MILITARY SPECIALISTS (military experts), generals, admirals, officers and officials of the old Russian army and navy, recruited to serve in the Red Army and the Red Army Fleet during the Civil War and intervention in Soviet Russia. After October revolution The officers of the old army and navy were divided into several groups. One of them (about 8 thousand generals and officers) voluntarily went over to the side of the Soviet government. Among them were subsequently known military leaders: M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, I. I. Vatsetis, S. S. Kamenev, B. M. Shaposhnikov, F. F. Novitsky, A. I. Egorov, A. A. Samoilo , A. I. Kork, D. M. Karbyshev, V. M. Altvater and others. By mid-June 1918, about 9 thousand officers voluntarily joined the Red Army. The second group did not recognize Soviet power, but did not embark on the path of open struggle against it and took a wait-and-see neutral position. The third group openly went over to the counter-revolutionary camp and formed its striking force.
V. I. Lenin set before the Communist Party and the Soviet state the task of attracting bourgeois military specialists to the building of the Red Army and to command and control troops in the conduct of hostilities. He pointed out: “There is absolutely no need to throw out specialists that are useful to us. But they must be placed within certain limits, which provide the proletariat with the opportunity to control them. They must be entrusted with work, but at the same time watch them vigilantly, placing commissars over them and suppressing their counter-revolutionary plans” (PSS, vol. 38, pp. 6-7). On March 19, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars decided on the wide involvement of old military specialists in the Red Army. On March 26, the Supreme Military Council issued an order to abolish the elective principle in the army. This opened access to the ranks of the Red Army former generals and officers. The use of former officers was opposed by the "left communists", and later by the "military opposition". On the other hand, the position of the People's Commissariat of War and the chairman of the RVSR L.D. Trotsky and his associates, who bowed to the authority of bourgeois military specialists, blindly trusted them and ignored the need for strict control over their work, posed a significant danger. The 8th Party Congress (1919) condemned the "military opposition", the views of Trotsky and his supporters.
As the Civil War expanded and the size of the Armed Forces increased, the need for experienced military personnel increased. Military schools and courses were created for the accelerated training of red commanders from workers and peasants (see Military educational institutions). The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of June 29, 1918 introduced the mobilization of former officers and officials. By September 1919, 35.5 thousand officers and generals and about 4 thousand military officials were enlisted in the Red Army. Until the end of the Civil War, a total of 48.5 thousand officers and generals were called up. In addition, 10.3 thousand military officials and about 14 thousand military doctors were called up. Gradually, commanders from workers and peasants who graduated from military schools and courses replaced former officers. In 1918, military specialists accounted for 75% of the command staff of the Red Army, in 1919 - 53%, in 1920 - 42%, at the end of 1921 - 34%. By transferring their operational and technical experience and military knowledge, military specialists rendered great assistance to the Soviet state in building up the Armed Forces and in organizing the defeat of the interventionists and White Guards. See also Specialists and Intelligentsia.
Used materials of the publication: Civil
Time * 239, - to return to the question of military specialists in connection with the general policy in the matter of creating an army. The reason for this seems to be all the more convenient since criticism of our military policy has lately found a printed and, so to speak, principled expression.
Before, there were quite a few critical remarks about the involvement of former career officers, military specialists, but these remarks were, in essence, fleeting and evasive in nature and always took on a half-joking form.
And what, your military specialists will not betray you?
And this, as God wills. If we are strong, then they will not betray us.
But there was discontent. Discontent among the lower classes, discontent in the middle, so to speak, circles of the Party, and even among some at the "top"*240. Discontent was fed from the simple source that, in the absence of one's own commanders, one had to resort to those who were not one's own. When the nit-picking became more insistent on one side or the other, one had to resort to an argument not so much logical as empirical: "Can you give me today 10 division chiefs, 50 regimental commanders, two army commanders, one front commander - all of them communists?" In response to this, the "critics" laughed evasively and turned the conversation to another topic.
But anxiety and discontent remained. It was only powerless to find a "principled" expression for itself. For there could be no serious theoretical solution to the problem, but there could only be a practical solution: the selection of suitable commanders from the old regular officers and non-commissioned officers and the simultaneous vigorous work on the education of new commanders. Therefore, the criticism did not give almost motives for a principled rebuff. Now some of the articles that have found their way into the central organ of the party*241 are trying to give a completely understandable dissatisfaction with what is, such a principled expression, which is deeply reprehensible.
There is no need to say that, other things being equal, the Soviet government would always prefer a communist commander to a non-communist. The moral factor plays an enormous role in military affairs, and the close moral and ideological, and even more so, the party connection of the commander with the best, most selfless part of the soldiers, is an invaluable success factor. But no one is asking us to choose between communist and non-communist commanders. Until recently, we almost did not have "our own", in the party sense of the word, command staff. The moral bond of the army is most directly ensured by the lower command staff. But even for the roles of detached, platoon, company commanders, we could nominate only a small percentage of communists. The higher the command category, the fewer communists we could find for it. Standing aside, one can, of course, rant as much as one likes about the advantages of the communist command staff over others. But whoever participates in today's work on building the army and deals with specific regiments, battalions, companies, platoons that need today, immediately, living regimental, battalion, platoon commanders - he has to not resonate, but select commanders from that material, which is available.
The obvious interests of the revolution required the involvement of former non-commissioned officers and even privates, who had advanced by their abilities or simply common sense, to the lower command posts. This method was practiced and practiced by the military department very widely. However, even here it is necessary, interspersed with non-commissioned officers, to place, if possible, former career officers. And only those divisions are good, as experience shows, in which both these categories are represented side by side.
We often refer to treason and flight of officers to the enemy camp. There were many such defections, mainly by officers in more prominent positions. But we rarely talk about how many entire regiments were ruined due to the combat unpreparedness of the command staff, due to the fact that the regiment commander was unable to establish communications, did not set up outposts or field guards, did not understand the order or did not understand the map. And if you ask what has done us more harm so far: the betrayal of former regular officers or the unpreparedness of many new commanders, then I personally would find it difficult to give an answer to this.
Some comrades, who seem very resourceful to themselves, propose the following solution to the problem: to appoint an intelligent communist from among the soldiers as the division chief, and to give him, as a consultant or chief of staff, a specialist - an officer of the general staff. One can, of course, evaluate such a practical combination in different ways, which, by the way, we often use when circumstances require it (we have no template on this score), but it is quite clear that this solution does not give us any fundamentally different path, because the leading role militarily will remain, with such a distribution of roles, obviously, with the chief of staff, while the commander will retain, in essence, a control role, i.e. the one that the military commissar is currently doing. It is completely indifferent to the interests of the cause whether a military specialist betrays the Red Army as division chief or as division chief of staff. "But on the other hand, under this system," others object, "the communist has all the rights in his hands, while the military specialist receives only an advisory vote." Such an argument can only be advanced by people who think in a clerical way (Soviet clerical "communism" is a rather widespread and nasty disease). If the consultant or the chief of staff wants to destroy the division, he will plant a treacherous plan on the communist who bears the rank of commander. The fact that Kerensky was called Commander-in-Chief did not prevent "Chief of Staff" Kornilov from surrendering Riga to the Germans. Moreover, it is the consultant, who does not have command rights and, therefore, command responsibility, who can almost with impunity slip a treacherous plan on a commander who does not know how to command. Who will be responsible? Commander, i.e. the one with command rights. If we assume that a communist, as a commander, will be able to see through the treacherous trick of his consultant, then it is clear that he would have seen it even as a commissar. And that the commissar has the right to deal with betrayal and traitors with the most severe measures, not a single commissar with his head on his shoulders has ever doubted this. In a word, it is clear to any serious person that the simple renaming of commissars into commanders, commanders into consultants, gives nothing practically or in principle and is, in essence, calculated on the instincts of parochialism and also on averting the eyes of little conscious people.
“We were often told,” Comrade Kamensky ironically says, “that waging war is such a delicate thing that we can’t do without military specialists. The military specialty, although a subtle thing, is still one of the components of a finer thing — waging of the entire state mechanism, however, we took the liberty of leading the state by the act of the October Revolution "... "And somehow (!!) managed" - our author concludes victoriously.
This is called putting the question in its proper place. It turns out, therefore, according to Kamensky, that, having accomplished the October Revolution, we, as it were, undertook to replace specialists in all branches of the state economy with good communists, who, although they “tear a little, they don’t take drunkenness in their mouths.” Comrades who are familiar with socialist and anti-socialist literature know that one of the main arguments of the opponents of socialism was precisely the indication that we would not be able to cope with the state apparatus due to the lack of a sufficient number of our specialists. It never occurred to any of our old teachers to answer in such a way that, since we take into our hands such a “thing” as the state, therefore, we can “somehow” cope even without specialists. On the contrary, they always objected in the sense that the socialist regime would open up a wide field of creativity for the best specialists and thereby increase them; that we will force others or buy them with high salaries, as the bourgeoisie bought them; finally, the majority will simply have no choice, and they will be forced to serve us. But no one ever imagined that the victorious proletariat would simply "somehow" cope without specialists.
Kamensky tells how, being cut off from Soviet power with their comrades, they themselves thought of turning the detachments into regiments. This, of course, is a very encouraging fact, to be sure. But Marxist politics is not at all the politics of Tyapkin-Lyapkin, who comes to everything with his own mind, for history is not at all going to wait until we, having cast aside specialists, begin to think gradually about the question of transforming detachments into regiments, or rather, of renaming them: for , no offense be said to Comrade Kamensky, in the case he is talking about, the matter precisely boiled down to the fact that the commanders of the detachments called themselves commanders of regiments, brigades and divisions, depending on their taste, which, however, did not bring their detachments any closer to the correct internally proportional military formations.
It is absolutely true that after the October Revolution the proletariat found itself compelled to draw the sword against specialists of the most diverse different categories. But why? Not, of course, because they were specialists, but because these specialists refused to serve him and tried to break his power by organized sabotage. By its terror against the saboteurs, the proletariat did not at all say: "I will exterminate you all and do without specialists" - such a program would be a program of hopelessness and death. Dispersing, arresting and shooting saboteurs and conspirators, the proletariat said: "I will break your will, because my will is mightier than yours, I will force you to serve me." If the Red Terror meant the beginning of a process of complete expulsion and extermination of specialists, then the October Revolution would have to be recognized as a manifestation of historical decline. Fortunately, this is not the case. Terror, as a demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, receives its historical justification precisely in the fact that the proletariat succeeded in breaking the political will of the intelligentsia, in conciliating the professionals of various categories and fields of labor and gradually subordinating them to their own goals in the field of their specialty.
We know that telegraph operators sabotaged us, railway engineers sabotaged us, gymnasium teachers, university professors and doctors sabotaged us. Shouldn't we conclude from this that we can, since we took power in October, do without medicine? One can even cite several salutary examples of how a communist, somewhere in Chukhloma, cut off from the Soviet Republic, successfully bandaged his aunt's finger and performed some other medical feats, without being in the least poisoned by bourgeois medical wisdom. Such a philosophy has nothing in common with Marxism; it is a philosophy of simplification, quackery, ignorant boasting.
But still, if the British and French start a serious offensive against us, moving a million-strong army against us, military experts will betray us ... This is the last argument both in logical and chronological order.
I have no doubt that if Anglo-French imperialism is able to move a powerful army against us without hindrance, under conditions in which our immediate defeats will seem obvious to the social circles "pacified" by the proletariat, these latter will begin to desert to the camp of our political enemies. This desertion will be the more widespread and more dangerous for us, the less favorable the balance of military forces will be for us and the less favorable the whole world situation. This has happened many times in history with other classes.
For brevity, we often call military specialists "tsarist generals"; At the same time, they only forget that when tsarism had a hard time, the "tsarist generals" betrayed it, taking up a position of benevolent neutrality in relation to the revolution and even directly going over to its service. The Krestovnikovs, Ryabushinskys, Mamontovs have the right to say that their engineers have betrayed them. After all, they now serve under the regime of the proletarian dictatorship. If the specialists betrayed the class in whose spirit they were brought up, when this class turned out to be clearly and indisputably weaker than its opponent, there can be no doubt that the same specialists will incomparably more easily betray the proletariat when it turns out to be weaker than their mortal enemy. But today this is not the case, and we have too many reasons to think that this will not happen. The better, wider and more fully we use specialists now, when they are forced to serve us, the better we build, with their assistance, our red regiments, the less will be the opportunity for the Anglo-French to attack us and lead our specialists into temptation.
If the situation changes to our disadvantage, we may again have to change our internal policy, we will have to go over again to the regime of the Red Terror, we will have to mercilessly exterminate all those who try to help the enemies of the proletariat. But to do this in advance, looking ahead, would only mean weakening oneself. To renounce military specialists on the grounds that individual officers are cheating would mean the same thing as to expel all engineers, all higher railway technicians, on the grounds that there are many skillful saboteurs among them.
Not so long ago, at the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets of the National Economy*244, comrade. Lenin said: "It's time for us to abandon our former prejudice and call on all the specialists we need to our work. All our collegiate departments, all our communist workers should know this" ... "Capitalism has left us top specialists, whom we must certainly use on a wide sizes". This is not at all like, as you can see, Tyapkin-Lyapkinskaya's readiness to cope with any "thing" without specialists.
In the speech of comrade Lenin is even a direct threat against the "communist" Tyapkins. "Any attempt to replace the case with reasoning that is the embodiment of short-sightedness and the crudest stupidity of intellectual conceit, we will pursue through merciless repression."
I have no doubt that some of our communist comrades are excellent organizers, but it takes years and years to train these organizers in greater numbers, and we have "no time" to wait. If we have no time to wait in the economic field, then, all the more so, we "have no time" in the military sense.
This article would be incomplete and would contain a direct injustice in relation to military specialists if I did not speak here about the profound evolution that the consciousness of the best part of the old officers did.
We now have thousands of former career officers in our service. These people have experienced an ideological catastrophe. Many of them, in their own words, only two years ago considered Guchkov an extreme revolutionary; for them, the Bolsheviks belonged to the area of the fourth dimension. They passively believed the gossip, slander and persecution of the corrupt and dishonest bourgeois press. During the 13 months of the Soviet regime, they saw us communists at work with our strengths and our weaknesses. Truly, we would have too low an opinion of ourselves and our Party, of the moral power of our idea, of the attractive power of our revolutionary morality, if we thought that we were incapable of attracting thousands and thousands of specialists, including military ones.
What is the mere fact of the military cohabitation of former lieutenants, captains, colonels and generals with our commissars? Of course, the family is not without its black sheep. Among the commissars there are sometimes quarrelsome people who are engaged in petty localism on the topic of who should sign first, etc. But the majority of our commissars are excellent and selfless communists, disinterested, fearless, capable of dying for the idea of communism and making others die. Can all this pass morally without a trace for the officers, most of whom in the first period went to our service only for the sake of a piece of bread? It takes complete moral stupidity to assume this. From my communication with many military specialists, and even more from my communication with the communist commissars, I know how many of the former "tsarist officers" internally became related to the Soviet regime and, by no means calling themselves Bolsheviks, live the same life with the best regiments of our Red Army .
The Council of People's Commissars decided to rename the station "Krasnye Gorki" near Kazan "Yudino" in memory of the "tsarist officer" Yudin, who fell in battle under this station, who was one of those who returned Kazan to us.
The general public knows almost all cases of treason and betrayal of officers, but, unfortunately, not only general public but even closer party circles know too little about all those regular officers who honestly and knowingly died for the cause of workers' and peasants' Russia. Only today the commissar was telling me about a captain who commanded only a squad and refused a higher command post because he got too close to his soldiers. This captain fell in battle the other day...
We are the party of the working class. With its advanced elements, we have been underground for decades, waged a struggle, fought on the barricades, overthrew the old regime, cast aside all sorts of mediocre groups like the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and, at the head of the working class, we took power into our hands. But, if our Party is vitally and inseparably linked with the working class, then it has never been and cannot become a simple praiser of the working class, which is satisfied with everything that the workers do. We treated with contempt those who taught us that the proletariat took power "too early": as if the revolutionary class could take power at any time it wanted, and not when history forced it to take power. But at the same time, we have never said, and do not say now, that our working class has reached full maturity and can cope "easily" with all tasks and resolve all difficulties. The proletariat, and even more so, the peasant masses, have just emerged from centuries of slavery and are bearing all the consequences of oppression, ignorance and darkness. The conquest of power, in itself, does not at all transform the working class and does not endow it with all the necessary virtues and qualities: the conquest of power only opens before it the opportunity to really learn, develop and cleanse itself of its historical shortcomings.
The upper stratum of the Russian working class, by means of the greatest exertion, has accomplished a gigantic historical work. But even in this upper stratum there is still too much half-knowledge and half-skill, too few workers who, according to their knowledge, outlook, energy, could do for their class what the representatives, henchmen and agents of the bourgeoisie did for the ruling classes.
Lassalle once said that the German workers of his time - more than half a century ago - were poor in understanding their poverty. The revolutionary development of the proletariat consists in the fact that it comes to understand its oppressed position, its poverty, and rises up against the ruling classes. This gives him the opportunity to seize political power in battle. But the possession of political power, in essence, for the first time reveals to him a complete picture of his poverty in the matter of general and special education and state experience. The understanding of one's shortcomings for the revolutionary class is the key to overcoming them.
The most dangerous thing for the working class would be, no doubt, if its leaders imagined that, with the conquest of power, the main thing had already been done, and allowed their revolutionary conscience to rest on what had been achieved. Indeed, the proletariat made the revolution not for the same reason, in order to enable thousands or even tens of thousands of advanced workers to sit in the soviets and commissariats. Our revolution will fully justify itself only when every worker, every worker feels that it is easier, freer, cleaner and more worthy for them to live in the world. It doesn't exist yet. Another difficult path separates us from achieving this main and only our goal.
In order to make the life of the working millions easier, richer and richer in content, it is necessary to improve the organization and expediency of labor in all spheres, it is necessary to achieve incomparably more high level knowledge, a broader horizon of all the called-up representatives of the working class in all fields of activity. While working, you need to learn. You need to learn from everyone from whom you can learn something. It is necessary to attract all the forces that can be harnessed to the work. Once again: we must remember that the masses of the people will evaluate the revolution, in the final analysis, by its practical results. And they will be absolutely right. Meanwhile, there is no doubt that among a section of Soviet workers such an attitude has been established to the matter as if the task of the working class had been solved in its fundamentals by the mere fact that workers’ and peasants’ deputies were called to power, who “somehow” with are doing things. The Soviet regime is the best regime for the workers' revolution precisely because it most accurately reflects the development of the proletariat, its struggles, its successes, but in the same way, its shortcomings, including the shortcomings of its leading stratum. Along with the many thousands of first-class figures who have been put forward by the proletariat and who are learning, advancing and who have an undeniably great future ahead, there are in the leading Soviet apparatus quite a few semi-know-it-alls who imagine themselves to be all-know-it-alls. Self-satisfaction resting on small successes, this worst trait philistinism, is fundamentally hostile to the historical tasks of the proletariat. But this feature, nevertheless, is found among those workers who, with more or less right, can be called advanced: the legacy of the past, petty-bourgeois traditions and influences, and finally, just the need for tense nerves to rest do their job. Next to this are quite numerous representatives of the intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia, who sincerely joined the cause of the working class, but internally have not yet burned out and have retained many qualities and methods of thought characteristic of the philistine milieu. These worst elements of the new regime tend to crystallize into the Soviet bureaucracy.
I say "worst" - not forgetting the many thousands of simply unprincipled technicians who are used by all Soviet institutions. Technicians, "non-Party" specialists carry out their task, for better or worse, without taking responsibility for the Soviet regime and without placing responsibility for themselves on our Party. They must be used in every possible way, without demanding from them what they cannot give ... But the direct historical ballast is our own bureaucracy, already conservative, inert, self-satisfied, unwilling to learn and even hostile to those who remind us of the need to study .
This is the real danger to the cause of the communist revolution. These are the real accomplices of the counter-revolution, although without a conspiracy. Our factories do not work better than the bourgeois ones, but worse. Therefore, the fact that at their head, in the form of a board, there are several workers, does not in itself decide the matter. If these workers are determined to achieve high results (and in most cases they are or will be), then all difficulties will be overcome. It is necessary, therefore, to approach from all sides a more reasonable, more perfect organization of the economy, of the administration of the army. It is necessary to awaken initiative, criticism, creativity. More space must be given to the great spring of competition. Along with this, it is necessary, therefore, to attract specialists, to look for experienced organizers, first-class technicians, to give way to all sorts of talents - both those who come up from the bottom, and those who are inherited from the bourgeois regime. Only a miserable Soviet bureaucrat, jealous of his new post and cherishing this post for the sake of personal privileges, and not for the sake of the interests of the workers' revolution, can treat with wholesale distrust any great expert in the field, an outstanding organizer, technician, specialist, scientist, having decided in advance to himself, that "we can manage somehow."
Our Academy of the General Staff is now training Party comrades who, in fact, through blood experience, have conscientiously understood how difficult this harsh art of war is, and who are now working with the greatest attention under the guidance of professors of the old military school. Persons close to the Academy informed me that the attitude of students towards professors was not at all conditioned by political motives, and it seems that the most conservative of the professors received the most striking signs of attention. These people want to learn. They see others next to them who have knowledge, and they don’t snort, they don’t brag, they don’t shout “let’s throw Soviet hats” - they study diligently and conscientiously from the “tsarist generals”, because these generals know what they don’t know communists, and what communists need to know. And I have no doubt that, having learned a little, our red military academicians will make major corrections to what they are now being taught, and perhaps even say some new word.
Lack of knowledge, of course, is not a fault, but a misfortune, and, moreover, a misfortune that can be corrected. But this misfortune becomes guilt, even a crime, when it is supplemented by complacency, hope for "maybe" and "maybe" and an envious and hostile attitude towards anyone who knows more.
You asked why this question of military specialists excites such passions. The point is that behind this question, if you get to the bottom of it, two tendencies are hidden: one, which proceeds from an understanding of the enormity of the tasks before us, strives to use all the forces and means inherited by the proletariat from capital - to rationalize, i.e. to -e. in practice to comprehend all social work, including military work, to apply the principle of economy of forces in all areas, to achieve the greatest results with the least sacrifices - indeed, to create conditions under which it will be easier to live. Another tendency, fortunately much less strong, feeds on the moods of narrow-minded, envious and self-satisfied and at the same time self-doubt petty-bourgeois-bureaucratic conservatism... Not true! "Somehow" we will not cope in any case: either we will cope completely, as it should be, in a scientific way, with the use and development of all the forces and means of technology, or we will not cope in any way, but we will fail. Who did not understand this, he did not understand anything.
Returning to the question raised by you, my friend, about military specialists, I will tell you the following from my direct observations. We have separate corners in the army where "distrust" of military specialists especially flourished. What are these corners? The most cultured, the most rich in political consciousness of the masses? Nothing like this! On the contrary: these are the most disadvantaged corners of our Soviet Republic. In one of our armies, until recently, a rather petty and stupid mockery of "military experts", i.e., was considered a sign of the highest revolutionary spirit. over anyone who has gone through military school. But in parts of this same army, almost no political work was carried out. The communist commissars, these political "specialists", were treated there no less hostilely than military specialists. Who sowed this enmity? - The worst part of the new commanders. Military half-knowers, half-partisans, half-party people who did not want to endure next to them either party workers or serious workers in military affairs. This is the worst type of commander. They are ignorant but do not want to learn. To their failures - and how can they have successes? - they are always looking for explanations in someone else's betrayal. They are pitifully shy before any change of mood in their unit, for they are deprived of serious moral and military authority. When a unit that does not feel a firm leader refuses to advance, they hide behind its back. Holding on tenaciously to their posts, they treat with hatred the very mention of military science. For them, it is identified with treason and betrayal. Many of them, utterly confused, ended up in a direct uprising against Soviet power.
In those units where the spiritual level of the Red Army soldier is higher, where political work is carried on, where there are responsible commissars and party cells, they are not afraid of military specialists, but demand them, use them and learn from them. Moreover, there, with much greater success, genuine traitors are caught and shot in time. And - most importantly - they win there.
So, dear friend! Now you may perhaps understand more clearly the roots of the differences on the question of military and other specialists.
"On my way". Tambov - Balashov,
"Military Affairs" N 5 - 6 (34 - 35),
*153 The question of attracting specialists in all areas of construction and, in particular, the question of attracting military specialists - officers of the tsarist army - to the Red Army, was one of the fundamental issues facing the party and the Soviet government in 1918.
It is absolutely clear that the Party did not have at that moment, just as it does not have to a sufficient extent at the present time, specialists capable of directing the work of economic and military organs. Meanwhile, there was a fairly strong trend among the party, headed by left-wing communists, which spoke out in the strongest terms against the involvement of "captains of industry" and "tsarist generals" in work under the control of the party. Since such a point of view introduced disintegration and sowed distrust in the specialists involved, which threatened especially great dangers in the army, the leaders of the party opposed the disorganizers with all their might. At the II Congress of Soviets National economy comrade Lenin threatened "merciless reprisals under martial law" to anyone who tries to "replace the matter with reasoning that is the embodiment of short-sightedness and the crudest stupidity, intellectual conceit", consisting in the assertion, "as if only communists, among whom, undoubtedly, there are very good people can carry out certain work. "Capitalism," he said, "left us an enormous legacy, left us its greatest specialists, whom we must certainly use and use on a wide scale, bulk size, put them all in motion. We have absolutely no time to waste time on training specialists from among our communists, because now the whole point is practical work, in practical results.
In particular, a lot of work on the issue of attracting specialists had to be carried out by comrade. Trotsky both inside the party - with the left communists, and outside it - with the left socialist-revolutionaries, during the construction of the army. Although it became increasingly clear that without the involvement of the officers it would not have been possible to create the main cadres of the army and, of course, it would not have been possible to repulse the first onslaught of the counter-revolution, the left communists continued in April in "Theses on the Current Situation" (Appendix No. 15) to assert that "in the field of military policy ... in practice ... the old officer corps and the command power of the tsarist generals are being restored," that "in the army, it is not elected persons who rule, but certain counter-revolutionaries." For their part, the left communists proposed an elected command staff and, at best, an appointed command staff of workers and peasants. Theoretically, the left communists were, of course, right in the sense that a communist commander is better than an officer in the tsarist army. “There is no need to say,” Comrade Trotsky pointed out, “that, other things being equal, the Soviet government would prefer a communist commander to a non-communist one, but no one is suggesting that we “choose between communist and non-communist commanders. Until recently, we almost did not have "our own" - in the Party sense - command staff ... Standing aside, one can, of course, resonate as much as one likes about the advantages of the communist command staff over others. But whoever participates in today's work on building the army and deals with specific regiments, battalions, companies, platoons that need today, immediately, living regimental, battalion, platoon commanders - he has to not resonate, but select commanders from that material, which is available."
It is clear, of course, that simultaneously with the recruitment of officers, the Soviet government intensively trained its red command staff in military schools and courses (see note 155) and did not at all "lose sight of the task of creating a proletarian officer corps," as the left communists portrayed. It is also clear that not all the officers involved were completely reliable. To supervise them, the institution of military commissars was created to exercise control over them (see note 184). The course of enlisting military specialists was steadily pursued by the Party, despite the opposition of a part of it. Already on July 29, officers, military officials and medical personnel born between 1892 and 1897 were mobilized, and two days later non-commissioned officers.
Life subsequently showed the correctness of this step, and already at the end of December 1918 Comrade. Trotsky could have stated in an interview with an employee of Izvestia VTSIK that "now, after hundreds of authoritative party workers themselves worked at the front and clarified the state of affairs on the spot, there is no 'question' about military specialists." After some recurrences of specialism (see, for example, note 241), observed in some places, however, to this day, the Eighth Party Congress could, however, already state that "the question of the command staff, presenting great practical difficulties, does not gives essentially no grounds for fundamental disagreements.
(Theses approved by the VIII Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1919*)
/* They are placed in the first part of the XVII vol., embracing 1918, because they are a generalization of the experience of 1918. - Comrade Trotsky did not make a report at the congress, because he was at the front. Note. ed.
I. General provisions
The old social-democratic program demanded the establishment of an all-people militia based, if possible, on the basis of non-barracks military training for all citizens capable of bearing arms. This program requirement, opposed in the era of the Second International to imperialist standing armies with barracks training, long service life and caste officers, had the same historical meaning like other demands of democracy: universal, equal suffrage, a unicameral system, etc. Under the conditions of "peaceful" capitalist development and for the time being forced to adapt the class struggle of the proletariat to the framework of bourgeois legality, the natural task of social democracy was to demand the most democratic forms in the organization of the capitalist state and the capitalist army. The struggle on this basis was undoubtedly of educational value, but, as the great experience of the last war showed, the struggle for the democratization of bourgeois militarism yielded even lesser results than the struggle for the democratization of bourgeois parliamentarism. For in the field of militarism, the bourgeoisie, without renouncing itself, can only allow such "democratism" as does not offend its class rule, i.e., democracy is illusory, imaginary. When it comes to the fundamental interests of the bourgeoisie in the international sphere, as well as in domestic relations, bourgeois militarism in Germany, France, Switzerland, England, America, despite all the differences state forms and the structure of the armies of these countries, revealed the same features of merciless class brutality.
When the class struggle turns into an open civil war, tearing apart the shell of bourgeois law and bourgeois-democratic institutions, the slogan "people's militia" loses its meaning in exactly the same way as the slogan of democratic parliamentarism, and therefore becomes an instrument of reaction. Just as the slogan "Constituent Assembly" became a cover for the work of restoring the power of the landlords and capitalists, so too the slogan of the "people's" or "all people's" army became a means of creating the army of Krasnov and Kolchak.
After the experience of the Russian revolution, the truly contemptible philistine blindness of Kautsky is needed in order to preach formal democracy in the organization of state power and the army at a time when the German Constituent Assembly is hiding in Weimar from Berlin, surrendering to the protection of the White Guard regiments, when General Hoffmann is recruiting his iron battalions from Junker, bourgeois and kulak sons, and the Spartacists are arming the revolutionary workers. The epoch of the proletarian revolution that has come is the epoch of open civil war of the proletariat against every bourgeois state and every bourgeois army, regardless of whether it is covered or not covered by forms of democracy. The victory of the proletariat in this civil war inevitably leads to the establishment of a class proletarian state and a class army.
Volunteerism is the only possible means of creating any combat-ready units in the conditions of the catastrophic collapse of the old army and all the organs of formation and control of it. The best proof of this is the fact that in today's Germany the counter-revolutionary generals find themselves as compelled as the Spartacists to resort to the creation of volunteer battalions. The transition from volunteerism to obligatory duty became possible at the moment when the main masses of the old army dispersed into cities and villages, and local military administration bodies had time to be created on the ground: accounting, formation and supply (volost, county, provincial, district commissariats).
The opposition of the idea of partisan detachments to a systematically organized and centralized army (the preaching of "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries and the like) is a caricature product of the political thought or thoughtlessness of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Partisan methods of struggle were imposed in the first period on the proletariat by its oppressed position in the state, just as the use of primitive underground printing houses and secret meetings of circles was already imposed on it. The conquest of political power gave the proletariat the opportunity to use the state apparatus for the planned construction of a centralized army, the unity of organization and unity of command of which alone can ensure the achievement of the greatest results with the least sacrifices. To preach partisanship as a military program is the same as recommending a return from large-scale industry to handicrafts. Such a sermon fully corresponds to the nature of intellectual groups, which are incapable of mastering state power who are incapable of even seriously setting themselves the task of mastering this power and excelling in partisan (polemical or terrorist) raids on workers' power.
It can be considered theoretically irrefutable that the most the best army we would get it by creating it on the basis of the compulsory education of workers and laboring peasants in conditions close to their daily work. The general improvement of industry, the increase in the collectivity and productivity of agricultural labor would create the most healthy basis for the army, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions of which would coincide with workshops of factories, factories, villages, volosts, districts, provinces, etc. Such an army, the formation which would go hand in hand with the economic upsurge of the country and the parallel education of command personnel, would become the most invincible army in the world. We are heading towards such an army, and sooner or later we will come to it.
The need for a direct, immediate rebuff to internal and external class enemies, however, did not allow us to proceed in such an organic way to the workers' and peasants' militia, for which it would take several years, in any case, a long series of months. Just as on the second day after the October Revolution we found ourselves compelled to resort to volunteer formations, so at the next stage, precisely in the summer of last year, when the ring of imperialism was especially tightly compressed around Soviet Russia, we found ourselves forced to speed up our military work and, without waiting for the militia, i.e. -e. non-barracks formations of the territorial type, to resort to forced general mobilization of certain ages and to their accelerated training and rallying them in the barracks. At the same time, all the efforts of the military department are aimed at bringing the barracks closer to the military school, making it the center not only of purely military training, but also of general education and political education.
Our current active, ie. acting or directly preparing for action, the army is precisely the specified transitional type: being class-based in its social composition, it is not a militia, but a permanent, regular one in terms of the methods of formation and training. If this last circumstance is the source of many internal difficulties, especially in the conditions of the extreme exhaustion of the country, then at the same time we can say with satisfaction that this transitional army, created in the most unfavorable conditions, has shown the ability to beat its enemies.
Simultaneously with the barracks or purely field formations, i.e. formations in a combat situation, extensive work is underway for the general training of workers and laboring peasants in the field. In relation to our regular formations, the work of general training at its first stages was considered as elementary training, as the instillation of certain skills in an individual wrestler with the aim of accelerating his further training in the composition of the combat unit in which he will be included. Undoubtedly, even from this limited point of view, general education already now serves an important service to the cause of building an army.
But the task of general instruction in military affairs can in no case be limited to the indicated auxiliary service role. General education should, through a series of stages, coordinated with more urgent and sharp work in the formation of regular units, lead us to the creation of a real militia army.
For this purpose, it is necessary that general education should not be limited to the tasks of individual military training, but should go over to the formation of at first at least the smallest military units, without, if possible, tearing off their constituent elements, i.e., workers and peasants, from a normal working environment. Universal training should move to the formation of individual platoons, companies, and later on battalions and regiments, with a more distant prospect of the formation of entire divisions from local workers and peasants with local command staff, with local stocks of weapons and all supplies in general.
Assuming a further uninterrupted and prolonged struggle against the imperialist troops, a gradual transition to a militia army is possible only through a new organization of replenishment of the attrition in the active troops. At present, replacements are formed in the same way as the main units - through the so-called reserve battalions. In the future, moreover, in the near future, replenishment should be formed in the process and on the basis of general training and sent to the active regiments of the same territorial origin in such a way that during demobilization the constituent elements of the regiment would not scatter throughout the country, but would retain local labor compatriotic connections. The development of a number of measures for the gradual transition from our current transitional army to a territorial-militia army should be the responsibility of the appropriate bodies of the military department, which has already taken the first decisive steps in this direction.
The class militia army to which we are heading does not, as is clear from everything that has preceded, improvised, i.e., a hastily created, poorly trained army, with a random selection of weapons and a semi-prepared command staff. On the contrary, training through general education should be so organized that, in connection with maneuvers, shooting exercises and military festivals, it will result in a more qualified type of individual soldier and whole unit than at present. The militia army must be trained, armed and organized according to the latest military science.
Commissars in the army are not only direct and immediate representatives of the Soviet government, but, above all, bearers of the spirit of our Party, its discipline, its firmness and courage in the struggle for the realization of the set goal. The Party can look back with full satisfaction at the heroic work of its commissars, who, hand in hand with the best elements of the command staff, in a short space of time built up a combat-ready army. At the same time, it is necessary that the Political Departments of the Army, under the direct supervision of the Central Committee, subsequently select commissars, eliminating from their midst all any chance, unstable, careerist elements.
The work of the commissars can give full results only if it relies in every unit on the direct support of a cell of communist soldiers. The rapid numerical growth of communist cells is the most important guarantee that the army will be more and more imbued with the ideas and discipline of communism. But it is precisely in view of the enormous role of the communist cells that the commissars and all the most mature party workers in the army in general must take measures to ensure that unstable elements do not enter the composition of the cells in pursuit of imaginary rights and privileges. Respect for communist cells will be the higher and more unshakable, the more clearly each soldier understands and is convinced by experience that belonging to a communist cell does not give the soldier any special rights, but only imposes on him the obligation to be the most selfless and courageous fighter.
Approving on the whole the regulation worked out by the Central Committee on the rights and obligations of communist cells, commissars and political departments, the congress makes it the duty of all comrades working in the army to unswervingly comply with this provision.
The demand for the election of command staff, which was of great fundamental importance in relation to the bourgeois army, where the command staff was selected and trained as an apparatus for the class subordination of soldiers and, through the mediation of the soldiers, the working masses, completely loses its fundamental significance in relation to the class workers' and peasants' Red Army. . The possible combination of election and appointment is dictated to the revolutionary and class armies by purely practical considerations and depends on the level of formation achieved, the degree of cohesion of the army units, and the availability of command cadres. In general, it can be established that the less mature the units of the army, the more casual and transitional their composition is, the less the young command staff is tested by experience, the less expedient use can be found in the beginning of the election of commanders, and, conversely, the growth of the internal soldering of units , the development of a critical attitude among soldiers towards themselves and their superiors, the creation of significant cadres of lower and higher combat commanders who have shown their qualities in the conditions of a new war, create favorable conditions in which the beginning of the election of command personnel can be more and more widely used .
The question of command personnel, while presenting great practical difficulties, does not, in essence, provide any basis for disagreements in principle.
Even if our army were given the opportunity for several years to systematically form and train for itself at the same time a new command staff, in this case we would have no fundamental grounds for refusing to involve in the work those elements of the old command staff who either internally became to the point of view of the Soviet government, or by the force of things they saw themselves forced to serve it conscientiously. The revolutionary character of the army is determined, first of all, by the character of the Soviet regime that creates this army, that sets its goal and thus turns it into its instrument. On the other hand, the correspondence of this tool Soviet regime achieved by the class composition of the main mass of fighters, the organization of commissars and communist cells, and finally, the general party and Soviet leadership of the life and activities of the army.
The work of training and educating new officers, mainly from among the workers and advanced peasants, is one of the most important tasks in creating an army. The continuous growth in the number of instructor courses and their pupils testifies to the fact that the military department is giving this task all the attention it deserves. Along with the Higher Military Academy (General Staff), 5 secondary schools are being organized - between instructor courses and the Higher Military Academy. Nevertheless, in the ranks of the present Red Army there are very numerous commanders from the composition of the old army, who are doing their job with great benefit for the cause. responsible work. The need for selection and control in order to prevent treacherous, provocative elements is self-evident and, as far as experience shows, is practically resolved more or less successfully by our military organization. From this point of view, there can be no reason for the Party to revise our military policy.
The regulations (internal service, field service, garrison) issued so far, while introducing firmness and formality into the internal relations of the army, into the rights and duties of its constituent elements, and therefore representing a major step forward, nevertheless reflect the transitional period of the formation of our army and will subject to further processing, as the old "barracks" features are overcome in the formation of the army and its ever greater transformation into a class, militia.
The agitation that is being waged from the camp of the bourgeois democrats (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks) against the Red Army, as against a manifestation of "militarism", as against the basis of the coming Bonapartism, is only an expression of political ignorance or charlatanism, or a mixture of both. Bonapartism is not a product of military organization as such, but a product of certain social relations. The political domination of the petty bourgeoisie, which stands between the reactionary big-bourgeois elements and the revolutionary proletarian rank and file, still incapable of an independent political role and political domination, created the necessary prerequisite for the emergence of Bonapartism, which found support in the strong peasant and rose above the class contradictions that could not be resolved in revolutionary program of petty-bourgeois (Jacobin) democracy. Inasmuch as the fundamental basis of Bonapartism is the kulak peasant, the very social composition of our army, from which the kulaks are excluded and expelled, provides a most serious guarantee against Bonapartist tendencies. Russian parodies of Bonapartism, in the form of Krasnovism, Kolchakism, etc., did not grow out of the Red Army, but in a direct and open struggle against it. Skoropadsky - the Ukrainian Bonaparte on the Hohenzollern side - formed an army on the basis of a qualification that was directly opposite to the qualification of the Red Army, recruiting strong fists into his regiments. Under these conditions, only those who only yesterday and directly and indirectly supported the Ukrainian, Don, Arkhangelsk and Siberian candidates for Bonaparte can see in the army of the proletarians and the rural poor a bulwark of Bonapartism!
Since the Red Army itself is only an instrument of a certain regime, the basic guarantee against Bonapartism, as well as against all other types of counter-revolution, must be sought in the regime itself. The counter-revolution cannot in any sense develop out of the regime of the proletarian dictatorship; it can only be established as a result of a direct and open bloody victory over this regime. The development and strengthening of the Red Army is necessary precisely in order to make such a victory impossible. Thus, the historical meaning of the existence of the Red Army lies in the fact that it is an instrument of the socialist self-defense of the proletariat and the rural poor, their defender against the dangers of kulak-bourgeois Bonapartism supported by foreign imperialism.
II. Practical Measures
Based on these basic provisions, the VIII Congress of the RCP considers it necessary to carry out the following next practical measures:
2. Continuing to attract military specialists to command and administrative positions and selecting reliable elements, to establish unrelenting centralized party-political control exercised through commissars over them, eliminating those who turn out to be politically and technically unsuitable.
3. Organize a system of attestation of command personnel, entrusting the commissars with the periodic compilation of such attestations.
4. Strengthen the formation of command personnel from proletarians and semi-proletarians and improve it both in terms of military and political training, for which purpose to create competent attestation commissions in the rear and at the front, composed with a predominance of party representation for the systematic sending of red officers of the Red Army soldiers to schools , the most prepared by combat practice for the role of red officers.
The course programs should be reviewed in accordance with the spirit of the Red Army in the context of the civil war.
Local party organizations should pay special attention to the proper organization of political education in the courses.
5. Local organizations are required to carry out systematic and intensive work of the communist education of Red Army soldiers in the rear units by assigning special workers.
6. The Central Committee of the Party is instructed to organize a planned distribution of army and navy communists among units.
7. To transfer the center of gravity of communist work at the front from the political departments of the fronts to the political departments of the armies and divisions in order to revive and bring it closer to the units operating at the front. Issue an agreed and precise regulation on the rights and duties of Political Committees, Political Departments and Komyacheks.
8. Abolish the All-Bureau Military Committee. Create the Political Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, transferring to this department all the functions of the All-Byurovoenkom, placing at its head a member of the Central Committee of the RCP as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.
9. Rework military regulations, reducing them, if possible, eliminating all archaisms and decrees establishing unnecessary privileges for command personnel, giving a proper place in the schedule of classes to questions of political education.
10. To hastily revise the regulation on commissars and revolutionary military councils in the sense of accurately defining the rights and obligations of commissars and commanders, while providing the resolution of economic and administrative issues to the commanders together with the commissars and giving the commissars the right to impose disciplinary sanctions (including the right to arrest) and the right to betray court.
11. To recognize as necessary the subordination of the "special departments" of the armies and fronts, respectively, to the commissars of the armies and fronts, leaving the functions of general leadership and control over their activities to the "special department" of the Republic.
12. Recognize it as necessary in the future, when developing general governing charters, regulations and instructions, to put them, if possible, for a preliminary discussion by the political workers of the armies.
The leader of the Bolsheviks, V. I. Lenin, set the task of attracting military specialists from the Russian Empire to the construction of the Red Army and to command and control troops during hostilities against the White armies.
Although, from the point of view of communist ideology, the tsarist officers and generals belonged to the exploiting class hostile to the proletariat, the military necessity to create a regular Red Army forced the recruitment of a large number of former officers and generals.
| ... Marxist politics is not at all the politics of Tyapkin-Lyapkin, who comes to everything with his own mind, because history is not at all going to wait until we, discarding specialists, gradually begin to think of the question of turning detachments into regiments, or rather, of renaming them : for, the matter was precisely reduced to the fact that the heads of the detachments called themselves commanders of regiments, brigades and divisions, depending on their taste, which, however, did not at all bring their detachments closer to the correct internally proportional military formations. L. Trotsky. Military specialists and the Red Army |
At the same time, the "left communists" and later the "military opposition" opposed the use of former officers. On the other hand, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, L. D. Trotsky, and his associates were against excessive control over the work of military specialists.
March 19, 1918 Council people's commissars adopted a decision on the wide involvement of military specialists in the Red Army, and on March 26, the Supreme Military Council issued an order to abolish the elective beginning in the army, which opened up access to the ranks of the Red Army for former generals and officers.
By the summer of 1918, several thousand officers voluntarily joined the Red Army. In Soviet literature, there is a figure of 8 thousand such officers, which, however, from the point of view of some modern researchers, is overestimated. It was even argued that during the period of voluntary recruitment of the Red Army, only 765 officers joined it [ need attribution ] . As the Civil War expanded and the size of the Red Army increased, the need for experienced military personnel increased rapidly. Under such conditions, the principle of voluntariness no longer suited the leadership of the Bolsheviks, and it switched to the mobilization principle (to the mobilization of officers, but a little later - at the beginning of 1919 - the opponents of the Bolsheviks were also forced to switch).
On June 29, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree, according to which the mobilization of former officers and officials was introduced. By September 1919, 35.5 thousand officers and generals and about 4 thousand military officials were enrolled in the ranks of the Red Army. Until the end of the Civil War, a total of 48.5 thousand officers and generals, as well as 10.3 thousand military officials and about 14 thousand military doctors were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army. In addition, up to 14 thousand officers who served in the white and national armies were enrolled in the Red Army until 1921, including, for example, future Marshals Soviet Union L. A. Govorov and I. Kh. Bagramyan.
According to A. G. Kavtardze, a total of about 30% of the pre-revolutionary officer corps served in the Red Army. Excluding about a third of the officer corps who did not take part in the Civil War at all, 43% of the officers who were in Russian army by the beginning of 1918, they fought on the side of the "reds", with 57% - on the side of the "whites". According to S. V. Volkov, the number of those who fought for the Bolsheviks is less and amounts (excluding former white officers taken prisoner) to 19-20% of the pre-revolutionary officers.
The personnel shortage in the Red Army was eliminated thanks to the creation of military schools and accelerated training courses for red commanders from workers and peasants. Gradually, due to commanders from workers and peasants who graduated from military schools and courses, the proportion of former officers decreased. So in 1918, military experts accounted for 75% of the command staff of the Red Army, in 1919 - 53%, in 1920 - 42%, at the end of 1921 - 34%, while the decrease in the proportion of former officers did not mean a decrease in their absolute number and was explained by an increase in the size of the army and its command staff as a whole.
Transferring their operational and technical experience, military knowledge and skills, the military specialists of the old school provided great assistance to the Reds in building their armed forces and in organizing the victories of the Red Army over the interventionists and the White Guards in the battles of the Civil War in Russia. In this regard, the following statistics are indicative:
| ... Of the 20 persons who held the positions of front commanders during the Civil War, 17 people, or 85%, were regular officers of the old army. The positions of chiefs of staff of the fronts were occupied by 25 people - all former regular officers, 22 general staff officers and 3 colonels of the old army. Of the 100 army commanders, 82 people were military specialists, of which 62 were personnel. 5 people changed the Soviet government, of which three were former career General Staff officers (B.P. Bogoslovsky, N.D. Vsevolodov, F.E. Makhin) and two wartime officers (I.L. Sorokin. A.I. Kharchenko) There were 93 chiefs of staff of the armies, of which 77 (83%) were former career officers, including 49 general staff officers. 5 former officers of the General Staff (V.A. Zheltyshev, V.Ya. Ludenkvist, V.E. Mediokritsky, A.S. Nechvolodov, A.L. Simonov) and two ordinary officers (V.V. Vdoviev- Kabardintsev and D.A. Severin). As chiefs of 142 rifle and 33 cavalry divisions in 1918-1920. consisted of 485 people, of which 118 did not manage to establish service until October 1917. Of the remaining 367 military specialists, there were 327 people (almost 90%), including 209 career officers (over 55%), of which 35 were former officers of the General Staff. Non-military specialists (former non-commissioned officers, soldiers, sailors and those who did not serve) were 40 people (about 10%). The position of chief of staff of the division consisted of 524 people, including 78 people who also replaced the positions of division chiefs and have already been taken into account above. Of the remaining 140 people, the service until October could not be established, 133 people who held the position of a guard for less than one month were also not taken into account by the author. The remaining 173 people were all military specialists, of which 87 people were career officers, including 5 generals, 45 headquarters and 37 chief officers. ... Military specialists also prevailed in the positions of middle and senior command staff in the link regiment commander - battalion commander, especially in the positions of regiment commanders (although here the proportion of regular officers was already noticeably lower). So, in the 3rd Army of the Eastern Front at the end of 1918, out of 61 officers, from the division commander to the battalion commanders inclusive, 47 people (up to 80%) were military specialists. ... Former generals and officers held the positions of military leaders, as well as the vast majority of other senior positions and in local military administration bodies (in seven district, 39 provincial, 395 county and 569 volost commissariats for military affairs), over 90% of the teaching and combatant staff of the military academies, higher schools, accelerated and short-term team courses. A.G. Kavtaradze. Military specialists in the service of the Republic of Soviets |
After the end of the Civil War, due to a large-scale (almost tenfold) reduction in the army, a significant part of the military experts were dismissed from the Red Army, many switched to teaching at military academies. The military experts who remained in the service, who in the 1920s occupied the main positions in the country's top military leadership and in the system of military education, largely determined the appearance and development of the Red Army.
In 1928-1929, a number of military engineers were arrested and shot in the case of a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy" in the military-industrial department of the Supreme Economic Council. Those arrested accounted for 1/3 of the military engineers of the VPU and trusts, and according to specific gravity(experience, knowledge) not less than 50%. The following were executed: V. S. Mikhailov, V. L. Dymman, V. N. Dekhanov, N. G. Vysochansky, N. V. Shulga. The organizer of the military chemical industry, former General V. N. Ipatiev, having learned about the massacre, became a defector.
The turn of the decades was marked by a massive repressive operation against the military (see the Vesna case), which was aimed primarily at regular officers of the old army.
Many of the military experts who remained in the service of the Red Army were subjected to various repressions during the purges in the Red Army in 1937-1938.
Some military experts, who were not affected by the repressions and were not dismissed from the army due to age and health, took an active part in the Great Patriotic War in combat and staff positions, including both regular officers of the old army and wartime officers.
Among the first, the following can be noted - these are the chiefs of the General Staff Marshal of the Soviet Union B.M. Shaposhnikov (colonel) and A.M. Vasilevsky (headquarters captain), commander of the 3rd Ukrainian Front F.I. Tolbukhin (headquarters captain), commander of the Leningrad Front L. A. Govorov (lieutenant), commander of the Bryansk Front, Colonel General M. A. Reiter (colonel), commander of the 24th Guards Rifle Corps, Lieutenant General A. Ya. Kruse (lieutenant colonel), lieutenant general of engineering Troops D. M. Karbyshev (lieutenant colonel), chief of staff and acting commander of the 89th Rifle Corps, Major General A. Ya. Yanovsky (captain), chief of staff of the 5th Guards Airborne Division, Lieutenant Colonel G. S. Gorchakov ( captain). During the war, the armies and corps were commanded by former career officers of the tsarist army N. Ya. Averyanov (captain), A. N. Bakhtin (colonel), A. V. Blagodatov (lieutenant), S. V. Vishnevsky (staff captain), N. M. Dreier (captain), I. P. Karmanov (second lieutenant), B. K. Kolchigin (captain), V. A. Krylov (captain), V. S. Tamruchi (captain). The outstanding artillery scientist Colonel-General of Artillery V. D. Grendal (colonel) did not live to see the war.
A much larger number of career officers continued to engage in military scientific and teaching activities: Lieutenant Colonel E. V. Aleksandrov, Colonel L. G. Aleksandrov, Lieutenant Colonel V. A. Alekseev, Major General of the General Staff E. Z. Barsukov, Major General of the General Staff V E. Belolipetsky, Colonel N. I. Betticher, Colonel
The October Revolution led to a split in the armed forces. The officers who faithfully served the tsar took at least three positions in relation to the Bolsheviks: a position of non-reconciliation in relation to the Soviet power, expectant, and more or less loyal. The group of officers who took the third position eventually went over to the side of the Soviets.
A little about how former career generals, military leaders and officers of the tsarist army ended up in the Red Army.
For the newly created Soviet power in early 1918, a turning point comes: Lenin understands that the partisans, and that is how Lenin calls the Red Guard, will not be able to protect the newly created young state. And Lenin decides to recruit former tsarist officers - military experts, as they were later called, into the ranks of the Red Army. And he brought them to the service of the Bolsheviks on the orders of Commissar Trotsky Ephraim Sklyansky, his deputy. It was Sklyansky who was engaged in propaganda among former officers. By the summer of 1918, almost seven thousand officers had voluntarily signed up for the regular Red Army. The military experts were led by Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, who had recently been appointed military instructor of the Air Force.
Almost until the end of the twentieth century, it was generally accepted that it was the Bolshevik Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army that defeated the well-trained and heavily armed armies of Denikin and Wrangel, however, according to today's historians' estimates, about 500 top-echelon officers, brilliant graduates of the General Staff Academy, fought in the ranks of the Reds. imperial Russia. These are B. Shaposhnikov, D. Karbyshev, M. Bonch-Bruevich, S. Kamenev, A. Egorov and others. According to the historian Kavtaradze, almost thirty percent of the officers of the tsarist corps served in the ranks of the Bolsheviks. As Trotsky joked about this: "The Red Army is very reminiscent of a radish: it is red only on the outside."
Fate brought them a sad surprise: the military experts had to fight against their fellow students on the side of the Bolsheviks. However, military experts, many of whom joined the Bolshevik army out of a sense of patriotism, believed that they should defend their homeland, the Russian people, and their family members.
When in the fall of 1920 the regular Red Army finally completed the defeat of the Russian army, Wrangel admitted before his escape that he was not afraid for Russia, because she now has such a trained army that will repulse any external enemy. “It was we who honed their blades,” Wrangel said in conclusion. Of course, he meant precisely them - the military experts, thanks to whom the army of the Bolsheviks turned from a rabble, from partisans into an active army that won the Civil War.
However, the Bolsheviks always believed that military experts were alien elements for the revolution, they were never trusted.
And what thanked the military experts Soviet state? In 1922, military experts began to be dismissed from command positions, and registration of all military experts began: they were forbidden to move around the country without the permission of the state security agencies. Many officers were shot in the dungeons of the Cheka: they were charged with participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracies. Lenin even had to create a new position in the General Staff, which controlled the arrests of military experts, which his associates did not really like. After Lenin's death, there was no one else to protect the military experts. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, Sklyansky, whom Stalin strongly hated, was sent to America, with which there were then no diplomatic relations. From the curator of military experts, he turns into a representative of trade. In America, Sklyansky works as chairman of Amtorg. However, he soon dies under very mysterious circumstances.
When in the early thirties the threat of war looms over the USSR, and in the country itself peasant uprisings break out here and there, the Soviet government decides to neutralize the military experts. Criminal cases are opened against them, the only charge in which was a conspiracy. The largest and loudest was the criminal case called "Spring", or "Guards case". In Leningrad alone, more than a thousand former military experts were shot. Among them: division commander A. Svechin, P. Sytin - former commander of the Southern Front, Yu. Gravitsky, A. Verkhovsky, A. Snesarev and others.
In 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, the commander of the Belarusian Military District, Kork, the Commissar of the Military Academy, the commander of the Leningrad Military District, Iona Yakir, the chairman of the Sovaviahim Eideman, and others were shot in the notorious case of the “military”.
It is not known what fate would have awaited the curator of the military experts, Ephraim Sklyansky, if he had not drowned in 1925. Until now, many people think that it was on Stalin's orders that Sklyansky was removed.
Almost all the prominent military leaders who stood at the origins of the creation of the Red Army disappeared one after another. Among them are Vatsetis, who was repressed in the 1930s, and Yegorov, who was shot on charges of espionage. During the period Stalinist repressions only a very few ex-military experts will survive. One of them was Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, Boris Shaposhnikov. Leonid Govorov.
We sharpened their blades. military drama
On August 27, 1925, in New York, under mysterious circumstances, Ephraim Sklyansky drowned, in the past - the right hand of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the young Soviet Republic, Lev Trotsky. Later, many will suspect that Sklyansky was removed at the direction of Stalin himself. Together with one of the founders of the Red Army, many secrets will drown in the waters of the American lake. Including the main one - who actually won the Civil War?
It was Ephraim Sklyansky, on the instructions of Trotsky, who was engaged in attracting former tsarist officers to serve in the young Red Army. They received a special status - military specialists or military experts. In the center of the film are the fates of Russian officers who happened to live in an era of historical turning point. First they lost their country and their army. Then they had to fight against their own brothers. And after the victory, most of them faced the sad fate of outcasts and candidates for destruction...
What prompted these people to serve the hated Bolsheviks? Who led the Red Army to victory: worker-peasant commanders or experienced tsarist officers? How did the Soviet authorities treat military experts after the Civil War? And why in the USSR did they try to forget about their merits and exploits?
The recruitment of military specialists was one of the main problems of the Red Army. Who can be considered military specialists? A military specialist (military specialist) is an officer of the old Russian army and navy, recruited to serve in the Red Army and the Red Army Fleet during the Civil War47. It was originally planned that there would be no place for officers in new army. But the defeats on the fronts of the Civil War forced the Bolsheviks to turn to military experts. The growth in the size of the Red Army required an increase in the number of experienced military personnel. It was impossible to prepare them in a short time. Therefore, the beginning of the development of legislation was laid on the recruitment of military experts both on a voluntary basis, and their mobilization, as well as control over the activities of these persons.
Here it is appropriate to note that after the destruction of the old army, the officers were left without a livelihood. It was not only expelled from the army, but also deprived of pensions. This, in our opinion, was the reason that the former officers began to voluntarily enter the service in the Red Army.
On March 19, 1918, the Supreme Military Council was established. As mentioned above, the Air Force was given the leadership of all military operations, control and leadership of the military department, organization and strengthening of the Red Army. According to A. G. Kavtaradze, the vast majority of posts in the Supreme Military Council were held by former high-ranking officers of the old army48. It was the Air Force that became the first body concentrating the military experts of the former General Staff.
On October 1, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On the Conscription of Former Officers and Military Officials for Active Military Service"49. According to it, six ages of the listed persons were called up for active service: in addition to officers, doctors, paramedics, medical assistants and military officials who were in active service or in reserve were indicated. This indicates an acute shortage not only of the actual officers, but also of persons with a narrow specialty. Persons who had obvious signs of unfitness for service, as well as "obsessed with serious illnesses" were exempted from conscription.
But here another problem arose. The fact is that a fairly large number of officers left after the breakdown of the old army in various civilian institutions in order to at least somehow feed themselves and their loved ones. Soon, many of them became indispensable specialists, without whom it was difficult to manage in production. Therefore, on December 7, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On the conscription of all former officers for military service"50. According to it, only 10 percent of all officers working at the enterprise could be exempted from conscription. Control over this was entrusted to local departmental commissions and the Special Commission under the Mobilization Directorate (established on April 16, 1918), which was supposed to consider applications for leaving more than 10 percent of the officers in the institution and extended its activities to the territory of the Moscow Military District.
A special commission was to carry out checks to determine the number of officers fit for military service. The work of the commission showed that a general check is required of all persons who received a deferment from conscription for any reason throughout the country in order to use the full potential of the officer corps of the imperial army. This was especially true of much-needed military specialists.
Therefore, on July 2, 1918, by a decree of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, a Special Commission was created to record former officers under the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (Osobkomuchet). The task of the commission was to search for and mobilize all former officers of the Russian imperial army on the territory of the RSFSR. For this, all local departments of the commission were subordinate to her.
Subsequently, the Regulation on the Special Committee was adopted, as well as orders No. 1-3 of the Chairman of the Special Committee, which regulated the activities of this body and its local departments51.
The Special Committee experienced significant difficulties in its work due to the confrontation of the interests of two departments: the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs, which wanted to get as many officers as possible, and the All-Russian Council of the National Economy, which sought to keep specialists in production.
Forced mobilization was carried out mainly by the very "lower classes" of the officer corps, who constantly carried big losses in its composition. But now I would like to talk about that privileged part of military specialists who, being the smallest group of them, nevertheless had a tremendous impact on the course of the Civil War. These are former officers of the General Staff. It is by their example that I would like to show the urgent need for military specialists that existed in the Red Army. Who was included in this group?
The names of these officers were included in the "List of the General Staff", published annually. It included officers who served in the positions of the General Staff or who had ever served, passed through and transferred either to other positions in the army, or left for civilian service.
In order to get into the General Staff, it was necessary to graduate from the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, which could be attended by senior officers who had at least three years of service in the officer rank, had a positive reference, were fit for health reasons and successfully passed the entrance exams. Every year about 70 people were recruited. As a result, very difficult entrance tests (for example, in 1914, out of 823 officers who took preliminary examinations at the headquarters of military districts, 420 people (51%) passed them). The training took two years and a nine-month additional course52.
We have listed all these requirements here in order to show how valuable the specialists of the General Staff were and how difficult it would be to create an institution of these specialists anew and how long it would take. And they were required immediately, especially since many of the military specialists were in the ranks of the Whites.
Therefore, it is the representatives of this group of military experts who will occupy leading posts in the Red Army. The General Staff officers were in more favorable material conditions than other categories of the command staff of the Red Army (salary - not less than 700 rubles per month). The terror of the Cheka practically did not affect the military experts of this category: in total, in 1918, according to V.V. Kaminsky, about 4.4 percent of the graduates of the Nikolaev Academy were arrested. Conditions lured the officers of the General Staff to the Red Army: as a result, it was the Red Army that concentrated more military specialists of the former General Staff than the combined White armies53.
Thus, the development of the institute of military specialists was of great importance for the development of the Red Army. It is these faces that will allow the Red Army to win victories on the battlefields. All the measures listed above, taken by the legislator, mainly concerned the replenishment of the army and its management. But an apparatus was required that had passed the combat school of the First World War. After all, the wars of the 20th century became not only wars of large masses of people, but, first of all, technical wars. And this required high-class specialists. Finally, talents were also required - the talents of organizers, managers, commanders. And such could only be a person with certain military knowledge. And the country's leadership understood their value and rolled back from the policy of confrontation, the persecution of former officers of the tsarist army. Moreover, the legislator went further - he tried to create favorable conditions for attracting as many military specialists as possible. And in the end it succeeded - the Red Army had more officers than its opponents.
