Apart from writing historical studies of the revolution, Trotsky was to a certain extent also a military historian. It was on his initiative that his orders, directives and speeches as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council were published in a five-volume collection in 1923-24 under the title Kak vooruzhalas revolyutsiya (How the Revolution was Armed). As early as February 1920 he had written to the Chief of the Field Staff, the Political Direction of the Red Army and the Military History Commission: ‘It seems that it will be absolutely necessary in the coming months to compile at least a brief history of the Red Army. Such a history will be needed above all in Western Europe and America … It must become the source-book for many other countries which have either already entered or are about to enter the revolutionary epoch.’66 He indicated that the history of the Red Army should reflect its different stages, that of partisan warfare, voluntary and regular service, the role of the commissars and aspects of strategy in the civil war.
The civil war occupies a special place in Trotsky’s writing, and the seventeenth volume of his collected works is devoted to its history, and an analysis and description of the widest possible range of events. At the Sixth Congress of Soviets in November 1918 he had proclaimed that ‘the first army of Communism in the history of the world’ had been created and was operating victoriously.67 Most of his writing on military themes took the form of narrative, or chronicles of events, but he also believed that by peopling scenes of battle and front-line activity with sharply etched personalities, he could strike sparks of revolutionary enthusiasm and raise the exhausted and tormented population once more to continue the fratricidal conflict. While his multi-volume history of the civil war lacked formal structure, it succeeded in recreating the atmosphere of the time.
Much of the material in the collection testifies to Trotsky’s enormous contribution to the thinking and decision-making that went into building the new army. Speaking in November 1920 at a commission charged with making use of the experience of the civil war, and long before the military reforms of 1925, he put forward the idea of a regular army based on the foundation of a militia.68 When the civil war was over, Trotsky repeatedly raised the question of spreading knowledge about its history in the interests of the world revolution. The idea, promoted in speeches by a number of other leaders besides Trotsky, was to familiarize the masses with the military history of the Russian revolution, on the assumption that awareness of it was essential as a manual of instruction and source of revolutionary strategy for the coming civil wars in other countries. The Soviet military leaders believed that their advice would soon be needed elsewhere. ‘We must compile a strategic and tactical calendar of October,’ Trotsky said. ‘We must show how events rose in wave after wave, and the way they were reflected in the Party, in the Soviets, the Central Committee and military organization.’ It would all be of use to ‘our class brethren’.
In his 1920 report Trotsky also spoke of the need to be able to combine a defensive war, forced on the Red Army, with the civil war conditions in the enemy camp.69 Practical experience thus became a definite weapon. When in 1924 D. Petrovsky, the editor of the journal Voennyi vestnik (Military Messenger), sent B. Shaposhnikov’s article ‘The History of One Campaign. Summer 1920’ to Trotsky for comment, Trotsky crossed out the author’s words, ‘Because of our military loss, the link was broken between the October revolution and that of Western Europe.’70 Shaposhnikov’s article had been devoted to an analysis of Tukhachevsky’s lecture ‘The Vistula Campaign’, and Trotsky was not prepared in 1924 to share this defeatist view in public.
He had in fact been the initiator of a large number of significant studies by military thinkers, including Anishev, Kakurin, Bubnov, Kamenev, Tukhachevsky and Eideman, but by the end of the 1920s his own name no longer figured in them. Many other important features of the Soviet Union’s military history with which he had been associated were also suppressed. For instance, on Trotsky’s orders the former commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, G. Gai, sent him a full report on the fate of Red Army units in Poland in 1920. After suffering severe losses in heavy fighting, the 3rd Corps had become separated from the main front and was forced to enter Germany, where its troops were interned.71 Trotsky had also been informed that the retreating 1st Cavalry Army under Budenny had brought with it a wave of pogroms, although no mention of this is to be found in the Soviet military literature. As Commissar Zilist reported to Lenin: ‘1st Cavalry Army and 6th division destroyed the Jewish population as they went, looting and killing on the way … 44th Division was also not idle …’72 Lenin marked the report ‘for the archives’, but Trotsky did not have the right to use such material in his writings.
At the end of the 1920s the process began whereby the roles of individuals were altered in the writing of Soviet history to suit Stalin’s purposes better, and military history was not neglected in this regard. When Trotsky read a panegyric by Voroshilov in Pravda on the occasion of the leader’s fiftieth birthday in 1929, he became enraged. Voroshilov asserted that the saviour of the Soviet regime in the civil war was none other than Stalin, whose ‘iron will and strategic talent’ were demonstrated in his able and skilful leadership. On the other hand, according to Voroshilov, ‘the defeat of our troops at Warsaw, which was the result of the treacherous orders of Trotsky and his supporters in Red Army Headquarters, disrupted the Cavalry Army which was preparing to attack Lvov.’73 During the civil war Trotsky had tried and failed to persuade Lenin to remove Voroshilov, and now the worm had turned and was having his revenge by piling one myth on the other.
Trotsky chose to reply to Voroshilov in an article entitled ‘Stalin and the Red Army, or How History is Written’, using almost exactly the same sub-headings as Voroshilov—‘Tsaritsyn’, ‘Perm’, ‘Petrograd’ and ‘The Southern Front’—but providing on the basis of the documents, step by step and paragraph by paragraph, an entirely different picture in each case. In his introduction he wrote that Voroshilov’s article contained ‘not a single line of truth, not one’.74 He realized, of course, that while millions would read Voroshilov’s travesty, virtually no one in the Soviet Union would have the chance to judge it by comparison with his own factual version, apart from some NKVD officials, a few diplomats and Stalin himself.
Trotsky did not know that in December 1928, when he was en route from Alma-Ata to Odessa, Voroshilov was enlisting Stalin’s assistance in having certain cuts made to a book by Yegorov on the Warsaw campaign. In particular he wanted to delete references to Stalin’s telegram which prevented the Cavalry Army from going to Tukhachevsky’s assistance. Voroshilov wrote to Stalin in their customary familiar way:
Dear Koba,
I have read your letter to Yegorov about keeping the telegram of 13 August 1920 in his book Lvov-Warsaw. I am in full agreement with the essence of your letter … But unfortunately Comrade Yegorov gives his own interpretation of the telegram. I urge you to cast your eye over the few pages (127-130) of Lvov-Warsaw which show why I am concerned. If you still think the explanation of Berzin’s correspondence with Trotsky and Yegorov’s commentary are adequate, tell Comrade Tovstukha to call me, or give me a call on the phone yourself. My own view is against including the telegram with such a peculiar commentary as that given by Yegorov.75
Yegorov wrote to the publishing house, protesting: ‘This book is my monograph and to make changes without my knowledge means to deprive it of its author and, as the author, I cannot accept public responsibility for the alteration carried out in the book by other hands.’76 It was of course the view of Stalin and Voroshilov that prevailed, not the author’s. It had become a rule that all sins, past and present, all defeats and failures, must be blamed on the chief opponent, the distant exile Trotsky.
Voroshilov would soon become even more explicit. In his Order No. 072 of 7 June 1937, the successor of Trotsky and Frunze as Defence Commissar stressed that
the Soviet court has already more than once justly punished the gangs of terrorists, saboteurs, spies and murd
erers exposed amid the Trotskyites and Zinovievites who have been doing their treacherous deeds with money from the German, Japanese and other foreign intelligence agencies under the command of the brutal Fascist, traitor and betrayer of the workers and peasants, Trotsky … As an agent of Japano-German Fascism, Trotsky will now have to recognize yet again that his faithful accomplices, the Gamarniks and Tukhachevskys, the Yakirs, Uboreviches and all the other scum who served capitalism as lackeys, are to be wiped off the face of the earth and that their memory will be forever cursed and forgotten.77
All this had only an indirect relation to the writing—and rewriting—of history. From the early 1930s, indeed, Trotsky was no longer able to devote himself wholeheartedly to such luxuries as historical research. He was consumed by the problem of self-preservation. History, however, is not only to be found in the pages of researchers. The drama of the historian himself may become elevated to the level of the highest tragedy.
Forty-Three Months in Mexico
Despite the fact that his name figured in every condemnatory remark made at the Moscow trials, officially Trotsky could not be sentenced by the Soviet court, even in absentia, since in 1932 he and his entire family had been deprived of their Soviet citizenship. As Vyshinsky’s concluding three-hour speech revealed, however, it was the regime’s intention that Trotsky should be morally and politically annihilated: ‘Together with our entire people, I accuse these most heinous of criminals, who deserve only one kind of punishment, shooting, death!’ His words were greeted by the customary stormy applause. At 7.15 p.m. on 30 January 1937, the court adjourned, ostensibly to consider its verdict, although this had been decided long in advance of the trial. While Vyshinsky and Ulrikh were reporting to Stalin, and tea was taken behind the scenes, the court waited. The accused had to wait eight long hours while their fate was decided. Finally it emerged that four of them were to be spared—for the time being. Concluding his reading of the sentence, Ulrikh declared that on the evidence given at the trial the court had shown that Trotsky and his son Lev had been directing the treasonous activities of the ‘Trotskyist anti-Soviet Centre’, and that should they ever be found on Soviet territory, they would be arrested and tried by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court.78 What Ulrikh did not know was that the order to liquidate Trotsky physically had been given long before.
As we have seen, for the first two or three years of his exile Trotsky still entertained some fragile hope of being able to return to the USSR. He knew that this could only happen if Stalin were removed from the leadership, or in the event of a dramatic change of course by the regime. In any case, he sent signals from Prinkipo on two occasions indicating his readiness for reconciliation without preconditions. He saw the international revolutionary movement as the basis for such reconciliation, maintaining the hope that the movement would rise and would convince the leadership in Moscow that he had been right all along.
From early 1931 Trotsky had been urging that the fate of the revolution in Spain depended crucially on the Spanish Communist Party’s readiness to fight and to lead with authority, and he wrote a letter to the Politburo warning that defeat of the Spanish Republic would automatically lead to the installation of a Fascist regime, as real as that of Mussolini. ‘There is no need,’ he concluded, ‘to speak of the consequences this would have for the whole of Europe and the USSR.’ In the letter, however, he also pointed to the opportunities for a world revolution contained in the situation in Spain, and urged the Soviet leadership to make ‘an honest attempt’ to heal its rift with the international labour movement, and ‘to form a united front in the arena of the Spanish revolution’. The word ‘honest’ cannot have come easily from Trotsky’s pen, knowing Stalin as he did. Noting the fact that ‘nine-tenths of these differences’ had nothing to do with Spain, he had decided not to complicate matters further by making his case in the press, and therefore restricted himself to this confidential address to the Soviet leadership.
Trotsky could not, however, bring himself to send the letter. He feared it would be read as a sign of surrender, and let it lie on his desk until 27 April 1931, when he added a short concluding sentence to the effect that his proposals required urgent action, and sent it by ordinary post to Moscow.79 Without waiting for a reply, he then lost patience and published the letter in the May-June issue of the Bulletin of the Opposition.80 The Politburo had in fact seen his letter in May, and Stalin had then made it clear that action must be taken to eliminate Trotsky politically. His note, scrawled in red ink across Trotsky’s typed letter, reads: ‘To Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Sergo, Andreev, Kuibyshev, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Rudzutak. I think that Trotsky, this criminal gang-boss and Menshevik charlatan, has to be bumped on the head through ECCI. He has to know his place.’81
Most of the Politburo added short approving comments, Molotov’s remark being more lengthy: ‘I suggest no reply be made. If Trotsky publishes this, a reply should be made along the lines proposed by Comrade Stalin.’ Exactly what this meant is unclear, since Stalin spoke only of ‘bumping Trotsky on the head’. It is noteworthy that Stalin did not name all the members of the Politburo for circulation: Kirov is missing, as are Mikoyan, Petrovsky and Chubar, who were candidate members, while Andreev was no longer a candidate member and was chairman of the Party Control Commission. It is not always possible to follow the serpentine path of Stalin’s thinking, but here at least it is clear that he wanted Trotsky silenced. He often issued orders in oblique or elliptical language, for instance ‘first category sentence’, which meant the death penalty. In Trotsky’s case, Stalin’s will would be carried out literally—after a nine-year delay.
Why did Stalin indicate Comintern as the means for getting at Trotsky? Did he intend the action to be carried out as the result of a propaganda resolution of ECCI, or similar action by the Spanish Communist Party? Evidently not. The issue was more complex. As early as the end of the 1920s, a special group had been formed by the OGPU under Menzhinsky, with the task of carrying out operations abroad against Russian counter-revolutionaries, including the liquidation of opponents of the Stalinist order. The work of this group was regarded by the leadership as especially patriotic, representing the highest form of class vengeance against the enemies of socialism. The perpetrators of these terroristic actions were well rewarded and given rapid promotion in the service. In due course the Foreign and Secret Political Sections of the Security Directorate of the NKVD were formed and staffed by senior intelligence officials, of whom the most notable were Zubov, Serebryansky, Sudoplatov, Kolesnikov, Eitingon, Shpigelglas and Fitin.
One of the most valuable sources of information on these activities is Pavel Sudoplatov, with whom I conducted lengthy interviews, and who has since published an authoritative account of the KGB and his life as a secret operative.82 Sudoplatov was not only an intelligence agent. Like others in his group, he also engaged in the assassination of the USSR’s enemies among the White émigrés and oppositionists. Some of these operatives themselves served prison terms or died, like Serebryansky, in Soviet custody, their work having exposed them to too many suspicious contacts for their masters’ liking. For most, however, their work on behalf of the system was valued as heroic and gladiatorial. Menzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria successively reported personally to Stalin on the work of their special ‘legionaries’.83
Before the Second World War the Foreign Section of NKVD Security carried out the orders of the highest authority. As Sudoplatov wrote to the Procurator General of the USSR in 1989: ‘For the thirty or more years that I worked in intelligence, all the operations I took part in emanated not from Beria, but from the Party Central Committee. Intelligence and diversionary operations abroad and behind the Fascist German lines were under the direct orders of the Party Central Committee [to which Sudoplatov and his colleagues reported back84]. All the reports on my special operations are to be found in the General Department of the Central Committee, and one of them is a one-page report in my own hand.’85 This handwritten rep
ort was on the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico.
Arrested in 1953—like many other senior officials of the secret service whose recent careers had been closely associated with Beria, who was himself arrested when Stalin died—Sudoplatov spent the next fifteen years in prison. In 1982 he applied for rehabilitation, but it was not granted until 1992.86 In a second application for rehabilitation in 1987, Sudoplatov mentioned other operatives of the Foreign Section, among them a number of foreign refugees and exiles, better known as Comintern personalities, who had been recruited into the Special Group, including Dimitrov, Manuilsky and Dolores Ibarruri, nicknamed ‘La Pasionaria’.87 The use of foreign Communists in NKVD intelligence operations was also confirmed in letters and reminiscences of Kolesnikov and Eitingon, and has been documented in a collection of KGB archives.88 A number of other other senior Comintern figures, as well as diplomats, were also used by the Special Group for intelligence-gathering rather than active operations. These included the Bulgarian ambassador to Moscow, Ivan Stamenov, who, according to Sudoplatov, suggested a radio receiver and embroidered Russian felt boots be presented as a gift to the Bulgarian king, Boris.
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