Trotsky made his own recommendations as to how the regime should deal with the chaos, sabotage, anarchy, Communist arrogance and lack of competence. Above all he advised the severe limitation of ‘collegial’ principles. During the period of consolidation, collegia, or boards, were being formed at every level of the state and economic hierarchy. Soon, however, the consequences of unbridled democracy and the absence of personal responsibility were felt throughout society. On 29 April 1918, the VTsIK agreed to strengthen the principle of one-man management, centralization and an active policy of employing bourgeois experts. A month earlier, the Central Committee, with Trotsky present, had discussed ‘the Central Committee’s general policy’. It was established that ‘the period of the conquest of power is over, basic construction is under way. It is essential to bring knowledgeable, experienced and businesslike people into the work. Sabotage by intellectual groups has been broken, the engineers are coming over to us, we must make use of them.’119
In effect, it was this policy that Trotsky propagated in his speeches. Some Left SRs, and many leading Bolsheviks also, feared that this step might lead to the downgrading of democracy and the growth of bureaucracy. Like Lenin, Trotsky argued for the introduction of iron discipline and the harshest of measures against overt and covert enemies. He stated that ‘the rural bourgeoisie will be the chief enemy of the working class, it wants to starve the Soviet revolution out … We warn the kulaks that as far as they are concerned we shall show no mercy.’120
Trotsky believed that enlightenment changed people. ‘There are many high and beautiful spiritual values: there is science and art, and they are not accessible to the working people, because the workers or peasants are forced to live like convicts, shackled to their wheel-barrows. People with a spiritual cast of mind must be prepared to say to themselves, “Yes, perhaps I shall perish in the struggle that is now going on. But what is the enslaved life without enlightenment and under the heel of the oppressors, when compared to the glorious death of a fighter?”’121 Like a true radical, Trotsky advocated the path of sacrifice, a path that would lead in time to the socialism of sacrifice.
Naturally, as Commissar for War, Trotsky devoted much thought and writing to questions of military construction. ‘The question of forming an army,’ he wrote, ‘is for us a question of life and death.’ Three or four years later, when preparing his earlier articles for publication in his collected works, he seems to have recalled something V.V. Shulgin had written about military force during turning-points in history. Shulgin was an exiled politician, a former member of the State Duma and one of the two emissaries from the Provisional Government-to-be to accept Nicholas II’s abdication. In a series of articles, later collected and published as Dni (The Days), he wrote of the revolution, which he called ‘the Devil’s plaything’: ‘A lost war always threatens [to bring] revolution … But revolution is immeasurably worse than a lost war. Therefore, the guards must be kept for the sole and honourable task of fighting against the revolution.’122 Trotsky determined that first the Red Guards and then the Red Army were needed to fight counter-revolution and the intervention. The revolution would not survive without force.
Trotsky was both a pragmatist and a dreamer. He was capable of withdrawing from the prosaic tasks of everyday life and floating on high, gazing far into the ‘Communist distance’. He could fire others with a belief that what he was saying was true. When on 14 April 1918 he sketched an outline of the future for which they would have to struggle and suffer and sacrifice, he held his audience in thrall. His words cast the seeds of great hopes:
We shall build a unified fraternal state on the land which nature has given us. We shall plough that land and work it on a collective basis, we shall turn it into a flowering garden, where our children will live, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as if they were in paradise. People used to believe in the legends about paradise; they were dreams of people in ignorance and misfortune, they were the longings of oppressed people for a better life. People wanted to live more justly, more purely, and people said there must be such a paradise even in the next life, in an unknown and secret place. But we say that we, the toiling people, will build paradise here in this world, for everyone, for our children and grandchildren forever.123
His audience gave him the expected stormy ovation.
Trotsky was speaking of heaven on an earth that had been ruined by war and two revolutions and that was now to face another three long years of bitter civil war. Dreams of paradise would be overwhelmed by the armoured trains, the music of liberty drowned by the clash of cavalry sabres and salvos, hopes for peace would be crushed by typhus and starvation. And against the background of Russia’s suffering, Trotsky would rise to the peak of his power and reputation.
3
The Ninth Wave of the Vendée
While he was in his first place of post-Soviet exile, in Turkey from the end of 1929, Trotsky planned to write a book on the Russian civil war and the formation of the Red Army. But, as he wrote to Yelena Vasilievna Krylenko, sister of the People’s Commissar of Justice and wife of the Trotskyist Max Eastman, a fire at his villa destroyed a large number of his books and documents on the subject.1 Trotsky’s copy of this letter was one of many stolen from him in the 1930s by the NKVD. There is no indication in the archives of the special services as to whether the fire was an accident or was caused by the NKVD, but in any event, the book was never written.
The carnage of the civil war was defined by another Bolshevik, A.S. Bubnov, as ‘a model of the escalation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the proletarian socialist revolution’. The civil war, he wrote in 1928, ‘advanced this process’.2 It was this ‘escalation’ that raised Trotsky to the summit of his power. He welcomed the war, in which he saw the chance both to eliminate all the exploiting classes in Russia and to push the workers of other countries towards the world revolution. In the autumn of 1918, when it was suggested in Moscow that boats carrying grain on the Volga should fly the Red Cross flag as a safety measure, Trotsky sent a telegram to Lenin protesting: ‘I consider it impermissible to let through ships flying the flag of the Red Cross. The charlatans and fools will think the delivery of grain means there is a chance of conciliation and that the civil war is not a necessity.’3 To the Russian Jacobins, the internecine slaughter was a necessary means to achieve their great goal.
The ‘Laws’ of Revolution
By early March 1918, Trotsky had become Commissar for Military (and later also Naval) Affairs. At the same time he was made Chairman of the Supreme War Council of the Republic. Why did Lenin choose Trotsky for these posts? First, Lenin recognized that organization of the military, a key factor in the survival of the revolution, would require an ability to make political judgements, as well as zeal and determination, a talent for exhortation of the masses, and the ability to bring spontaneous Bolshevik actions and the herd instinct under central control. The holder of this post also needed to be popular and to have political weight and authority in the Party. Lenin believed that Trotsky was such a man.
Lenin also came to see that it was impossible to create a battle-worthy Red Army without the help of military specialists, the generals and officers of the old army, a notion many Bolsheviks, among them some leaders, found unacceptable. Trotsky was firmly behind Lenin on this issue. Indeed, it was Trotsky who, before being appointed to his new position, had suggested the setting up of a Supreme War Council to be composed of former generals who were willing to collaborate. The Council was headed by commissars, but its main functions were carried out by these military specialists under the leadership of the former chief-of-staff of the General Staff of the tsarist army, General M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, a brother of one of Lenin’s most trusted colleagues, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich.
The opposition to the use of military specialists from a number of prominent Bolsheviks forced Lenin to make some significant changes. His opponents had resisted abolishing the elective principle for the appointment of commanders and wan
ted to preserve the role of the soldiers’ committees, and were prepared to accept former officers only under strict control as ‘consultants’. The German advance, however, soon exposed the weakness of Red Guard units which applied these principles.
Trotsky later recalled that he had resisted taking the job at first, but was persuaded when he found he could not think of anyone better:
Was I prepared to do military work? Of course not. I had not even had the benefit of service in the Tsar’s army. My army-service years I had spent in prison, in exile, and abroad. In 1906, the court deprived me of all civil and military rights … I did not think of myself as in any sense a strategist, and had little patience with the sort of strategist-dilettantism that flooded the party as a result of the revolution. It is true that on three occasions—in the war with Denikin, in the defence of Petrograd, and in the war with Pilsudski—I took an independent strategic position and defended it first against the high command, and again against the majority of the Central Committee.4
Lenin made the correct choice in appointing Trotsky. What he lacked in military knowledge and technique, he made up for in his broad political approach to questions of defence and military organization, as well as in his astonishing energy and the ability to inspire people.
Trotsky applied himself to his new post with all the vigour expected of him. He made speeches, wrote papers, gave instructions and received a stream of visitors. Recalling that period of his life, he wrote:
The Cavalry building, opposite the Poteshny Palace, before the revolution was the living quarters of the officials of the Kremlin. The entire lower floor was occupied by the commanding officer. His apartment had now been made into several smaller ones. Lenin and I took quarters across the corridor, sharing the same dining-room. The food at the Kremlin was then very bad. Instead of fresh meat, they served corned beef. The flour and the barley had sand in them. Only the red Ket caviar was plentiful, because its export had ceased. This inevitable red caviar coloured the first years of the revolution, and not for me alone … Lenin and I met a dozen times a day in the corridor, and called on each other to talk things over … The little cloud of the Brest-Litovsk disagreements had dispersed, leaving never a trace. Lenin was very cordial and considerate both to me and to my family. He often stopped our boys in the corridor to play with them.5
Trotsky saw his chief task as the ‘revolutionary education’ of the masses in uniform. Problems of strategy, operations and tactics, of which he knew nothing anyway, tended to be put to one side. He sought an intellectual or ideological ‘flux’ with which to weld the peasants, workers and lower middle class into a single revolutionary family, which would be bound not only by a sense of moral responsibility, but also by judicial means, with the threat of revolutionary punishment for not obeying an order.
On 22 April 1918, the VTsIK approved Trotsky’s ‘socialist military oath’. In six points it covered the meaning of military service, the duty and honour of a soldier, the obligation to study military affairs, willingness to come to the defence of the Soviet Republic at the first call, sparing neither ‘one’s strength nor one’s life’, and ended: ‘If with malicious intent I renounce this my ceremonial promise, then let general scorn be my lot, and let me be punished by the stern hand of revolutionary law.’6 Generations of Soviet soldiers swore an oath close to this, never realizing that its author was the ‘despised fascist hireling, Trotsky’, as he is described in Stalin’s history of the Party.
Among the issues Trotsky dealt with in 1918 was that of the mass mobilization of the workers and peasants, which he regarded as an absolute necessity that was being inadequately carried out. There were far too few naturally gifted people available to convert shapeless assemblies into the revolutionary units of a regular army. What was needed were commissars, political organizers and teachers, the experience and knowledge of the old officer corps.
The First All-Russian Congress of Military Commissars met in June 1918 to hear Trotsky expound in simple terms two fundamental tasks of commissars in the army: to give the soldiers a political education, and to control the actions of the command staff. Recognizing that voluntary recruitment could not produce more than a third of the army’s needs, and that too many ‘useless elements—hooligans, idlers and dregs—had been let in’, he argued that it was ‘the responsibility of commissars to work ceaselessly to raise awareness in the depths of the army and mercilessly to root out the undesirables’. He pointed out that the commissars were ‘the direct representative of the Soviet regime in the army, and defenders of the interests of the working class … If a commissar notices that a military leader represents a danger to the revolution, then he has the right to deal ruthlessly with the counter-revolutionary, including execution.’7
There were some Left SRs among the military commissars, and Trotsky described the Left SR Krivoshein, for instance, as ‘a wonderful provincial commissar’ in Kursk. Soon, however, the Bolshevik monopoly would be extended to every facet of state activity. Like the other leaders, Trotsky was not troubled by the fact that the commissars were ‘defenders of the interests of the working class’ in an army that was overwhelmingly made up of peasants.
Trotsky was the chief protagonist of the idea of using military specialists. In the summer and autumn of 1918 he published a series of articles with such titles as ‘The Officer Question’, ‘On the Officers Deceived by Krasnov’, ‘NCOs to Your Posts!’, ‘NCOs’, ‘On Former Officers’, ‘Military Specialists and the Red Army’. It was in the last of these, written on 31 December 1918, that Trotsky expounded most fully his ideas on the use of former tsarist officers. In it he dealt with the criticism he had endured from comrades on this issue: ‘When the nagging became persistent, I had to resort to pragmatism rather than logic: “So, can you give me ten divisional commanders, fifty regimental commanders, two army commanders and one front commander—today? And all of them Communists?” In reply, my “critics” would smile meekly and change the subject.’8
Plainly, the regime would choose a Communist commander over a non-Communist one, but, as Trotsky pointed out, the regime did not have that choice. Another criticism that required rebuttal was that officers were defecting to the enemy. ‘There have been quite a few such cases,’ he admitted,
mostly of officers in important posts. But rarely do people talk about the loss of entire regiments through a [Communist] commander’s lack of training, because a commander did not know how to maintain communications, had not put out pickets or field patrols, had misunderstood an order or could not read a map. If I were asked what had caused us the most damage up to now, treachery by former professional officers or the lack of training among new commanders, I would personally find it hard to give a reply … Cases of treason and treachery by former officers are known about in general, but unfortunately neither the general public nor even inner Party circles know enough about regular officers who honestly and consciously have given their lives for the cause of workers’ and peasants’ Russia. Only today a commissar told me about a captain who was in command of nothing more than a unit and who declined a higher command because he had become closely attached to his soldiers. That captain died in battle a few days ago.9
When confronted by a concrete case of treachery, however, Trotsky was implacable and merciless, as the case of A.M. Shchastny shows. Captain First Class Shchastny, commander of the Baltic Fleet, was arrested on 27 May 1918 on Trotsky’s orders and arraigned before the Supreme Tribunal of the Republic on 20-21 June, charged with organizing a counter-revolutionary coup. Trotsky—the sole witness—brought as evidence the text of a speech that Shchastny was to have made to a naval congress: ‘The whole speech from beginning to end, despite its apparent cautiousness, is indisputable documentary proof of a counter-revolutionary plot … It was a particular political game, a big game, aimed at seizing power. But when gentlemen admirals and generals start playing their personal political games during a revolution, they must be prepared to take the responsibility for such games when they
go wrong. Admiral [sic] Shchastny’s game has gone wrong.’10 The trial was brief. Shchastny was shot on suspicion of conspiracy, but no evidence was brought, other than Trotsky’s, and there were no defence witnesses. This was the first political trial in Soviet Russia at which the death sentence was imposed, and it is worth noting that it was a breach of the law in itself. The extreme nature of the revolutionary laws, while combating one evil, was capable of creating a greater evil. Trotsky was an ideal executor of such laws.
The Red Army’s crushing of the Kronstadt revolt, which occurred during the Tenth Party Congress of March 1921 when the once-loyal garrison rebelled against Bolshevik policies, gave a perfect illustration of Trotsky’s capability in this sphere. When he was told about the uprising, he at once dictated an address:
To the population of Kronstadt and the rebellious forts. I order all those who have raised their hand against the socialist Fatherland to lay down their arms immediately. Recalcitrants must be disarmed and handed over to the Soviet authorities. Commissars and other representatives of the regime who have been arrested [by the insurgents] must be released at once. Only those who surrender unconditionally can count on the mercy of the Soviet Republic. I am simultaneously issuing instructions to prepare to crush the insurgency and the insurgents with an iron hand.11
The address was signed by Trotsky, as People’s Commissar, S.S. Kamenev, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, commander of 7th Army Tukhachevsky, and chief-of-staff Lebedev.
Years later, when his rôle in Kronstadt was mentioned in the West, Trotsky tried to justify his actions in his Bulletin of the Opposition and in letters to his supporters. These letters, of which there were several hundred, quickly found their way into the hands of the NKVD. Noting that the revolution had its own laws and that it recognized only the strong, Trotsky wrote on one occasion: ‘During the years of the revolution, we had frequent clashes with Cossacks, peasants, even with groups of workers (groups of Urals workers formed a volunteer regiment in Kolchak’s army) … In various parts of the country so-called “Green” peasant detachments were formed that did not recognize either “Reds” or “Whites”. The “Greens” often clashed with the “Whites” and suffered heavy losses; and of course they were given no quarter by the “Reds”.’12
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