At this time, news was coming in that German forces under General von der Goltz were moving towards Riga and that Polish troops were advancing on Minsk. This information did not exercise Trotsky particularly, as he knew no large numbers were yet involved. But then very disturbing news came from the east. Kolchak, having recovered from the losses of 1918, was advancing westwards. According to intelligence he had 150,000 infantry and cavalry against the Red Army’s 100,000 on the eastern front, and in his rear he had the potential support of large numbers of intervention forces.
Analyzing the situation in March 1919, Vatsetis later wrote: ‘It was entirely clear to me that Kolchak’s advance on the Middle Volga was a grandiose demonstration aimed at using energetic pressure to draw a large number of our armed forces to the Eastern Front, and then by falling back to suck them further into Western Siberia, that is, away from our main theatre of war, especially from the Southern Front, where we were preparing to deal with Denikin.’167 A month later, Lenin came to the same conclusion: ‘Kolchak’s offensive,’ he told a meeting of factory committees and trade unions in Moscow, ‘which is inspired by the Allies, is aimed at drawing our forces from the Southern Front in order to allow the remnants of the White Guards and the Petliurists [forces of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Simon Petliura] to reorganize themselves. We shall not move a single company from the Southern Front.’168 Of the position in March 1919, however, the historian A. Anishev noted that 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Armies had begun a general withdrawal: ‘The troops showed all the signs of disintegration associated with a retreating army. Desertion and defection to the Whites assumed significant proportions, there was unrest in the ranks and entire regiments were breaking up.’169
Telegrams from the front disrupted Trotsky’s plans. He had intended to report to the Congress that after a short breathing-spell a decisive offensive could be launched in several directions. But the enemy was ahead of him. A Central Committee meeting of 14 March 1919 approved a motion by Trotsky calling for all military personnel, including himself, to leave at once for the front.170 When the army delegates heard this there was a determined protest, their main argument being that the situation at the front was not catastrophic. Moreover, they argued on 16 March, if they were all to leave for the front ‘the units at the front might see it as a sign that the centre did not want to hear the voice of the army’. Some even thought it was a trick. The session decided that Trotsky should leave at once for the front, but that Sokolnikov should announce to a meeting of front delegates that the directive on their departure had been rescinded and that only those should go who felt that their presence at the front was essential. The question of military policy was placed at the top of the Congress agenda.171
Before leaving for the front Trotsky met Sokolnikov on 16 March for what turned out to be a brief conversation. Trotsky presented his ideas on the need to build a regular, professional permanent army, free of domination by the Party. It seems likely that his ideas had already been seen by Lenin, for on 21 March at a plenary session of the Congress it was Lenin who spoke as the chief advocate of Trotsky’s theses. Trotsky left instructions with his supporters about how they should defend his ideas. He was depending especially on Alexei Okulov, but Okulov arrived late for the meeting.172
Sokolnikov began his report to the Congress, outlining Trotsky’s nineteen points173 and explaining that the Central Committee’s military policy was structured ‘in the way it is expressed in Comrade Trotsky’s theses’.174 He then laid out the principles for forming a regular army. Included in Trotsky’s points was the idea of putting former officers of the old army into command positions, as well as raising the profile of military commissars and Communist cells in units and on naval ships. A firm supporter of Trotsky, Sokolnikov continued: ‘On the question of military specialists the issue is not entirely a military one, but one of general principle. When the question was raised of bringing former engineers into the factories, and using former capitalist organizers, you recall that the Left Communists published the harshest “super-Communist” criticism, which asserted that to return an engineer to the factory would mean returning capital to the commanding heights. And now we have the perfect analogy of that criticism, but in the military field. They say that by returning former officers to the army we are resurrecting the old officer class and the old army. But these comrades are forgetting that alongside the commander stands the commissar, the representative of Soviet power.’175 Sokolnikov reproduced exactly what Trotsky had wanted him to say, but he did it without the brilliance and conviction the author of the ideas would have brought, a fact Zinoviev alluded to when he later gave a report on the Congress to the Party activists in Petrograd.176
Had Trotsky addressed the Congress he would no doubt have stressed the fact that there was still a large measure of support for Party domination in the army, practised in particular by Voroshilov, who was under Stalin’s protection. Two months earlier in January 1919, for instance, Trotsky had informed Lenin on the direct line: ‘If you want to know what Tsaritsyn is, read Okulov’s report which consists entirely of factual material and reports from commissars. I consider Stalin’s protection of the Tsaritsyn tendency as a most dangerous sore, worse than any treason or treachery by military specialists … Rukhimovich is Voroshilov’s other name [i.e. both were equally hostile to military specialists]; in a month we shall have to eat the Tsaritsyn dish … Rukhimovich is not alone, they support each other firmly, raising ignorance into a principle … Artem should be appointed, but not Voroshilov and not Rukhimovich … I ask you once more to read Okulov’s report on the Tsaritsyn army carefully to see the way Voroshilov has demoralized it with Stalin’s collaboration.’177
Lenin had been told the day before in a cable from Pyatakov that Trotsky was determined not to use Voroshilov at the front. Trotsky had utter contempt for Voroshilov, whom he regarded as a poor war leader and a defender of anti-professionalism in the army. In October 1918, for instance, Trotsky had cabled Lenin: ‘Voroshilov can command a regiment, but not an army of fifty thousand men,’ and he threatened to put Voroshilov on trial for failing to carry out his instructions.178 Thus, Trotsky would have plenty to say had he stayed for the Congress.
After Sokolnikov it was the turn of Smirnov to speak. Smirnov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of 5th Army, was Trotsky’s chief opponent, and his tone was accusatory. He claimed that ‘the general command of all the armed forces is extremely unsatisfactory’, and referred to the dangerous leaning in army construction ‘towards the mechanical resurrection of structures of the old army, including those which were once conditioned not by the demands of military technique, but by the class relations of the pre-revolutionary order, and which are organic relics of the autocratic-serf order’.179 Smirnov’s speech, which expressed the views of the so-called ‘military opposition’, pushed the Party back towards militia-style thinking in military construction, to the abolition of single command and stern discipline. Of particular harm to Trotsky’s position was Smirnov’s insistence that military specialists not be put in positions of command.
The fact that sixty-four delegates spoke on the military question at the Congress indicates the interest and feeling it generated. The most vigorous of Trotsky’s opponents was Voroshilov, whose hostility dated from the autumn of 1918, when, as commander of 10th Army with Stalin, he had shown insubordination and blatant persecution of specialists. Trotsky had turned to Lenin and got his support, as first Voroshilov and then Stalin were withdrawn from Tsaritsyn. Voroshilov tried to show that all the successes of the Tsaritsyn army had come only because ‘the command staff was not made up of the men of [the old] general staff, not made up of specialists’. He described this army as ‘close to our ideal’. Without naming Trotsky, it was clear who his target was. During the session of the military section, someone placed officers’ epaulettes on the table, enabling Voroshilov’s supporters to claim that Trotsky was facilitating the defection of specialists to the Whites.
At
this, Okulov, who had been savaged by Voroshilov, spoke up: ‘I beg your attention for a moment. Officers’ epaulettes have appeared here on the table. This is their history. When Comrade Trotsky was in Tsaritsyn, as a result of a discussion with many of the comrades who were there, it was suggested to the Council (of 10th Army) that some sort of marks of distinction should be devised … They were designed from sketches I had made of the Red Star, sewn in gold and silver thread … This scheme, which did not receive approval, was known also to Comrade Voroshilov. The scheme was sent somewhere and somehow buried. When I was leaving Tsaritsyn, with the enemy only a few kilometres away, a close colleague of Comrade Shchadenko dragged out these same epaulettes and started up a campaign to the effect that general staffer Yegorov was taking seventy traitors with him and that the epaulettes had been prepared on Trotsky’s instructions with the idea of handing 10th Army over to the Whites. And that filthy provocation has now been dragged up here at the Congress.’180
In the absence of Trotsky and a necessary degree of resistance, the ‘military opposition’ gained the upper hand. A roll-call vote on Smirnov’s theses received thirty-seven against twenty for Trotsky’s. In effect, the vote reflected the influence of the ‘Left Communists’ who were especially active in the first half of 1919, and it was thus leftist revolutionary principles for building and running the army that emerged from the Congress. Trotsky had feared this outcome. He received Sklyansky’s daily and gloomy reports on the proceedings, hoping in his heart that Lenin would come to the rescue and defend his position, for otherwise, he feared, the difficulties would not only come from the external enemy, but also from short-sightedness and pseudo-revolutionism on the domestic scene. And he was right. What Sokolnikov had failed to do, however, Lenin set out to achieve.
At the evening session of 21 March Lenin listened attentively to the speeches. Aralov produced a survey of the situation at the fronts, Yaroslavsky outlined the course of the debate and the differences that had surfaced in the military section, and Safarov criticized Trotsky’s ideas and called for the introduction of ‘Party hegemony in the army’. Then Okulov, while defending Trotsky’s theses, said that it was not the operational command, ‘but the Communist command’, i.e. not the specialists, who were making huge mistakes, not only in the military but also in the political sphere. He cited some facts: the political commissar of 1st Steel Division reported that there was flogging in the detachments; the political commissar of Trotsky Regiment ‘beats the men’; instant field courts martial were being set up and were sentencing Red Army men to corporal punishment. Okulov wanted to show the delegates that the incompetent military leadership was also politically inept.
Voroshilov claimed that ‘there was little truth’ in Okulov’s speech, and urged that ‘we should not place great hopes in our specialists, even if only because these specialists are different people’. He referred several times to ‘Comrade Stalin’, whose own speech, delivered in a flat, quiet voice, also sharply criticized Okulov and hence also Trotsky and the Centre. ‘I say this,’ Stalin stated, ‘in order to lift the shame that has been heaped on the army by Comrade Okulov.’ As always, Stalin was taking a middle position, criticizing Trotsky’s line, and hence also the Central Committee’s, while agreeing partly with it, and borrowing something from Smirnov while rejecting the rest. In one thing, however, he was consistent, and that was the use of force: ‘I have to say that those non-worker elements who form the majority of our army, the peasants, will not fight for socialism, they will not! They don’t want to fight voluntarily. Our task then is to force them to fight, to make them follow the proletariat not only in the rear but also at the front, force them to fight imperialism.’181 No one objected to this line, all were agreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat must compel the peasants to hand over their grain, to pay taxes and to fight for the new regime.
Trotsky, for all his leftism, understood that in order to stand fast and create a shield for the defence of socialism it was necessary to use the experience of the ‘despised imperialists’, the experience of the old army and military history. He showed that, for all his intellect, he was also pragmatic. When the Congress closed, for instance, he cabled the central organizing bureau of the Party, the Orgburo: ‘I enclose herewith the minutes of a meeting of military delegates … According to a Congress resolution, the Central Committee must as soon as possible settle the question of Party committees in the army. The minutes contain valuable material on this, as the issue of Party commissions was subjected to detailed discussion and voting.’182
It was inevitable that Trotsky would make many enemies. Not only because of his execrable non-Bolshevik past, nor because, like others, he made serious mistakes, and not only because he unexpectedly stood firm over the military specialists and defended intelligent practices borrowed from the old army. Many could not accept his way of working, his hardness and inflexibility, but above all his independent judgement and superior intellect. Lenin knew that had Trotsky been present, his powers of presentation and analysis would surely have won the day.
To defend both Trotsky and the Central Committee’s policy, therefore, Lenin took the floor. He opened by declaring that the Central Committee had been conscious of the loss it was inflicting on Congress by sending Trotsky back to the front, and then launched into an attack on Trotsky’s critics. ‘When Comrade Goloshchekin said that the military administration was not following Party policy … this was a crazy accusation. You bring not a shadow of argument.’ He spoke sharply against partisan thinking: ‘[One] can hear it in all the speeches of Voroshilov and Goloshchekin … What Voroshilov said bears awful traces of partisan thinking. That’s an indisputable fact. Comrade Voroshilov says: we had no military specialists and we had 60,000 losses. That is frightful.’ Lenin defended Okulov: ‘Comrade Voroshilov came out with such monstrous things as that Okulov had destroyed the army. That is monstrous. Okulov was following Central Committee policy.’ (None of this would help Okulov in the 1930s.) He summed up: ‘This is a historic transition from a Party-run to a regular army, the Central Committee has discussed it dozens of times, but here it has been said that all that has to be thrown out and that we must start again. Never and under no circumstances.’183
Sokolnikov had also described Trotsky as the executor of Party policy and had added: ‘For us it was clear that the issue was not only to overturn previous Party policy; had the Congress put the question thus, it would have been necessary also to take the conduct of that policy … out of Comrade Trotsky’s hands … We would ask, whom would the opposition put in Trotsky’s place? I don’t even ask the question seriously.’184
The fact that he received support at the Congress did not mean that Trotsky was an infallible war leader: far from it. Some of his mistakes were significant. He had quickly grasped the central operational fact about the Red Army: its fronts were all internal, and when necessary, troops could be moved from one front to another. The Whites and intervention forces lacked this advantage. But occasionally, as a military non-professional, Trotsky’s understanding of operational conditions was superficial. For instance, in the spring of 1919 forces of the eastern front under the command of S.S. Kamenev delivered a powerful counter-attack against Kolchak. The Whites fell back and headed east, pursued by the Reds. On 6 June Vatsetis, with Trotsky’s approval, ordered the transfer of some units to the southern front, which was under pressure. Commander of 5th Army Tukachevsky later wrote that Trotsky’s directive ‘met a hostile reception on the Eastern front and at the Party Central Committee’.185 Other commanders, namely S.I. Gusev, M.M. Lashevich and K.K. Yurenev, blundy asserted that Trotsky’s directive was ‘a major fatal mistake which could cost us the revolution’.186 The Central Committee wanted to continue the pursuit of Kolchak and effectively rescinded the order given by Trotsky and Vatsetis. Trotsky, on Vatsetis’s suggestion, removed Kamenev as front commander, for insubordination, but Lenin intervened and Kamenev regained his post.187 It was a serious blow to Trotsky’s authority.
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A second blow occurred in July 1919, when the Central Committee rejected Trotsky’s plan for an offensive against Denikin across the Donbass. The plan was later adopted—and during the Stalin cult attributed by Voroshilov to the General Secretary—but the initial rejection depressed Trotsky and led him to tender his resignation as War Commissar. Lenin, who understood Trotsky’s temperament, persuaded the leadership to bolster his morale by issuing a clear motion of support: ‘The Orgburo and Politburo … have come to the unanimous decision that … Comrade Trotsky’s resignation at this moment is absolutely impossible and would do the greatest harm to the Republic, and they therefore insist that Comrade Trotsky not raise this matter again and that he continue to carry out his functions to the full.’ The resolution was signed by, among others, Lenin and Stalin.188
Trotsky remained at his post. There were still many enemies to be defeated. The war, however, eventually came to an end in 1920, and as it did, so Trotsky’s star began to wane. Within five or six years official Soviet historiography would draw a thick line through his name on the list of civil war leaders. In accordance with a decision of the Politburo, in 1928-30 a three-volume work entitled The Civil War of 1918-21 was published. The editor, A.S. Bubnov, managed in his forty-page preface not to mention the former War Commissar’s name once. By 1930, when the third volume came out, new names appeared which had not even been mentioned in the first volume. After noting the particular role played by Lenin, the editor produced the following remarkable statement: ‘An enormous part in establishing the strategic aims (that is, the overall strategic leadership) was played by several members of the Bolshevik old guard, above all by Comrade Stalin.’189
The long night of the Stalin cult had begun, and with it the cynical reshaping and rewriting of history. Trotsky was finally cast into the Orwellian ‘memory hole’. From the hero of the civil war he was made into its anti-hero.
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