92. On July 24, over the Hughes apparatus from Moscow, Lenin told Stalin, “I must say that neither in Piter nor Moscow is bread being distributed. The situation is terrible. Let us know if you can undertake extreme measures, because if not from you, we have nowhere else to obtain food.” But Stalin was hard-pressed to deliver. The Whites were closing the noose. Stalin personally rode out in an armored train to inspect rail line repairs. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 668, l. 90 (F. S. Alliluev, “T. Stalin na bronepoezde”). On July 26, 1918, following a reconnaissance to the Kuban (“Until now we only had unproven information, but now there are facts”), Stalin deemed the situation critical (“the entire Northern Caucasus, the purchased grain and all the customs duties, the army created by inhuman exertions, will be lost irrevocably”) and begged for a division to be sent immediately (the one designated for Baku). “I await the answer. Your Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 3, l. 35. Bonch-Bruevich, sending some troops from Voronezh, a division from Moscow, would hold out until then. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 3, l. 37–8.
93. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 3, l. 47. A second Remington was added to the inventory sheet by hand.
94. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 41, n2; Genkina, Tsaritsyn v 1918, 121.
95. K. E. Voroshilov, “Avtobiografiia,” in Gambarov, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, XLI/i: 96.
96. V. Pariiskii and G. Zhavaronkov, “V nemilost’ vpavshii,” Sovetskaia kul’tura, February 23, 1989.
97. Leninskii sbornik, XVIII: 197–99; Sochineniia, IV: 122–6.
98. Colton, “Military Councils,” 41–50.
99. Chernomortsev [Colonel Nosovich], “Krasnyi Tsaritsyn.” The date of this telegram is not specified. Khmel’kov, K. E. Voroshilov na Tsaritsynskom fronte, 64 (October 3, Stalin and Voroshilov to Lenin, Sverdlov, and Trotsky). Okulov became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front in Tsaritsyn (October–December 1918); Lenin recalled him to Moscow “in view of the extremely sharp relations between Voroshilov and Okulov.” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/i: 94 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 486).
100. Argenbright, “Red Tsaritsyn”; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, V: 630, 640; Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny v SSSR, I: 290; Iudin, Lenin pisal v Tsaritsyn, 61–2; Sochineniia, IV: 116–7; Leninskii sbornik, XXXVIII: 212.
101. Argenbright, “Red Tsaritsyn,” 165.
102. Argenbright, “Red Tsaritsyn,” 166 (citing Nevskii, Doklad ot narodnogo komissara putei soobshcheniia, 17–18). Appended to a report by the People’s Transport Commissar (V. I. Nevskii), Makhrovsky’s report was presented to Lenin.
103. On August 27, 1918—the same day the Supplementary Treaty with Germany was signed in Berlin—Lenin ordered the local Cheka head to release Makhrovsky and the non-party specialist Alekseev, but the Cheka replied that the latter had already been shot. On September 4, Sverdlov would repeat the order to release Makhrovsky; he would be freed on September 21 by a former Baku Chekist who worked in the central fuel supply department. Argenbright, “Red Tsaritsyn,” 175–6 (citing Sal’ko, “Kratkii otchet o deiatel’nosti Glavnogo Neftianogo Komiteta”). In May 1921, Makhrovsky would be tried for embezzlement in the fuel industry and sentenced to be shot, a sentence commuted to five years. His wife (Burtseva) also received a prison term. Gudok, May 20, 1921.
104. The Tsaritsyn Cheka, in its newsletter, claimed to have arrested “around 3,000 Red Army men,” but executed only twenty-three leaders: Izvestiia Tsaritsynskoi gubernskoi chrezvychainoi komissii, October 1918: 16–22, and November 1918: 36, in Hoover Institution Archives, Nicolaevsky Collection, no. 89, box 143, folder 11.
105. Magidov, “Kak ia stal redaktorom ‘Soldat revoliutsii,’” 30.
106. Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 134–7; Trotsky, Stalin, 288–9.
107. If the city fell to the Cossacks, the prisoner barge was to be blown up and sunk—the source, evidently, for the subsequent rumor that Stalin had had it deliberately sunk to drown the prisoners. Chernomortsev [Colonel Nosovich], “Krasnyi Tsaritsyn”; Khrushchev, Memoirs, II: 141, n2. Izvestiia KPSS, 1989, no. 11: 157, 161–2.
108. Izvestiia Tsaritsynskoi gubernskoi chrezvychainoi komissii, November 1918: 16, in Hoover Institution Archives, Nicolaevsky Collection, no. 89, box 143, folder 11; Genkina, Tsaritsyn v 1918, 126, 154.
109. In a newspaper interview at the time, Stalin praised “two happy phenomena: first, the emergence in the rear of administrators from the workers who are able not only to agitate for Soviet power but build a state on new, communist foundations, and secondly the appearance of a new corps of commanders consisting of officers promoted from the ranks who have practical experience in the imperialist war and enjoy the full confidence of Red Army soldiers.” Izvestiia, September 21, 1918; Sochineniia, IV: 131.
110. The appointment (on September 6, 1918) was sparked by a report, dated August 23, 1918, from Alexander Yegorov about the need for unified command. Krasnov and Daines, Neizvestnyi Trotskii, 72–5.
111. Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 420. Nikolai Krylenko, the former tsarist ensign, had resigned as Red supreme commander over the decision to build a permanent standing army; he went over to the justice commissariat.
112. Trotsky also decreed that White Army captives who signed an oath to the Reds should be sent into battle, as long as their family members were held as hostages. Izvestiia, August 11, 1918; Trotskii, “Prikaz” [August 8, 1932], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, I: 232–3. That fall of 1918, at the suggestion that barges carrying grain up the Volga fly the Red Cross flag, to make sure they were not sunk, Trotsky exploded. “The charlatans and fools,” he telegrammed Lenin, “will think the delivery of grain means that there is a chance of conciliation and that civil war is not a necessity.” Volkogonov, Trotsky, 125 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 7, l. 79).
113. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 40.
114. Chernomortsev [Black Sea Man], “Krasny Tsaritsyn,” reprinted in Nosovich, Krasnyi Tsaritsyn. It was Voroshilov who identified Black Sea Man as “General [sic] Nosovich.” Voroshilov, Lenin, Stalin, i krasnaia armiia, 45–7. Nosovich asserted that the specialist Alekseev really was plotting with Serbian officers, but that they did not understand each other well. Nosovich falsely claimed he had been a spy in the Red camp, rather than a willing collaborator (the Whites remained suspicious of him). A prevaricator, he nonetheless should go down as having written the first accurate portrait of one of the most important figures in world history. On White suspicions of Nosovich, see Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 178–9. Soviet works accepted Nosovich’s claims at face value: Genkina, Tsaritsyn v 1918, 126–7 (citing a Nosovich report to Denikin of December 1918); Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no., 11: 177 no., 20. Nosovich soon emigrated to France, lived a long life, and died in Nice (1968). Nosovich, Zapiski vakhmistra Nosovicha.
115. No known record has survived of Stalin’s emotions at that moment. He, Minin, and Voroshilov issued a public order in Tsaritsyn “that deserters from the White side who voluntarily surrender their weapons are not to be executed or abused”—this was regime policy, but evidently not Tsaritsyn practice. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 3, l. 114; Soldat revoliutsii (September 1, 1918).
116. Denikin would later write that in 1917 Sytin had approached him and other generals with a proposal to save Russia by turning over land—be it gentry, state, or church—gratis to the peasants who were fighting. General Kaledin, who shot himself in early 1918, is said to have replied, “Pure demagogy!” Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty, I: 93.
117. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 51 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5412, l. 2); Khmel’kov, Stalin v Tsaritsyne, 50–1; Lipitskii, Voennaia deiatel’nost’ TsK RKP (b), 126–9. Invariably Trotsky’s answer to these incessant requests—not just for ammunition but also guns, armored vehicles, airplanes, pilots—was to cite profligacy in the expenditure of materiel, likely true but no solution to
immediate needs. Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 162; Golubev, Direktivy glavnogo komandovaniia, 89–90; Velikii pokhod K. E. Voroshilova, 175.
118. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 262 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 2, d. 19, l. 16–7).
119. Karaeva, Direktivy komandovaniia frontov, I: 345–8 (RGVA, f. 10, op. 1, d. 123, l. 29–30); Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/i: 91.
120. Kolesnichenko, “K voprosu o konflikte,” 44.
121. Sverdlov, Izbrannye porizvedennye, III: 28.
122. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 60.
123. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 52–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5413, l. 1–2).
124. Knei-Paz, Social and Political Social Thought.
125. Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 134–6; Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 54, n2 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2433, l. 33); Trotsky, My Life, 443. Trotsky’s frustrations went beyond Stalin (“Send me communists who know how to obey,” he telegrammed Lenin from the front in 1918). Schapiro, Communist Party, 262.
126. Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, I: 176. The Cossack leader Krasnov had founded a “Don republic,” which Germany promptly recognized, but Denikin deplored this as separatism. When Germany capitulated in November 1918, Krasnov’s army disintegrated; he was forced to subordinate himself to Denikin but soon quit the South and joined Yudenich’s northern forces operating out of Estonia. He emigrated West in 1920, and would later collaborate with the Nazis.
127. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 64; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 132 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 2, d. 40, l. 29); Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 54 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5414, l. 2–4: Oct. 5, 1918); Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 134–6. See also Trotskii, “Prikaz” [November 4, 1918], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, I: 350–1. Trotsky would later write that “the atmosphere of Tsaritsyn, with its administrative anarchy, guerilla disrespect for the Center, . . . and provocative boorishness toward military specialists was naturally not conducive to winning the good-will of the latter and making them loyal servants of the regime.” Trotsky, Stalin, 273, 280–1, 288–9.
128. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 68. Trotsky had reported to Sverdlov on October 5, 1918, that “yesterday I spoke on the direct line and laid the responsibility on Voroshilov as the commander of the Tsaritsyn Army. Minin is in the Military rev Soviet of the 10th Tsaritsyn Army. I did not raise the question of Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 67.
129. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 3, l. 46–7. See also Sverdlov’s note to Lenin (October 5, 1918): Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedenniia, III: 36.
130. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, VI: 156; Genkina, Tsaritsyn v 1918, 183. Stalin telegrammed Voroshilov and Minin that day (October 8, 1918), suggesting all could be settled “noiselessly.” Kolesnichenko, “K voprosu o konflikte,” 45–6. Lenin commented that hiding the money from Stalin was improper: “L. A. Fotievoi i L. V. Krasinu,” PSS, L: 187 (October 9, 1918).
131. Danilevskii, V. I. Lenin i voprosy voennogo stroitel’stva, 37–8.
132. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, V: 663; Trotsky, Stalin, 291–2; A. L. Litvin et al., “Grazhdanskaia voina: lomka starykh dogm i stereotypov,” in Istoriki sporiat (Moscow, 1969), 63; Iuzhnyi front, 19.
133. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 1, l. 20 (October 16, 1919).
134. Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 158–64, 196.
135. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 71; Golubev, Direktivy glavnogo komandovaniia, 84–5.
136. Trotskii, “Prikaz” [October 5, 1918], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, I: 347–8. A caravan went to Moscow to try to bring back some supplies, especially ammunition. On October 24, a Red Army regiment arrived from Moscow consisting of workers from two factories. The next day, in Moscow the Central Committee considered a letter from Stalin demanding a trial of the Southern Front commander (Sytin) and others (Okulov) for sabotaging the supply of the Tenth Army in Tsaritsyn; Sverdlov brushed off the request. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 71, 79, 82; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/i: 101. In Moscow, Lenin received Stalin on October 23, and evidently brokered a peace, which Sverdlov, in Lenin’s name, telegrammed to Trotsky. Meijer, Trotsky Papers, I: 158–60; Leninskii sbornik, XXXVII: 106.
137. D. P. Zhloba, “Ot nevinnomyskoi do Tsaritsyna,” in Bubnov, Grazhdanskaia voina, I: 28–34, 32–4; Azovtsev, Grazhdanskaia voina v SSSR, I: 229; V. Shtyrliaev, “Geroi grazhdanskoi voiny Dmitrii Zhloba,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1965, no. 2: 44–6; Sukhorukhov, XI Armiia, 81, 83–95. On the military situation, see Vacietis’s report to Lenin (August 13, 1918): RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 8, l. 51–66.
138. P. N. Krasnov, “Velikoe voisko donskoe,” in Gessen, Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, V: 190–320 (at 244–5).
139. Izvestiia, October 30, 1918; Sochineniia, IV: 146–7. Zhloba (b. 1887), the kind of peasant autodidact commander Stalin usually favored, proved to be one of the few people unafraid to argue with the Tsaritsyn warlord—a greater sin for Stalin than Zhloba’s soon-to-be-revealed limits as a military leader. Nosovich, Krasnyi Tsaritsyn, 60–1. Before the end of 1918, Zhloba’s Steel Division was dispersed into the cavalry commanded by Boris Dumenko, against whom Zhloba then intrigued, taking his place. (Dumenko was arrested and executed by his own side on apparently false charges of murder.) In 1920, fighting Wrangel in the Crimea, Zhloba’s Red cavalry was surrounded. In 1922, he quit the Red Army. Stalin would have Zhloba executed in 1938.
140. Almost simultaneously, Roman Malinowski, the okhranka agent in Bolshevik ranks, faced a revolutionary tribunal on charges of treason at the end of October 1918. The prosecution established that he had betrayed eighty-eight revolutionaries to the tsarist authorities, but the defendant voiced contrition only for two, “my best friends, Sverdlov and Koba. These are my two real crimes.” The six judges sentenced Malinowski to death and in the wee hours of November 6, one day before the first anniversary of the seizure of power, he was executed by firing squad. He was the original traitor within Bolshevik ranks. Halfin, Intimate Enemies, 7–17 (citing Delo provokatora Malinovskogo [Moscow: Respublika, 1992], 159, 216, 108). Minin (Pravda, January 11, 1919) began the portrayal of the bungled near-fall of Tsaritsyn in 1918 as a surpassing Red victory, a depiction that only gained in strength under Stalin’s rule: Voroshilov, Lenin, Stalin, i krasnaia armiia, 42–8; Melikov, Geroicheskaia oborona Tsaritsyna, 138–9; Genkina, “Bor’ba za Tsaritsyn v 1918 godu.”
141. On the German military’s inveterate high-risk gambling, see Hull, Asbolute Destruction, 291ff.
142. Deist and Feuchtwanger, “Military Collapse of the German Empire.”
143. Lieven, “Russia, Europe, and World War I,” 7–47; Jones, “Imperial Russia’s Forces,” I; Pearce, How Haig Saved Lenin, 7.
144. Koehl, “Prelude to Hitler’s Greater Germany,” 65. See also Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front; Kitchen, Silent Dictatorship; Lee, The Warlords; and Ludendorff, My War Memories. Compare the Russian army occupation of Galicia in 1915: Von Hagen, War in a European Borderland.
145. Quoted in Denikin, Ocherki Russkoi smuty, I: 48–9. Germany’s naval chief of staff, Admiral Georg von Muller, railed at Hindenburg and Ludendorff in his contemporaneous diary: “Mistake after mistake has been made, above all the casual handling of the peace with Russia, whose collapse had been a boon of immeasurable value to us and should have been exploited to release troops for the West. But instead of this we conquered Latvia and Estonia and became involved with Finland—the results of an excess of megalomania.” Von Muller, The Kaiser and His Court, 398 (September 29, 1918). Similarly, Major-General Hoffmann would complain of the units desperately needed in the West who remained in the East that “our victorious army on the Eastern Front became rotten with Bolshevism.” Wheeler-Bennet, Forgotten Peace, 352 (citing Chicago Daily News, March 13, 1919).
146. Wheeler-Bennet, Forgotten Peace, 327; Wheeler-Bennet, “The Meaning of Brest-L
itovsk Today.”
147. Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare.”
148. PSS, XXXVII: 150, 164. On November 7, 1918, the first anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin had made a point of visiting the Cheka club (at Lubyanka, 13). His appearance was unexpected, and greeted with wild applause. Lenin returned the next day to answer questions for two hours. Izvestiia, November 9, 1918; Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 92–3 (citing internal publication); Latsis, Otchet Vserossiiskoi chrevzyvhanoi kommissi, 81; V. I. Lenin v vospominaniiakh chekistov, 111–2. See also Pravda, December 18, 1927; and PSS, XXXVII: 174.
149. On November 18, 1918, Max, Prince of Baden, imperial chancellor, announced the kaiser’s abdication of nine days before. Wilhelm lived out his life in comfortable Dutch exile and died from natural causes in June 1941, after the Netherlands fell under Nazi German occupation. Hull, Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II; Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
150. Stevenson, Cataclysm, 379–406.
151. Wheeler-Bennet, Forgotten Peace, 370–1, 450–3.
152. “The period of sharp divergences between our proletarian revolution and the Menshevik and SR democracy was a historical necessity,” Lenin wrote, adding that “it would be preposterous to insist solely on tactics of repression and terror toward petty-bourgeois democracy when the course of events is forcing the latter to turn toward us.” Pravda, November 21, 1918. See also PSS, XXXVII: 207–33 (speech of November 27, 1918).
153. Broadberry and Harrison, Economics of World War I.
154. Bond, War and Society in Europe, 83–4.
155. Knobler, Threat of Pandemic Influenza, 60–1. Russia’s 15 million, Germany’s 13.1 million, France’s 8 million (nearly 80 percent of the prewar population aged 15–49), Britain’s 5.25 million (almost half the prewar population of men aged 15–49) plus 3.7 million from the empire, Austria-Hungary’s 7.8 million, Italy’s 5.6 million, the United States’ 4.3 million, the Ottoman empire’s 2.9 million, Romania’s 750,000, and Bulgaria’s 1.2 million all contribute to these estimates.
Stalin, Volume 1 Page 122