In the autumn of 1924, a few months after Lenin’s death, Zinoviev demanded Trotsky’s removal from the post of War Commissar and his expulsion from the Party.
In the preface to his book on the October Revolution Trotsky passes a scathing criticism on Zinoviev’s vacillating attitude in those days and on his opposition to the Party’s decision to start the Revolution. Trotsky also puts the question: What would have happened if Zinoviev had been leader of the Party in 1917, if he had occupied the position of authority which was his in 1923 and again in 1924, when he was at the head of the Comintern?
The political deduction to be drawn from Trotsky’s reasoning is that it would have been necessary to obtain leadership which offered the greatest personal guarantee against defeats similar to those suffered by the German proletariat in 1923 when circumstances were favourable to them.
In the autumn of 1924 the leadership of both Party and State was vested in the so-called Troika’ or triumvirate of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. The lastnamed, who had previously incited Zinoviev to sharp action against Trotsky, suddenly appeared in the role of ‘mediator,’ and so a compromise was arranged. Trotsky was relieved of his military offices, but remained a member of the Boishevist Party.
Several months previously Sklansky, the first Deputy War Commissar and Trotsky’s closest confidential friend, had been removed from office overnight while on leave and sent to America, where he was destined to be drowned a year later on a motor-boat trip. His place was filled by Michael Frunse, an intimate friend of Zinoviev. The relations of Trotsky and Frunse in the War Commissariat were in the nature of mutual antagonism rather than co-operation.
Frunse was an old Boishevist, of the professional revolutionary type. He was an army surgeon’s son, born at Pishpek, in Central Asia, in 1885; after passing his Secondary School Matriculation, he studied economics at the Petersburg Technical School, but was sent down in 1904 for participating in a Marxist course.
In the following year we find him active as an organizer of the Boishevist Party at Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the centre of the Russian textile industry. He was a delegate to the 3rd Party Day (London 1905) and the 4th Party Day (Stockholm, 1906), but in the follow
’A Russian team of three horses driven abreast. (Translator’s Note.)
ing year he was arrested and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. A year later he was sentenced to death for ‘resisting the State authority,’ but the Court of Appeal commuted the sentence to six years’ penal servitude.
Frunse escaped from prison at Chita in 1915. At the time of the February Revolution of 1917 he was carrying on illegal military work at Minsk; later on he became leader of the Bolshevist Party for White Russia and on the western front. In October 1917, he came to Moscow at the head of 2,000 armed workmen. He became Military Commissar at Yaroslavl in the summer of 1918, an army commander on the eastern front in December of the same year, and was appointed to lead a group of armies on this front in 1919. The forces under him defeated Kolchak and won Turkestan for the Soviets. He also directed the final operations against Wrangel in the Crimea, where he displayed great personal courage at the storming of Perekop.
Frunse was a highly educated man, who combined a great talent for organization with painstaking thoroughness. He held his post as War Commissar only for a few months; then he died in consequence of an operation for gall-stones, which was forced upon him against his will by the Central Committee. The medical board which examined him did not pronounce in favour of the operation, but stated that he would never be completely fit for work without it. Thereupon Stalin induced the Party to order him to undergo it.
The choice of Frunse’s successor caused a conflict within the Troika. First Zinoviev proposed Lashevitch, an old Bolshevist who took a prominent part in military work during the Civil War; this was the man who promoted an illegal meeting of the Zinoviev opposition group in a wood near Moscow some years later, for which offence he was relieved of his post and exiled to Siberia, where he died.
Stalin’s candidate was Ordyonikidse. When Zinoviev realized his inability to secure the post for Lashevitch, he made a daring attempt to eliminate Stalin from the leadership of both Party and State by proposing him as War Commissar. Later on Stalin admitted to friends that this proposal came as a revelation to him and made him realize that the differences between Zinoviev and himself must inevitably lead to a struggle for power, in which one or the other would have to go under.
At last their comedy of intrigue ended with a compromise which gave Voroshilov a temporary appointment as Frunse’s successor. Zinoviev was convinced he would find no great difficulty in winning this man over to his political views, for he was easily influenced and not particularly intelligent. But Zinoviev was destined to have an unfortunate experience with Voroshilov.
It came when the two men were on leave together in the Crimea. There Zinoviev divulged his plans to Voroshilov, and thought he had convinced the new War Commissar of the necessity of breaking Stalin’s exces
sive influence. Voroshilov promised to support him: he then attended a meeting of the Central Committee, where he came out with revelations of Zinoviev’s designs that hastened the latter’s fall.
Voroshilov has a hard proletarian life behind him. He is a railway-worker’s son, born in 1881; at the age of seven he was put to work, and so could not go to school. At first he worked underground in the mines; later on, he became a farm labourer under a kulak. After that he worked as a shepherd, but at the age of twelve he had the chance to attend a village school. At fifteen he was employed in a metal works, and at seventeen underwent his first arrest when he was taken into custody for participation in a strike.
When employed as a metal worker in the Hartmann factory in Lugansk in 1903, he made his first contact with Marxist circles. In 1906 the young workman was a delegate to the Stockholm Party Day; the following year he was arrested for illegal work, but escaped shortly afterwards and went to Baku on Party business. From that time onward he was in touch with Stalin.
At the outbreak of the World War he was living in exile, but was influenced by Chauvinist propaganda to volunteer for active service. During the February Revolution he found his way back to the Party fold.
Voroshilov has never been able to fill the gaps in his education, although he made earnest endeavours to do so, at least during his first few years at the War Commissariat. His authority in the Higher Command of the Red Army was and is slight, for he has always been regarded as a mere mouthpiece of the Boishevist Party leaders. He has never developed any independent military ideas in the sessions of the Revolutionary Council of War, although he has displayed a certain originality in designing new uniforms for various military units. He was responsible for the re-introduction of all the old officer ranks, from lieutenant to fieldmarshal, in 1936.
Voroshilov entered upon his new post with two Orders of the Red Flag which he had won in the Civil War. As soon as he was in office, he awarded himself two more for gallant deeds performed at that periodan unnecessary gesture, for his courage was well known throughout the whole army.
Trotsky sums him up as follows in an article dated June 17, 1937:
“It is no secret that the old Boishevist Voroshilov is a purely decorative figure. In Lenin’s lifetime no one would have dreamed of electing him to the Central Committee. Although his personal courage in the Civil War is undeniable, he displayed a complete lack of military and administrative abilities and showed the outlook of a backwoodsman. Neither Stalin nor any other member of the Politburo had any illusions about his qualities as a military leader, and for that reason they made efforts to support him in office by giving him the assistance of expert colleagues.”
With these words Trotsky has voiced the opinions current in the Higher Officers’ Corps as well as among the heads of the Party and government.
Nevertheless the ‘First Red Marshal of the Soviet Union’ is a popular figure in the eyes of the younger generation and the privates of the Red Army. Voroshilov is an excellent rider and a superb shot who takes part in many shooting competitions inside, and outside the army. It is the ideal of every Red soldier and every young Soviet citizen to become a ‘Voroshilov shot,’ i.e., to shoot as well as Voroshiov and receive a badge for his prowess.
The real leaders of the Red Army during the last few years have been Tuchachevsky and Gamarnik. Their best immediate subordinates were the three members of the Soviet Union Council of War and commanders of the most important military districts-Yakir, Uborevitch and Blücher.
The first definite pronouncement on the structure of the new army is to be found in the Ten Theses of Soviet Power, which Lenin drew up for the 7th Party Day in March 1918,’ Section 5 prescribes:
“The creation of armed forces of peasants and workers who must remain in as close contact as possible with the people (the Soviets and the armed peasants
1 See Appendix I.
and workers). The organization of a general arming of the people as the first step towards a whole nation in arms.”
This resolution was adopted in concrete form in the Party programme drawn up for the 8th Party Day in March 1919.1 It provided for a complete introduction of the militia system, on the ground that “in contradistinction to the structure of the old army, it is necessary to make the period of instruction in barracks as brief as possible. The barracks must approximate to a military-political school and secure the closest possible contact between the military formations and the factories, works, trade unions and organizations of the poorer villagers.”
The Civil War prevented the Soviet Government from attempting to realize this programme in 1919[See Appendix I.]. In April 1920, shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Polish War, the 9th Party Day decided, in a special resolution, entitled, “The Transition to the Militia System,” to build up a Red Peace Army on the general principles of the militia system. This resolution stated, however, that “the workers’ and peasants’ militias must be based on cadres that have received military technical and political preparation.”
After the Russo-Polish War the future form of the army became the subject of violent discussions in the Party, and even more violent ones in the ranks of the officers. The supporters of the militia system and the advocates of a standing army represented two extremely antagonistic points of view, the chief spokesman for the latter system being Tuchachevsky, who published in January 1921, a polemic entitled The Red Army and the Militia, in which he expressed his own standpoint most pungently. It is interesting to note the daring trends of thought of this officer who commanded an army at the age of twenty-eight, though it must be admitted that he sometimes expresses them with too much acerbity:
“The adherents of the militia system take absolutely no account of Soviet Russia’s present military mission of disseminating socialist revolution throughout the world. The rich varieties of socialist life and the socialist revolution cannot be forced into any particular framework. They will spread irresistibly over the whole world, and their expanding force will endure so long as there is a bourgeoisie left anywhere.
“What is the way in which they will best achieve their aims? It is the way of armed insurrection within every state, or the way of armed socialist attacks on bourgeois states, or a combination of both ways. No one can make definite prophecies, for the course of the Revolution will show us the right way. One thing, however, is certain: if a socialist revolution succeeds in gaining power in any country, it will have a selfevident right to expand, and will strive to cover the whole world by making its immediate influence felt in all neighbouring countries. Its most powerful instrument will naturally be its military forces.
“The structure of an army is determined on the one hand by the political aims it pursues and on the other by the recruiting system it employs. It i self-evident that a proletariat which has emerged victorious from a class war cannot recruit its army by the ordinary form of national compulsory military service. The obligation to serve in it must affect the working classes alone.
“We therefore see that the Socialist Revolution has created a new recruiting system for its international class army, thus forming a contrast to the bourgeois revolutions which evolved national and democratic armies.
“The characteristic features of a militia army are its vast size and its comparatively small war efficiency. Large armies which lack the nuclei of permanent military formations can receive no thorough training with regular units in time of peace, since they are assembled only by mobilization orders. Their war efficiency is therefore bound to be small.
“This defect must be remedied in some way or other, and the most suitable way is by the method of war technique. The success of a militia system is dependent on an extremely well constructed network of communications which permits of the transport of men by railway, motor vehicle and waterway. It can become a source of great strength-but only when the State in question has practically all its land under cultivation and possesses great wealth and highly developed industries. A militia army is not worth a brass farthing if it lacks these vast reserves of man-power and a military technique which can be applied to the utmost limits. In our case the introduction of the militia system would be tantamount to a crucifixion of Soviet Russia.”
Tuchachevsky considered the militia system “an antiquated idea, or, more correctly, an antiquated superstition dating from the period of the Second International,” which was not inspired by the principle of a socialist offensive. Lenin and Trotsky, and with them the majority of the Boishevist Party, were, however, not at that time in agreement with Tuchachevsky’s point of view.
Tuchachevsky envisaged the creation of a modern revolutionary army, ready and able to defend Soviet Russia against imperialist attacks and to assist the proletariats of other countries and the colonial races with armed fraternal aid in their struggles against their oppressors. But the internal conditions necessary for the creation of such an army were lacking, since the closer and better relations between the working classes and the peasantry which they presupposed did not yet exist. The Red Army had therefore to be built up in a way that would enable it to serve first and foremost as a link between town and country.
The years 1922 and 1923 were occupied with the difficult task of demobilizing the millions who served in the Civil War. In 1924 a beginning was made with the construction of the Red Army on the general principles laid down by the military programme of the 9th Party Day.
From that time onward obligatory service in Russia has been divided into three. parts: (1) preliminary training; (2) service with the colours; (3) service in the reserve. Service with the colours is performed in either the regular, standing, so-called ‘Cadre Army,’ or in the ‘Territorial Army,’ which is based on the militia system. The period of service in the regular army varies according to the arm; in the infantry it is two years, in the artillery and some other specialized corps three years, and in the navy and air force four years.
There was originally a regulation by which only men of proletarian or semi-proletarian ancestry were eligible for service in the army, by which sons of kulaks, priests, or other persons who had not obtained full Soviet citizenship were excluded. This restrictive regulation was, however, abolished in 1937.
All men mustered for service had to pass three recruiting commissions. The first of these was the ‘Social Commission,’ which had to ascertain whether the recruit’s social origin rendered him eligible for service in the Red Army; this commission also divided the recruits into groups according to their social dispensibility, some sons of peasants working one-man farms being assigned to the Territorial Army along with youthful workmen and employees with relatives dependent upon their earnings. Then came the ‘Medical Commission,’ which assigned the recruits to the following categories:
(1) Unfit for military service.
(2) Fit for service with the Territorial Army.
(3) Fit for service with the Cadre Army.
(4) Fit for service with the artillery, navy, air force, and special branches.
Finally, the ‘Military Commission’ assigned the recruits to the Territorial or Cadre Army and posted them to the arms in which they were to serve in one or other army system. Recruits serving with the tank corps, air force or navy had to pass certain examinations (psychotechnical and other) after a period of probation.
In the Territorial Army training was spread over a number of years, but on an average the territorial recruit could count on a five-year period, eight to eleven months of which would be passed with his unit. These included two months’ service in barracks for the first year, followed by periods of about six weeks in camp or on manuvres in subsequent years.
The territorial conscripts residing in a particular area formed a military unit of some particular territorial formation, which was commanded by reserve officers belonging to that district.
The system in force for mustering recruits living on the steppes is as follows: the eligible men from three villages are assembled, and thereupon constitute a unit of their regiment, although as yet unarmed. Under the charge of a few officers, they converge by foot marches, motor, rail and water transport on the regimental depot, and the regiment is deemed to be formed as soon as they have drawn their uniform and equipment.
In the event of mobilization these territorial formations have to co-operate in speeding up the marches of the regular Red Army.
The territorial system provides the minimum interruption of industrial and economic life by the performance of military service. Peasant territorials are only called up for training in the months in which they can be most easily spared from their work on the land. Workmen employed in factories receive their usual pay during their periods of service. In contrast to the Swiss militia system, Russian territorials do not take their uniform, arms and other equipment home with them on completion of their military training.
The disadvantage of this form of training is to be found in the inferior military value of the men who undergo it. According to Gussov, the experiences of the Civil War show that “territorial formations fight principally for their hearths and homes. They are loth to take part in offensives or retreats which remove them from the vicinity of their dwellings and families.”
The organizational form of the Russian Cadre Army is similar to that which may be found in any imperialist standing army. But until 1934, 74 per cent of the Red Army’s divisions were territorial ones, leaving only 26 per cent for the standing army. In 1935 these proportions were reversed, and we now have 77 per cent of the troops in regular divisions, and only 23 per cent in the territorial forces.
From 1923 to 1934 the strength of the Cadre Army was about 560,000 men. It was then increased to 940,000 in 1935 and finally in 1936 to 1,300,000, distributed among all branches of the defence forces. These figures do not include the men serving in the Red Territorial Army.
From 1935 onwards the regular divisions have been gradually brought up to war strength, and on January 1, 1936, Tuchachevsky stated in his report to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets that “the training for war given in peace time approximates as closely as possible to the conditions of actual war service. Our system is as perfect as it can be for both mobilization and training purposes.”
We may thus note that Tuchachevsky’s original demands have not been fulfilled. But the political hypotheses on which he based them in 1921 no longer exist.
The military oath taken by the men of the Red Army was in its first form as follows:
“In entering hereby into the community of the Red Army of workers and peasants, and taking upon myself deliberately and of my own free will the duty of giving aid in the hard and holy wars of the oppressed peoples, I swear to my brothers in arms, to the whole nation of workers and to my own revolutionary conscience that I am ready to fight worthily and without fear, treachery or misgiving for the great cause for which the children of the best families of workers and peasants have already given their lives, for the victory of the Soviet power and the triumph of socialism.”
On taking over the War Commissariat, Trotsky devised a new form of military oath, which bound the soldiers of the Red Army to serve not merely Soviet Russia and the Russian workers, but the proletariat of the whole world:
“(1) I, son of working-class parents and a citizen of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, assume the title of a soldier in the Army of Workers and Peasants.
“(2) Before the workers of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and the whole world I pledge myself to bear this title in honour, to learn the art of war conscientiously and to cherish as the apple of my eye the property of the people and protect it against all robbery and destruction.
“(3) 1 pledge myself to observe revolutionary discipline strictly and resolutely and to obey without demur all orders given me by the commanders set over me by the government of workers and peasants.
“(4) I pledge myself to abstain from all actions derogatory to the dignity of a citizen of the Soviet Union and to restrain my comrades from such actions, and to direct my every action and thought towards the freeing of all workers.
“(5) I pledge myself to respond to the first call from the government of workers and peasants by placing myself at its disposal for the defence of the republic of workers and peasants against any attack and peril from any enemy, and to spare neither my strength nor my life in battle for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and for the cause of socialism and the fraternization of all races.
“(6) May the scorn of all be my lot and may the hard hand of the revolutionary law punish me, if ever with evil intent I break this my solemn oath.”
The entire political educational work in the ranks of the Red Army was permeated at first by this spirit of internationalism. The magnitude of the mission it set itself becomes apparent when we realize that the peasants constituted far the greater part of the army. But, as Gussov wrote in 1921, “If the Tsar’s barracks, schools and press were able to turn the peasants into soldiers capable of shooting down their fathers and brothers, why should not we accomplish the task of creating from those same peasants an army that would give assistance to the World Revolution?”
The leadership of the army was undertaken by the threefold authority of commander, commissar and political administrator. The military leadership devolved on the commander. The office of commissar was created in order to keep the commanders under political observation. Additional to these was the ‘Political Administration’ of the Army, which was a component part of the War Commissariat (later known as the Defence Commissariat); this was an institution of some importance, subject, however, to the immediate control of the Party. The first chief of the Political Administration was Gussov; his successor was Bubnov, who gave way in turn to Gamarnik, the last-named holding office until May 1937. All three were members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Political Administration worked through the instrumentality of the Party Cells, which existed in every unit from the general staff down to the companies. As long as Lenin’s Party principles that “every member of the Party is responsible for the whole Party, and the Party is responsible for every individual,” held good, these Party cells were able to deal with every political question arising within the army, and took a hand in shaping the Party policy on the basis of democratic centralism. Moreover, they exercised a political and moral control over both their own members and non-party officers and soldiers.
Finally, the Political Administration organized and directed the whole of the vast cultural and political educational work within the army by means of political instruction, political schools and courses, libraries and literature dissemination, wall and Red Army newspapers, theatres, cinemas, Lenin corners, contacts with the factories and villages, Red Aid Work, the Society for Air and Chemical Defence (Ossoaviachim), musical and dramatic societies, sports clubs, chess clubs, etc. Illiterate recruits were taught to read and write in the first few months of their training, while a large number of soldiers were prepared during their final year for future civilian employment in positions such as tractordrivers, machine-minders, leaders of collective farms and specialized industrial workers; in many cases these men received instruction by means of courses lasting several weeks which they were detailed to attend at the factories. Thu the Red Army provided the villages with entire cadres of qualified organizers and workers.
In Party work there was no distinction between officers and privates; the only differences recognized were those between Party members, candidates and non-party men. A communist company-commander who behaved in an uncommunist way in service or private life had to answer for his conduct to the cell, the secretary of which might possibly be his direct military subordinate. If a non-party officer sought admission to the Party, he had to submit to an all-round searching examination of his political and human qualities at a Party meeting, to which the other non-Party men were admitted. In such cases privates, who might even be natives of the same village as their officer, came forward to report on his past political tendencies and his personal behaviour to his fellow-men and subordinates, and asked questions to which he had to give detailed practical answers. The decision as to his acceptance or rejection then rested with the Party cell and Party authorities above it.
As long as democratic principles ruled in the Party, these military cells constituted a valuable guarantee for the continuance and intensification of the proletarian class character of the Red Army. They formed a protective wall against the development of a definite officer class.
The social and economic distinctions between all ranks of the Red Army remained extremely slight during the first few years of peace. The Red officers-especially those who belonged to the Communist Party-were restricted to an extremely Spartan mode of life.
I can recall an incident which took place in 1925, just after motor-buses made their first appearance in the Moscow streets. When leaving barracks, I asked the company-commander, who happened to be with me, to accompany me on a bus to the centre of the town. He refused in all seriousness, on the ground that it was not fitting for a proletarian commander to ride in a ‘motor.’
In 1924 the pay of a corps-commander was 150 roubles a month, corresponding roughly to that earned by a well-paid metal worker. It was thus 25 roubles a month below the ‘Party maximum,’ i.e. the largest monthly salary that a Party member was allowed to accept in those days. The commander of a division received 100 roubles a month, and a company-commander 43 roubles. A group-leader (non-commissioned officer) received only 15 roubles a month.
There was at that time no special officers’ mess. The meals of officers and men were prepared in the same kitchens. Communist officers seldom wore the badges of their rank when off duty, and frequently dispensed with them even when on duty. At that time the Red Army acknowledged a relationship of superior and subordinate only during the performance of military duty, and in any case every soldier knew his commanding officer with or without badges of rank.
Officers’ servants were abolished. The officers had therefore to clean their own boots. I remember another incident in 1925, which took place at a summer camp in the Volga district. While the troops were on duty, a private, who happened to be peasant from the German Volga settlements, was sent to his companycommander’s tent to fetch a map. Happening to notice that his commanding officer’s boots were dirty, he sat down outside the tent and began to clean them. The consequence of his action was a complaint against both the officer in question and the secretary of the company’s Party cell.
The officer was able to prove himself innocent of this ‘relapse into Tsarist abuses,’ but the cell secretary was reprimanded for failing to give the soldier sufficient instruction in proletarian class-consciousness. Thereafter the regimental dramatic society produced a number of scenes of barrack-room life in Tsarist days, in which officers’ servants and boot-polishing were the principal themes.
The ‘basic mission’ of the political educational work was, as Gussov wrote in 1921 when head of the Political Administration, “to turn a large proportion of the peasants into international communists and the restor, at least, the younger generation-into sympathetic supporters of the idea of a revolutionary war of aggression, because the idea of a revolutionary war of defence was one which the peasant could grasp comparatively easily.” Gussov also gave the following practical hints for the performance of this international educational work:
“Education in the spirit of internationalism naturally presupposes in the first place that the Red Army man will be familiar with the A.B.C. of communism. Without this theoretical basis we can make no progress. The crux of the matter is not, however, to be found in an abstract internationalism, but in the daily initiation of the soldier into the sphere of interest of the World Revolution by way of his immediate peasant interests. Otherwise the work will be useless.
“For example, the instructor must be able to link the fate of a peasant’s land in the Ufa district with the fate of the World Revolution, and prove beyond all possibility of argument that only the success of the World Revolution can sanction that peasant’s permanent right to his land. From the peasant’s land in the Ufa district to the World Revolution may be a very long way, but it must none the less be traversed by showing the peasant where his real interests lie. We have prepared concrete instruction material of this type in the form of instances of the help given us and our peasantry by the proletariat of Western Europe during the Civil War and once again during the famine. It is only a step from these instances to the idea of mutual assistance and to conceptions of the Russian peasantry’s duty towards the World Revolution.”
The work of education was supplemented by addresses from delegates belonging to the Communist Parties of other countries, political emigrants (Red Aid), and representatives of the colonial peoples.
The Red Army literature was also devoted to the task of awakening and intensifying the internationalism of the soldiers. In 1929 a revolutionary play entitled The First Red Cavalry Army was produced in the Red Army’s Central House in Moscow. The cast was made up entirely of amateurs belonging to the Red Army, the female parts being played by officers’ wives. In one scene a Russian soldier was condemned to be ‘shot by the enemy’ for revolutionary propaganda during the World War, i.e., at the command of his lieutenant he was forced by non-commissioned officers with loaded revolvers to climb on to the breastwork of the trench and expose himself to the German bullets. Amid the excitement and indignation of his comrades, who nevertheless dared not mutiny, he climbed up, but instead of the death-dealing bullets expected from the enemy trenches there came only a shout in German: “Comrades, we won’t shoot!” Thereupon the German proletarian soldiers came up out of their trenches and fraternized with their Russian class comrades.
Several foreign communists who witnessed this play with me spoke to Gamarnik in the interval and told him of the ineradicable impression made on them by such an internationalist paean expressed in the form of dramatic art. Gamarnik took us behind the scenes and introduced us to the actors playing the leading parts of the ‘Tsarist Lieutenant’ and the ‘soldier.’ We discovered that the stage ‘soldier’ was a lieutenant belonging to a company of the 1st Proletarian Rifle Regiment, while the ‘lieutenant’ who cursed and struck him and afterwards ordered him to the breastwork was a private in his platoon, i.e., an immediate subordinate of the ‘soldier’ he maltreated on the stage. “Could any imperialist army do a thing like that without undermining the whole basis of military discipline?” asked Gamarnik with a smile.
In 1924 I wrote a play for the Red Army at Gamarnik’s request. Its subject was the war on capitalism waged by the Bavarian Red Army, whose ranks contained a number of Russian and Italian prisoners of war, who were willing to give their lives for the German and International Revolution.
In 1929 a young Red Army soldier of peasant origin tried to explain the basis of socialist discipline to a German Reichswehr general, who paid a visit to the Central House. In one of the club-rooms the general found a class of officers and men sitting together on school benches to receive instruction in the German language.
He asked a Red divisional-commander who was taking part in the class how this state of affairs could be reconciled with military discipline. It might happen, he pointed out, that the instructress put a question to the officer which he could not answer. If one of his soldiers answered it, he would be made to look a fool in front of his men.
“On the contrary, we vie with one another in socialistic emulation,” replied the divisional-commander with a smile.
“And why shouldn’t I learn German better than the Comrade divisional-commander?” asked a private sitting next to the general. “He’s a great authority for me, because he’s my instructor in military and political affairs, and about these I can learn a lot from him. But in everything else, in all agricultural matters, for instance, I am a great authority for him. We peasants were detailed for harvest work after the last autumn manceuvres, and then Tied a squad of twenty-four men, because I am an experienced farmer. The commander of my own regiment was working under me; he’s a metal-worker and knows nothing about farming. He’d have made a proper fool of himself if he’d had to run our squad on harvest work.”
The international spirit and socialistic basis of discipline in the Red Army were swept away during the years 1931-3, which were a time of severe crisis. Nowadays the entire educational work is concentrated on inculcating a ‘Soviet Union patriotism’ and nationalistic arrogance. The consequence of the policy of bloc alliances with imperialist governments was that the conception of class struggles within the imperialist states and struggles of oppressed colonial races against imperialist states had to give way to the opposite theory of ‘friendly’ and ‘hostile’ states and their citizens. The effect of this is that to-day a Red Army man-or, indeed, any average Soviet citizen-regards a German as his ‘enemy’ and a Frenchman or American (even if it be Mr. Pierpont Morgan himself) as his ‘friend.’
The natural and easy relations between officers and men in the Red Army have also gone by the board. The Red officers now form a closed, privileged caste. Certain democratic army institutions were abolished soon after Voroshilov took office. Even as far back as 1926 officers’ pay underwent large increases. Officers’ messes were re-established; the ordinary military relationships between officers and men both on and off duty were reintroduced at the same time. In numerous cases the ‘rise in the cultural level’ of officers caused them to obtain divorces from wives of proletarian or peasant origin, who were not up to ‘Society’ standards, and to marry women belonging to the circles of the old aristocracy, the former bourgeoisie or the new bureaucracy. This was, in fact, a mass phenomenon.
The Soviet officer’s standard of life is now no lower than that of his colleagues in imperialist armies, but the standard of life of the mass of the people and of the privates in the Red Army still falls considerably below the corresponding standards in Western Europe and America. Like the ‘commanders’ of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the officers of the Red Army now form a special privileged class which has cut adrift from the mass of Soviet Union workers and risen high above it. A special type of ‘non-political’ officer has been created. The senior officers who were drawn from the old Tsarist officer class remained essentially alien to proletarian internationalism, while the junior ones, even when of proletarian origin, began to hate internationalism as a disturbing element. They are happy to live their ‘life of comfort,’ and consequently they sing the Internationale or utter the form of oath devised for the Red Army by Trotsky as mechanically as any average Christian repeats his catechism.
These ‘non-political’ officers regard the policy of bloc alliances inaugurated by Stalin and Litvinov as a guarantee for the permanency and strengthening of their privileged position. Their champion in the army is now Voroshiov, the old advocate of guerilla warfare who once proclaimed a crusade against the ‘wearers of epaulettes,’ military discipline and the system of a centralized army. But, after all, it was Voroshilov who once maintained that the essential difference between a proletarian and an imperialist army was to be found in their varying forms of organization instead of in the different ideology and politics that dictated the aims and objects for which they were created. Over-valuation of outward forms has always been one of his prominent characteristics.
The Red Army does not merely exist on paper; it is now a live component part of the body of the Soviet Union. But its political aspect has undergone the same change as the political aspect of the whole Soviet Union has undergone under the autocratic Stalinist régime.
Immediately after Voroshilov’s assumption of office in 1925 Tuchachevsky was removed from his key position on the staff of the Red Army. He was sent first to Leningrad as commander of a military district, and later to Minsk.
At that time a commission set up by Trotsky and presided over by Tuchachevsky was still working on the new field service regulations for the Red Army. Its members, including Yakir, Uborevitch, Primakov, and Eydeman, protested their inability to dispense with his valuable co-operation, and so the man exiled to the provinces remained president of the body which established the first tactical and strategical foundations of the Red Army in these field-service regulations.
In his preface to the Provisional Regulations for Field Service, which appeared in the winter of 1925-6 Tuchachevsky launched a sharp attack on the theory which found its principal advocate in Voroshilov, who maintained that “the Red Army cannot undertake the task of rising to the technical standard of imperialist armies; it must win victories by its enthusiasm.” Tuchachevsky called such conceptions “foolish chatter which helps the counter-revolution” and put forward the view that “the superior technique of imperialist armies must be overcome by the Red Army’s evolution and mastery of a still more powerful technique.”
Tuchachevsky served in the provinces for more than five years, but remained all the time the army’s spiritual chief. He continued to give instruction at the War Academy, and his articles on organizational, tactical and strategic problems still appeared in military technical journals. All efforts to induce him to publish some condemnation of Trotsky which might smooth his path to advancement in the Red Army broke down on account of his upright character and his fanatical devotion to the truth. But meanwhile the aspect of foreign affairs had undergone a change. In the Far East the petty warfare on the Manchurian frontier threatened to develop into warlike operations on a large scale. Consequently there was a movement among the leaders of the Red Army to bring Tuchachevsky back to the General Staff. Voroshilov’s resistance was broken down, and Tuchachevsky was appointed chief of the Operations Department of the Red Army. He had been out of the Soviet public eye for years, and it was only when the victory of Fascism in Germany rendered the danger of war on two fronts acute that the Central Committee came to the decision to boost his popularity throughout the land. They were aware that the Commander-in-Chief in the coming war would have to be well known to the mass of the people, and so from that time onward Tuchachevsky took Voroshilov’s place as the principal speaker on home defence at all the Soviet Congresses.
He directed his main efforts to overcoming the technical and tactical unprogressiveness which was a legacy of Tsarism. The principal problem was the mechanization of the Red Army.
The original champion and propagandist of mechanization was Trotsky. In 1924 he had introduced the subject of the motorization and mechanization of the Red Army at a mass meeting on the October Field in Moscow with the words: “Give the Red Army its motors!”
In his demand for mechanization Tuchachevsky was supported by Feldmann. This Odessa Bolshevist, from whom the Boulevard Feldmann in his native town takes its name, was then in charge of the War Department of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industries, and worked in close contact with his deputy, People’s Commissar Piatakov.
Tuchachevsky likewise paid particular attention to the Air Force. For some years he had studied the problem of combining the functions of aeroplane and tank in a machine to be known as the ‘flying tank,’ i.e., an armoured car which automatically or by a few turns of a handle could be transformed into an aeroplane and then changed back again into a tank that was ready to go into action as soon as it landed. There is also a compromise solution of this problem in the form of large-sized aircraft which can transport a tank by air and land it behind the enemy’s lines.
The study of the ‘flying tank’ led to successful experiments in the large-scale employment of special shock troops that could be dropped behind the enemy’s lines by parachute. It is no mere chance that this idea of aerial infantry originated in the brain of Tuchachevsky, the Commander-in-Chief of the first Red Army of workers and peasants.
The idea of dropping such detachments in the enemy’s rear presupposes that this area is peopled by inhabitants in sympathy with the aerial invaders, for otherwise such aerial shock troops as survived the attentions of the enemy’s anti-aircraft batteries would be wiped out by mechanized units hastily despatched to deal with them. The conception of a parachute corps is therefore closely connected with the idea of an international Socialist Revolution. In 1921, when Tuchachevsky was still in a position to make open propaganda for his theories of internationalism, he wrote as follows:
“The socialist revolution has revolutionized a strategy. Our Red Army will never fight an adversary unaided, for it will always find the support it expects from the workers of the country with whose bourgeoisie it is at war. This support will not be confined to revolutionary outbreaks in the rear of the enemy’s armies, since one of its essential points is the fact that reinforcements can be recruited from the workers inhabiting the territory occupied by the Red Army. Such reinforcements will not merely be drawn from the local population; they will also come from the man-power of capitalist armies. This accession of a stream of international fighting forces is a characteristic feature of the Red Army methods of warfare.”
Ten years later he was not in a position openly to propagate his ideas as to the international nature of the Red Army, but he acted upon them by creating the preliminary technical conditions for giving support to socialist revolutions in other countries. The parachute detachments were to become the helpers of the proletarians, in any imperialist country that were fighting for their freedom. He also made a thorough study of the problems attendant on the landing of aerial infantry in the Ruhr, in East Prussia and in the territory between Berlin and Saxony, so that they might hasten to the assistance of the German proletariat in the event of revolution. Thus military history will couple the evolution of aerial infantry with the name of Tuchachevsky.
The cadre problem was still a sore point in the Red Army. The old officers who had made their careers in the Tsarist Army or in the Civil War were still too steeped in the traditions of an army that did not derive its power and rapidity of action from mechanized or motorized infantry. At the 17th Party Day of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934, Voroshilov said:
“There was a time when all of us-Comrade Yakir, Comrade Tuchachevsky, Comrade Uborevitch and all the other members of the Higher Command and Revolutionary Council of War-were troubled by the question: Will the officers and men of our Red Army be able to master the new technique, of which they are still ignorant?” Voroshilov then named as the Red Army’s chief instructors the three men whom he and Stalin were three years later to send to execution. If the Red officers and men have made some progress towards the mastery of the new technique, it is mainly due to the efforts of this trio that they have done so.
Under Tuchachevsky’s direction new curricula were drawn up for the War Academy and the Higher and Lower Commands, and new methods of instruction worked out. But his own sole special subject was strategy, and the special mission for which he prepared himself was the command of Russia’s forces in the event of hostilities between the Soviet Union and some imperialist power.
Was he really the great general that his co-operators, the Central Committee of the Boishevist Party and the whole Soviet Union once deemed him to be?
Marshal Pilsudski, the greatest military adversary against whom Tuchachevsky pitted his strength in a major war, wrote as follows:
“Tuchachevsky inspired his subordinates by virtue of his energetic and purposeful work. This fine quality of leadership stamps him for ever as a general with daring ideas and the gift of putting them into vigorous execution. He gives me the impression of a general who tends to abstract ideas, but displays will-power, energy and a strange obstinacy in the working methods he has chosen for himself. Generals of this type are seldom capable of taking a broad view, because they link, so to speak, their whole personalities exclusively with their immediate tasks; on the other hand, they give the assurance that they will show no hesitation in carrying out the work they undertake. Tuchachevsky handled his troops very skilfully, and anyone can easily discern the signs of a general of the first order in his daring but logically correct march on Warsaw.”
This is Pilsudski’s opinion of Tuchachevsky at the age of twenty-seven. A contemporary judgement passed on Napoleon when he undertook his Egyptian Campaign at a similar age would hardly have been different.
The final judgement passed on Tuchachevsky by his immediate chief in the days of the Russo-Polish War is almost identical with Marshal Pilsudski’s, for Trotsky writes in 1937:
“Undoubtedly Tuchachevsky displayed extraordinary talents. He lacked, however, the ability to judge a military situation from every point of view. There was always an element of adventure in his strategy. For this reason we had several differences of opinion, which always, however, remained quite friendly ones. I was also compelled to criticize his attempts to create a new ‘doctrine of war’ by means of hastily adapted elementary Marxist formulas. We must not forget, however, that he was still very young in those days, and had made an over-rapid leap from the ranks of the Guards officers to the Boishevist camp.
“Afterwards he may not have studied Marxism with great diligence (nobody does so nowadays in the Soviet Union), but he certainly took great pains with the art of war. He mastered the new technique, and was not unsuccessful in his role of mechanizer of the army. Only another war in which he was cast in advance for the role of generalissimo would have shown whether he had acquired the inner balance of power without which no one can become a great general.”
There is but little to add to the verdicts of Pilsudski and Trotsky. Both of them knew Tuchachevsky only in his impetuous youth. Indeed, Trotsky makes this reservation.
Tuchachevsky learnt much in the last ten years. He even made a profound study of Marxism and its revolutionary principles which Stalinism has betrayed. In the Soviet Union these works are indeed still available in unabridged, unaltered editions to persons who have climbed to as high a rung of the political ladder as Tuchachevsky did; moreover, such collections contain all the other books and treatises published abroad, including those of Trotsky.
The young Tuchachevsky spoke his mind freely. The mature man learnt to realize the value of silence. Like everyone else in the Soviet Union who has remained true to the principles of international socialism, he kept his political opinions locked away in his heart, and confided only in a few comrades of the old Boishevist Party and the Civil War who cherished similar views. In the words of the old proverb of Tsarist days, which has once more become a living reality, he ‘kept water in his mouth.[1]
He spoke on military problems only to military audiences or to the principal political bodies of State and Party functionaries, to whom he had to submit his proposals and make reports on the condition of the fighting forces and the tasks of home defence. In social intercourse, however, the vitality and joy of life inherent in this Red general made him a lively exponent of the thoughts engendered by his sparkling intellect. He was also well versed in all branches of art and literature, to which he devoted such of his ‘leisure hours’ as were not given up to the study of history.
Herriot, the French statesman, has recorded an incident of his meeting with Tuchachevsky when on a visit to Moscow. The communicative Budyonny-that old practical warrior of the Civil War who remains a child of nature despite the height to which he has climbed in the course of his career-complained of the difficulty he experienced in the War Academy when he tried to hammer the ‘great theory’ into his peasant Don Cossack skull. As witness of his troubles he cited a certain ‘Misha,’ who happened to be standing near him. This was, in fact, Michael Tuchachevsky, who came forward and confirmed the cavalry general’s statements with a smile.
Herriot tossed a military question into the conversation. Tuchachevsky answered it politely but briefly, and Herriot then found himself drawn into a discussion on Mairaux’s last book and the latest productions of French literature before he quite realized what had happened. The French Foreign Minister of those days thought he was indulging in flattery when he wrote that Tuchachevsky’s hair, forehead and eyes resembled those of Napoleon.
Tuchachevsky’s most prominent political trait was the internationalism he expressed in his actions. For him this form of internationalism was no mere dogma or thesis, but a definite fixed opinion. The principal maxims on which his military-political opinions and actions were based never changed from those which he expressed in truly classic form in 1921:
“Outside the frontiers of the Soviet Union our Red Army should be regarded as a formation of international cadres. Every mission undertaken by our republic should be closely linked with the mission of World Revolution. That applies most particularly to our Red Army, which constitutes the first nucleus of the International Red Army. This army must be a model one in every respect, and therefore perfect in a political sense. This army must learn to forget that one national element preponderates in it; it must realize that it is the army of the international world proletariat, and nothing more. Wherever it goes, the people must be made to feel that it is a Red Army and not a Russian one.”
In his mind’s eyes the youthful Tuchachevsky saw this Red Army as a fait accompli, and so he overleapt in his plans many stages of its development. In 1921 he took steps towards the formation of an International General Staff, regarding which Trotsky wrote as follows in his treatise on Military Doctrine:
“Comrade Tuchachevsky applied to the Comintern for permission to form an International General Staff within this body. Naturally this proposal came to nothing, because the time was not ripe and it was not in accordance with the mission which the 3rd World Congress had taken upon itself. Even if the Comintern had become a living force, even if strong communist organizations had come into existence in all the principal countries, such an International General Staff could only have been formed on a basis of National General Staffs, in several proletarian states. But as long as such proletarian states do not exist, an International General Staff can only be a caricature.
“Tuchachevsky thought fit to accentuate his error by printing his letter to the Comintern at the end of his interesting book Class Warfare. This error resembles the one he made in his violent attack on the militia army. But ‘uninsured offensives’ constitute one of the weak points of Comrade Tuchachevsky, who is one of our best military experts of the younger generation.”
As we have already noted, Tuchachevsky was not so far wrong over this militia question. His error in the matter of the International General Staff certainly ‘resembles’ that which Trotsky is making to-day in attempting to create a Fourth International when international socialism can boast no parties strong enough in ideology and numbers in the principal countries of the world.
M. N. Tuchachevsky’s work is as indissolubly linked with the technical efficiency achieved by the modern mechanized and motorized Red Army as Trotsky’s work and personality are with the Red Army of the Civil War. But his political basic conception of the Red Army as “a buttress for the Socialist Revolution in Europe” (on the principle established by Lenin on January 12, 1918), brought him and the other internationally minded members of the Higher Command into conflict with the authorities of the Stalin régime.
[1]This Russian proverb needs some explanation to English readers. No one can speak with water in his mouth; Russians therefore ‘kept water in their mouths’ in order to avoid the disaster of an over-hasty word which in Tsarist days would have led to the dungeons of the Ochrana, as it does now to those of the G.P.U. There is also a joke about the great drought in Russia, ‘because 165,000,000 people keep water in their mouths.’