There were sixteen armies fighting on the revolutionary fronts of the Soviet Republic. The Great French Revolution had almost as many — fourteen. And every one of the sixteen Soviet armies had its own brief but striking history. The mere mention of the number of any one army is enough to evoke scores of remarkable stories. Each of the armies had its own clear-cut, though ever-changing, physiognomy.
The Seventh army held the western approaches to Petrograd. The prolonged standstill had impaired its morale. Its watchfulness became dulled; its best workers, even whole detachments, were taken away and sent to the more active sectors of the front. For a revolutionary army, which needs constant charges of enthusiasm, marking time almost always ends in mishap, and often in disaster. The Seventh army was no exception.
In June, 1919, an important fort called “Krasnaya Gorka” (The Red Hill), in the Gulf of Finland, was captured by a detachment of Whites. A few days later it was recaptured by a force of Red marines. Then it was discovered that the chief of the staff of the Seventh army, Colonel Lundkvist, was transmitting all information to the Whites. There were other conspirators working hand-in-glove with him. This shook the army to its very core.
In July, General Yudenich was made Commander-in-chief of the Northwestern army of the Whites, and was recognized by Kolchak as his representative. In August, with the aid of England and Esthonia, the Russian “northwestern government” was established. The English navy in the Gulf of Finland promised Yudenich its support. Yudenich’s offensive was timed for a moment when we were desperately pressed on the other fronts. Denikin had occupied Orel and was threatening Tula, the munitions-manufacturing centre. From there it was only a short distance to Moscow. The South demanded all our attention. Just then, the first strong blow from the west threw the Seventh army completely off its balance, and it began to roll back with hardly a show of resistance, abandoning its arms and supplies as it went. The Petrograd leaders, Zinoviev in particular, kept telling Lenin about the enemy’s excellent equipment — the automatic rifles, tanks, airplanes, the British monitors on their flanks, and so forth. Lenin concluded that we could fight Yudenich’s army of officers, armed with the latest technical devices, only at the cost of denuding and weakening our other fronts, the southern one most of all. But this was impossible, and so, in his opinion, there was only one thing to do: abandon Petrograd and shorten the front line. After he decided that such an amputation was essential, Lenin began to try to win over other leaders. When I arrived in Moscow, I firmly opposed this plan. Yudenich and his masters would not have been satisfied with Petrograd alone; they wanted to meet Denikin in Moscow. In Petrograd, Yudenich would have found enormous industrial resources and manpower; moreover there would be no serious obstacles in his way from Petrograd to Moscow. So I decided that we had to save Petrograd at any cost, and found support first of all among the citizens of Petrograd. Krestinsky, at that time a member of the Politbureau, sided with me. I believe that Stalin also supported my stand. Several times during those twenty-four hours I attacked Lenin, until he said at last: “Very well, let us try!”
On October is the Politbureau adopted my resolution on the situation at the fronts: “Recognizing the existence of an acute military danger, we must take steps really to transform Soviet Russia into a military camp. With the help of the party and the trades-unions, a registration must be carried out listing every member of the party, of the Soviet institutions and the trades-unions, with a view to using them for military service.” This was followed by a list of practical measures. Regarding Petrograd, the resolution said: “Not to be evacuated.” The same day I submitted the draft of a decree to the Council of Defense:
“To defend Petrograd to the last ounce of blood, to refuse to yield a foot, and to carry the struggle into the streets of the city.” I had no doubt that even if the White army of 25,000 fighting men could manage to force its way into the city of a million inhabitants, it would be doomed to extinction if it met serious and well-organized resistance in the streets. At the same time, with an eye especially on the possible intervention of Esthonia and Finland, I thought it necessary to plan for the withdrawal of the army and workers toward the southeast, since that was the only way to save the flower of the Petrograd proletariat from wholesale extermination.
On the 16th I left for Petrograd. The next day Lenin wrote me:
“October 17, 1919. Comrade Trotsky: Last night transmitted in code . . . the decision of the Council of Defense. As you will see, your plan has been accepted. But the withdrawal of the Petrograd workers to the south is, of course, not rejected (I am told that you expounded it to Krassin and Rykov), but to discuss it before the need arises would distract attention from the fight-to-the-finish. An attempt to outflank and cut off Petrograd will, of course, bring corresponding changes which you will carry out on the spot . . . I enclose a proclamation which I wrote at the suggestion of the Council of Defense. I did it hastily, and it did not turn out well. You had better put my name under your own text.
Greetings,
LENIN”
This letter, it seems to me, definitely shows how the most violent disagreements between Lenin and me, inevitable in a work of such scope, were overcome in practice, and left no trace on our personal relations or on our joint work. It occurs to me that if it had been me against Lenin, instead of Lenin against me, who in October, 1919, defended the idea of surrendering Petrograd, there would have been plenty of literature to-day, in every known language, exposing this destructive manifestation of “Trotskyism.”
During the course of the year 1918, the Allies were forcing a civil war on us, supposedly in the interests of victory over the Kaiser. But now it was 1919. Germany had long since been defeated. Yet the Allies continued to spend hundreds of millions to spread death, famine, and disease in the country of the revolution. Yudenich was one of the condottieri in the pay of England and France. His rear was propped up by Esthonia, his left flank was covered by Finland. The Allies demanded that both these countries, freed by the revolution, should help to butcher it. There were endless negotiations in Helsingfors, as there were in Reval; the scales tipped this way and that. We watched in alarm the two little states that constituted a hostile pincers about the head of Petrograd.
On the first of September, I wrote in the Pravda, by way of warning: “Among the divisions we are now bringing over to the Petrograd front, the part of the Bashkir horsemen will not be least important, and if the bourgeois Finns attempt to attack Petrograd, the Red Bashkirs will advance with the battle-cry: ’To Helsingfors l’”
The Bashkir cavalry division had been formed only a short time before. From the outset, I had planned to transfer it to Petrograd for a few months, so that the men from the steppes might have a chance to live for a time amid the cultural surroundings of the city, come into closer contact with the workers, and visit clubs, meetings and theatres. To this, a new and still more urgent consideration was now added — that of frightening the Finnish bourgeoisie with the spectre of a Bashkir invasion.
But our warnings carried less weight than the swift successes of Yudenich. He took Luga on the thirteenth of October, Krasnoye Syelo and Gatchina on the sixteenth, directing his blow at Petrograd in such a way that he could cut off the railway line connecting Petrograd and Moscow. On the tenth day of his offensive, Yudenich advanced as far as Tsarskoye Syelo. His scouts on horseback could see the gilded dome of St. Isaac’s cathedral from the hill.
The Finnish radio, forestalling the event, reported the occupation of Petrograd by Yudenich’s troops. The ambassadors of the Allies in Helsingfors reported this officially to their governments. All through Europe and the rest of the world the news spread that the Red Petrograd had fallen. A Swedish newspaper wrote of “a world-week of Petrograd fever.” The ruling circles in Finland were especially excited. The government, as well as the military, was advocating intervention. No one wanted to let the quarry slip out of his hands. As was to be expected, the Finnish Social Democracy promised to observe “neutrality.” A White historian writes: “The question of intervention was now discussed only from the financial side.” All that remained was to ratify the guarantee of fifty million francs — that was the price of the blood of Petrograd in the Allied markets.
The question of Esthonia was no less acute. I wrote to Lenin on October 17: “If we save Petrograd, as I hope, we shall be in a position to make an end of Yudenich. The difficulty will be his right of asylum in Esthonia. Esthonia must close its frontiers to him. In case he does enter, we must retain the right of invading Esthonia on Yudenich’s heels.” This proposal was accepted after our army had begun to drive Yudenich, but it took some time to start the drive.
In Petrograd I found the leaders in a state of utmost demoralization. Everything was slipping. The troops were rolling back and breaking up into separate units. The commanding officers looked to the communists, the communists to Zinoviev, and Zinoviev was the very centre of utter confusion. Svyerdlov said to me: “Zinoviev is panic itself.” And Svyerdlov knew men. In favorable periods, when, in Lenin’s phrase, “there was nothing to fear,” Zinoviev climbed easily to the seventh heaven. But when things took a bad turn, he usually stretched himself out on a sofa — literally, not metaphorically — and sighed. Since 1917, I had had many opportunities to convince myself that Zinoviev had no intermediate moods; it was either the seventh heaven or the sofa. This time I found him on the sofa. And yet there were brave men about him — Lashevich, for example — but even their hands hung limp. Everyone felt it, and it had its effect everywhere. I ordered an automobile from a military garage by telephone from the Smolny. It did not come on time, and in the voice of the garageman in charge I sensed that apathy, hopelessness, and submission to fate which had infected even the lower ranks of the administrative staff. Exceptional measures were necessary; the enemy was at the very gates. As usual in such straits, I turned to my trainforce men who could be depended on under any circumstances. They checked up, put on pressure, established connections, removed those who were unfit, and filled in the gaps. From the official apparatus, which had become completely demoralized, I descended two or three floors to the district organizations of the party, the mills, the factories and the barracks.
Everyone expected an early surrender of the city to the Whites, and so people were afraid of becoming too conspicuous. But as soon as the masses began to feel that Petrograd was not to be surrendered, and, if necessary, would be defended from within, in the streets and squares the spirit changed at once. The more courageous and self-sacrificing lifted up their heads.
Detachments of men and women, with trenching-tools on their shoulders, filed out of the mills and factories. The workers of Petrograd looked badly then; their faces were gray from under nourishment; their clothes were in tatters; their shoes, some times not even mates, were gaping with holes.
“We will not give up Petrograd, comrades!”
“No.” The eyes of the women burned with especial fervor. Mothers, wives, daughters, were loath to abandon their dingy but warm nests. “No, we won’t give it up,” the high-pitched voices of the women cried in answer, and they grasped their spades like rifles. Not a few of them actually armed themselves with rifles or took their places at the machine-guns. The whole city was divided into sections, controlled by staffs of workers. The more important points were surrounded by barbed wire. A number of positions were chosen for artillery, with a firing-range marked off in advance. About sixty guns were placed behind cover on the open squares and at the more important street-crossings. Canals, gardens, walls, fences and houses were fortified. Trenches were dug in the suburbs and along the Neva. The whole southern part of the city was transformed into a fortress. Barricades were raised on many of the streets and squares. A new spirit was breathing from the workers’ districts to the barracks, the rear units, and even to the army in the field.
Yudenich was only from ten to fifteen versts away from Petrograd, on the same Pulkovo heights where I had gone two years before, when the revolution which had just assumed power was fighting for its life against the troops of Kerensky and Krasnov. Once more the fate of Petrograd was hanging by a thread, and we had to break the inertia of retreat, instantly and at any cost.
On October 18, I issued an order “not to send in false reports of hard fights when the actual truth was bitter panic. Lies will be punished as treason. Military work admits errors, but not lies, deception and self-deception.” As usual, in moments of stress, I thought it necessary to bare the grim truth before the army and the country, and I made public the senseless retreat that took place that very day. “A company of the rifle regiment took alarm because of an enemy threat against its flank. The regimental commander gave the order to withdraw. The regiment ran at a trot for eight or ten versts and reached Alexandrovka. A check-up disclosed that the troops on the flank belonged to one of our own units . . . But the stampeding regiment was not so bad, after all. With its self-confidence restored, it turn............