They call me a Trotskyist here, despite my protests and vain attempts at refutation. I come to the conclusion that the label of a Trotskyist is automatically applied to ANYONE WHO REFUSES TO INDIVIDUALLY BRAND TROTSKY AS A TRAITOR, WHO TRY TO UNDERSTAND HIS MERIT, GOALS AND FACTS (precisely the facts, and not the slander leveled at him) of his activities. You notice that in his PSS there is no such and such statement of his, you remind that Lenin called Trotsky “the best Bolshevik”, that’s it, you are a Trotskyist. Is this smart, and who feels better about hiding the heads of anti-Trotskyists in the sand of ignorance?
We’ll talk about the confessions of those convicted, whether forced out by the Trotskyist-Zinovievsky center, or sincere, later, but for now we’ll only talk about the topic indicated in the title.
Let's list the facts:
People who grew up in the USSR, as a rule, do not realize that Trotsky was not just a prominent revolutionary, but a figure practically equal to Lenin. Only two of them were officially called “leaders” in Soviet Russia: “leader of the revolution, Comrade Lenin” and “leader of the Red Army, Comrade Trotsky.” Trotsky had a paper in his hands: “Everything done by Comrade Trotsky is unconditionally supported by me, and all his orders must be carried out unquestioningly, as if they were mine personally. Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Ulyanov (Lenin).”
During the revolution of 1905, when Lenin returned only briefly from exile and did nothing special, Trotsky was, no more, no less, chairman of the Leningrad Soviet. He shone at rallies, sat, ran. After the split of the RSDLP into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky declared himself independent and persuaded the warring parties to make peace. For this, Lenin called him “Judas,” but his position “above the fray” helped Trotsky earn political points. With a brilliant command of several languages, he sent reports from the Balkan War of 1912 to leading European newspapers, so he was well known in the West. After the first unsuccessful attempt to seize power on July 3-4, when Lenin and Zinoviev hid in a hut on Lake Razliv, Trotsky went to prison, but after the “Kornilov rebellion” he emerged triumphant and headed the Petrograd Soviet for the second time.
Today, historians almost unanimously admit that the October revolution was led mainly by Trotsky. Vladimir Mayakovsky described the situation at the “headquarters of the revolution” as follows:
"Comrade Stalin is calling you,
third to the right, he’s there.”
“Comrades, don’t stop, why did you get up?
In armored cars and at the Post Office
on the orders of Comrade Trotsky!"
"Eat!" - turned and disappeared quickly.
And only on the naval tape
under the lamp flashed: “Aurora.”
Poem "Good!" was written for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, when Trotsky was already in deep disgrace, but Mayakovsky found it impossible not to mention him. From all subsequent editions the line about Trotsky was erased. Attentive readers wondered why there was no rhyme for the word “naval”.
In the first Bolshevik government, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. His main task was peace negotiations with Germany. Stalin's "Short Course" and all subsequent Soviet history textbooks left no stone unturned from Trotsky's "ridiculous" and "treasonous" idea: "Neither peace, nor war, but disband the army." A number of modern researchers point out that Trotsky, of course, made a mistake in his calculations, but the idea itself was not so stupid. Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee did not consider him either a traitor or an idiot, and did not try to correct him. Trotsky hoped that Berlin would take the opportunity to transfer all available forces to the Western Front and would not make territorial claims to Soviet Russia. In addition, he was expecting a revolution in Germany from day to day, and in every possible way played for time, involving the German delegation in philosophical discussions.
On March 3, the Soviet delegation signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and the next day Trotsky was appointed chairman of the Supreme Military Council (from September 1918 - the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic). On March 13, he also became People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs,
Trotsky came up with the hammer and sickle emblem and the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, personally wrote the text of the oath, which, with some modifications, is still taken by Russian military personnel, and created a system of military registration and enlistment offices that is still in effect today.
Perhaps Trotsky’s main service to the Soviet government was the massive recruitment of former tsarist officers into the service, without whom the Reds would hardly have been able to win. It began with Trotsky’s directive article in Izvestia, published on July 23, 1918. “Ninety-nine hundredths of the officers declare that they cannot participate in the civil war,” he wrote. “This must be ended! The officers received their education at the expense of the people. Those who served Nikolai Romanov can and will serve when the worker orders them Class". Many in the party leadership considered the idea dubious and dangerous, but Trotsky insisted on his own. Of the 200 thousand officers of the former imperial army, 75 thousand served with the Reds, and only 50 thousand with the Whites. Of the 20 commanders of the Red Fronts, 17 were officers of the tsarist era, out of 100 army commanders - 82, chiefs of staff of fronts, armies and divisions - all.
Among the “military experts” there were such “stars” as the most famous Russian general of the First World War, Alexey Brusilov, or Boris Shaposhnikov, who was a colonel of the General Staff under Nicholas II, and twice headed the “brain of the army” under Stalin.
However, the officers served the Bolsheviks not only out of fear, but also out of conscience. Four former generals, having been captured by the whites, did not renounce the new oath and were shot. The meaning of life for most officers was the great and indivisible Russia. They were disillusioned with the Romanov monarchy, capitalist values were an empty phrase for them, and in the Bolsheviks many saw a force capable of putting together a collapsed empire and even leading it to new heights of power. Back in the summer of 17, while sitting in German captivity, Mikhail Tukhachevsky told his comrades: “The garb of dictatorship suits us best. If Lenin manages to make Russia a strong country, I choose Marxism.” The officers of the General Staff - the elite of the armed forces, the hereditary "military bone" - went to the Bolsheviks more willingly than intellectuals drafted into the army during the war. Over 600 former General Staff officers signed up for the Red Army. About a hundred then ran over to the whites. The percentage of deserters among ordinary Red Army soldiers was higher.
In the early 1920s, Trotsky preached “over-industrialization” and “forced transfer of funds from the countryside to the city.” Stalin, for opportunistic reasons, objected, earning from Trotsky the derogatory, in the latter’s opinion, nickname “peasant king,” but, having expelled his main opponent, he exactly embodied his idea.
Some Russian historians emphasize Trotsky's Jewish origins. But Trotsky was neither a Jewish nationalist nor a Russophobe. He was an absolute cosmopolitan and an atheist, did not know the Yiddish language and never showed the slightest interest in the Jewish question or the idea of \u200b\u200bthe creation of Israel, which began to be widely discussed during his lifetime. There is no evidence that Trotsky provided patronage to anyone based on nationality. He wanted to radically change the world, and any traditional society was equally alien to him. Apparently, Trotsky did not care where to make the revolution - in Russia or in Hawaii. And everywhere he would act with the same methods.
More than once I heard that Trotsky entered into an alliance with Hitler against the USSR and Stalin. Here is one of his last articles: “STALIN - HITLER'S INTENDANT”http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotm472.htm and a paragraph striking with the power of prophecy:
“Tomorrow we will undoubtedly hear on the radio the voices of yesterday’s communist leaders who, in the interests of their governments, will expose the Kremlin’s treason in all languages of the civilized world, including in Russian. The collapse of the Comintern will deal an incurable blow to the authority of the ruling caste in the minds of the masses of the Soviet Union itself. Thus, the policy of cynicism, which was supposed to strengthen the position of the Stalinist oligarchy, will actually hasten the hour of its collapse. The war will wipe out many, many people. By cunning, subterfuge, forgery, and betrayal, no one will be able to evade her formidable judgment.”
And most importantly, Trotsky’s attitude towards the USSR, could the person who wrote these lines:
“However, our article would be completely misunderstood if it led to the conclusion that everything new that the October Revolution brought into the life of mankind will be swept away in the Soviet Union. The author is deeply convinced of the opposite. New forms of economy, freed from the unbearable shackles of bureaucracy, will not only withstand the fiery test, but will also serve as the basis of a new culture, which, we hope, will put an end to war forever,” to be an accomplice of Hitler and want the defeat of the USSR?
Trotsky's role in the 1917 revolution was key. One can even say that without his participation it would have failed. According to the American historian Richard Pipes, Trotsky actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the absence of Vladimir Lenin, when he was hiding in Finland.
Trotsky's importance for the revolution is difficult to overestimate. On October 12, 1917, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he formed the Military Revolutionary Committee. Joseph Stalin, who in the future would become Trotsky’s main enemy, wrote in 1918: “All work on the practical organization of the uprising took place under the direct leadership of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky.” During the attack on Petrograd by the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov in October (November) 1917, Trotsky personally organized the defense of the city.
Trotsky was called the “demon of the revolution,” but he was also one of its economists.
Trotsky came to Petrograd from New York. In the book of the American historian Anthony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” it is written about Trotsky that he was closely associated with Wall Street tycoons and went to Russia with the generous financial support of the then American President Woodrow Wilson. According to Sutton, Wilson personally gave Trotsky a passport and gave the “demon of the revolution” $10,000 (more than $200,000 in today’s money).
This information, however, is controversial. Lev Davidovich himself commented in the newspaper “New Life” on rumors about dollars from bankers:
“Regarding the story of 10 thousand marks or dollars, neither is mine
the government and I knew nothing about it until information about it appeared
already here, in Russian circles and the Russian press.” Trotsky further wrote:
“Two days before I left New York for Europe, my German associates gave me a farewell rally.” At this meeting, a gathering for the Russian revolution took place. The collection gave $310.”
However, another historian, again an American, Sam Landers, in the 90s found evidence in the archives that Trotsky did bring money to Russia. In the amount of $32,000 from the Swedish socialist Karl Moor.
Creation of the Red Army
Trotsky is also credited with creating the Red Army. He set a course for building an army on traditional principles: unity of command, restoration of the death penalty, mobilization, restoration of insignia, uniform uniforms and even military parades, the first of which took place on May 1, 1918 in Moscow, on Khodynskoye Field.
An important step in the creation of the Red Army was the fight against the “military anarchism” of the first months of the existence of the new army. Trotsky reinstated executions for desertion. By the end of 1918, the power of the military committees was reduced to nothing. People's Commissar Trotsky, by his personal example, showed the Red commanders how to restore discipline.
On August 10, 1918, he arrived in Sviyazhsk to take part in the battles for Kazan. When the 2nd Petrograd Regiment fled without permission from the battlefield, Trotsky applied the ancient Roman ritual of decimation (execution of every tenth by lot) against deserters.
On August 31, Trotsky personally shot 20 people from among the unauthorized retreating units of the 5th Army. At the instigation of Trotsky, by decree of July 29, the entire population of the country liable for military service between the ages of 18 and 40 was registered, and military conscription was established. This made it possible to sharply increase the size of the armed forces. In September 1918, there were already about half a million people in the ranks of the Red Army - more than two times more than 5 months ago. By 1920, the number of the Red Army was already more than 5.5 million people.
Barrier detachments
When it comes to barrage detachments, people usually remember Stalin and his famous order number 227 “Not a step back,” however, Leon Trotsky was ahead of his opponent in the creation of barrage detachments. It was he who was the first ideologist of the punitive barrage detachments of the Red Army. In his memoirs “Around October,” he wrote that he himself substantiated to Lenin the need to create barrier detachments:
“To overcome this disastrous instability, we need strong defensive detachments of communists and militants in general. We must force him to fight. If you wait until the man loses his senses, it will probably be too late.”
Trotsky was generally distinguished by his harsh judgments: “As long as the evil tailless monkeys called people, proud of their technology, build armies and fight, the command will put soldiers between possible death in front and inevitable death behind.”
Over-industrialization
Leon Trotsky was the author of the concept of super-industrialization. The industrialization of the young Soviet state could be carried out in two ways. The first path, which Nikolai Bukharin supported, involved the development of private entrepreneurship by attracting foreign loans.
Trotsky insisted on his concept of super-industrialization, which consisted of growth with the help of internal resources, using the means of agriculture and light industry to develop heavy industry.
The pace of industrialization was accelerated. Everything was given from 5 to 10 years. In this situation, the peasantry had to “pay” for the costs of rapid industrial growth. If the directives drawn up in 1927 for the first five-year plan were guided by the “Bukharin approach,” then by the beginning of 1928 Stalin decided to revise them and gave the green light to accelerated industrialization. To catch up with the developed countries of the West, it was necessary to “run a distance of 50 - 100 years” in 10 years. The first (1928-1932) and second (1933-1937) five-year plans were subordinated to this task. That is, Stalin followed the path proposed by Trotsky.
Red five-pointed star
Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most influential “art directors” of Soviet Russia. It was thanks to him that the five-pointed star became the symbol of the USSR. When it was officially approved by the order of the People's Commissar of Military Affairs of the Republic Leon Trotsky No. 321 dated May 7, 1918, the five-pointed star received the name “Mars star with a plow and hammer.” The order also stated that this sign “is the property of persons serving in the Red Army.”
Seriously interested in esotericism, Trotsky knew that the five-pointed pentagram has a very powerful energy potential and is one of the most powerful symbols.
The swastika, the cult of which was very strong in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, could also become part of secular Russia. She was depicted on the “Kerenki”, swastikas were painted on the wall of the Ipatiev House by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna before the execution, but by Trotsky’s sole decision the Bolsheviks settled on a five-pointed star. The history of the 20th century has shown that the “star” is stronger than the “swastika”. Later, the stars shone over the Kremlin, replacing the double-headed eagles.
Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most controversial figures in the history of the 20th century. He was an ideologist of the revolution, created the Red Army and the Comintern, dreamed of a world revolution, but became a victim of his own ideas.
"Demon of the Revolution"
Trotsky's role in the 1917 revolution was key. One can even say that without his participation it would have failed. According to the American historian Richard Pipes, Trotsky actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the absence of Vladimir Lenin, when he was hiding in Finland. Trotsky's importance for the revolution is difficult to overestimate.
On October 12, 1917, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he formed the Military Revolutionary Committee. Joseph Stalin, who would later become Trotsky's main enemy, wrote in 1918:
“All work on the practical organization of the uprising took place under the direct leadership of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky.”
During the attack on Petrograd by the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov in October (November) 1917, Trotsky personally organized the defense of the city. Trotsky was called the “demon of the revolution,” but he was also one of its economists.
Trotsky came to Petrograd from New York. In the book of the American historian Anthony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” it is written about Trotsky that he was closely associated with Wall Street tycoons and went to Russia with the generous financial support of the then American President Woodrow Wilson. According to Sutton, Wilson personally gave Trotsky a passport and gave the “demon of the revolution” $10,000 (more than $200,000 in today’s money).
This information, however, is controversial. Lev Davidovich himself commented in the newspaper “New Life” on rumors about dollars from bankers:
“Regarding the story of 10 thousand marks or dollars, neither my government nor I knew anything about it until information about it appeared here, in Russian circles and the Russian press.”
“Two days before I left New York for Europe, my German associates gave me a farewell rally.” At this meeting, a gathering for the Russian revolution took place. The collection gave $310.”
However, another historian, again an American, Sam Landers, in the 90s found evidence in the archives that Trotsky did bring money to Russia. In the amount of $32,000 from the Swedish socialist Karl Moor.
Creation of the Red Army
Trotsky is also credited with creating the Red Army. He set a course for building an army on traditional principles: unity of command, restoration of the death penalty, mobilization, restoration of insignia, uniform uniforms and even military parades, the first of which took place on May 1, 1918 in Moscow, on Khodynskoye Field.
An important step The creation of the Red Army was the fight against the “military anarchism” of the first months of the existence of the new army. Trotsky reinstated executions for desertion. By the end of 1918, the power of the military committees was reduced to nothing. People's Commissar Trotsky, by his personal example, showed the Red commanders how to restore discipline.
On August 10, 1918, he arrived in Sviyazhsk to take part in the battles for Kazan. When the 2nd Petrograd Regiment fled without permission from the battlefield, Trotsky applied the ancient Roman ritual of decimation (execution of every tenth by lot) against deserters. On August 31, Trotsky personally shot 20 people from among the unauthorized retreating units of the 5th Army.
At the instigation of Trotsky, by decree of July 29, the entire population of the country liable for military service between the ages of 18 and 40 was registered, and military conscription was established. This made it possible to sharply increase the size of the armed forces. In September 1918, there were already about half a million people in the ranks of the Red Army - more than two times more than 5 months ago. By 1920, the number of the Red Army was already more than 5.5 million people.
On November 7 (October 25), 1879, Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Davidovich Bronstein) was born - one of the key figures in the history of Russia in the 20th century...
In the 1920-30s, the name of Trotsky was known to everyone in the Soviet country. At first he was praised to the skies as the main leader of the October Bolshevik uprising and the winner of the White armies. Then they anathematized him as an enemy of the party and the Soviet people. After the release of the film “Lenin in October” in 1937, the nickname “political prostitute” (with the reduced “r” characteristic of Ilyich) firmly stuck to Trotsky in the minds of the Soviet people. In fact, Lenin loved to use this word, but he only called Kautsky a “prostitute.” In relation to his closest “accomplice” Trotsky, the leader of the world proletariat twice allowed himself the affectionate “Judushka” (meaning Shchedrin’s Judushka Golovlev). And this only happened in the pre-revolutionary period, when Trotsky actively collaborated with the “Mensheviks.”
However, the name of perhaps the brightest and most charismatic of the leaders of the revolution became a household name already in 1918. The Narco-Combatant Trotsky was respected and feared not only by the Red commanders, but also by their opponents in the civil struggle.
Thus, in the original version of M. Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Turbins,” Captain Myshlaevsky remembers the name of Trotsky as the only deterrent factor for all kinds of bandits and “independents” that neither the Germans nor the whites could cope with:
“At Petliura’s, you say, how much? Two hundred thousand! These two hundred thousand heels have been greased with lard and are blowing at the mere word of Trotsky! Have you seen it? Purely!"
After November 1927, “Trotsky,” for censorship reasons, was replaced by the word “Bolshevik,” but this does not change the meaning of the statement of the disappointed White Guard. An opponent like Trotsky could not but command respect.
Childhood and youth
Leiba Davidovich Bronstein was the fifth child born into the family of a wealthy Jewish colonist, large landowner David Leontyevich Bronstein. He spent his childhood and youth on the estate of his parents (Kherson region) and the city of Odessa, where he received a good classical education at the private school-gymnasium of St. Paul. Lev Davidovich himself describes these years with love and tenderness in his autobiographical book “My Life.” The book is an extraordinary literary work, designed in the style of an adventure bestseller and is certainly worth reading and quoting.
According to Trotsky himself, social inequality affected him from childhood. His parents achieved their well-being solely through their own labor, and therefore did not share their son’s revolutionary views, but they never refused him material support. During his youth, his father “ransomed” Leiba from prison several times, hoping that he would come to his senses and “get down to business,” but these hopes were not destined to come true.
Subsequently, when the social revolution started by the former Jewish boy Leiba Bronstein and his associates had already won on the entire one-sixth of the land, old David came on foot to his son in Moscow. In his memoirs, Lev Davidovich wrote:
By that time, old Bronstein, like all landowners, had been deprived of his property and was seriously damaged by the Civil War in southern Russia. The unfortunate parent still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that all this disgrace was created by his youngest son Leiba under the name of some Trotsky...
Besides the fact that L.D. Trotsky gained fame as an extraordinary politician and military leader; he was also a talented writer (it was not for nothing that one of his party nicknames was “Pero”). Trotsky had a masterful command of the Russian language, and long periods of imprisonment and the need to make himself known to a wide reading audience prompted the revolutionary to methodically hone his literary gift.
Trotsky himself recalled more than once that during his imprisonment in tsarist prisons, the main nuisance for him was the obligatory walks. The prison authorities were concerned about the health of their “guests,” and the political prisoner was outraged that he had to be distracted from literary work and waste time.
First link
Leiba Bronstein went into his first exile in 1900, and not alone. While still in prison, he married revolutionary Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya. In 1901 and 1902, the couple had two daughters, Zinaida and Nina. The naive tsarist government hoped that a quiet life in Siberia and starting a family would turn the exiled settlers away from active revolutionary activities. Not so! Bronstein very quickly got into contact with Social Democratic organizations in Siberia, writing leaflets and appeals for them. According to the revolutionary himself, there was practically no supervision over family exiles, so already in 1903 he decided to flee. Having abandoned his wife and two small children (the youngest Nina was not yet four months old), Lev Davidovich takes a cart to the railway station, where he calmly gets into the carriage.
“In my hands was Homer in Gnedich’s Russian hexameters. In my pocket is a passport in the name of Trotsky, which I wrote in at random, not foreseeing that it would become my name for the rest of my life. I was traveling along the Siberian line to the west. The station gendarmes indifferently let me pass by,” the successful fugitive later recalled.
Trotsky quickly reached Samara. Under the pseudonym "Pero" he collaborated with Lenin's newspaper Iskra, then moved abroad illegally. In London, Paris, and Geneva, Trotsky met with Russian émigré revolutionaries, including Lenin. Russian Social Democracy was actively fueled by funds from foreign capital and did not suffer from poverty. In 1904, Trotsky joined the future “Mensheviks” and married N.I. Sedova, and in February 1905 he again went to Russia to lead the first Russian revolution.
Second link and escape
At one time, the Soviet “Leniniana” actively exaggerated the exploits of the leader of the world proletariat V.I. Lenin in the fight against the tsarist gendarmerie. It’s worth remembering the leaflets Ilyich personally sewed into felt boots, milky letters and tricks with the lower and upper shelves during searches in his apartment... All this looks like “innocent pranks” compared to what L.D. did. Trotsky.
Without a doubt, the future opponent of the white generals was a much brighter, resourceful and decisive personality than the emigrant theorist V.I. Lenin. Trotsky more than once demonstrated enviable composure, extraordinary energy and the ability to survive in the most extreme, sometimes incompatible with life, situations. His second escape from exile, after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, is undoubtedly worthy of the pen of Jack London or Fenimore Cooper.
In 1907, Trotsky, deprived of all civil rights, was exiled to eternal settlement in Berezov - a small town remote from any civilization, where, as you know, the disgraced favorite of Peter I, Aleksashka Menshikov, whiled away his days. As soon as he arrived at the place, the exiled revolutionary decided not to waste time getting to know the local attractions, but immediately went on the run.
A week-long journey on reindeer (700 km) in forty-degree frost conditions, through completely wild terrain, could cost the life of any unprepared person. In addition, Trotsky came across a guide from the local northern peoples, who knew the road well, but turned out to be a bitter drunkard.
Lev Davidovich had to carry out such an operation to “sober up” the conductor more than once. If caught, the fugitive settler was legally threatened with hard labor; if the road is lost in the taiga, death is inevitable. Imagine V.I. Lenin, pushing a sledge along an icy road and “sobering up” a drunken aborigine, with all their imagination, neither Bonch-Bruevich nor Zoya Voskresenskaya could have done...
However, the revolutionary Trotsky managed to get to the Perm railway and board the train. Just 11 days later he met his wife Sedova near St. Petersburg, and soon moved to Finland.
Emigration and return to Russia
From 1907 to 1917 L.D. Trotsky was in exile. In 1916, for revolutionary activities, he was expelled from France to Spain, then to the USA. Having learned about the February Revolution, Trotsky immediately headed to Russia, but on the way, in the Canadian port of Halifax, he and his family were removed from the ship by the British authorities and sent to an internment camp for sailors of the German merchant fleet. He was accused of spying for Germany. Trotsky immediately declared a protest and had the police carry him off the ship in their arms. Subsequently, this will become a habit for the revolutionary.
Soon, at the written request of the Provisional Government, the family was released and continued on their way. On May 4, 1917 (a month later than the German “sealed” carriage with Lenin), Trotsky was “exported” to Petrograd.
Revolution of 1917 and Civil War
After the failure of the July Bolshevik uprising, Trotsky was arrested and sent to prison as a German spy. Some of his “accomplices,” including Lenin, managed to escape. However, already at the end of August 1917, the Provisional Government, having imprisoned the participants of the Kornilov rebellion in the Bykhov prison, for some reason released enemies and “spies” from the “Crosses”. It also gives its former opponents complete freedom of action.
During the “Bolshevisation of the Soviets” in September - October 1917, the Bolsheviks received up to 90% of the seats in the Petrograd Soviet. The young, energetic Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, elected to the Pre-Parliament, and became a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly.
On October 12, 1917, Trotsky formed the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), the main body for preparing an armed uprising. The pretext for the formation of the Military Revolutionary Committee was a possible German offensive on Petrograd, or a repetition of the Kornilov attack. The Military Revolutionary Committee immediately began work to win over parts of the Petrograd garrison to its side. Already on October 16, the Chairman of the Petrosovet, Trotsky, ordered the distribution of 5 thousand rifles to the Red Guards.
Lenin from Razliv demanded that the uprising begin immediately. Trotsky proposes to postpone it until the convening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in order to confront the Congress with the fact that the regime of "dual power" has been destroyed. Thus, the Congress was supposed to be the highest and only authority in the country. Trotsky manages to win over the majority of the Central Committee to his side, despite Lenin's concerns about the postponement of the uprising.
Between October 21 and 23, the Bolsheviks held a series of rallies among wavering soldiers. On October 22, the Military Revolutionary Committee announced that orders from the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District without its approval are invalid. At this stage, Trotsky's oratory greatly helped the Bolsheviks to win over the wavering parts of the garrison to their side. On October 23, Trotsky personally “agitated” the garrison of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The talented speaker was once again carried in his arms.
The plan for the October revolution was developed by Trotsky and carried out completely independently by him. October 25, 1917 L.D. Trotsky turned 38 years old, but he didn’t even remember it. The leader of the uprising spent the entire day at the telephone in Smolny.
His memories of this unusual birthday look much more humane than everything that was written about the October uprising in subsequent years:
Yes, it was not enough for Trotsky to take the state power that was lying on the road into his own hands. The executors and planners of the daring political act immediately faced the question: what to do with this power? Their foreign owners obviously did not count on such great success. Torn from within by its own revolution, virtually defeated Germany, in 1918 it was not possible to chew such a “fat piece”. The invaders had to resolve the dangerous situation themselves: end the war, re-create the state apparatus, build an army, and defend the results of the coup d'etat. Over the following years, like a wound spring, Trotsky continues to defend the gains of the Comintern in a single country.
On March 13, 1918, he resigned from the post of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (after the failure of his formula in Brest, which read “neither peace nor war”). Already on March 14, he actually headed the Red Army as the People's Commissar for Military Affairs (People's Commissar for Military Affairs, Pre-Revolutionary Military Council) and retained this post throughout the Civil War.
According to many post-Soviet historians and publicists, as the “military leader” of Bolshevism, Trotsky showed organizational skills and undoubted oratorical talent. However, it was in the military sphere that he remained, as historian Dmitry Volkogonov emphasizes, an “amateur.” During the Civil War, Trotsky did not show any special leadership talents, also making several strategic mistakes.
In our opinion, historians’ claims against Trotsky the military leader are completely unjustified.
We should not forget that the newly-minted “commander-in-chief,” without having received a military education or military service experience, managed to “beat” much more educated and experienced opponents in the Civil War. The generals of the White armies opposing him, for the most part, had experience of the First World War and service in the Russian General Staff. All of them, according to the biographical reference book N. Rutycha, graduated from military schools and academies, where they were, of course, trained in planning and conducting strategic operations. Despite this, the famous generals from the infantry and cavalry lost their Russia, finding themselves powerless outcasts, taxi drivers and Parisian “clowns”. Trotsky, who never served in the army, did not even have the rank of private. Nevertheless, he entered the Kremlin as a winner and remained in power until 1926-27.
The struggle for power in 1921-1927
In 1921, Lenin's deteriorating health and the virtual end of the Civil War brought the issue of power to the forefront. The secret conclusion of the doctors, sent to members of the Politburo of the Central Committee, emphasized the extremely serious nature of the illness of the head of state. Immediately after Lenin’s stroke (May 1922), a “troika” was formed consisting of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin to jointly fight with Trotsky as one of the likely successors.
At the suggestion of Kamenev and Zinoviev, the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was established, to which Stalin was appointed. Initially, this position was understood as a technical one and therefore did not interest Trotsky in any way. The head of state was considered the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Meanwhile, Stalin manages to head the “technical” state apparatus just during a period of particularly sharp growth of his influence.
Trotsky, in his own opinion, considered himself the only successor to Lenin and did not consider Stalin and company as serious competitors. Kamenev (Rosenfeld) was his relative: he was married to Trotsky’s sister. Lev Davydovich never took him seriously, as well as Zinoviev, for whom the image of a party buffoon had long been attached.
Since 1922, in parallel with the strengthening of Stalin’s influence as the head of the “technical” apparatus, his influence as the secretary of Lenin’s retirement has been increasing. Trotsky himself in his autobiographical work “My Life” admits on this matter:
Indeed, Trotsky, who “rested on his laurels,” was never interested in the details or parts of party power. He was used to getting everything and did not pay attention to the little things. Stalin often visited Lenin in Gorki during his illness. Trotsky, as it turned out, had no idea where this settlement was located.
Stalin, starting in 1922, methodically placed his supporters in all key positions in the party. He pays special attention to the secretaries of provincial and district party committees, as they form delegations to party congresses. During 1923, the “troika” replaced the commanders of military districts with “their own”. Trotsky, as if not noticing what was happening around him, did nothing. He ostentatiously appears at Central Committee meetings with a French novel (as if in a toilet), creates loud scandals, slams doors, and often goes hunting.
In the fall of 1923, while hunting, Trotsky caught a severe cold and contracted pneumonia. He never showed up at Lenin's funeral. Subsequently, Trotsky blamed Stalin for this, who, according to him, deliberately reported the wrong date of the funeral.
The once second-in-command in the state, losing real power, can only appeal to his authority as a figure in the revolution and the Civil War, using his oratorical and journalistic abilities.
In October 1924, seeing that the “troika” Stalin-Kamenev-Zinoviev was close to collapse, Trotsky finally decided to go on the offensive. He publishes a scandalous article, “Lessons of October,” in which he recalls his role as the organizer of the October Revolution, and, by way of “compromising evidence,” informs readers that Zinoviev and Kamenev were generally against the speech, and Stalin played no role in it. The article provoked the so-called “literary discussion”, in which the “troika”, having united again, attacked Trotsky with counter “compromising evidence”, recalling his non-Bolshevik past and mutual abuse with Lenin before the revolution.
The “war of incriminating evidence” started by Trotsky damaged his authority much more than all previous scandals. At the plenum of the Central Committee in January 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded that Trotsky be expelled from the party. Stalin, continuing to maneuver, proposes that Trotsky not only not be expelled, but even left him in the Central Committee and the Politburo, taking away from him only the key posts of the People's Commissar of Military Affairs and the Pre-Revolutionary Military Council. Frunze becomes the new People's Commissar of Military Affairs, and Voroshilov becomes his deputy.
According to Trotsky himself, he even accepted his “overthrow” with relief, since this to some extent averted accusations of preparing a “Bonapartist” military coup. The Plenum of the Central Committee appoints Trotsky to a number of minor posts: chairman of the Main Committee for Concessions (Glavkontsessky), chairman of a special meeting at the Supreme Economic Council on product quality, chairman of the Electrical Technical Committee.
After such a blow to Trotsky, the “troika” Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin finally disintegrates. Supporters of Zinoviev and Kamenev form the so-called “new opposition”. The main pretext for the split is the doctrine developed by Stalin of “building socialism in a single country.” Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev continued to pursue a “world revolution.”
Summing up the internal party discussions of the mid-20s, it is worth noting that at present among Stalinist historians and jingoistic patriots who have taken up the new “great power” platform, there is an opinion that Stalin, who did not participate in any what conspiracies with the Western powers, at that moment he was most concerned about the welfare of the country. The former Caucasian criminal always felt like a stranger in the society of re-emigrant intellectuals, “sent Cossacks,” and therefore chose to eliminate Trotsky and company not only politically, but also physically.
However, the guardian of national interests decided to leave Trotsky himself alive for some time. A living enemy is better than a dead one because the fight against the foreign “opposition” can justify any outrages and lynchings in the party leadership.
The united opposition Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev lost its war in 1926-27, without even starting it. Stalin very quickly “squeezed” them out of the state of party legality, forcing them to actually go underground. As you know, anti-government protests and opposition rallies on November 7, 1927 only led to riots and riots on the streets of Moscow and Leningrad.
At the joint October plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, Trotsky demands that the “Testament of Lenin” be read out, and, in accordance with it, Stalin be removed from the post of General Secretary. Stalin was forced to announce the text of the “Testament”, but this did not become, contrary to the expectations of the opposition, a “bomb exploding”. After the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stalin asked the plenum of the Central Committee to accept his resignation from the post of General Secretary. It was just a well-rehearsed performance. Naturally, the Central Committee, controlled by Stalin himself, did not accept the “resignation”. On the contrary, the majority of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) spoke in favor of expelling Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party. In fact, the opposition was crushed.
In January 1927, Trotsky and his family went into exile in Alma-Ata. OGPU officers had to carry the oppositionist out of the apartment in their arms. Trotsky again declared all kinds of protests and actively resisted their actions, trying to make as much noise as possible. But that didn't help him.
Emigration and death
The forced expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR was associated with even greater difficulties: none of the European powers that accepted white emigrants wanted to give shelter to such an odious figure. In 1929, Trotsky was exiled to Turkey. Then, after being deprived of Soviet citizenship, he moved to France, and in 1935 to Norway, where there were practically no Russian emigrants. But Norway, fearing to worsen relations with the USSR, tried with all its might to get rid of the unwanted guest, confiscating all of Trotsky’s works and placing him under house arrest. Trotsky was repeatedly threatened to hand him over to the Soviet government if he did not stop “stirring up the fire of the world revolution” and looking for new “ghosts of communism” in post-war Europe. Unable to withstand the oppression, Trotsky emigrated to distant Mexico in 1936, where he lived until his death. In Mexico, Trotsky completed work on the book “The Betrayed Revolution,” in which he called what was happening in the Soviet Union “Stalin’s Thermidor.” He accused Stalin of Bonapartism and usurpation of power.
In 1938, Trotsky proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International, the heirs of which still exist today. In response to this, Trotsky’s eldest son, Lev Sedov, died in a hospital in Paris after an operation for appendicitis (or was deliberately eliminated by NKVD agents). The fate of Trotsky's daughters from his first marriage was equally tragic: the younger Nina died in 1928 from tuberculosis, and the eldest Zinaida followed her father into exile, but in 1933, being in a state of deep depression, she committed suicide.
Trotsky managed to take his personal archive into exile. This archive included copies of a number of documents signed by Trotsky during his time in power in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, the Central Committee, the Comintern, a number of Lenin’s notes addressed personally to Trotsky and not published anywhere else. Relying on his archive, Trotsky in his memoirs easily quotes a number of documents he signed, including sometimes even secret ones. In the 1930s, OGPU agents repeatedly tried (sometimes successfully) to steal some of their fragments, and in March 1931, part of the documents burned during a suspicious fire. In March 1940, Trotsky, in dire need of money and fearing that the archive would eventually fall into the hands of Stalin, sold most of his papers to Harvard University.
On August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who had previously penetrated Trotsky’s entourage as a staunch supporter of his, mortally wounded him in the head with a blow from an ice pick. Trotsky died from his wound the next day. The Soviet government publicly denied its involvement in the murder. The killer was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison, but in 1961, Ramon Mercader, who came to the USSR, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin.
One of the creators of the October Revolution and the Red Army, who fell out of favor with Stalin. How could Trotsky displease the head of the country? Opposition views or political ambitions? What was he like - cruel or fair? What ideas were in his head? Our experts argued about all this.
Questions:
What role did Trotsky play in the October Revolution?
Yaroslav Listov
In the October Revolution, Trotsky played a very significant role, although not the main one. It must be said that for a long time Trotsky was in a camp hostile to the Bolsheviks and Lenin, and his rapprochement with the Bolsheviks occurred under the influence of the revolutionary events of 1917, when history itself removed the main contradictions between them, so that he became a Bolshevik only in July-August 1917 . In the October Revolution, he played a role primarily as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, where he made the decision to form the Military Revolutionary Committee, which became the headquarters of the revolution. Although he supported Lenin’s resolution on an armed uprising, he delayed its implementation in every possible way, since he believed that the All-Russian Congress of Soviets would be able to take power peacefully. He himself admitted that “if Lenin had not been in St. Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution.” His articles and speeches played a significant role in the revolutionization of the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, but as an organizer of the uprising he was far from in the forefront.
Mikhail Voeikov
Trotsky played an outstanding role in the October Revolution. Trotsky was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, which essentially concentrated all power in the city in his hands. He formed the Military Revolutionary Committee, which carried out the seizure of power. Essentially Trotsky was second only to Lenin in this revolution. Stalin also admitted this in a newspaper article, I think in 1918. Then, of course, Stalin forgot this article and did not publish it anywhere.
What place did Trotsky occupy in power after the revolution?
Yaroslav Listov
His non-main role in the October Revolution is also evidenced by the fact that in the First Soviet government he took the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, where he did not show his best side. His position “no peace, no war, but we disband the army” became the reason that Soviet Russia had to sign the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty on more difficult terms. During this period, he exceeded his authority, so on January 28 he sent a telegram to the Commander-in-Chief Krylenko on the demobilization of the army on all fronts, and although Lenin canceled this order 6 hours later, he worsened the situation on the fronts.
Mikhail Voeikov
It's a difficult question. During the civil war, until 1921, Trotsky was undoubtedly the second person in power. At those party congresses, Lenin and Trotsky received an equal amount of applause (see transcripts of the congresses). Others had significantly less, least of all Stalin. But after the civil war (around 1923), Trotsky announced a “new course” for greater democratization (primarily in the party) and economic liberalization, and they began to push him out of power. From this time and the beginning of the “left opposition,” Trotsky began to lose power and after 1925 he was practically out of power.
Was Trotsky going to lead the country?
Yaroslav Listov
After Lenin's death, Trotsky believed that he could become his successor and lead the country. At some stage it even seemed to him that he had succeeded.
Mikhail Voeikov
Most likely no. Trotsky advocated collective leadership. There are memories of Trotsky himself that it cost him nothing to forcefully remove Stalin and his faction. The leaders of the army and partly the Cheka came to him and offered to remove Stalin. But, Trotsky writes, then these Red generals would have to be given dictatorial powers, which contradicted Trotsky’s ideological principles. It is a known fact that Lenin offered Trotsky to head the government, but he refused, saying that under those conditions a Jew could not be at the head of the Russian government. Trotsky's ideological considerations outweighed pragmatic ones.
Was Trotsky cruel and tyrannical?
Yaroslav Listov
Trotsky did not take into account people and human losses, for him they were only a tool to achieve a goal, as a leader he was tyrannical, did not forgive weaknesses, and was cruel to his subordinates. He resorted to repressive policies to restore order. During the Civil War, he actively used such a tool as taking hostages.
