succeeded in releasing Dzierzynski and suppressing the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries; and the Fifth Congress of Soviets, which was taking place at the time, passed all the resolutions tendered by the Bolsheviks. Already on 9 May a Food-Supplies Dictatorship had been proclaimed, and armed requisitioning of grain was turned from an intermittent local practice into a general system. The removal of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries from the Congress eliminated the last vestige of opposition to the new policy.
While Lenin, Sverdlov and a shaken Dzierzynski imposed their authority in Moscow, Trotski rushed to the Volga where the Czechoslovak Legion took Kazan on 7 August 1918. Komuch was poised to re-enter central Russia. Trotski’s adaptiveness to the role of People’s Commissar for Military Affairs was impressive. Not all the orators of 1917 had managed an effective transition to the wielding of power; but Trotski, having dazzled his diplomatic adversaries at Brest-Litovsk, was turning his talents with equal success towards the Red Army.
Temperamentally he was as hard as a diamond. Like Lenin, he came from a comfortable family and had been a brilliant student. Trotski’s real name was Lev Davydovich Bronshtein. He was a Jew from southern Ukraine, whose farming father sent him to secondary school in Odessa. His flair for writing and for foreign languages revealed itself early; but so, too, did a restlessness with the kind of society in which he had been brought up. He drew close to the clandestine populist groups which approved of terrorism. But by late adolescence he was a Marxist and by 1900 he was in Siberian exile. He made a dramatic escape by sleigh a couple of years later, joining Lenin in London and working with him on the
In organization, Trotski had agreed with Menshevik criticisms of Leninist organizational ideas, which he predicted would result in a dictator placing himself in authority over the Central Committee. He meant this satirically, and was not to know that Stalin would one day realize the prophecy; but his hostility to Bolshevik divisiveness was sincere at the time. Trotski was already a distinctive figure among Marxists. While opposing the Bolsheviks on organizational questions, he stood close to them on strategy. His theory of revolution in Russia squeezed the schedule for the introduction of socialism to a shorter span of time than even Lenin would accept: in 1905 Trotski was calling for the installation of a ‘workers’ government’.
It was in September of the same year that he distinguished himself as the firebrand deputy chairman of the Petersburg Soviet. Within the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party he refused to show allegiance to either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks; and, after returning abroad in 1907, he tried to unify the factions. Unfortunately Trotski was arrogant even when doing his best to reunify the party. Both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks thought Trotski was a windbag whose personal ambition mattered more to him than his radical political strategy. Yet they could not deny his talents. Trotski was a master of Russian literary prose, being incapable of writing an inelegant paragraph. His knowledge of the history of European politics and diplomacy was extensive. In 1912 he had covered the war in the Balkans as a correspondent for the
Trotski returned from North America in May 1917 and was horrified to find the Mensheviks collaborating with the Provisional Government. Needing to belong to a party if he was to have any influence, he accepted Lenin’s invitation to join the Bolsheviks. His fluency of tongue and pen were a great asset. He was a handsome fellow, a few inches taller than the average Russian, and he had quick reflexes in dangerous situations. It was he who had saved the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov, despite their political differences, from being torn apart by a mob in midsummer 1917.7 Trotski himself spent weeks in prison after the ‘July Days’, but turned his detention to effect by writing
His brilliance had been proved before 1918. What took everyone aback was his organizational capacity and ruthlessness as he transformed the Red Army into a fighting force. He ordered deserters to be shot on the spot, and did not give a damn if some of them were communist party activists; and in this fashion he endeared himself to Imperial Army officers whom he encouraged to join the Reds. He sped from unit to unit, rousing the troops with his revolutionary zeal. The hauteur of spirit which made him so annoying to his rival politicians was an asset in situations where hierarchical respect was crucial. His flair, too, paid dividends. He organized a competition to design a Red Army cap and tunic; he had his own railway carriage equipped with its own map room and printing press. He also had an eye for young talent, bringing on his proteges without regard for the length of time they had belonged to the Bolshevik party.
The Red Army’s first task was to retake Kazan. Lenin still suspected Trotski of being weak minded, and wrote urging him not to worry if historic buildings were damaged. Trotski needed no urging. On 10 September the city was recaptured for the communists. Trotski was the hero of the hour. Lenin was delighted, and turned his attention to Red Army commanders whom he suspected of reluctance to press home their advantage. From Moscow he sent telegrams emphasizing the need to clear the Volga region of the Komuch forces.8
The Red Army overran Komuch’s base in Samara on 7 October, and the Czechoslovak Legion retreated to the Urals and then to mid-Siberia before regrouping under the command of Admiral Kolchak, who initially recognized Komuch as Russia’s legitimate government. His loyalty lasted only a few days. On 17 November Kolchak’s officers organized a coup against the Socialist-Revolutionary administration, arresting several ministers. Kolchak was proclaimed ‘Supreme Ruler’ and the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries never again played a leading role upon the Russian national stage. Kolchak’s blood was up. He moved westwards from Omsk into the Urals, capturing the provincial centre of Perm in late December. The Red Army, the soviets and the party crumbled in his path. The Reds briefly counter-attacked and succeeded in taking Ufa, to the south of Perm; but Kolchak’s central group of forces were not deflected from their drive on Moscow.
The last months of 1918 were momentous on the Western front in the Great War. The Allies had seen off the German summer offensive in France, and military disarray ensued for the Central Powers. On 9 November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. The German army had been defeated; and, for the Russian Communist Party, this meant that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk could be disregarded as obsolete. First and foremost, Lenin sought links with German far-left socialists and gave encouragement to the formation of a German Communist Party. Revolutionary opportunities beckoned. Within days of the German military defeat, Red forces were aiding local Bolsheviks to set up Soviet republics in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.
In Russia, violence intensified not only on the war fronts but also in civilian politics as Lenin widened the Cheka’s scope to suppress rival political parties. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were excluded from the soviets in June 1918 on the grounds of being associated with ‘counter-revolutionary’ organizations, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were arrested in large numbers. Many Kadets were already in prison. Lenin, Trotski and Dzierzynski believed that over-killing was better than running the risk of being overthrown. And so, as the anti- Bolshevik forces approached the Urals in the summer, the communist central leadership considered what to do with the Romanovs, who had been held in Yekaterinburg for some months. They opted to murder not only the former Emperor but also his entire family, including his son and daughters. On 17 July the deed was done. Lenin and Sverdlov claimed that the responsibility lay with the Bolsheviks of the Urals region, but the circumstantial evidence strongly points to the Central Committee having inspired the decision.9
On 30 August Lenin himself got it literally in the neck. As he addressed a meeting of workers at the Mikhelson Factory in Moscow, shots were fired at him. His chauffeur Stepan Gil bundled him into the official limousine and drove him away. A woman standing nearby, Fanya Kaplan, was arrested. It is doubtful that she carried out the shooting since she was almost blind;10 but she was a sympathizer with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and may well have been involved in the plot in some form or other. Be that as it may, she was executed as the principal malefactor while Lenin convalesced at the government’s new sanatorium at the Gorki estate, thirty-five kilometres from the capital.
The attempt on Lenin’s life was answered with the promulgation of a Red Terror. In some cities, prisoners were shot out of hand, including 1300 prisoners in Petrograd alone. Fire would be met by fire: Dzierzynski’s Cheka had previously killed on an informal basis and not very often; now their executions became a general phenomenon. Lenin, as he recovered from his wounds, wrote the booklet
