On the imperialist massacre
The first essay on military articles by the classics of the third wave (Military prose of Stalin and Trotsky) demanded a continuation, although the topic of war was clearly pressed by the topic of the revolutionary, which is hardly surprising.
After all, almost every revolution was a consequence of the war. This can be said about Russian revolutions without any doubt. And by the beginning of the world war, Trotsky and Stalin were already experienced revolutionaries from among the leaders of Russian social democracy.
Stalin is a convinced Bolshevik, the main expert on the national question. Trotsky, on the other hand, rushes about in search of unity not only with the Mensheviks, but also with other left-wing parties, and not necessarily Russian ones. After all, the goal of his life is a world revolution.
However, they practically did not put their hand to a new wave of strikes and demonstrations, which threatened to turn into a revolution but interrupted by the war. Stalin was in exile in the Turukhansk region, by the way, together with Sverdlov (see photo), and Trotsky was in exile.
Only in the spring of 1917 will they be given the opportunity to seriously tackle the revolution by the "temporary" - those who, in fact, delivered Russia from the monarchy. Both were writing at this time. And they wrote a lot. Although Stalin's works of those years either disappeared or are still almost unknown to anyone.
But it is known for sure that even from the Turukhansk region, the future leader of the peoples continued organizational work with peripheral party cells. In many ways, this is what in 1917 will provide the Bolsheviks with such powerful support for the national borderlands.
At the same time, Trotsky, who became a popular author during the years of the Balkan Wars, is again a correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl. He had no chance to work in the Russian army, and the French authorities did not give him accreditation on the western front.
Trotsky, who no longer had to hide his characteristic pseudonym "Perot", worked from Switzerland as if he himself were at the front. In his autobiography, he later admits that it was European newspapers that were constantly arriving in Geneva that were saved.
Let's not forget the active secret correspondence with the front-line soldiers. And the invaluable experience of a reporter, and that very lively pen. In the very first essays ("Two Armies", "The Seventh Infantryman in the Belgian Epic", etc.) Trotsky unmistakably predicts that the war will drag on.
He absolutely accurately predicts that backward empires, like the Austro-Hungarian, Russian or Ottoman, will most likely lose in the struggle for attrition. Already in the first weeks of the war, Trotsky will make a fatal diagnosis of both the Tsarist and the Kaiser's armies.
He still has time to write the only and brilliant biographical sketch about the British General French, the commander of the expeditionary army. And he will even get close to the national question, which is not too typical for ideologists from among Jews, a priori - internationalists.
His articles "Imperialism and the National Idea", "Nation and Economy", "Around the National Principle" were read in Kiev, Odessa, in two capitals and in the Caucasus. After all, in them, too, the idea of an impending uprising against tsarism, for which all Russian revolutionaries should be prepared, ran like a red thread.
About nations and nationalism
However, even then, the Bolsheviks considered the national theme to be Stalin's fiefdom.
But Trotsky has not yet joined the Leninists. And it did not concern him.
And Koba, who finally adopted the pseudonym Stalin in 1912, was then mainly busy with self-education, correspondence with Lenin, Krupskaya and other Bolsheviks.
Stalin is already a recognized party organizer, who managed to attract thousands of members from the outskirts of the empire to the RSDLP (b). And he is a harsh critic of opportunism, no matter who it comes from: even from Plekhanov. Like Trotsky, there are no authorities for Koba. Except for Ulyanov-Lenin.
But it was in exile that Stalin wrote his famous essay "On cultural and national autonomy." He left the Turukhansk region only in 1916. And from Achinsk he managed to get to Petrograd only in March 1917.
Trotsky, on the other hand, wrote so much during the First World War that it was enough for an entire volume of collected works. But he himself later admitted that he had not created any major software projects. Among the writers (and Trotsky considered himself to be such) it is called - exchanged on trifles.
Behind the thousands of lines it is not easy to discern the future builder and leader of the Red Army. But Lenin and his comrades-in-arms saw Trotsky. Although at first they put this brilliant polemicist at the head of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.
This was done out of purely pragmatic considerations, but as if in defiance of the cadet Milyukov and his direct follower in terms of the ability to get along (or rather, grovel in front of the allies) - Kerensky.
As you know, Stalin got the post of People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Leninist Council of People's Commissars. There was no such post in the Provisional Government, which (according to a number of historians), among other things, predetermined the choice of the national outskirts of the fallen Romanov empire in favor of the Bolsheviks.
Moreover, they immediately granted not autonomy, but de facto independence to such as Poland and Finland.
However, the high posts of Stalin and Trotsky were ahead. Since the power, which Nicholas II so easily gave up, had yet to be conquered.
About February and dual power
It was with the establishment in revolutionary Russia of a dual power - the Provisional Government and the Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, where the Bolsheviks were not yet in the first roles, that the military theme became almost the main one in the works of Trotsky and Stalin.
Again they write a lot and it must be admitted, talented and extremely effective.
Of course, they write together with Lenin and other associates. Trotsky very quickly pulls up to the Bolshevik camp and will lead thousands of Mezhraiontsy - members of the RSDLP.
These were Social Democrats, Marxists, who had not yet decided who they were on the way with: the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks. In this, Trotsky and Stalin, we can say, agreed - he also managed to "Bolshevize" very many of those vacillating from their seats.
One of the first articles written by Stalin after his return from exile was the article "On the War," where Rodzianko and Guchkov, and along with them, General Kornilov, got from him for his unwillingness to even talk about peace. In mid-March 1917, he reported to the Petrograd Soviet on the situation at the front, and Stalin immediately managed to discern in him a future contender for the Russian Bonaparte.
Trotsky practically in the same days in the United States was fighting for the right to return to his homeland - his own and several other Russian revolutionaries. In farewell, on the eve of boarding the steamer Christianfjord, Trotsky will publish in Harlem River PC a catchy article calling on the Americans
"Overthrow the accursed, rotten capitalist government."
Trotsky arrived in Petrograd (not without the help of Lenin) only in May 1917. But by this time he had managed to gain tremendous popularity in the capital thanks to bright anti-war and anti-government publications in both the Russian and foreign press.
One step before power
It is especially important that propagandists from different parties, agitators at the St. Petersburg factories and in the Petrograd garrison, which, due to the influx of storerooms, not only greatly expanded, but also decomposed, worked for the authority of Trotsky. It is not surprising that the tsar did not even count on him on the eve of his abdication.
If Trotsky gave a whole volume of his works for the world war, then Stalin's third volume included works of only one year - 1917. The military theme is not the most important among his articles and speeches. And it hardly makes sense to look for classics of military literature among them.
It is more important, in my opinion, that at conferences and congresses of the Bolsheviks, in the absence of Lenin, it is Stalin who reads the reports of the Central Committee, makes reports on the political situation, where it is certainly a question of war and peace.
However, one cannot but recall the August Stalinist attack in the Rabochy Put newspaper on the Social Revolutionaries from Delo Naroda, which was effectively titled "On the Revolutionary Front." In response to criticism of the Bolsheviks for their open readiness to change the power of the Provisional Government to the power of the Soviets, Stalin gives out this, truly Leninist:
"Who will win this fight - this is the whole point now."
Although why is it necessarily Leninist? Here it is already quite possible to feel exactly
"Stalinist style".
As, however, in the main thesis of the article:
“We are told about the reasons for the defeat, offering not to repeat the old“mistakes”.
But what guarantee is there that the "mistakes" are real mistakes and not a "premeditated plan"?
Who can guarantee that after they have “provoked” the surrender of Ternopil, they will not “provoke” the surrender of Riga and Petrograd in order to undermine the prestige of the revolution and then establish the hated old order on its ruins?"
It was both more difficult and simpler for Trotsky in this respect.
He is quickly promoted to the first roles in the Petrosovet - his experience of 1905 is too remembered by many. But Trotsky never ceases to write, and most importantly, to deliver speeches.
Lunacharsky, who was truly friends with Trotsky, would later note how much
"He is literary in his oratory and orator in his literature."
What is even Trotsky's speech on October 22, 1917 worth?
“The Soviet government will give everything that is in the country to the poor and comfrey.
You, bourgeois, have two fur coats - give one to a soldier who is cold in the trenches.
Do you have warm boots? Stay at home.
The worker needs your boots."
Almost half of the first part of the third volume of Trotsky's works is formed from the author's public speeches. In general, the works of Trotsky's revolutionary 1917 were never systematized.
But by the very same author transformed into the famous "History of the Russian Revolution", or rather - in its second volume.
Stalin in October
We will not repeat here that the uprising against the Provisional Government began, in general, spontaneously. Despite the fact that he was expected from day to day. Yes, it has already been prepared, if not 100 percent, then 95 percent - for sure.
In the assertions that Lenin led the October uprising together with Stalin, there is (albeit scanty), but a grain of truth. After all, it is not for nothing that Stalin on October 24 (even in the absence of Lenin) made a report on the political situation at a meeting of the Bolshevik faction at the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
And in the morning of the same day - October 24, the Bolshevik "Rabochy Put" came out with Stalin's article "What do we need?" And there was a call to overthrow Kerensky's cabinet. For which no one accused Koba of treason, as recently Kamenev and Zinoviev. And do not think that you just did not have time.
After that, by and large, there was no time to write to the press to the People's Commissar. Stalin writes the famous "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia", and at the same time gives the actual go-ahead for the independence of Finland, speaking at the congress of the Finnish Social Democrats in Helsingfors.
Who would then have guessed what this independence would turn out to be for Soviet Russia and Petrograd-Leningrad. Answering in the same days to "comrades Ukrainians", the Russian People's Commissar makes it clear that the Bolsheviks are not on the way with the bourgeois Rada, and it must be immediately replaced by the Soviet government.
The time of military prose will come very soon for Stalin. But he still manages to outline the Bolshevik position on Turkish Armenia, and on the Tatar-Bashkir republic, and even on peace with the Germans. This will be one of the first hard fights with Trotsky. But about it - already in the next article.
Trotsky: power itself is coming into our hands
Trotsky, who actually headed the Petrosovet back in 1905, did not just count on, but fought to the death to take power. But then she is by no means
"Lying under my feet"
as he wrote about the Provisional Government years later - in the fall of 1917.
The roll-over with Lenin's articles on the eve of the decisive October days is no less impressive than Stalin's staunch Pro-Leninist position. Trotsky and Stalin together are ready to simply deal with the "traitors" Kamenev and Zinoviev. Although, by and large, in their demarche they revealed a secret, already known to everyone.
Power itself fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks; moreover, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and many of the Mensheviks had already taken their side. And in this, by the way, the great merit of Trotsky, who was then ready to cooperate with anyone from the "left". But this turned into a skirmish with the stubborn orthodox Lenin.
The October uprising itself is one of the rare cases when everything went not according to Lenin, but according to Trotsky. With his submission, after Lenin wrote from Spill that
"Procrastination is like death,"
the uprising was nevertheless postponed until the beginning of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
It was Trotsky who wanted to present the Congress with the fact of liquidating the "dual power" regime. The delegates of the II Congress, the qualified majority, as they say now, declared themselves the supreme power in Russia. Not paying any attention to the fact that the congress, in protest against the overthrow of the Kerensky government, left everyone except the Left SRs and Bolsheviks.
However, Lenin nevertheless turned out to be at the head of the new provisional government - the Council of People's Commissars, to whose authority Trotsky was very far away. There are historians who are convinced that, among other things, the hatred of the members of the Provisional Government and of Kerensky personally played in favor of Ilyich.
Together with Lenin or instead of Ulyanov?
The threat of arrest, exile and such a timely return are a whole set of whists for Lenin. In addition, Trotsky himself, no matter how power-hungry and not recognizing authorities, seems to have simply bowed to the leader.
Everyone in the Bolshevik Central Committee, even Stalin, understood what a huge role Trotsky played in preparing and carrying out the coup in October, which, in Lenin's way, it was immediately decided to call the socialist revolution. However, judging by the pace at which socialist transformations were launched in Russia, the term was absolutely correct.
It is characteristic that Trotsky did not consider himself a talented organizer. But in the Military Revolutionary Committee he relied on such assistants as the same Stalin, Podvoisky, Antonov-Ovseenko, and finally, Efraim Sklyansky, his future deputy in the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic.
This forgotten character - Sklyansky (the first after Trotsky), a former regimental doctor, later turned out to be a truly irreplaceable collaborator for Trotsky. Trotsky liked to compare his deputy to Lazar Carnot, who formed 14 armies for the French Revolution. But Sklyansky, rather, looks more like a scrupulous assiduous Berthier - the chief of Napoleon's staff.
By all indications, it was Sklyansky who managed to organize the construction of the Red Army in such a way that even a direct (and not half-hearted, as it turned out in reality) foreign intervention would not help the white movement. Not counting, of course, the Polish campaign. But then the Entente was already too late.
However, Trotsky's candidacy for the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars was not even considered. There is some special irony of history in the fact that Trotsky got the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, which immediately after the overthrow of the monarchy was occupied by the leader of the Cadets Pavel Milyukov, who coined the term "Trotskyism".
Trotsky also did not become the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which formed the government. In this place was Lev Kamenev, which in itself refutes his ultimately inflated subsequently allegedly betrayal on the eve of the October Revolution.
The overly soft and unhurried, albeit scrupulous, Kamenev, by the way, was replaced by the energetic Sverdlov just two weeks later. And Trotsky, whom his comrades-in-arms recognized as a military expert, had to deal with almost the main issue - about peace, entering into negotiations with the Germans.
About this, as well as what Stalin and Trotsky wrote about the Civil War and military development in the Republic of Soviets, read the next essay.
Here, it remains only to note that in the October days, Trotsky, like Stalin, was simply forced to write very little to the press - there were enough real worries.
