A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

* * * With Denikin's capture of Orel, the crucial arsenal of Tula, 100 miles away, was imminently threatened. Its loss, claimed Trotsky, 'would have been more dangerous than that of Moscow'.²⁷ Without Moscow the Reds would have lacked a prestigious capital; but without Tula they would have lacked an army. The entire fate of the Soviet regime hinged on the defence of Tula — and at the centre of that defence stood Dmitry Os'kin. As the Military Commissar of Tula, Os'kin was placed at the head of the two key bodies — the Military Council and the Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) — which between them ruled the so-called 'Tula Fortified Region' by martial law.

Os'kin had no doubts about the need for martial law. He had long ago left behind his Left SR libertarianism and accepted the need for ruthless discipline in a civil war. The necessity was underlined by the fact that the Tula workers were threatening to strike in protest against shortages of food. There had been a general strike in Tula in the spring. Os'kin and his comrades had been denounced by hungry workers at every factory meeting: 'Down with

the Commissars!' became the slogan of the strike. To suppress the strike the Bolsheviks had waged civil war against the workers. Dzerzhinsky himself had been sent by Lenin on 3 April. Special Communist detachments had occupied the factories and up to 1,000 workers had been arrested. Since then relations with the workers had been less embattled — Os'kin had made sure that better food supplies were brought in — but this was now threatened by a renewed strike as food stocks once again became depleted. Given the vital need to keep munitions production going, there was no choice m Os'kin's view but 'to militarize the factories and repress the workers if they went on strike'. None of the Bolsheviks had any illusions about the possibility of negotiating a settlement with the workers: there was not enough time. And, in any case, as Lenin admitted to the Politburo on 15 October, 'the masses in Tula are a very long way from being with us'. In fact, if anything, they were with the Mensheviks, who had led the general strike in the previous spring and who, before that, had held majorities in the city Soviets. Some of the Mensheviks now chose to agitate for the Reds in Tula in order to repel Denikin. It was a measure of the Bolsheviks' desperation, and of the low esteem in which the workers held them, that they had to rely on their deadliest rivals to come to their aid. Os'kin and his comrades were reluctant to do so, fearful as they had been of any other party since the general strike, but Lenin intervened to open up the factory doors to the Mensheviks. Dan told the Tula workers that the victory of the Whites would mean the defeat of the revolution; but the hungry workers seemed only bored by this. The Mensheviks were forced to conclude that the workers were 'extremely hostile to the Communists and no appeal to defend the revolution against Denikin could pacify their mood'.²⁸

The need for urgent results also lay behind Os'kin's extraordinary measures for Tula's military defence. Thousands of peasants and 'bourgeois' citizens were forcibly conscripted into labour teams. They worked day and night felling timber to fuel the factories and digging trenches around the city. Hundreds of their relatives were held as 'hostages' — to be shot if the work was not done properly. Os'kin had no qualms about using such measures: they were 'necessary for the defence of the revolution'. Thousands of Red Army reinforcements were despatched to Tula, including the famous Latvian Rifle Division, stalwart supporters of the Bolshevik regime. Os'kin organized the conscription of 20,000 local troops in addition to this. 'The whole of Tula', as he put it, 'was turned into one huge barracks.' Soldiers were billeted in every spare building. The town squares and parks were taken over by tanks and units of soldiers going through their drill. Machine-gun posts were mounted on the tallest buildings along the major roads and mined barricades were erected at the entrance to the town. Throughout the southern districts of the province there were look-out posts, linked by telephone with Tula, to warn of the approach of Denikin's troops.

The gentry's abandoned manors were turned into barracks. One regiment made its home on Tolstoy's former estate at Yasnaya Polyana; while another camped nearby on Prince Lvov's at Popovka.²⁹