37. Disagreements Over War Strategy¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 37: Disagreements Over War Strategy¶
This chapter examines four major strategic disputes within the Central Committee during the civil war, each corresponding to a different front. The first, in summer 1919, concerned the eastern front. Commander-in-chief Vatzetis, supported by Trotsky, proposed halting at the Urals to transfer divisions south against Denikin. Kamenev, Smilga and Lashevich countered that Kolchak was so thoroughly beaten that pursuit required few troops, and that granting him a winter breathing-spell would necessitate restarting the campaign. The Central Committee sided with the eastern front command, dismissed Vatzetis, and appointed Kamenev. Trotsky offered his resignation; the Central Committee unanimously rejected it.
The second disagreement centred on the southern front. The high command planned to strike Denikin’s Kuban Cossack base from the Volga. Trotsky argued this would drive Cossacks into Denikin’s army; he proposed cutting the volunteers off from the Cossacks by advancing from Voronezh towards Kharkov and the Donetsk basin, where peasants and workers supported the Red Army. This plan was adopted only after Denikin threatened Tula. The third conflict involved Yudenich’s offensive against Petrograd. Lenin briefly favoured surrendering the city; Zinoviev and Stalin supported Trotsky against Lenin, who soon abandoned the idea.
The fourth and most violent disagreement concerned the Polish front in summer 1920. Trotsky, supported only by Rykov, demanded immediate peace after initial Soviet victories, arguing the army was exhausted. Lenin, backed by the majority, insisted on continuing to Warsaw to spark a Polish workers’ uprising. Trotsky found that frontline headquarters favoured war, but from army to company level he saw an offensive was impossible. He sent Lenin a handwritten letter, continued his inspection, and confirmed his conclusion. Returning to Moscow, the Politburo voted almost unanimously for immediate peace—but too late. The offensive ended in catastrophic defeat. Trotsky attributes the scale of the disaster partly to Stalin’s command of the south-western group, which delayed changing direction to support Tukhachevsky’s forces before Warsaw. After the defeat, Trotsky successfully opposed a second Polish war, winning Lenin’s support.
The strategic error had major historical consequences: Pilsudski’s Poland emerged strengthened, the Polish revolution was crushed, and the Riga treaty frontier cut Soviet Russia off from Germany, affecting both countries later. Lenin understood this mistake’s significance better than anyone and returned to it repeatedly. Trotsky argues that epigone literature portrays Lenin not as a revolutionary strategist with a genius for assessing situations, but as a mechanical automaton of faultless decisions—a caricature like Suzdal icon painters’ saints. Trotsky, who first called Lenin a genius when others dared not, insists Lenin made mistakes, though fewer than anyone else in his position, and grave ones commensurate with his titanic work.