Trotsky: architect of the Red

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Red Guard detachment from the Putilov works For the first time the complete military writings and speeches of Leon Trotsky during the period of the Russian civil war (1918-22) will be available in English.

The present volume is the first of five, and covers the year 1918 when the young Soviet Republic was in greatest danger.

Trotsky, as People's Commissar for War from March 1918 was responsible for building up the Red Army from a few detachments of Red Guards, numbering only a few thousand to a million strong by the end of 1918.

The articles, speeches, letters,' orders and telegrams collected here reveal Trotsky not only as one of the greatest military strategists of all time, but also as a brilliant: Marxist able to assess with great sensitivity the relations between and changing • moods of all classes and between layers within each class in the white heat of civil waI.

Arsenal

Trotsky could not have built up a Red Army without the theoretical / arsenal of Marxism, and these writings themselves are a powerful addition to that arsenal.

These writings were first published in Russia in 1923, and Trotsky intended them to be translated into all languages to be used by proletarian revolutionaries all over the world in the struggle for communism.

But with the rise to power of the Stalinist bureaucracy, these and all. other writings and speeches of Trotsky • were suppressed. They have not been available in Russia for over 50 years.

Now we can see how the Red Army was really built.

No wonder the Stalinists are unable to write a history of the Red Army.

Nationalist

In these writings and speeches there is no trace of the reactionary nationalist theories of "socialism in one country" and "peaceful coexistence with imperialism".

It is true that one of the first decrees of the Bolshevik government after seizing power in 1917 was the decree on peace, calling on all governments and peoples to cease the imperialist slaughter and negotiate a democratic peace without annexations and indemnities.

But at the same time workers in all belligerent countries were urged to struggle to overthrow their own ruling classes.

The imperialists of both warring camps had no intention of "peacefully coexisting" with the "Soviet power in Russia.

They organised massive armed intervention with their own forces, as well as organising support for counter-revolutionary White Guard armies which seized power and set up reactionary capitalist administrations in various parts of Russia.

The first foreign invasion came from the Cermans.

The Bolsheviks were eventually foiced to accept harsh terms or a peace treaty, includirg the loss of the grain producing areas of the Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Trotsky himself was reluctant to accept the peace terms until persuaded by Lenin that there was no other way to preserve Soviet power.

The majority of the Bolshevik Party was inclined to the "evolutomany war against the Germans-a hopeless perspective at the time because the old Tsarist Russian army had disintegrated and the Red Army was not yet built.

After the peace treaty with the Germans was signed at Brest Litovsk, the Bolshevik government had to deal not only with White Guard armies which had seized power in the South and East but also with direct imperialist invasion from the Allied Powers (Britain and France) in the North and South as well as the Japanese in the East.

The most dangerous situation was caused by the revolt of the Czechoslovak legions against the Soviet power in May 1918.

These former prisoners of war from the Austrian army were interned in Siberia under Tsarist rule, and were released by the Bolsheviks on the understanding that they would be sent to France.

The revolt was undoubtedly sparked off by propaganda and false information supplied by Allied Imperialism and local White Guard forces.

The Czechoslovak / revolt coincided with an offensive organised by White Guard forces in Siberia, and organised uprisings by Social Revolutionaries elsewhere in Russia.

This was followed by British and French intervention in Murmansk and Archangelsk in the North.

At the same time the armies of the Don Cossacks advanced to overthrow Soviet power in the South and White Guard: troops backed by Turkish forces advanced in Central Asia. anti-Soviet forces and the spectre of famine stalked the land.

In July the Left Socialist Revolutionaries who had been in alliance with the Bolsheviks staged a rèvolt and assassinated the German ambassador Count Mirbach in order to provoke war with Germany.

Uritsky, a™ prominent Bolshevik leader in Petrograd was murdered and Lenin was shot and wounded by Socialist Revolutionaries.

Rallied

But in the hour of greatest danger, the workers and poor peasants rallied to the Soviet A decisive change occurred in the Red Army, and for the first time they took the offensive and began to drive back the White Guard forces.

The recapure of the city of Kazan in September gave a tremendous boost to the Red Army -and the Soviet government.

The section in this book on the fight for Kazan is one which will educate and inspire all those who fight for the revolutionary overthrow of imperialism.

The fight was, directed by Trotsky himself from his armoured train at the front.

This train was to trayel to all parts of the front during the civil war and Trotsky was able to rally and inspire. the Red Army wherever he went.

Continued next week