Between 1918 and 1920 Stalin was the only man whom the Central Committee kept sending from one front to another, to the point at which the Revolution was in the greatest peril.— K. VOROSHILOV
TO-DAY all the world recognises Marshal Stalin as a great military strategist, and wonders how it came to be that one of so modest an origin, who did not pass through the military academies, could achieve such eminence in so specialised a science. There should be no mystery about it to those who have followed his career and understood the philosophy which has guided him. His life has been that of a political warrior and leader of political warriors in a land where politics have consisted of unrelenting warfare.
When Trotsky was appointed Commissar for War there was no prior discussion among the Party leaders as to his military qualifications. Yet the Bolshevik Commissar for War had to do no less than create an army. At the time of his appointment there was only an army in embryo in the form of some 100,000 Red Guards—armed working men. It is to Trotsky’s credit that he proved himself the greatest of recruiting sergeants. His inspiring oratory and élan brought recruits flooding into the ranks of the Red Army. Later he was assisted by the passing of a conscription decree, but he lured into the ranks men of every kind, including thirty to forty thousand officers trained in the Czar’s army. Trotsky was conscious of the lack of military training among the working class, and thought to make up for it by persuading the trained officers to enlist. Aware that they might prove politically unreliable, he introduced the system of political commissars to keep check on their integrity in action.
Before ever it was possible to train this army it was flung into battle on many fronts, and Trotsky himself had to reveal his qualities as a military leader. That he had read a great deal concerning the structure of armies, much of the history of revolutions, and not a little about military strategy, is undoubted. But he lacked both military practice and the practice of organising revolutionary warfare. From 1898, when he was nineteen, to 1917, he had hardly been in Russia; and until, on Stalin’s proposal, he and his group were accepted into the Bolshevik Party in July, 1917, he had fought the Bolsheviks with voice and pen.
The disagreement was fundamental and was never eliminated. It was now to appear again in quarrels with Stalin concerning the Red Army. The fact is, he never really accepted the principle governing the relationship of Lenin’s party with the masses because he was incapable of believing in the creative power of the proletariat. He was an egotist, with all the over-confidence of the egotist. He was of the stuff of which dictators are made, and his conception of leadership had as its premise the recognition of his abilities plus a proletariat which would do as he ordered. They had to be organised. He would organise them as part of a machine under the control of a staff drawn from the middle classes—the intelligentsia and the Army officers, with himself at the head. He was efficient. He admired efficiency. But he could never surrender himself to the idea of integrating himself with the proletariat, or believe that the qualities he saw in the middle-classes were latent in the proletariat also and that the revolutionary struggle would bring the working-classes into the ranks of leadership. They could be educated in the long run, he thought, but not in the short. His intellectual snobbery ruined him as a revolutionary.
That he performed great feats of service as the Commissar for War is undeniable. Lenin remarked to Gorki, “Show me another man who could have created an army in so short a time.” His tremendously inspiring effort in rousing the proletariat for the defence of Petrograd against Yudenitch, in 1919, is unforgettable. But the nature of these triumphs is in keeping with the man. They were feats of emotional appeal and efficiency in dictatorial organisation.
All this might have proved successful had the war it was called upon to fight been a national war and not a class war. But to staff a proletarian class war army with officers drawn from its class enemies without first ensuring their political reliability, was to ask for trouble of a most fatal kind. This Trotsky did not see. Obsessed by the technical qualifications of the professional officers, conscious of the technical backwardness of the proletariat, he relied too much on his capacity to make good the political deficiencies of his officers through the cadres of commissars. That many of these officers were destined to give of their best as loyal and efficient soldiers is true, but their best could not make up for the fact that they were being called upon to fight a war of a kind outside their experience—a military political war in which father would fight son, a fluid war, sometimes a guerrilla war, and always a war of unfamiliar ideas.
The results were to lead, among other things, to Trotsky’s first big conflict with Stalin. It arose from Stalin’s appointment as Commissar in charge of securing food supplies from the south of Russia.
Such an appointment bears its own testimony to the seriousness of the situation. The tolerance of the Bolsheviks towards their opponents at the beginning of the Revolution enabled the forces of counter-revolution to recover. Officers who had been put on parole made their way to the centres of resistance to the new power. Employers, bank staffs, functionaries of the old Government departments, confident that the Revolution must fail, sabotaged production. The workers, aware of their new power, had not yet learned the discipline of production emphasised by Lenin in his speech on the “Tasks of our Time.” Production declined to low levels. The peasants, fearful of the morrow and distrustful of the paper currency, hoarded food for their own use and held back supplies for the towns. By May, 1918, the Soviet Government was surrounded within a sixth of the territory of the country. But eight armies were defending the encircled republic. They were not well-equipped armies and often they were fluctuating forces which had to be reinforced with the best revolutionary elements from the factories. They were armies which had to be welded by the force of an idea in the very process of the war.
When Stalin was appointed to his new post he had no intention, nor had the Government, that he should interfere with military affairs. But on his arrival at Tzaritsyn, the key centre for the transport of food from South to north, he had to face a disastrous situation. The army was disorganised. The officers were demoralised. Those whose sympathies were not wholly with the enemy regarded themselves as nothing but employees of the Government, “staff workers,” not leaders of a revolutionary war. There in its most extreme form was the ultimate logical sequel of Trotsky’s policy in regard to the composition and leadership of the army. Stalin appraised the situation at once, and asked the Central Committee of the Party for authority to deal with it. He had none of Trotsky’s inhibitions concerning the workers, and rejected outright Trotsky’s ideas about the army. Steeped in Lenin’s theory of the rôle of the Party as the leader of the Revolution, he was convinced that a revolutionary class war could result in victory only if conducted under leaders who were themselves convinced revolutionaries.
The situation was appalling. The line of the Red Army had been cut. The Cossacks were near the city. On Tsaritsyn the North’s food depended utterly, and already starvation conditions obtained in Petrograd.
Stalin found disorganisation and confusion in the city. All the supporters of the counter-revolution who had lain low when the Red Army appeared to have the upper hand had now come into the open, confident their new day was at hand. The Army command was inept, infested with supporters of the enemy, and had no conception of its task. Indeed, it had just ordered a retreat, and while the military bands were playing in the square counter-revolutionaries were walking the streets freely.
It was not Stalin’s way to wait for the War Council to settle matters by correspondence. From his youth onward he had been thrust into situation after situation in which he had to make decisions quickly, though this was the biggest and most challenging he had ever been called on to handle. To suggest that he now began to interfere with military affairs because he disliked Trotsky is absurd. It is more than doubtful whether on arrival in Tsaritsyn he gave any thought to the possibility of a quarrel between them. The situation was too serious. Writing to Lenin on July 7th, 1918, he said:
I am driving and bullying all who require it. Hope soon to restore the position! You can rest assured that we shall spare nobody, ourselves or others, and the grain will be obtained. If only our military “specialists” (what cobblers!) would not sleep and idle, the line would not have been broken; and if we restore the line it will not be thanks to the officers, but in spite of them.
He received authority from the Revolutionary Military Council, headed by Lenin, instructing him to take the situation in hand, “restoring order, amalgamating detatchments into regular army units, appointing the proper authorities and driving out the undisciplined.” On July 11th he sent Lenin a telegram which is illuminating:
Everything is complicated by the fact that the Headquarters Staff of the NorthCaucasus Command has proved to be absolutely incapable of fighting against counter-revolution. It is not only that our “specialists” are psychologically incapable of striking a decisive blow against the counter-revolution, but also that they, as “Staff” workers, are capable only of “drafting plans” and elaborating schemes of organisation, but are entirely indifferent to military operations . . . and generally speaking, behave as though they were outsiders, guests. The military commissars could not fill the gap. . . . I consider I have no right merely to observe this with indifference, when Kaledin’s front is cut off from supplies and the North cut off from the grain district. I intend altering this and many other shortcomings in the localities; I shall take measures, even to the dismissal of those officials and commanders who are ruining the cause, despite the formal difficulties, which where necessary I shall break through. Of course, I shall take full responsibility before all the higher institutions.
Lenin was anxious concerning the possibility of a rising of the “Left” Social Revolutionaries in Tsaritsyn. Promptly Stalin answered: “As for the hysterical ones, rest assured, our hand will not falter, we shall deal with enemies as enemies.”
He formed a Revolutionary War Council within Tsaritsyn itself, composed of men of his personal selection. Among them were Kaganovitch and Voroshilov, with whom he had worked in the Caucasus and whom he knew intimately. Voroshilov had only recently arrived, after performing the most remarkable feat of leading 15,000 fighting men and conveying 35,000 non-combatant refugees hundreds of miles across the Ukraine amid continuous fighting. He had had no previous military training: that trek began his military career. He was now put in command of the defence of Tsaritsyn. With him, Kaganovitch, and others whom he knew to be reliable Bolsheviks, Stalin established a Cheka or committee to deal with counter-revolution in the rear. He then proceeded to clean up both the civilian and military institutions. Nossovitch, the Chief of Military Direction appointed by Trotsky, went over to the enemy. He afterwards left on record in a newspaper called The Surge of the Don, issue of February 3rd, 1919, his own account of the change wrought by Stalin. He writes:
We must be fair to him and admit that any of the old administrators have good cause to envy his energy; and it would be well for many others to learn from his capacity to adapt himself to his work, and the local circumstances. Gradually, as his task became less, or rather, as his direct tasks became smaller, Stalin began to examine the work of all the administrative departments of the town, and the task of organising the defence of Tsaritsyn in particular, and the whole of the Caucasian, so-called revolutionary, front in general. . . . By this time the atmosphere had become heavy at Tsaritsyn. The Tsaritsyn Cheka was working at full speed. Not a day passed without plots being discovered in what had seemed to be the most reliable and secret places. All the prisons of the town were full. . . . The local counter-revolutionary organisations also, which adopted the Constituent Assembly as their motto, had become considerably strengthened and, having obtained money from Moscow, were preparing an insurrection to help the Don Cossacks to free Tsaritsyn. Unfortunately, the leaders of this organisation who had arrived from Moscow, Engineer Alexeyev and his two sons, were not well acquainted with the existing state of affairs and, as a result of a badly-arranged plan, which included bringing into the ranks of the active participators a Serbian battalion that had lately served the Bolsheviks in the Extraordinary Committee, the organisation of this plot was discovered . . . Stalin’s resolution was short: “To be shot!”
The same writer recalls Trotsky’s intervention:
A characteristic peculiarity of this drive was the attitude of Stalin to instructions from the centre. When Trotsky, worried because of the destruction of the command administration formed by him, with much difficulty, sent a telegram concerning the necessity of leaving the staff and the war commissariat on the previous footing and giving them a chance to work, Stalin wrote a categorical, most significant inscription on the telegram: “To be ignored!”
But Trotsky had no intention of being “ignored.” He wired to Lenin—“I insist categorically on Stalin’s recall. . . .” Stalin was recalled, and Lenin patched up the dispute. Voroshilov was transferred to the Ukraine. But Stalin had done his job, and the fundamental difference between him and Trotsky remained. Trotsky wanted his “specialists.” Stalin wanted Bolshevik leadership of the Army and was determined to get it. And thus began the great struggle between the two men which was to reach its conclusion in 1938 with the final purge of the Red Army leadership and the execution of the generals who were organising an insurrection against Stalin’s Government. It should be understood that Stalin was not opposed to former Czarist officers joining the Red Army, but he insisted that before they held positions of leadership they must become revolutionaries steeped heart and soul in the purpose of the Revolution. He was also convinced that many a Bolshevik workman could acquire the military knowledge and ability to become an army leader. And it was he, in pursuance of this belief, who brought to the front such men as Frunze, Voroshilov, Budienny, Timoshenko, and many others, workmen and peasant revolutionaries, who have since blazed their names across the battlefields of the Soviet Union.
Hardly had the Tsaritsyn crisis subsided than the Social Revolutionaries turned again to terrorism. Two Bolshevik leaders, Uritsky and Volodarsky, were assassinated, and Dora Kaplan attempted the assassination of Lenin. He was severely wounded, and undoubtedly the event shortened his life by years. The passion aroused among the workers carried the civil war to unprecedented heights of fearfulness. The Bolsheviks answered the “White Terror” with the “Red Terror,” and in the days immediately following the attempt on Lenin thousands were shot for merely looking bourgeois. But in a few weeks, although one bullet remained unextracted, Lenin resumed activities, for the steel ring about the Soviets was closing in.
At the end of 1918 Lenin telegraphed as follows:
To Trotsky, the President of the Revolutionary War Council, at Koslov or wherever he may be, Moscow, December 31st, 1918. There are several Party dispatches from Perm concerning the catastrophic condition of the Army and drunkenness. I am sending them on to you. You are asked to go there. I thought of sending Stalin—am afraid Smilga would not be firm enough in his attitude towards . . . who also, it is said, drinks and cannot restore order. Telegraph your opinion.
Trotsky answered, “I agree to Stalin’s journey with the powers of the Party and the revolutionary war council.” Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, were accordingly sent to investigate. The Third Army was at Perm and in a demoralised condition. The investigators restored order. They reported, and again Stalin proceeded with his relentless exposure of the composition of the leadership, and the process he had carried through at Tsaritsyn he carried through at Perm. On January 5th, 1919, he and Dzerzhinsky reported by telegraph to Lenin:
The investigation has begun. How the investigation goes on we shall inform you from time to time. For the time being we consider it necessary to inform you of one requirement of the Third Army which brooks no delay. The point is that out of 30,000 previously in the army, there remain only about 11,000 tired, exhausted men, who can scarcely hold out against the attacks of the enemy. The units sent by the Commander-in-Chief are not reliable, some are even hostile to us, and need seriously combing out. To save the remnants of the Third Army and avert the rapid advance of the enemy towards Viatka (according to reports received from the commanders at the front and the Third Army, this is a very real danger) it is absolutely necessary to send immediately from Russia at the disposal of the Army Commander at least three absolutely reliable regiments. We urgently request you to bring pressure to bear in this direction on the military institution concerned. We repeat: without such measures the fate of Perm awaits Viatka; this is the general opinion of the comrades on the spot, which we share on the basis of all the information at our disposal.
STALIN, DZERZHINSKY, 5th January, 1919
Viatka.
On the 15th of January Stalin reported to the Council of Defence: “1,200 reliable infantry and cavalrymen have been sent to the front; a day later two squadrons of cavalry.” On January 10th he writes:
. . . the 62nd regiment, 3rd brigade has been carefully combed out. These reinforcements made it possible to stop the enemy, roused the spirit of the Third Army and opened up the way for the attack on Perm, which up to now has been successful. In the rear of the army a serious cleansing of the Soviet and Party institutions is taking place. In Viatka and other provincial towns revolutionary committees have been organised. . . . The entire party and Soviet work is being reorganised on a new basis. The military control department has been cleansed and reorganised. . . . The unloading at the Viatka junction is proceeding. . . .
The enemy was stopped and the Eastern front took the offensive. From Perm Stalin was sent to the Ukraine to assist Voroshilov in the struggle against Denikin. Steadily Denikin’s army was being pushed back upon Kiev, when suddenly another crisis confronted Stalin with a new challenge. General Yudenitch, at the head of a mixed army of Russian “Whites,” Esthonians, and Poles, supported by the British, crossed from Esthonia and began to march on Petrograd. Lenin reluctant to weaken the drive against Denikin, proposed the abandonment of Petrograd until Stalin’s forces had beaten Denikin. To this Stalin was flatly opposed. So also was Trotsky—a rare situation! Lenin gave way, part of the southern army was diverted to Petrograd, and Stalin and Trotsky were sent to take charge of the situation. It was here that Trotsky leaped again into the limelight by his terrific rally of the workers of Petrograd for its defence. But Stalin had another task. There was treachery at the front, both in Petrograd and in Kronstadt. Two telegrams from Stalin to Lenin tell the part he played, and in them he again attacks the “specialists.” The first said:
On the heels of “Red Hill” we have liquidated “Grey Horse”; their big guns are in complete working order. . . . The naval specialists assured us that the capture of Red Hill from the sea would overthrow all naval science. There is nothing left but to mourn the loss of this so-called science. The speedy capture of the “hill” was the result of the most brutal interference on my part, and civilians generally, in the operations, including the cancelling of orders on land and sea, and giving our own instructions. I consider it my duty to declare that I shall continue to act in this way despite all my reverence for science.
STALIN
The second telegram, sent six days later, said:
The turning-point in our units has arrived. For a week there has been no single case of individual or group desertion. The deserters are returning in thousands. There are more frequent desertions from the enemy to our camp. In a week 400 men have deserted to us, the majority with their weapons. We began the attack yesterday afternoon. Although the promised reinforcements have not arrived, it was impossible for us to remain on the line we occupied—it was too close to Petrograd. The attack so far is successful; the whites are running; to-day we took the line Kernovo-Voronino-Slepino-Kaskovo. We have taken prisoners, two or more guns, automatics, cartridges. The enemy ships have not appeared, they apparently fear the “Red Hill” which is now entirely ours. Urgently send the two million cartridges for the 6th division.
For this victory both Trotsky and Stalin were awarded the order of the Red Flag. But the dispute between them was by no means at an end. Hardly had the defence of Petrograd and the defeat of Yudenitch become history than it flared up again to new heights, this time on a question of strategy. Denikin’s army was advancing in the Ukraine at an alarming rate, whereas Kolchak’s army had been thrown back from the Volga to the Urals. Should Kolchak be pursued and his forces completely smashed, or should all attention be diverted to defeat Denikin? Trotsky, who in his memoirs fully admits his blunder, decided on leaving Kolchak to concentrate on Denikin. Stalin was emphatically opposed to this plan, and the Central Committee supported him in his contention that such a decision would leave Kolchak time to recuperate, reorganise, and re-equip his forces behind the Urals. The Red Army, he urged, must advance and “liquidate” him and his army. It did advance, and Kolchak and his army were liquidated.
Stalin now urged Lenin to remove Trotsky from his position as War Commissar. He wrote on June 4th, 1919: “The whole question now is whether the Central Committee can find courage to draw the proper conclusions. Has the Central Committee sufficient character and firmness?” Trotsky promptly countered by submitting his resignation, which Lenin and the Central Committee were not prepared to accept. Stalin too thought better of his proposition, for he also voted that Trotsky’s resignation should not be accepted. Was it because here his hand faltered and his “courage” failed him? Hardly. He retreated because it was expedient. He could wait. But one thing is certain—by this time he had become convinced that Trotsky was a danger to the Revolution.
Shortly after this incident Stalin, Voroshilov, Kirov, and other leading Bolsheviks were sent to the Denikin front. Stalin was requested by the Central Committee to take charge of the situation. At once his deep conviction concerning Trotsky came to the top, and before accepting the post he insisted on three conditions, (1) That Trotsky should not interfere in the affairs of the southern front, and should not cross its boundary line; (2) That a number of workers whom he (Stalin) considered unsuitable for the work of restoring the position among the troops should be immediately withdrawn; and (3) That new workers, to be chosen by himself, should be immediately despatched to the southern front, who would be capable of fulfilling the task.
It speaks much for the genius of Lenin that he was able to hold his forces together in the face of such a demand. Imagine a leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1944 stipulating drastic limitation of the authority of the Red Army’s Commander-in-Chief before accepting a task assigned by the Central Committee! But Stalin’s conditions were accepted, and as soon as he arrived at the front he overhauled the situation with his characteristic thoroughness. The following letter, sent to the Central Committee, sets out with telling effect what he found, what he thought of it, and what he proposed to do:
Two months ago, the Higher Committee agreed in principle that the main attack should be directed from west to east through the Don basin. This operation was not carried out because of the situation created by the retreat of the troops from the south during the summer, that is to say because of the automatic re-distribution of the troops on the south-eastern front which caused a considerable loss of time of which Denikin took advantage. But now the situation, and with it the re-distribution of the forces, is completely altered. The Eighth Army (one of the principal forces of the old southern front), has advanced and has the Donetz basin before it. The Budienny Cavalry Army (another important force) has also advanced. A new force has also been added, namely the Lettish Division which, in a month’s time, when it has been reorganised, will again threaten Denikin. . . What is there to compel the Higher Committee to keep to the old plan? It can obviously only be the spirit of obstinacy, so short-sighted and so dangerous for the Republic, which is fostered in the Higher Committee by the “Ace of Strategists” [presumably Trotsky].
Some time ago the Higher Committee gave Korin directions to advance on Novorossisk across the Don steppes by a route which might perhaps be practicable for our airmen, but over which it would be impossible to take our infantry and our artillery. It is childishly easy to show that this senseless advance in the midst of hostile country, on an impossible line, would in all probability be utterly disastrous. It is easy to show that such an advance upon Cossack villages could only have the effect, as it did not so very long ago of grouping the Cossacks round Denikin for the defence of their villages against us, and of enabling Denikin to pose as the saviour of the Don; that is to say, it could only succeed in strengthening Denikin’s hand. For this reason the old plan must be changed at once, without a moment’s delay and must be replaced by that of a central attack on Rostov through Kharkov and the Donetz basin. So that, in the first place we would not find ourselves in the midst of hostile country but, on the contrary, in friendly surroundings, which would facilitate our advance. Secondly, we would occupy an important railway line (that of the Donetz) and the principal line of communication of the Denikin Army, the Voronezh-Rostov line. Thirdly, we would split Denikin’s Army into two portions of which one, the “Volunteers,” can be dealt with by Makhno, whilst we would be threatening the rear of the Cossack Army. Fourthly, we might succeed in estranging the Cossacks from Denikin, for, if our advance were successful, Denikin would try to make the Cossacks fall back to the west, which the majority of them would refuse to do. And fifthly, we would obtain coal, whereas Denikin would not be able to get any. No time must be lost in adopting this plan of campaign. . . .
To sum up: the old plan, which, owing to recent events, is now out of date, must in no case be put into operation, as it would endanger the Republic and would certainly improve Denikin’s position. A new plan must be substituted for it. Not only are conditions and circumstances ripe for this, but they urgently call for such a change. . . . Otherwise, my work at the southern front becomes meaningless, criminal and useless, which gives me the right, or, rather, compels me to go no matter where, even to the devil, but not to remain here.
Yours, STALIN
The Central Committee endorsed his plan. Within a few weeks the Ukraine and the north of the Caucasus were in Soviet hands and Denikin’s Army was utterly defeated. But Stalin never received any public credit for his work at the fronts. In the eyes of the workers generally the victories were “the triumphs of the Red Army and its great leader Trotsky.”
The incessant activity and extraordinary strain placed on Stalin began to wear him down. His nerves became frayed. He became somewhat capricious, and for a time lost his customary calm. He complained to the Central Committee that he “was being transformed into a ‘specialist’ for cleaning out the Augean stables of the War Department.” Nevertheless, when a further crisis arose on the Caucasian front in January, 1920, he was requested by the Central Committee to go there. He tried to avoid the job. He sent a telegram to Lenin which brought back a reproof that hurt. The telegram said:
It is not clear to me why the care for the Caucasus front should be put first upon me. In the order of things, the care of consolidating the Caucasus front lies wholly on the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, the members of which, according to my information, are in full health, and not on Stalin who, as it is, is overburdened with work.
Lenin answered: “The task of expediting the arrival of reinforcements from the southern front to the Caucasus front is entrusted to you. One should generally be helpful in every way, and not become a stickler for departmental spheres of authority.” Stalin went as requested.
But after he had liquidated the troubles on the Caucasian front his health broke down completely, and he had to be released from duties for a period. He recovered, however, in time to be called upon to take charge of the south-western army. Tukhashevsky was in charge of the army on the central front, and Gais in charge of that attacking in the north-west. Striking victories were registered on all fronts. I remember the excitement of these days when the delegates to the Second Congress of the Communist International were assembled in the Kremlin watching first one and then another move the red flags on a great map, marking the advance of the Red Army against the foe.
There had been a sharp dispute among the leaders of the Party about the advisability of advancing into Poland. Trotsky, Radek and Dzerzhinsky were against it. Stalin was on the sick list at this time, and absent from the discussions. Lenin was for the advance. The central army swept the Poles before it with such rapidity that it ran away from its supplies. Tukhashevsky reached the suburbs of Warsaw, and all Europe waited breathlessly for the news that the Polish capital had fallen to the “Reds.” But it was not to be. The French sent General Weygand by aeroplane to assist the Poles. Rapidly appraising the situation, he ordered the Poles to attack both the Russians’ centre army and their northern. Desperately the Poles answered his call. The advancing Red Army was cut off from its supports, and Gais’s army was defeated and also cut off. Two hundred miles away the army under Stalin, Voroshilov, and Budienny had meanwhile cut its way to within a few miles of Lemburg (Lwow).
Trotsky, in his history of the Russian Revolution, accuses Stalin of disobedience to the demands of the War Council in order to satisfy his personal ambition to take Lemburg. Certainly a barrage of telegrams were sent calling on the south-western army to abandon Lemburg and turn to the relief of the central army before Warsaw. Stalin was reluctant to let Lemburg go, expressing the view that its capture would be likely to draw forces away from Warsaw, whereas to turn aside and make for Warsaw would have no effect on the centre situation. It would take a week to move their forces into the proposed positions, during which time it would be possible for the Poles and French to settle with the centre and northern armies and then turn on the southern. This actually occurred, and the southern army had to fight its way back to Russia. The real blunder lay not in the failure to take Lemburg nor in the failure of the southern army to reach the central, but in the headlong rush of Tukhashevsky’s army ahead of its supplies and reserves. Indeed, the whole conception of advancing on Warsaw was an error. For this Lenin was primarily responsible, and time and again he referred to it publicly as his mistake.
One other enemy now remained in European Russia. Wrangel, who had received money and supplies from Britain and France, was advancing from the Crimea. On August 3rd, 1920, the Central Committee decided that
in view of Wrangel’s success and the alarm, over the Kuban, the tremendous and altogether exceptional importance of the Wrangel front must be recognised and it must be considered as an independent front. Stalin must be charged with forming the Revolutionary Military Council; all available forces must be concentrated on that front; Egoroff or Frunze must be put in command at the front, as arranged by the Higher Council in consultation with Stalin.
Stalin organised this new front and planned the strategical measures for the liquidation of Wrangel and his army. I well remember Lenin outlining this plan to me in the later months of the year, and with what confidence he asserted at the very moment when Wrangel appeared to be within a hundred miles of Moscow—“His army will be shattered within two to three weeks from now.” The names of the men in charge of the operations should be observed. They will be heard of again in the history of the Red Army—Voroshilov, Frunze, Kirov, Budienny—all convinced Bolsheviks in the course of rising from the ranks. Their military training had been derived only from these wars of intervention and the insurrectionary warfare of the Bolshevik Party. Stalin was proving his theory in practice, and the Red Army was experiencing a metamorphosis which would make Trotsky’s position untenable and the Army itself into a wholly different body from that which he had conceived. Lenin’s disciple had proved himself a pupil who had surpassed the expectations of friend and foe. His manner may not have been the most courteous, but his military judgement and capacity for getting things done had been put to the test and found extraordinarily reliable.
Next: XII. Retreating to Advance