Unquestionably, during the October revolution and the civil war a high degree of mutual trust developed between Lenin and Trotsky, of the kind that exists between like-minded men committed to the same task. It is also true that as personalities they remained very much themselves. In 1917 Lenin saw a completely new Trotsky, active and adhering to the revolutionary idea, and as a rule accepting Lenin’s views without argument. Nor was this mere political conformism: it was a coincidence of aspirations. It was no doubt Trotsky’s finest hour, an amazingly fortunate confluence of personal, historical and political circumstances, in which he could reveal the essence of his personality to the maximum, as well as his deepest wishes and dreams. He believed that the revolution justified any measure one might take and that it would transform the world. He had yet to discover that it would engender hopes that would be bitterly disappointed.
Possibly Lenin was the man to understand the destructive revolutionary principle embodied in Trotsky, a principle Trotsky himself acknowledged graphically at a meeting of the Politburo in July 1919, which he recalled in his memoirs. He remarks that he had become aware of the rumours circulating about the harshness of his alleged criminal order in August 1918 to execute the regimental commander and political commissar of the Eastern Front for having withdrawn their troops from battle positions:
Only once did I remark, at the meeting of the Politburo, that if it had not been for the ruthless measures at Sviyazhsk, we would not be holding our meeting. ‘Absolutely,’ Lenin picked it up, and then and there he began to write very fast, as he always did, in red ink at the bottom of a blank sheet that bore the seal of the Soviet of People’s Commissaries [Council of People’s Commissars]. It read: ‘Comrades, Knowing the strict behaviour of Comrade Trotsky’s orders, I am so convinced, so absolutely convinced, of the correctness, expediency, and necessity for the success of the cause of the order given by Comrade Trotsky, that I unreservedly endorse this order.’ ‘I will give you,’ said Lenin, ‘as many forms like this as you want.’ … Lenin gave his signature in advance to any decision that I might consider necessary in the future. And these were decisions that carried life or death with them. Could there be greater confidence of one man in another? The very idea of this extraordinary document could have come to Lenin only because he knew better than I did, or else suspected the source of the intrigue [against Trotsky] and thought it necessary to strike back at it with the utmost vigour.75
To those in the know, it was clear that information about executions at the front carried out on Trotsky’s orders was being spread by Stalin and Voroshilov. At a Central Committee Plenum in 1927, for instance, Voroshilov accused Trotsky of arresting army commanders and commissars without grounds. Trotsky interrupted him and cried out: ‘You are uttering a bare-faced lie, like the dishonourable scoundrel you are, when you say I executed Communists!’ ‘You’re a scoundrel yourself and an out-and-out enemy of our party! Anyway, the hell with him,’ Voroshilov retorted angrily. ‘Don’t think I’m going to sit here in silence while you accuse me of shooting Communists,’ Trotsky exploded. At this, Podvoisky exclaimed, ‘You did shoot Communists. I’ll show you the list of those who were shot.’76
The question of the terror and repression during the civil war, of which Trotsky was one of the initiators, will be discussed in the following chapter. For the moment, it is important to underline the fact that Lenin was always in favour of the most rigorous measures to secure the battle-worthiness of the Red Army. He believed Trotsky was sufficiently severe to bring the front to order, to end desertion, panic-mongering and partisan action, and for his part Trotsky recognized this as the highest form of trust. Trotsky expressed his own attitude to Lenin perfectly plainly: ‘I realized only too well what Lenin meant to the revolution, for history and to me. He was my master. This does not mean that I repeated his words and his gestures a bit late, but that I learned from him to arrive independently at the same decision.’77
The years of the revolution and civil war were unquestionably the high point in Trotsky’s life, at least partly because he was seen as standing alongside Lenin, with whom he was in almost complete harmony. Their intellectual and political collaboration was based on their shared fanatical attachment to the idea of revolution and the radical restructuring of Russia. Neither of them felt the tragedy of a revolution occurring in a backward peasant country with weak democratic traditions. Both had decided that it was possible to ‘skip over’ the bourgeois-democratic stage and proceed straight to the building of socialism, settling the needs of democracy en route. In practice, the revolution which brought the people peace and land took away the more important quality of their lives, liberty.
The Brest-Litovsk Formula
One of the principal reasons for the bloodlessness of the October coup was the haste with which the war-weary nation turned towards peace. The Bolshevik peace policy, expressed in the first decree of the Soviet regime, was immensely popular with millions of ordinary people. Once the Bolsheviks had gained their immediate objective, they were obliged to make good on their promise and leave the war.
On 20 November 1917, as the newly appointed Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Trotsky formally circulated the embassies of Russia’s allies with the news that Russia was now ruled by a government of Soviets under the chairmanship of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The new government had issued a decree on peace which was to be considered as a proposal for an immediate armistice on all fronts and the immediate opening of peace negotiations. The peace envisaged by Lenin’s government, the note continued, would exclude reparations and annexations, and would be based on the principle of national self-determination.78 This and subsequent communications from the Soviet government and foreign commissariat were ignored.
Trotsky relates in his memoirs that he was reluctant to take office:
From my youth on, or, to be more precise, from my childhood on, I had dreamed of being a writer. Later, I subordinated my literary work, as I did everything else, to the revolution … After the seizure of power, I tried to stay out of the government, and offered to undertake the direction of the press … Lenin would not hear of it, however. He insisted that I take over the commissariat of the interior, saying that the most important task at the moment was to fight off a counter-revolution. I objected, and brought up, among other arguments, the question of nationality. Was it worth while to put into our enemies’ hands such an additional weapon as my Jewish origin?
The majority of the Central Committee agreed with Trotsky. Sverdlov proposed instead that he take charge of foreign affairs, ‘and thus I came to head the Soviet diplomacy for a quarter of a year’.79
Within a few days of entering the government, however, Trotsky found himself absorbed once more in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet and the Military Revolutionary Committee, where he was also bombarded by questions about his activities as Foreign Commissar and asked when he was going to publish the secret agreements made by the Tsar with the Entente powers on the post-war division of the territory of the defeated countries. He was able to tell the deputies that in the three days since his appointment he had spent only one and a half hours at the ministry, where he thought it proper to say farewell to the outgoing staff, and had not yet had time to publish the secret treaties.
Indeed, when he had first entered the foreign ministry, he was greeted with the news that no one had come to work. When Trotsky demanded that the staff all be assembled, however, it transpired that there were in fact many of them in the building. In a few words Trotsky explained their new duties and declared: ‘Whoever is willing to work in good faith can stay.’ The new commissar was listened to with gloomy faces, but no keys or papers were handed over to him. The next day he sent a sailor, Markin, who without fuss and pour encourager les autres arrested Prince Tatishchev and Baron Taube, two foreign ministry officials who, like many others in that particular ministry, had survived the fall of tsarism and the Provisional Government period intact. Things then began to go more smoothly. The keys appeared and files
of papers were laid out. Markin found what seem to have been two young experts, called Polivanov and Zalkind, and they began to sort out the classified documents and prepare the secret treaties for publication. But it was only when Georgy Chicherin was appointed as Trotsky’s successor in February 1918 that new assistants were found and a new ‘proletarian’ style emerged.
The Bolshevik victory of October had barely been achieved when it became clear that the new regime’s first priority must be to end the war. They had promised the people land, bread and peace. They had begun to distribute the land, and that should bring bread. But peace depended not on the Bolsheviks alone. The country watched and waited while the new government under Lenin’s chairmanship deliberated at sessions lasting up to eight hours over a multitude of unfamiliar problems. The Council of People’s Commissars was learning the business of administration on the job. Many of the problems being addressed were of fundamental importance for the creation of Bolshevik statehood, even if they were tackled by improvisation and guesswork. At first it was food supply, transport and fuel that occupied much of the government’s attention, but soon came the turn of foreign affairs, as the people began to demand the return of the troops to their villages. The hope that the Germans would agree to a quick armistice, however, was not realized, and it was a full month before hostilities ceased on the Eastern Front.
On 27 November 1917 the Sovnarkom debated the composition of the delegation that would negotiate an armistice with the Germans. It was decided that it should consist of Ioffe, Kamenev and the female Left SR Bitsenko.80 On 2 December the group duly signed an armistice at Brest-Litovsk, and on 9 December peace talks began. On 24 December Trotsky went to Brest-Litovsk to take over as head of the Soviet delegation.
Trotsky reported to Lenin every day, and at first it seemed things were going according to plan. German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann announced that the Central Powers agreed with the Russian proposal to conclude a general peace without annexations or reparations, but only on condition the Entente agree to these terms. Trotsky again asked the Western Allies to support this formula, but again he met a wall of silence. Meanwhile, the Soviet government started demobilizing the Russian Army. On 27 December Kühlmann declared that, in the absence of an Allied response, the Central Powers could not now accept the Soviet concept. Then, on 5 January 1918, it was announced that Germany and Austria-Hungary would make peace on condition that 150,000 square kilometres of Russian territory were ceded to them. Cynically exploiting the right of national self-determination, pronounced by the Soviet government, Germany made peace conditional on Ukraine being given independence, on Poland and Lithuania being detached from Russia, as well as parts of Latvia and Belorussia and the Moonsund archipelago in the Baltic, while the border south of Brest-Litovsk was to be agreed with the government of independent Ukraine.
Trotsky was already in Brest when these conditions were put. On the way from Moscow, he had seen for himself that the Russian trenches were all but empty and that there was nothing to stop the Germans from advancing at will. The Austrian Foreign Minister, Count Czernin, later recalled that the German officer escorting Trotsky through the front line reported that the Soviet Commissar had observed the scene with a growing sense of gloom.81 When Trotsky reported the position to him, Lenin at once replied that he should sign the ‘predatory peace’, although he also said that he, Lenin, must first consult the Central Committee and Sovnarkom. The issue produced a dramatic reaction in the leadership and led to the first real split since October.
Those who resolutely opposed signing the ‘predatory peace treaty’, and who were immediately dubbed ‘Left Communists’, were firmly convinced that revolutionary Russia, with the help of the international proletariat, was capable of giving a rebuff to German imperialism. Their belief in an imminent European revolution was very strong. It was at ‘Left Communist’ insistence that the Sovnarkom allocated two million gold roubles for revolutionary propaganda abroad. Trotsky himself, moreover, brought with him to Brest-Litovsk several bundles of pamphlets and leaflets addressed to the soldiers of the Austro-German bloc. He also took with him Karl Radek, a fiery agitator and talented pamphleteer, showing that he not only believed in the imminence of a German revolution, but was determined to do his best to make it happen. It was therefore not surprising when on 9 January General Hoffmann and von Kühlmann protested at the ‘agitational appeals of the Soviet government’. Next day Trotsky decisively swept their protests aside: ‘We, the representatives of the Russian Republic, maintain for ourselves and our fellow citizens full freedom to propagate republican and revolutionary socialist convictions.’82
As he paced the cobbled streets of the old fortress of Brest in the evenings with Kamenev, Pokrovsky and Karakhan, Trotsky agonized over how to extract Russia from the war without damaging her revolutionary reputation. He recognized that by undertaking separate peace negotiations the Russian delegation was giving the Central Powers a major advantage. Kühlmann made it abundantly clear, even if in camouflaged form, that the Russians were at Brest to sign a surrender, and that all of Trotsky’s high-flown rhetoric about justice and the rights of nations to peace and self-determination were nothing but revolutionary cosmetics. He who had the power would call the tune. Kühlmann seems to have been unaware that the Central Powers were themselves standing on the brink of disaster.
Trotsky told his comrades that in Petrograd Lenin had instructed him, during a break in the talks, to prolong the verbal battle as much as possible. If the Germans issued an ultimatum, he had said, the Russians would have to sign on their terms. Kamenev had protested that it would be impossible to drag the talks out indefinitely, as ‘the Germans simply won’t allow it’. Trotsky replied that there was hope that the revolutionary stance of the Soviet delegation would raise revolutionary tension in the Central Powers. In this belief, he fought hard on almost every point of the treaty in the talks.
Czernin devotes several pages of his memoirs to the talks at Brest-Litovsk, and evidently found Trotsky a worthy adversary: ‘Trotsky is undoubtedly an interesting, clever man and a very dangerous opponent. He has outstanding oratorical talent and an ability to make swift and effective retort such as I have rarely seen, and with the insolence characteristic of his race.’ Czernin also noted that Trotsky was capable of cynicism: when Czernin asked what terms Russia would accept, Trotsky replied that ‘he was not as naive as we thought. He knew perfectly well that force was the weightiest of arguments and that the Central Powers were capable of seizing Russia’s provinces.’83 Commenting on the preamble to the peace treaty, which loftily proclaimed that the sides ‘wish to live in peace and friendship’, Trotsky dismissed this wording with: ‘Some friendship, when one of the friends wants to rob the other … Let it be a closer friendship. Only the word “eternal” is missing.’
Trotsky kept Moscow fully informed of progress at the talks by courier and direct telegraphic line. One particular record of such calls is worth reproducing, as it smacks of the doctoring so much material was subjected to under Stalin’s auspices. It reads:
1. Lenin here. I’ve just received your special letter. Stalin isn’t here and I haven’t been able to show it to him yet. I think your plan is discussible. Shouldn’t we just postpone its final stage until after a special session of the TsIK [Central Executive Committee] has passed it? As soon as Stalin gets back I’ll show him your letter. Lenin.
2. I want to consult Stalin before replying to your question. A delegation from the Kharkov branch of the Ukrainian Central Executive Committee is going out to you today and they have told me the Kiev Rada [Central Government] is on its last legs. Lenin.
3. Stalin has just arrived and we are going to discuss the matter and give you our joint reply. Lenin.
Tell Trotsky we request a break in the talks and his return to [Petrograd]. Lenin.84
This was first published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, after Trotsky’s deportation from the USSR.
The official chroni
cle of Lenin’s life shows that Lenin discussed the issue with Stalin between 10.50 p.m. and 11.30 p.m. on 3 January 1918.85 It seems surprising, though not inconceivable, that Lenin should find it impossible to reply to Trotsky until he had consulted Stalin. On 11 January Kühlmann asked Trotsky: ‘What means of expression would a newly emerged national unit have for making known in practice its wish for independence, and in particular for secession.?’86 Trotsky replied that the question of the future of the self-determining provinces. i.e. Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Kurland, would be decided in conditions of complete political freedom and the absence of any kind of outside pressure. But ‘elections can take place only after the withdrawal of foreign troops and the repatriation of refugees and exiles’.87 It is possible that Trotsky had asked for Lenin’s view on this issue, and that Lenin in turn had wanted to discuss it with Stalin, as Commissar for Nationalities.
The authenticity of the document, however, is flawed on the grounds that when Trotsky was finally anathematized and 1937-38 came, the Soviet Union witnessed not only its ‘night of the long knives’, but also a time when Stalin’s henchmen put their hands to falsifying the past. Among them were some well-known figures. Whether willingly or not, on 7 May 1938 Yelena Stasova and Vladimir Sorin, both secretaries of the Central Committee at the time of Brest-Litovsk, drew attention to the need to ‘elaborate more precisely’ the Central Committee’s minutes on Brest-Litovsk and to correct ‘the incorrect light they throw on Stalin’s rôle in this matter’. Stalin evidently approved of this initiative and circulated the letter to Molotov, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich and Andreev for their comments.
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