LENIN, TROTSKY & MAKHNO
(an extract from Lenin and
the Bolsheviks)
Adam B. Ulam
The guilty passion for the unruly, anarchistic, even partly criminal "man of the people"
never quite left Lenin, but it was entirely absent in Trotsky's make-up. In the latter's
view the conduct of the war required a regular army staffed by professional officers. He
looked with distaste upon partisan activities and the undisciplined private detachments
that were a notable feature of the Civil War.
The war had spawned many private bands and armies, neither Red nor White in their
political complexion. Sometimes they were led by Anarchists and sometimes by soldiers
of fortune, but in practically every case there was a strong admixture of the outright
criminal element. The most famous of those armies was led in the Ukraine by Nestor
Makhno. A half-illiterate Ukrainian peasant, self-professed Anarchist, Makhno appeared
in the spring of 1918 in Moscow where he had an interview with Lenin, who received
him graciously and facilitated his return to the Ukraine, still under Austro-German
occupation. Once on his home ground Makhno organized a guerrilla band, which
intermittently fought every armed force that passed through the unfortunate land: the
Germans, Ukrainian nationalists, Denikin's, and other partisan bands. At times he would
collaborate with the Red Army in its fight against the Whites, at other times he would
turn against them. Captured Communists, especially if they were connected with the
Cheka, were often executed by his forces. Still, at the most critical period of the Civil
War the Bolshevik policy was to establish some form of collaboration with Makhno. In
April 1919 no less a dignitary than L. Kamenev was dispatched to negotiate with
Makhno. It must have been an incongruous conference with this barely literate and
usually intoxicated Anarchist chieftain. "Father Makhno," as he was known to his
followers, assured Kamenev that he was a friend of the Soviet power and showed him
the tree where with his own hands he had just hanged a White colonel. He denied the
charges of banditry and anti-Semitism, and his visitor, evidently satisfied, told Makhno
that his forces were included in the Red Army and addressed him as "Comrade".(1)
Though Makhno compared favourably with other partisan leaders insofar as he
discouraged, not always successfully, pillaging and Jewish pogroms, Trotsky's reaction to
this alliance was one of anger and humiliation. His comments on Makhno's partisans
even when they were fighting alongside the Reds against Denikin are characteristic of
his military philosophy: "There is no regard for order and discipline in that 'army'. No
sources of supply.... In that 'army' officers were elected.... Dark deluded ... armed
masses become a blind instrument in the hands of adventurers.... High time to end this
half kulak, half anarchist dissipation...."(2) But Makhno continued his uneasy
collaboration with the Red Army long after Trotsky had written those words. Only in
1921, when his help was no longer needed, was his band liquidated and he himself
forced to flee from the country.
Except for being headed by an avowed Anarchist, makhno's forces were not really too
different from many an early Soviet army or partisan detachment. Trotsky worked
ceaselessly to have them transformed into regular disciplined units. He was an early and
enthusiastic proponent of the employment of the former Tsarist officers. That the latter
contributed decisively to the Red Army's victory is one thing on which both the
Bolshevik and White sources are unanimously agreed. The employment of those people
was bound to encounter strong opposition. If we discount the story of Lenin's hesitation
on this count, it is still a fact that many old-line Communists found this step unpalatable,
and for some of them who had assumed command or were commissars this
represented a direct threat. As is well known, Trotsky accompanied his policy with the
famous circular warning that his ministry would keep a register of the professional
officers' families and that they would be held responsible for their desertion or
disloyalty. But he was an enthusiastic defender of the professional officer, whom he
praised frequently and protected from attacks by the doctrinaires. In Party circles his
defence of the "gentlemen" was being caustically compared with his readiness to punish
Communists. Another of his famous orders stipulated that in the case of a unit's
desertion its commissar would be shot first and then the commanding officer. He had
none of Lenin's occasional toleration of hooliganism when produced by an excess of
proletarian zeal. Severe penalties awaited the Red Army soldiers caught looting and
Trotsky's sense of orderliness went so far as to make him protest against exactions and
humiliation inflicted upon the bourgeoisie in the recaptured territory.
Ironically enough, it was Lenin who can be said to have been the main political
beneficiary of his War Commissar's severity and authoritarianism. Himself a stern
disciplinarian under whose hand many Bolsheviks had chafed in the first months of the
Revolution, Lenin now appeared as almost a semi-anarchist when compared with
Trotsky.
Notes:
(1) V.S., "The Expedition of L. Kamenev to the Ukraine, in April, 1919," in The Proletarian
Revolution, 1925, No.6.
(2) Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed, Vol.2, Part 1, p.191
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