The Military Situation

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Report to the Sixth Congress of Soviets, November 9, 1918

During the four months and more which have passed since the time of the July Congress, tremendous changes have taken place in the world situation and in the internal lives of all countries, and these changes have found direct reflection in the life and development of our Red Army.

When, in the memorable days of July, we experienced one of the most acute crises in the existence of the nine-months-old Soviet Republic, our Red Army was still weak, and, what was yet more serious, even in our own Soviet ranks its future development was often questioned. At that time many comrades doubted whether we would succeed, under those conditions of the extreme weariness of the entire adult male population of the country and of the anaemic and exhausted state of the Republic, in creating within a short period a trained, close-knit, combat-ready Red Army.

Then, in July, as you will remember, comrades, a party which occupied a certain sector of this hall made it a matter of principle to counterpose guerrilla detachments to the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. We were told, from the camp of the Left SR party which then existed, that a revolutionary regime cannot create regular armies, that it must confine itself to forming guerrilla detachments. That was dangerous nonsense. Guerrilla detachments correspond to the period of struggle for power and the first, infant phase of the development of Soviet power. As the ruling class begins to make use of its power for military purposes, it goes over from guerrilla amateurism to planned state-building and has to create a regular army. I think, comrades, that the number of deputies we should find here and now who would support the Left SR cry of those days: ‘Long live guerrilla detachments’ – counterposed to the cry that rang out in this place: ‘Long live the workers’ and peasants’ army’ – would not reach even single figures.

At that time, in July, our army was in a poor way. The situation was this. On the one hand, the painful breaking-up of the old army, which, in its decomposition, corrupted our newly-formed units: on the other hand, these units, suffering from the natural maladies of youth, were as yet only precariously put together and lacked even the minimum of military traditions. Under these conditions we retreated wherever any fairly well-organized enemy units were in action against us. That happened, for example, when the Czechoslovaks attacked us on the Eastern front. However, we gradually began to form strong units, and as these grew, so the situation began to change.

Previously, the Red Army units had shown a low level of military preparation, and we surrendered town after town. We fell back from the Volga and gave up part of Siberia.

When the Anglo-French expedition landed at Murmansk, and then, almost without having to fight, insolently seized Archangel, there arose before us the concrete danger that the Anglo-French Northern front would link up with the White Guards in the East, on the Volga and in the Urals. This tremendous threat from the North-East shook the Soviet Republic.

Nevertheless, after the Fifth Congress of Soviets which concluded in early July, we still went on retreating for a whole month. In the first days of August we surrendered Kazan, the center of military operations where the War Council of the Eastern Front was situated. Our inability to hold Kazan symbolised the extremely low level of development of the Red Army.

After that there began, at last, a turn for the better, which was accomplished in a short time. The turn took place not so much within the War Department as in Soviet Russia as a whole. For the first time everyone realised that the country was facing mortal danger, and that the War Department and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army had to get rid of this threat, with their own forces and with the help of the entire working class of Russia.

We appealed to the Petrograd Soviet, to the Moscow Soviet, to the trade unions, to the factory committees and to the more advanced of the provincial soviets, which were still far from completely on the same levels as the revolutionary capitals. The organizations mentioned sent the flower of their workers, the best, most self-sacrificing proletarians, to the Eastern Front.

These comrades, members of trade unions and workers in various commissariats, reinforced the still diffuse, disorganized Workers’ and Peasants’ Army and formed, as I reported to the Central Executive Committee, its strong, firm and supple backbone. Without those thousands of Soviet executives and advanced proletarians the War Department would not have coped with its task. It was only thanks to their extraordinary self-sacrifice that we not only did not lose Nizhny-Novgorod, Vyatka and Perm, not only prevented any link-up between the Czechoslovaks and the Anglo-French force but, on the contrary, went over to the offensive on these fronts, an offensive which developed with ever greater success and led to our clearing the White Guard forces out of the whole Volga region within a few weeks. And I must say, before the most authoritative assembly of the Republic, that we owe these victories, first and foremost, to the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, in the shape of the proletarians they hurled into battle on the Eastern Front. In the Ural region our successes did not develop as speedily as we had wished. The chief difficulty here was that a White Guard revolt broke out in the factories of Izhevsk and Votkinsk [Izhevsk and Votkinsk are about half-way between Kazan and Perm.], and these factories were transformed into strongpoints for the White-Guard and Czechoslovak forces. The factories in question supplied them with cartridges and with machine guns. The counter-revolution succeeded in involving in the factory revolt not only kulaks but also, undoubtedly, a section of the workers, who joined them under compulsion. A struggle began for possession of these highly important armament centers, and this struggle diverted forces from our offensive towards Yekaterinburg and other points in the Urals. Only yesterday we received the news that the Izhevsk factories have been taken by regiments of the Red Army and, on the first anniversary of the Republic, the flag of Soviet power is flying over them. All the other points will soon be liberated. Henceforth these factories will supply our Red Army with cartridges, machine-guns and everything else that it needs. This gives us grounds to expect that, in the nearest future and on the nearest front, we shall be advancing. And success will develop at a faster rate. We may suppose that in the immediate future the British and French will scrap even the idea of forming a unified North-Eastern Front. We have information that on the Northern Front the British and French and the Czechoslovaks have given up hope of success, and at the same time there are indubitable signs ofdisintegration of the expeditionary force. It is reported from the Kotlas front [Kotlas is on the River Northern Dvina, about 500 km south-east of Archangel.] that, for the first time, a detachment of 58 British soldiers has come over to us. It’s the first step that counts. Fifty-eight is not many, of course: but we need to remember that there are extremely few British in the North, and that their position will get worse with the winter weather. There can therefore be no doubt that the British must very soon remove their expeditionary force, if they do not want to expose it to the risk of complete disintegration and dispersion.

During the winter the country will not be threatened with any danger on the Northern front. And, I repeat, there can be no question but that the enemy will, for the time being, close down that front.

In the East, operations will develop further in the direction indicated, that is, in the sense of a systematic and planned offensive by our forces. One may legitimately express impatience, comrades, because the capital of the Urals, Yekaterinburg, is not yet in our hands: but at the same time you must note and take full account of the fact that on the Eastern Front our offensive is in the highest degree regular, planned and systematic, and not at all of the guerrilla variety. Here we are safeguarding ourselves against any sort of surprises. This does not prevent the operation on the flanks of our advancing front, and fairly deep in the enemy’s rear, of our guerrilla detachments, acting in conformity with directives from the Center, transmitted by the commanders of the regular armies, and they are operating with conscious success.

On the Southern Front, comrades, matters are, up to now, certainly worse than on the Northern and, especially, than on the Eastern Front. On the Southern Front our army has been put together in a different way, as compared with the other two fronts. The enemy here is different, and the course of operations has developed differently. Until recently the Southern Front was, so to speak, our stepchild: our attitude towards it was almost one of letting things slide, the reason being, of course, that we had to concentrate our attention, forces and means upon the Northern Front. The British, French and Czechoslovaks were there, and the Americans and Japanese had already appeared on the Eastern horizon. But the menace proved to be too serious, and unexpectedly so, in the near South as well, where Krasnov’s band was. During the first year of the revolution we had too easily got used to disposing of the internal counter-revolution and our own bourgeoisie, of the Kiasnovite and Kaledinite bands, by means of improvised workers’ detachments which were poorly organized, each numbering a thousand or two of untrained Petrograd workers, who picked up rifles and dealt very well with the matter in hand. Because of this we developed a contemptuous attitude towards the Southern Front, a conviction that we should get rid of our enemies eventually, sooner or later. That was one aspect of the matter. The other aspect was the actual process of formation of the units which are now holding our Southern Front. To a considerable extent they are composed of men from the Ukraine, the Don region, the Kuban and North Caucasia. They are excellently seasoned troops who have been through a hard school of experience during the guerrilla war. Their commanders have shared with them all the adversities and hardship and all the fortunes of war through many months, in the Ukraine, on the Don, and in North Caucasia; but at the same time, these units brought with them the negative features of the guerrilla period of the war, to a greater degree than all our other units on other fronts, and have still not got rid of them. Each guerrilla commander looked on his unit, which he later named a division, as a closed world: he required of the soldiers belonging to his division unconditional submission to severe discipline, and was often capable of creating and maintaining such discipline. At the same time, he was often lacking in that discipline where his own attitude to the higher centers of command was concerned. It was hard to turn these units into regular formations, proper military units, divisions of a normally functioning centralized army. This task called for a large number of Soviet Communist activists, combat-hardened revolutionaries, and to get them, comrades, we again appealed to the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, pointing out how extremely important and necessary it was to discipline and unify the Southern Front, along the same lines as the Eastern Front. And again the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets gave us many hundreds of workers for service on the Southern Front. But this happened very recently, and it was only a few days ago that these several hundreds of the state’s best workers appeared at the front: they are today, perhaps, scattered over various sectors of the front. Until now there have been no commissars on the Southern Front, either in the regiments or in the divisions. Those of your comrades who are at all close to the Army know what a tremendous role is played by commissars who are old Party workers. As commanders we have only young men and former soldiers whose attention and strength are wholly absorbed by the military side of things, and the tasks of political control and revolutionary tempering of the troops are, naturally, assigned to a different leader, to the commissar, whose post is of the highest importance. Yet in our Southern armies, which include great numbers of men, there are hardly any units that have commissars, apart from those regiments and divisions which have recently been and are now being transferred thither. Only now has an apparatus of commissars been formed on that front. Our enemies have given our regime the name ‘commissar-rule’, and, where our workers’ and worker-peasant army is concerned, we are ready to accept that name which our enemies wanted to fasten on us as a term of abuse. Yes, our army is ruled by commissars, and in so far as it depends on them we can call the revolutionary regime ‘commissar-rule’. If you will give us experienced, battle-tempered commissars who know how to die, our cause will prosper.

Comrades, I am repeating what I have told the CEC many times before. I do not know of one single unit that has retreated in panic, shown faint-heartedness or produced many cases of desertion, if that unit has a firm commander and a firm commissar. In any case there is always, even if it be small, a perfectly conscious and hardened nucleus of soldier revolutionaries, Communists, knights devoted to the struggle for socialism, and if the commissar always stands at his post as an unbending soldier of the revolution, if, at the moment of most terrible danger, he is there in the front line, in front of his unit, and says ’Don’t move’, he will be backed up by the best of the soldiers, and then the conduct of all the soldiers is guaranteed, for in every unit, even one that is not very conscious, there is the voice of conscience in the soul, which whispers: ‘You must not betray, you must not desert.’ And if even the commanding personnel are silent, and it is known that the instinct of self-preservation may triumph over consciousness, it is enough for the voice of duty to ring out: ‘Comrades, don’t move,’ and the Red Army unit will not fall back. I have not yet known an example of panic under those conditions. That is why we have introduced a rule which some find severe, but which remains fully in force: for every panicky withdrawal, for every case of desertion, the commander and the commissar are to be answerable, first and foremost. If they have not taken all the necessary measures, have remained unharmed, or have deserted along with their unit, then, of course, they will be the first to fall beneath the sharp blade of our revolutionary punishment. Apparently, some comrades have considered, and have voiced their opinion, that we are acting too harshly, too mercilessly. Our time is, in general, a harsh and merciless time for the working class, which is compelled to defend its power and its existence against a swarm of external foes. And if we want to celebrate more than just one anniversary of the Soviet Republic, to uphold Soviet power and win the future for the working class and the working peasantry, then, in this merciless time, we are obliged to be merciless towards anyone in our own ranks who does not display the utmost energy, courage and firmness when he has been put in a responsible position: and there is no post more responsible than that of Commissar. There can be no doubt, comrades, that if such a firm proletarian course is followed on the Southern Front in the immediate future, beneficial work will be accomplished in the disciplinary, unifying and centralizing of our armies stationed there.

I have visited the armies stationed on the Voronezh, Balashov, Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan fronts, and acquainted myself, closely and in detail, with their situation, and I can say with a clear conscience that we possess in the South a good and very numerous army, very much bigger than many of you suppose. It is now being given the proper organization of command and a real corps of commissars. I repeat – the results of this will make themselves felt very soon.

In the Cossacks and White Guards we now have an adversary who is a great deal more serious than seemed to be the case until recently. United against us are the substantial forces which until recently were backed by the Germans, in the shape of Krasnov’s bands, and by the British and French, in the shape of Denikin and Alekseyev. There is now taking place a unification of the Alekseyev-Denikin front and the Krasnov front, which previously relied on the two hostile imperialist coalitions, the German and the Anglo-French, but which both now hope to receive supplies, on both sectors of their united front, from victorious Anglo-French militarism. Our problems on the Southern Front are now extremely acute. German militarism has collapsed. We have just heard a report which shows that the process of its downfall is going ahead at feverish speed. The Germans were needed to defend the Ukraine. Anglo-French militarism is hurrying to take their place in the Ukraine, on the Don and in North Caucasia. And we must slip in between departing German militarism and approaching Anglo-French militarism. We must occupy the Don, North Caucasia and the Caspian, support the workers and peasants of the Ukraine, crush their enemies, and enter into our Soviet house (in which we mentally include North Caucasia, the Don and the Ukraine), go into our own Soviet dwelling and say that there is no entry here either for British or for German scoundrels. This concludes the repercussion on the Red Army of those changes in the world situation that I mentioned earlier. I will now proceed to questions of organization.

It is no secret that we are experiencing difficulties in the organization of supplies and in the training of commanding personnel.

We have overcome the deepest crisis: the army exists and is being administered and supplied. There can be no room now for the doubt that was felt not long ago as to whether we could create an army. The army exists, is fighting, and is becoming a factor in international affairs with which our enemies are already having to reckon. Quoted in our own Soviet newspapers recently were extracts from the foreign press, namely, the leading British paper The Times and the German bourgeois paper Der Lokal-Anzeiger, They write of our Red Army that it is growing at a menacing rate. As regards numbers, the papers mentioned a figure of 400 to 500,000 soldiers, already now. [Figures published later show that the Red Army actually comprised only 350,000 men at this time.] For reasons you will understand, I am not going to quote precise data, but I will say that at present the figures given by country’s forces, and to do this, in the first place, so as to serve the Southern Front. If certain institutions feel pressure from the War Department as the cruel pressure of a new Red Soviet militarism, well, I resolutely say again that we live in a harsh time, when our country has to be transformed into an armed camp. If our soldiers fall back under the influence of panic, severe punishment awaits them. This fate will befall likewise those Soviet institutions which may remove themselves, as many have done, previously, from the territory of the front. True, such cases are happening now a great deal less frequently; on the contrary, indeed, when the front bends and comes close to uyezd or town soviets, the latter no longer move away, but take up arms and join the ranks of our army. For all that, though, we are still far from having formed a stable, disciplined vigorous rear. When we have such a rear, we will take the offensive on our Southern front. It is clear to everyone how important the conquest of the Don region will be. It will have repercussions in the Ukraine and all over the world, for we shall develop forces there which will help us wage a struggle for mastery of the Caspian Sea. Just three days ago I was in Astrakhan, and I returned from there with seven large steam ships which had been captured from Bicherakhov. We needed these ships, for three of them were the biggest on the Caspian Sea, such ships as we did not possess. On them we shall mount our hundred-millimetre guns, which neither Bicherakhov [General L.F. Bicherakhov held positions in Daghestan, on the Western coast of the Caspian Sea, from which he was waging a two-front war: by sea against the Bolsheviks based at Astrakhan, and by land against the Turks who had come in through Armenia and Azerbaidzhan.] nor the Turks will have. And I think that our honest Soviet river Volga will soon flow into an equally honest Soviet sea, the Caspian. It is not permissible, of course, to slip into extreme optimism, but we cannot but acknowledge that our general military position is satisfactory.

On the Eastern Front there is complete demoralisation in the units fighting against us. We are now intensifying this by supplying information about the events in Austria-Hungary, about Bohemia having gained independence, and every Czechoslovak understands and knows that the road to liberated Bohemia lies not through Britain and France but through Soviet Russia or through Soviet Ukraine. As regards the Southern Front, the whole question there comes down to the tempo of our work. We must not allow our enemies to relieve each other. Krasnov, who until yesterday was in conflict and competition with Alekseyev, is now united with him: Bicherakhov is now at war with Turkey, but tomorrow he will be united with her. The Germans will undoubtedly clear the way for the British and French and will even help them in the common struggle against us. Tempo is of very great importance, and we must achieve tremendous speed: this together with the forces of the Red Army, will enable us to act so as to safeguard Russia from counter-revolutionary onslaughts.

I returned from the front with the conviction that there is much work to be done, and that there are also subjective obstacles: that, for instance, not all Soviet executives have realised that a centralized administration exists, and all orders that come from above have to be obeyed, that deviation from them is impermissible, and that we shall be pitiless towards those Soviet executives who have not yet understood this. We shall dismiss them, cast them out of our ranks, subject them to repression. There are still many difficulties, especially on the Southern Front, but our forces have grown larger, and we have more experience and confidence. If all of you comrades go from the Congress of Soviets refreshed from having met together, if you go back to the localities and report what you have heard here, and if you say that we have a Red Army that is strong and united, if you go to the localities with that conviction and explain that the principal task before us is to send all available and half-available forces to the Front, that all barrels have to be scraped and all superfluous bayonets and cartridges mobilized and sent back through the appropriate channels, to the front, that if there are motor-cars in the localities, it is necessary to do without them, and to send all of them to the front, as well – if you do all this, if you carry through the work of militarising all Soviet organizations, our country will be put on such a footing that it will fear neither the German nor the Anglo-French imperialists. Our Red Army and our rear will develop daily and hourly. And the slogan which Comrade Lenin issued in his letter to the CEC, that we need an army of three million men, will become reality. [The reference is to Lenin’s letter to the All-Russia CEC, October 3, 1918, in Collected Works, Vol.28, pp.101-104.]

While in the other countries a process of internal breakdown is taking place, with only a difference of degree between one country and another, while the war is giving rise there to a process of disruption between the mass of the soldiers and the commanders, and between the ruling classes and the masses generally, when they are going through the period we knew in February, March and April of this year – meanwhile, the opposite process is going on here. We are taking shape, getting into formation, becoming hardened. Here we have soldiers, taken partly from the old army, who are now fulfilling historical tasks, soldiers who cannot break down and disperse, which is something that happens now only in the countries of the bankrupt bourgeoisie. There the armies have either dispersed or are dispersing, or will disperse tomorrow, as a result of revolutionary agitation alone. Our soldiers fear no agitators, and, in confirmation of that, I bring to your notice the fact that on the Southern Front, where we are now in a difficult situation, confronted with the imperialists of Germany, France and Britain, not only the Right SRs but the Left SRs as well are fruitlessly engaged in baseless conspiracies. The details of one of these conspiracies in our Red Army (cries of ‘Shame!’) fighting against united Anglo-French imperialism will be published in the next few days.

Someone here uttered the word ‘shame’. Yes, shame, thrice shame! Our Red Army is now afraid of no agitators. It knows that the country has no task other than to supply and care for the Red Army. The Army has its commanding apparatus. All the forces that are available in the country are being devoted to the Red Army. We do not conceal our tasks and aims.

Our Red Army feels that it is the Soviet workers’ and peasants’ regime in arms. Our Red Army will uphold this regime. Comrades! Make serving the Red Army, with moral and material means alike, your first priority. The whole country must be mobilized, materially and spiritually. All the country’s strength and resources belong to the Red Army, which has to fight better than it has fought hitherto. The experience of the Red Army is being transformed into irreplaceable capital. It will accumulate this experience, it will not waste its strength. The whole country now faces a fresh process of forming units of workers and peasants, and everyone must see to it, in the localities, that these units which are being formed lack nothing they need, either materially or morally. They must feel that they are supported by the Soviet power. It is your duty to leave here conscious that there is no higher task than strengthening the Red Army and supporting the front.

And when this task has been performed, our front will be unshakable, and then we shall celebrate the anniversary of the revolution not only at home but also in Rostov, Kharkov, Kiev, Vienna and Berlin, and, perhaps, the international congress which Friedrich Adler was preparing to convene in July 1914, on the eve of the war, will be fully convened by us, in one of our Soviet capitals. Then we shall tell the Third International that it has assembled here, in Moscow or Petrograd, [A conference of the Second International was being prepared when the First World War broke out. The first Congress of the Third (Communist) International met in Moscow in March 1919.] because its congress is defended by the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army, the first army of communism in the whole history of the world.