The White leaders knew the importance Trotsky, and indeed the regime, attached to propaganda, and they made efforts to counter it with campaigns of their own, sometimes in new and unexpected ways. In May 1919, for instance, Sermuks showed Trotsky several copies of an order, supposedly signed by Trotsky, which had been removed from the walls of railway stations by Red Army men. The ‘order’, dated 1 May 1919 and printed in precisely the same format used by Trotsky’s press, read:
After a period of time in which I sold out Russia, which is alien and hateful to me, I achieved the highest power thanks to the hooligan-sailors of Kronstadt and with material help from the Germans. I now govern the remnants of Russia in fear of my death and to the misfortune of all who love Russia. Our cause is quite hopeless, also on the fronts of which I have lost count; all I can see is that the borders of my kingdom are shrinking; within only a year I have lost bountiful Siberia, Turkestan and in a week or so the entire Perm region will have gone, Ukraine doesn’t recognize us, we have lost Riga, Pskov has left us and soon there will be no Petrograd … We are not sorry for Russia, and therefore as before, comrades, we will go on stealing, ruining the labouring peasantry, destroying industry, causing violence and excesses, bestiality, deception.
The document was signed ‘Leiba Trotsky-Bronstein’ and listed all his posts.114
‘Why did they tear them down?’ Trotsky asked. ‘They shouldn’t have. No one would believe such a forgery. They should have pasted up my latest order alongside.’
The editor of V Puti was the former head of the Moscow training battalion, Berezovsky, who also compiled reports on the fronts for Izvestiya. Trotsky had issued a general order to all HQs requesting full cooperation with him.115 Berezovsky began by lauding the War Commissar, but Trotsky quickly put a stop to this, sending a memo to his editor: ‘The leading article of No. 18 contains references to me. I regard it as highly inappropriate that such eulogies should appear in a paper printed on our train. I request you to keep personalities out of the paper as far as possible.’116 Trotsky had no need of petty flattery, having long been used to thinking in terms of epochs and continents.
He took the issue of propaganda very seriously, and expected others to do no less. At the beginning of June 1920 he cabled Karl Radek, who was in charge of ‘Polish agitation’, with copies to Alexandrov, the deputy chief of the political section of the Revolutionary Military Council, the Central Committee Secretariat, Steklov, editor of Izvestiya, and Bukharin, editor of Pravda:
Our agitation on Poland so far in no way corresponds to the importance of events and only touches the masses superficially … 1. We must organize flying street meetings on, for instance, the capture of Borisov. Totally precise slogans must be issued from one centre … 3. Slogans attacking the Polish bourgeoisie must be posted on every street, at all stations, terminals and so on … 4. The poets must be mobilized for this. Up to now practically no poems have been written about the war with Poland. 5. We must bring in the composers, ordering them to compose for the victory of the international over the tune of Polish chauvinism. I suggest we start with a small ‘special commission’ of poets, playwrights, composers, artists, film-makers, and then, after working out a definite programme, with prizes, create an intellectual-artistic meeting of Proletcult under the slogan ‘The Mobilization of the Arts against the Polish Landowners’.117
Trotsky established a political section on the train itself, whose task was both to undertake the political education of the crew and to recruit reserve commissars at the stopping-places.118
On most of their return trips to Moscow, Trotsky’s staff would deposit hundreds of files in the Commissariat, including Trotsky’s orders, intelligence data, correspondence on the conduct of the war, details of ‘unrest in various towns and localities’, materials on ‘arrests and investigations, supply questions, cables about leave of absence and apartments’.119
The train enjoyed a high degree of autonomy when it came to obtaining weapons and ammunition, equipment and food supplies, usually of the highest quality. When Trotsky discovered that the Tsar’s garage with five automobiles had survived, he at once requested the People’s Commissar of Transport to transfer them to his train.120 Thanks to Trotsky’s efforts, train personnel enjoyed certain benefits, including cooks and doctors, and there is a note from Trotsky requesting a warm winter coat for one of his staff, Alexander Pukhov, ‘who really needs one badly. I request he be authorized to obtain one without having to wait.’121 Even at the height of the war, Trotsky issued passes for his men to go on leave, for instance three weeks at the end of 1918 for one Comrade Spiridonov.122
Apart from his wife, Trotsky had no close friends. Instead, he had what Stalin would later call ‘staff’. This was not the same as domestic staff, but rather a silent, terrified socialist staff who, for the privilege of the slave, for the possibility of being somewhat higher than ordinary mortals, were willing to carry out the leader’s every wish. Trotsky was one of those who laid the foundations of this numerous and essential attribute of the bureaucratic Moloch.
The Whites and the intervention forces frequently subjected the train to artillery and aircraft bombardment, and several times it was mysteriously derailed. As Trotsky later recalled: ‘The train earned the hatred of its enemies and was proud of it. More than once the [Socialist Revolutionaries] made plans to wreck it. At the trial of the [SRs], the story was told in detail by Semenov, who organized the assassination of Volodarsky* and the attempt on Lenin’s life, and who also took part in the preparations to wreck the train.’123
Later in Berlin, perhaps with the connivance of the Cheka, Semenov published an account of the SRs’ terrorist actions, in which he wrote that, after the murder of Volodarsky, ‘we planned the assassination of Lenin and Trotsky’.124
The savagery of the war left its mark on Russia. It is hard now to accept that in order to establish the Idea so much blood had to be shed. One of the high priests of that Idea hurried from place to place in his special armoured train. It never occurred to him to doubt whether the great idea could be built on the pinnacle of a heap of his countrymen’s skulls. The fact is, any dictatorship needs terror. And Trotsky, like the other leaders of the revolution, knew it.
The Dictatorship and Terror
Radically-minded Russian revolutionaries had for decades believed that, in a country where the peasantry were the overwhelming majority, only a dictatorship of the proletariat would be capable of moving society in the desired direction. Thus, the unrestrained use of violence against the enemies of the dictatorship was justified in their minds. To a considerable degree the Bolsheviks were compelled by their opponents to use force and by the manifest failure of their economic policy to resort to extreme measures. Lenin had to admit that ‘on the economic front and with our attempt to go over to Communism, by the spring of 1921 we had suffered a more serious defeat than anything inflicted on us by Kolchak, Denikin or Pilsudski, far more serious and far more fundamental and dangerous. Our economic policy was isolated from the grass roots.’125
In the unstable circumstances that reigned throughout the country, the situation in the Red Army was also unstable. Typical of the reports Trotsky was receiving from the Cheka in different localities was one dated 15 May 1919, covering Ukraine. In Kiev province anti-Semitic agitation was widespread. Jewish members of the Cheka in Uman district were being captured by the population and shot, and the local villages were anti-Soviet. In Berdichev district Red Army units were running riot, perpetrating pogroms under the slogan ‘Beat the Yids, smash the Cheka—they’re our enemies’. Vasilkovsk district was rife with banditry, counter-revolutionaries and ‘every other kind of scum’. There were constant risings, looting, murder, attacks on the Cheka. ‘In one case practically the entire staff of the local Cheka were murdered by bandits. The leather factory was razed to the ground by Red Army men.’ In Tarashchansk, when a gang of twenty bandits was approaching, the Red Army commander assembled his men and asked them if they wanted to fight: they vote
d to abandon the town. The gang entered Tarashchansk, opened the army stores and started selling goods to the population. Similar accounts of wholesale banditry, pogroms and Red Army failure came from all over Russia.126
The peasantry had been allowed by the Bolsheviks to take the land, but now they were being subjected to seizure and requisitioning. The Soviet regime had been forced to change its policy towards the peasantry, differentiating between the various levels of the agrarian population and using extreme measures in the process. In an article entitled ‘The Governing Principles of [Our] Policy in the Don Region’, Trotsky outlined the regime’s attitude to the Cossacks:
We explain to the Cossacks by word and show them by deed that our policy is not one of revenge for the past. We do not forget anything, but we are not avenging the past … We watch carefully to ensure that the Red Army does not commit pillage and rape as it advances. Firmly aware that any excess by Red Army forces … would become a major political fact and create the most enormous difficulties, we nevertheless demand everything the Red Army needs from the population, we collect everything in an organized way through the food committees and we are careful to pay fully and promptly … We deal demonstratively with elements that penetrated the Don during its cleansing.127
‘Organized’ and ‘demonstratively’ were of course euphemisms intended to conceal coercion and violence.
The mood among the peasants could not but be felt also by the Red Army, which consisted mostly of peasants, as Trotsky was well aware. He wrote to Lenin in December 1919: ‘All the information from the localities confirms that the emergency tax has greatly aroused the local population and is having a bad effect on the ranks. It is the mood of most of the provinces. In view of the poor food situation it would seem necessary to halt the emergency tax or to moderate it sharply, at least as far as the families of serving men are concerned.’128
The sufferings of the villages and other causes of discontent among the Red Army soldiers, not least the successes of the White armies, created a mood of unrest and a wave of desertion. Commanders, faced with chaotically retreating units shouting ‘We’re surrounded!’ resorted to the sort of coercion that is customary in time of war, the threat of the firing-squad. But what was permissible on the battlefield soon became a key feature of the Soviet system. Trotsky found the situation perfectly normal, and never revised his views. Later, in his memoirs, he wrote: ‘An army cannot be built without [repression]. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death at the front and the inevitable one in the rear.’129
Repression was in Trotsky’s view a component part of military structure, a method for educating both officers and men. A telegram he sent to the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Western Front in 1919 is characteristic: ‘One of the most important principles of educating our army is never to leave a single crime or misdemeanour unpunished … Repression must follow immediately upon a breach of discipline, for repression is not an end in itself, but is directed towards didactic, military aims … Breaches of discipline and disobedience … must be subjected to the harshest punishment.’130 It was Trotsky’s belief that the threat of harsh punishment would compensate for the low level of awareness, conviction and training of the army rank and file. Curiously, like Lenin, Trotsky regarded consciousness as the foundation of discipline, yet he stressed that fear and arrest should be used to instil discipline.
He told his commanders to set an example in the field, but also to command with an iron fist and not to flinch from using their weapons to maintain order. When someone pointed out to him that not all commanders and commissars had revolvers, he at once cabled Lenin: ‘The absence of revolvers creates an impossible situation at the front. It is impossible to maintain discipline without a revolver. I suggest Comrades Mironov and Pozern requisition revolvers from everyone who is not on active duty.’131 The threat of punishment gradually entered the structure and functioning of the army, and also entered people’s minds as a moral norm, ‘revolver law’, the revolutionary imperative, proletarian necessity.
On 26 November 1918 Trotsky wrote to a number of army military councils, with copies to Lenin and Sverdlov: ‘I draw your attention to the fact that 9th Army is working very poorly. Its HQ’s orders are not being carried out, the army is marking time … The divisional and regimental commanders must be made to go over to the attack at any price. If the position does not change in the course of the next week, I shall be compelled to apply severe repression against the commanding personnel of 9th Army.’132 In due course he was able to acknowledge the achievements of 9th Army: ‘8th and 9th Armies have gone over to victorious offensives. The first steps have made significant advances: there are many prisoners and much booty. I demand merciless punishment for the deserters and shirkers who are paralyzing the will of 10th Army … No mercy for deserters and shirkers. Commanders and commissars answer for disobedience and cowardice. Advance!’133
All civil wars are inordinately bloody, but the sheer scale of the Russian civil war made it one of the most violent in recorded history. And its violence was expressed not only in military, but also in economic, social and spiritual terms. Addressing an audience of Chekists on 7 November 1918, Lenin declared: ‘When we are reproached for our harshness, we wonder how people could have forgotten the most elementary Marxism. What is important for us is that the Cheka is directly involved in bringing about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and for that reason its rôle is invaluable. There is no other way to the liberation of the masses than by means of violence against the exploiters.’134 It seemed completely normal that the regime should employ the most violent means to attain its ends. Lenin could send a telegram to Trotsky in Sviyazhsk, thanking him for his good wishes for Lenin’s health and adding: ‘I’m sure the crushing of the Kazan Czechs and White Guards, as well as the kulak-bloodsuckers who support them, will be carried out with an exemplary lack of mercy.’135
Trotsky, however, would apply ‘an exemplary lack of mercy’ to more than just ‘kulak-bloodsuckers’. Thousands of peasants were driven into the Red Army, many of them only recently released from the trenches of the First World War and with no appetite for wading through any more mud, taking part in bayonet charges or being fed on by lice. Battalions and regiments were melting away as soon as they were formed, as Red Army men scattered to their homes. Desertion acquired mass proportions. S. Olikov, who had been engaged on recapturing deserters, wrote an interesting study of the subject in the 1920s, in which he noted that desertion reached particularly high numbers in the second half of 1918 and the first half of 1919: ‘In the first two weeks of their punitive and agitational operations, the [desertion] commissions produced 31,683 men who were either caught or returned voluntarily. The next weeks saw 47,393 such cases. In a few months as many as 100,000 were caught. Only force, the threat of execution (and many were executed mercilessly), forced thousands of men to return to the front.’136 Trotsky realized he would never build an effective army as long as the epidemic of ‘boycotting the war’ continued, and hence a large number of desertion commissions was formed, at divisional, army and front levels. On 2 June 1919 Lenin and Sklyansky co-signed a special Defence Council order according to which deserters who failed to report to their units or to the authorities ‘will be regarded as enemies and traitors of the toiling people and will be sentenced to severe punishment, including execution’.137
On his first trip to the front Trotsky dictated a number of extremely harsh orders on deserters. On 30 August 1918, for instance, he reported that: ‘Yesterday 5th Army field court martial sentenced twenty deserters to death. First of all, commanders and commissars who had abandoned the posts entrusted to them were executed. Then cowardly liars who had tried to pass as unfit. Finally, a number of Red
Army deserters who refused to atone for their crime by agreeing to fight in the future.’138
Such measures helped, but not invariably. Fear prevented many from escaping to their homes, but not everyone. There were also many deserters who were motivated by political considerations. Thousands of the former tsarist officers who had been swept into the army were divided into three categories by Denikin in his study of the civil war:
The first, very few in number, were those who ‘stood on the Bolshevik platform’, that is, they were either sincere Communists or ‘Octobrists’ [i.e. sympathizers since the coup], in any event sufficiently compromised by their close association with the bloody work of the Bolsheviks to be denied a place outside the Soviet system … A second group, equally small in number, were the so-called ‘counter-revolutionaries’ who actively worked against the Soviet regime, despite the repression, Cheka persecution and terror. They took part in scattered outbreaks, uprisings, assassination attempts, defection to the White armies, and so on. Finally, the third group, and the most numerous, were flung into the Red Army by hunger, fear and compulsion, and they shared the fate of the Russian intellectuals who had become specialists.139
Denikin and other commanding White officers did their best to persuade former tsarist officers either to leave the Red Army or not to join it. One of Denikin’s orders, calling on men to leave the Red Army at once, warned those who refused that they would be cursed by the people and tried by a ‘stern and pitiless court martial’ of the Russian Army.140 The order was circulated clandestinely in the Soviet Republic and some officers obeyed it, with the result that even more severe repression followed. Former tsarist officers continued to go over to the Whites, nevertheless. In response, Trotsky instituted hostage-taking. On 2 December 1918 he cabled the Revolutionary Military Council at Serpukhov:
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