No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Where Was the Conscience of the Revolution? The Military Opposition at the Eighth Party Congress (March 1919)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
This article examines the debates and decisions of the military section of the Eighth Party Congress of March 1919, only released in Izvestiia TsK KPSS in 1989-90. It rebuts the standard interpretation of the military section (usually referred to as the Military Opposition) as a minority platform opposed to the use of former tsarist officers in the Red Army, most notably proposed in R. V. Daniels's The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (1960). Instead, I argue that the debates were more concerned with the military's increasing autonomy at the expense of party control. These fears were compounded by the introduction of the mass conscription of an apolitical peasantry at a time of extreme instability. This indiscriminate conscription had alarmed many Red Army party workers, who were only too aware of the dangers of arming an unconscious peasant mob. In addition, the article lays bare the beginning of the longer-term conflict between Iosif Stalin and Lev Trotskii and demonstrates Stalin's early influence within the party membership.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2015
References
I would like to thank Steven J. Main for reading early versions of this article and for his help in clarifying the structure of the Red Army in the civil war. My thanks as well to Harriet Murav and the editorial staff at Slavic Review.
1 Mastny, Vojtech, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (Oxford, 1996), 7 Google Scholar.
2 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, nos. 9-11 (Moscow, 1989-91). The minutes of the meetings were published as part of a series of documents that were declassified to demonstrate Mikhail Gorbachev's commitment to glasnost.
3 Trotsky, Leon, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence, trans. Malamuth, Charles (London, 1947), 301 Google Scholar.
4 Trotsky, Leon, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (Uarmondsworth, 1975), 465 Google Scholar.
5 Voroshilov, K. E., Stalin and the Red Army (Moscow, 1937)Google Scholar.
6 Volkogonov, Dmitrii Antonovich, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), 41 Google Scholar.
7 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Talbott, Strobe (London, 1971), 18–20 Google Scholar.
8 Daniels, Robert Vincent, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar.
9 von Hagan, Mark, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (Ithaca, 1990)Google Scholar.
10 Goloshchekin was military commissar of the Urals Regional Soviet and most famous as the envoy of Sverdlov and Lenin who ordered the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in Ekaterinburg. For further information on Goloshchekin, see Steven J Main, “The Creation, Organisation and Work of the Red Army's Political Apparatus during the Civil War, 1918-1920” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1989); Steinberg, Mark D. and Khrustalev, Vladimir M., The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (New Haven, 1995), 35 Google Scholar; and Slezkine, Yuri, The Jewish Century (Princeton, 2004), 178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Zemliachka had made a complaint against Stalin after a trip to Baku in 1908 to resolve divisions in the underground party there, with Stalin at the heart of the tensions. On Rozaliia Zemliachka, see Kun, Miklós, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest, 2003), 88–89 Google Scholar.
11 Benvenuti, Francesco, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 1918-1922 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Benvenuti, Francesco, “La ‘questione militaire’ aFVIII Congresso della RKP(b),“ Studi Storici 35, no. 4 (1994): 1095–21Google Scholar. Minin was the commissar at Tsaritsyn, attached to the military commander Pavel Sytin, a former tsarist officer appointed to the city by Trotskii. Reese, Roger R., The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991 (Abingdon, 2000), 21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At this congress, he was the delegate from the Tsaritsyn gubemiia conference of the RKP(b). Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 188-89.
13 Osipova, T. V., Rossiiskoe krest'ianstvo v revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voine (Moscow, 2001), 305 Google Scholar.
14 Ibid., 301-7; Figes, Orlando, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921 (Oxford, 1989), 324–25Google Scholar; Graziosi, Andrea, A New, Peculiar State: Explorations in Soviet History, 1917-1937 (Westport, 2000), 92 Google Scholar. For an examination of the razverstka, see Malle, Silvana, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918-1921 (Cambridge, Eng., 1985), 397–410 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Volkogonov, Stalin, 39-41; Service, Robert, Stalin: A Biography (London, 2004), 171–72Google Scholar.
16 Benvenuti, “La ‘questione militaire,“’ 1105; Trotsky, Stalin, 301-2.
17 Main, “The Creation, Organisation and Work of the Red Army's Political Apparatus,“ 126-27.
18 Harris, James, “Stalin as General Secretary: The Appointments Process and the Nature of Stalin's Power,” in Davies, Sarah and Harris, Jame, eds., Stalin: A New History (Cambridge, Eng., 2005), 81 Google Scholar.
19 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 175-81.
20 For a detailed discussion of Bolshevik recruitment policies during the civil war, see Sanborn, Joshua A., Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925 (DeKalb, 2011), 45 Google Scholar.
21 See comments by Miasnikov, , Goloshchekin, , and Iurenev, in Izvestiia Tsk KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 140 Google Scholar,143-45, and 146, respectively.
22 This is covered in points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7, ibid., 181-84.
23 For more on the rates of desertion and the high incidence of mobilizations on the front line, see Olikov, S., Dezertirstvo v Krasnoi Armii i box'ba s nim (Leningrad, 1926)Google Scholar.
24 Points 6, 7, 8,10, and 11, Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 181-84.
25 Point 8, ibid.
26 This desire was seen throughout the framework of state and party institutions. The idea of polyarchy to hegemony comes from Robert Service, “From Polyarchy to Hegemony: The Party's Role in the Construction of the Central Institutions of the Soviet State, 1917-1919,” Sbornik, no. 10 (1984): 77-90.
27 Izvesdia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 181, point 7 of Sokol'nikov's theses.
28 Ibid., point 4 of Sokol'nikov's theses.
29 Izvesdia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 181.
30 Ibid., 149,162.
31 The first meeting had a break and is listed as two separate meetings, while the final one ensured that all were agreed on the amendments before it went to the plenary meeting.
32 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 143. Okulov was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR).
33 Ibid., 149.
34 Ibid., 140. Aleksandr Miasnikov had been commander of the Volga front in the summer of 1918. In early 1919, he was appointed chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus and chairman of the Central Bureau of the Belarusian Communist Party.
35 Ibid., 151.
36 Ibid., 149. Nothing is known of Abramov according to the list of delegates and their attachments in ibid., 187.
37 Ibid., 153.
38 Meijer, Jan M., The Trotsky Papers, 1917-1922 (The Hague, 1964), 327–29Google Scholar.
39 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 150. Ivan Smilga was a CC member and military delegate. He advocated edinonachalie (one-man command) for all commanders, including former tsarist officers.
40 Ibid., 165.
41 See Service, Robert, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organisational Change, 1917-1923 (London, 1979), 104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 170.
43 Ibid., 171. The actual count here was nineteen for Trotskii's proposals; however, the representative obviously miscounted and declared the number of votes as twenty. This became the official figure, and in the absence of the actual minutes of the meetings, it went on to be repeated in Kliatskin, S. M., Na zashchite oktiabria: Organizatsiia reguliarnoi armii i militsionnoe stroitel'stvo vSovetskoi respublike, 1917-1920 (Moscow, 1965)Google Scholar; and Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army.
44 See point 10 of Smirnov's theses on measures to be taken, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 183.
45 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 10 (1989): 176.
46 Ibid., 177-78.
47 Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 156.
48 Point 5 of Smirnov's theses, Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 10 (1989): 173.
49 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 9 (1989): 182.
50 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 10 (1989): 173. Meaning, as it was in the old-style partisan divisions and, prior to that, in the ranks of the army during the time of the Provisional Government, when the Bolsheviks had encouraged this type of democratic participation within the military as a way of undermining the old army.
51 Point 7 of Smirnov's theses on measures to be taken, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 183.
52 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 10 (1989): 173.
53 Stalin, I. V., Sochineniia, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1954), 197–224 Google Scholar.
54 Stalin's speech was eventually published in his collected works, although in a heavily edited version. The sections missing from the original version produced much discussion as to Stalin's line of argument, and in subsequent attempts to predict their contents, the suspicions and suppositions contained in Trotskii's memoirs were often relied on.
55 Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 11 (1989): 163.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 164.
58 Ibid., 169.
59 Ibid., 169-71.
60 Ibid., 167-68.
61 See Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 110-11.
62 Ibid., 110-14.
63 Main, “The Creation, Organisation and Work of the Red Army's Political Apparatus,“ 238.
64 Volkogonov, D. A., Triwnfi tragediia: Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1989)Google Scholar; Service, Stalin.