Trotsky’s Military Writings/Volume 4

Keywords:Trotsky’s Military Writings/Volume 4

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How the Revolution Armed

Foreword by the editor

Soviet Russia in the years 1921-1923 saw the ending of the civil war fighting. As the Red Army moved on to a peace footing, its leader, Leon Trotsky, fought to prepare it for new tasks, in a period in which the destiny of the Russian Revolution was closely bound up with the development of the working class internationally. It was a time for study, for training and for drawing the lessons of the Army’s first years. In these years, Trotsky says, the history of the Red Army was in large part the history of the working class itself. The analysis he makes in this, the fourth of the five-volume series, is a major contribution to present-day knowledge of the Russian Revolution. Suppressed for decades in the Soviet Union, Trotsky’s military writings and speeches are here published in English for the first time.

In the last two volumes of the Military Writings, Trotsky draws out the lessons of the civil war years and the construction of the Red Army.

The years 1921-1923 were punctuated by the Kronstadt rising, by bandit incursions and by the continuing war threat from the west. They were nevertheless years in which the most immediate danger to the Soviet frontiers had been overcome and the interventionist forces pushed back.

The problems of Soviet Russia’s international situation and of its internal economic development now occupied the attention of the Bolshevik leadership. Trotsky recognised that with international capital unable to crush the October Revolution as it had wished, a more prolonged, bitter period of class warfare was on the agenda throughout Europe. This meant that while the Red Army moved over to a ‘peace footing’, its leadership faced the task of training and preparing it against renewed dangers.

Within Russia itself, the turn was made in 1921 to the New Economic Policy – described by Trotsky as neither a victory nor a defeat, but a strategic retreat. Openings were made for small and medium enterprise and to concessionaires in order to get the war-shattered economy moving.

On the military front, the emphasis was on education, study and training. Here Trotsky squarely confronted the problems of Russian backwardness and the difficulties of training the peasant masses who formed a large proportion of the Red soldiers. As he says (p.73) ‘the working-man hero will much sooner and more readily die on horseback for the Soviet Republic than he will take care to see that his horse is groomed as and when he should be.’ It was for this reason that Trotsky insisted on the highest standards of training and fought for organised, systematic construction in opposition to the old ways of managing ‘somehow’. He calls repeatedly for precision, accuracy and ‘attention to trifles’. His speeches to students at the military schools and on command courses repeatedly attack slipshod methods and fight to instil pride in the record and traditions of the Red Army units.

To carry through this struggle required a high level of political work by the Communist Party members within the Red Army. At the same time there re-emerged the question of non-Party military specialists which had been raised at the outset of the building of the Red Army. When some elements in the Party proposed restricting access to the higher military academies to Party members only, Trotsky vigorously opposed them. Rejecting all narrow and doctrinaire conceptions of ‘Marxism’, he reiterated the need to utilise all those military specialists who were prepared to put themselves at the service of the workers’ and peasants’ state. Marxism is not a set of formulae for all spheres of human activity, and the socialist revolution had to learn to make use of all knowledge and skills developed under the previous order, for its own ends. In the final volume these lessons are further elaborated in the discussion on Marxism and military affairs.

The Bolsheviks’ policy in relation to the Red Army in this period followed the policy laid down by the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921. In opposition to the European ultra-lefts who called for a ‘revolutionary offensive’ everywhere, the Congress affirmed that it was a period of political preparation for the offensive. The task for the Red Army was not to march on Berlin but to subordinate itself to the political struggle to build the leadership for the world revolution and continue the task of training and educating the worker and peasant masses who entered its ranks. Hence the drive against illiteracy, effectively eradicated from the Red Army during these years. At the same time relations between the Party and the Army were put on a more correct footing: to guard against the danger of careerism and opportunism, a purge was carried out of Red Army commanders who had no real place within the Communist Party. They were deprived of their Party membership, but continued in their Army posts.The links between the masses and the Army were meanwhile strengthened by the practice of adoption of army units by local soviets. In the case of the Red Navy, there were particular problems: at the time of the October Revolution it was a bastion of Bolshevism, due in large part to its high proletarian composition. Of secondary importance to the Army in the Civil War struggle, it had been necessarily deprived of resources and cadres in the intervening years, and then suffered the blow of the Kronstadt revolt within its own ranks. It was strengthened by its adoption by the Young Communist League and a new intake of Communist youth.

The work of these years gives the lie to those who depict the subsequent Stalinist course, and the reduction of the Red Army to an instrument of the bureaucracy, as inevitable. Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, there was an unceasing fight to raise the political level of the Red Army and to make it the conscious instrument of the workers’ and peasants’ state.

 

I. The Red Army on a Peace Footing

1. Speeches, Articles, Reports

• Communication to the 8th Congress of Soviets on Reducing the Size of the Army, December 29, 1920
• From a Speech at a General Meeting of Members of the Russian Communist Party in Zamoskvoretsk District, January 4, 1921
• Speech at a Meeting of Military Workers in Yekaterinburg, on the Question of the Militia System, February 17, 1921
• Attention to Trifles!
• Concluding Speech at the Analysis of Manoeuvres at Kotyuzhanyk, September 12, 1921
• Speech at the 2nd All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments, October 20, 1921
• The Tasks of the Red Army (Address to the commanders and political workers of the Moscow Military District in the Zimin Theatre), October 25, 1921
• Speech at a Meeting of Cadets of the 1st Unified Military School Named after the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, November 2, 1921
• Tula is Still the Great Smithy of the Red Army
• The Tula Soviet’s Division
• Not One Week, but Fifty-Two Weeks!
• It is Necessary to Learn to Write!
• Concluding Remarks at the 2nd Conference of Communist Party Cells in Higher Military-Education Institutions, December 10, 1921
• Report to the Conference of Military-Education Institutions of the Moscow Military District, December 12, 1921
• Alas, We are not Accurate Enough!
• The Disabled of the Civil War
• Conference of Military Delegates to the Congress of Soviets
• Care for the Army
• Thanks, Workers’ Moscow!
• The Fifth Year – a Year for Study
• Speech at the Parade on Red Square, February 23, 1922
• Report to the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), March 29, 1922
• Speech at the All-Russia Conference of Navy Men, April 1, 1922
• ’Ty’ and ‘Vy’ in the Red Army
• From a speech at the textile workers’ congress, October 10, 1922
• Speech at the 5th All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, October 16, 1922
• Prospects and Tasks in Building the Army

2. Orders, Circulars, Telegrams, etc.

• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, August 5, 1921, No.254
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 5, 1921, No.259
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 5, 1921, No.260
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 10, 1921, No.262
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 11, 1921, No.263. More Care for the Disabled of the Civil War!
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 12, 1921, No.264
• The Case of Red Army Man Kozlov: Military Tribunal of the Kiev Military District, September 13, 1921
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, October 11, 1921, No.2252. The Week of Care for the Red Army Man’s Kit
• Letter to the Editorial Board of the Military-Scientific Journal of the 11th Petrograd Infantry Division
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, November 1, 1921, No.2458
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, February 28, 1922, No.515
• A Contribution to the Question of Military Propaganda
• The Military Academies and Non-Party People
• Letter to a Red Army Man
• Greetings to a Glorious Division!
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, May 20, 1922, No.1247
• Greetings to Commander-in-Chief S.S. Kamenev
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, July 25, 1922, No.1764. To a Hero of the Pencil and the Paintbrush
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, October 24, 1922, No.273. The Supplementary Call-up of the 1901 Class has been Completed!
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, October 25, 1922, No.274. The Capture of Vladivostok
• Telegram to the Revolutionary War Council of the Black Sea Fleet
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, November 2, 1922, No.275
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, December 21, 1922, No.2846
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, December 22, 1922, No.2848
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, January 6, 1923, No.59
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, April 22, 1923, No.278
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, April 22, 1923, No.279
• Letter to the 2nd All-Russia Conference of Communist Navy Men
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic and People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, May 26, 1923, No.280
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR and People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, October 29, 1923, No.281
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR, December 8, 1923, No.2656

II. The Kronstadt Mutiny

• The Mutiny of ex-General Kozlovsky and the Vessel Petropavlovsk (Government communiqué of March 2, 1921)
• A Last Warning: To the Garrison and Inhabitants of Kronstadt and the Mutinous Forts
• On the Events at Kronstadt (Interview given to representatives of the foreign press)
• Kronstadt and the Stock-Exchange
• Speech at the Parade in Honour of the Heroes of Kronstadt, April 3, 1921

III. Banditry and Famine

1. Speeches and Articles

• The Famine and the World Situation (Speech at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet, August 30, 1921)
• Greetings to Right-bank Ukraine!
• Speech at the Meeting of Zhitomir Town Soviet, September 5, 1921
• The Stock-Exchange Republic and Its Noulens
• This Must Be Stopped
• Speech at a Plenary Session of the Moscow Soviet, September 20, 1921

2. Orders

• Order to Volhynia, Podolia and Odessa Provinces, September 5, 1921, No.257
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 10, 1921, No.261
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, September 13, 1921, No.265
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, November 10, 1921, No.267. A Fresh Provocation by the Polish Military Clique
• Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, December 11, 1921, No.268
• Order by the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, February 11, 1922, No.365. Fraternal Thanks!

IV. Military-Political Surveys

• There are No Fronts, but There is Danger (Address to the 9th Congress of Soviets, December 26, 1921)
• Springtime Machinations by Our Enemies (Speech at the ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Soviet on the anniversary of the February Revolution, March 12, 1922)
• Maps

🔍 See also Military Writings : Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 5.