A Worker's Way Of War: The Red Army's Doctrinal Debate, 1918–1924 by Major Matthew M. Hurley

Author:Major Matthew M. Hurley [Hurley, Major Matthew M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, United States, Europe, General, Germany, Russia & the Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9781786250513
Google: b6xvCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-11-06T05:07:21+00:00

CHAPTER 7 — THE SAD WINGS OF DESTINY: The Debate’s Final Stages and Aftermath

Judging from the bulk of literature available, it would seem that the debate over a “unified” or “proletarian” military doctrine virtually ended with the Eleventh Party Congress. True, the bitter, open conflict which characterized the debate in the military press and party congresses largely ceased after April 1922. However, some discussion of the subject continued, though primarily on a different and more obscure plane—i.e., among the hard-core theorists who genuinely took military matters to heart and cared little for the political conflagrations which engulfed and in many ways fueled the debate. Among these must be included Trotsky himself; and while he certainly had reason to fear the political ramifications of the debate, at the time he still remained oblivious to them.

That scant mention is made of the debate’s latter stages is due in part to the fact that the idea of a class-based method of warfare bore little relevance to the economic conditions which persistently plagued the Soviet leadership. Whether Trotsky’s opponents liked it or not, the manpower of the Red Army was being reduced to a peacetime strength of a mere 561,000 regular soldiers, supplemented by a “territorial militia” system consisting of minimally trained, part-time troops.{240} Similarly, the technical, scientific, industrial, and transportation bases of the Soviet Union remained thoroughly primitive by Western standards and would require massive effort to be brought up to the level necessary to support large-scale, mobile, offensive operations with a fair chance of success. Discussions of a “proletarian” doctrine simply paled in comparison to the irrefutable realities of the day and their attendant problems. Thus, Frunze’s conception of a workers’ army unified by class consciousness and imbued with an offensive spirit, and Tukhachevsky’s dream of that army’s gloriously marching forth to wars of revolution, would simply have to wait.

Furthermore, historians may be excused for their neglect of the final phases of the debate because it was quickly overshadowed by more profound events. The struggle for doctrinal pre-eminence was soon followed by a fight to control the military itself; from there a struggle for party and national leadership inevitably and quickly ensued. After Lenin’s death the struggle’s military facade was dropped altogether, at least as far as Stalin’s ruling troika and Trotsky were concerned. The only “military” aspect of the resultant contest was that Trotsky was relieved of his military duties before he was ousted from the party and ultimately thrown into exile.

In 1922, however, Trotsky seemed oblivious to the perils that awaited him. By all indications, he had won the doctrinal debate; his opponents’ schemes had failed to gain approval at the Eleventh Party Congress, his position as War Commissar remained as yet unchallenged, and—perhaps most important—Lenin was still alive, and his sympathies and support, though muted, lay with Trotsky. As he later remarked from exile, “the ‘proletarian military doctrine’ was rejected by the party like its older sister, ‘the doctrine of proletarian culture{241}....[and] never saw a resurrection, notwithstanding that its former advocates soon stood at the helm of state.

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