To the Communists on the Eastern front

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The setbacks we have suffered on the Eastern front have nothing catastrophic about them. There can be no doubt that the Eastern front will soon revive, pull itself together and resume its victorious advance. Nevertheless, losses such as we have suffered there cannot be called insignificant. It is enough to mention the surrender of Perm and Ufa. The enemy’s forces are substantial, but they are not so large as to account for our defeats and our armies’ retreat on a considerable part of the front. There are undoubtedly internal reasons for our setbacks. And just as the principal causes of our successes have lain in the energy, cohesion, discipline and self-sacrifice of the Communists, so, in this case too, we must seek in the work of the Communists one of the reasons for the setbacks that have befallen us.

In certain institutions of the Eastern front there were concentrations of Communists who saw it as one of their most important tasks to criticise and condemn our military system, passing resolutions to this effect, resolving that decorations are unnecessary, protesting against the internal service regulations, and soon and so forth. This led in its turn to conflicts with those Communists who conscientiously carried out the Party’s policy. These conflicts then resulted in weakening internal relations and discipline, and had most pernicious repercussions in all spheres of work, and consequently in the army’s combat. capacity.

It is necessary now to remind all Party members working at the front, without exception and with all definiteness, that they have been sent here not to criticise the military system but to implement it unanimously under war conditions. The member of the Revolutionary War Council of the Front or of an army, the commissar of a division, a brigade, or a regiment, the worker in a Political Department or the member of a company Communist cell – all these have been delegated by the Party to carry out a definite policy and to see that it is carried out by everybody else. Anyone who does not agree with this policy has no right to act in the name of the Party, abusing its name and authority, for it is in the last analysis a matter of indifference to the Party and to the Soviet Republic who is disrupting the army’s internal relations, its unity and moral authority – a Left SR, or an undisciplined Communist who is misusing his responsible position for a purpose directly opposed to that for which he was sent to the front.

All the organs and institutions of the War Department and all the Party cells of the front constitute not clubs for discussion but military organs, created to serve practical ends and obliged for this purpose to follow paths decided by the Party. He who cannot subordinate his personal disagreement to the need for unanimity, he who indulges in argument, criticism and complaining is thereby violating both military discipline and Party discipline.

The Political Department of an army is an organ of that army’s Revolutionary War Council entrusted with tasks of supervision and education. It can have no independent tasks, no independent methods, other than those laid down and assigned to it by the Revolutionary War Council. The Political Department is unconditionally subordinate to the Revolutionary War Council. An army publication is the press organ of the Revolutionary War Council of that army. Such publications can in no way be turned into a free forum for criticism and condemnation of the established method of building the army. Every soldier of the Red Army must find in his army’s publication a firm guideline that will strengthen his confidence that the Soviet power is doing everything it can to utilise the Red units in the best way in the interests of the working class. Still less permissible is it to denigrate in the military press those institutions and individuals to whom the Soviet power has entrusted this or that responsible task.

It is necessary to begin at the bottom and strictly to check, in all units, the composition of the Communist cells and the regimental commissars. On them depends the combat-capacity of the units, and a unit will retain its combat-capacity only if the Party group in it does not degenerate into a little political club to which everyone brings its grumbles and discontents, but remains the united fighting vanguard of the unit, setting an example of the strictest unconditional discipline to all the other soldiers.

The comrade commissars must be reminded that they are directly answerable, along with the commanders, for the combat-capacity of their units. There have been a number of cases recently on the Eastern front of unprecedented and even shameful retreats by particular regiments. What measures were taken, in all these cases, by the commissars concerned, and where was the Communist cell, what was it doing? After every such retreat a thorough check must be made by the divisional commissar or by the army’s political department on the individuals making up the cell, to ascertain how each of them in particular behaved at the critical moment.

The number of Communists at headquarters and in the political departments must be reduced to the minimum and the most energetic experienced and self-sacrificing workers must be sent directly into the active units. The title of regimental commissar must be exalted higher by appointing the best Communist workers to these positions.

Instead of engaging in gossip and chatter about the medals of the Order of the Red Banner, a feeling must be created such that every Communist soldier will regard it as a matter of revolutionary honour to deserve by his conduct in battle the award of the Order of the Red Banner, as an expression of his revolutionary services to the working class.

An immense amount of time is spent in discussing all kinds of orders and measures. Yet, in war, economy of time is an essential condition for success. It is necessary to suppress completely all pointless, irritating, demoralising discussions. Communists must demonstrate by their own example that an order is an order, and has to be obeyed unconditionally and at once.

Not one single breach of duty and discipline, especially if it be committed by a Communist, must remain unpunished. It is necessary to revive at the front that high moral intensity which characterised all the Communist workers on the Eastern front in the period when the Whites were being swept from the Volga. If, since that time, elements suffering from fatigue have accumulated among the Communists, these must be eliminated and removed. Let anyone occupying a responsible post who feels that he is incapable of acting with all the firmness required by the situation of the Soviet Republic say so openly, instead of giving his fatigue and sluggishness expression in sterile, demoralising criticism.

At its congress the Party checked over the objections expressed in this criticism. By its resolution it reaffirmed the methods which it had laid down as the basis for building the Red Army. These methods have gained us great victories in the past. They will ensure complete victory over Kolchak’s bands if each one of us Communists tolerates no waverings or deviations at his post.

Addressing this letter to Communist comrades, I ask them to render unanimous and heroic support to the Revolutionary War Council of the Eastern Front in its work of restoring the combat-capacity of the Eastern front.

March 24, 1919