commissar to each officer; he also took the families of many officers hostage to ensure loyalty. Proud of his ruthlessness, he published a book in 1920, Terrorism and Communism, which eulogized mass terror.

  Admiral Kolchak’s advance into the Urals in winter 1918–19 prevented Trotski from attending the Eighth Party Congress. Lenin had been so worried that he put out feelers to the Allies to see whether they might broker a halt to the Civil War if the communists forswore sovereignty over the parts of the country not presently occupied by the Reds.31 This was not defeatism but a temporary ploy. His thoughts were still directed at the ‘European socialist revolution’. A rising of far-left German socialists, the Spartakists, occurred in Berlin in January 1919; it was suppressed, but successful insurrections took place in March in Munich and Budapest. In the same month Lenin summoned communist and other far-left parties from around the world to the First Congress of the Communist International (or Comintern) in Moscow.