Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Having seen the army collapse before the German advance in February 1918, and having witnessed even the most trusted Red Guards and units of Baltic sailors (led by P. E. Dybenko) fleeing from the enemy at Narva, Trotsky immediately began issuing decrees that would transform what was left of the old army and the irregular units of Red Guards into a regular army, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Ably supported by his deputy, E. M. Sklianskii, he was responsible also for establishing its early command structure; encouraging the use of military specialists; establishing the role of military commissars; the transformation from the volunteer principle to the principle of universal military training (Vsevobuch) and forced conscription; and building a network of military-educational institutions, culminating in the Red Military Academy, that would train a new generation of Red commanders. During the summer and early autumn of 1918, Trotsky’s presence on the Eastern Front, the orders that he gave, and his insistence on the strictest of discipline (including the execution of deserters) has been credited with saving the revolution from defeat at the hands of the People’s Army of Komuch and the Czechoslovak Legion. Such policies, however, were not universally popular, and Trotsky’s trust in military specialists, in particular, would earn him the distrust of Stalin and K. E. Voroshilov during the Tsaritsyn affair.

On 6 September 1918, Trotsky was made chairman of the new Revvoensovet of the Republic, while Jukums Vācietis took over the command of the army. Trotsky spent much of the next two years touring the various Red fronts in his personal armored train (Trotsky’s train), becoming the very symbol of Bolshevik militarism. In March 1919, he made concessions on the role of military commissars and military specialists that appeased the Military Opposition, and in July of that year he overcame a crisis when his opponents removed Vācietis, purged the membership of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, and reversed Trotsky and Vācietis’s decision not to pursue the defeated forces of Admiral A. V. Kolchak across the Urals but to concentrate forces on the Southern Front. On 5 July 1919, Trotsky tendered his resignation as War Commissar, but the Politbiuro, the Orgbiuro, and the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) unanimously rejected it and forced him to reconsider.

A further crisis followed in the autumn of 1919, at the height of the advances of the White forces of Generals A. I. Denikin (which had almost reached Tula and looked set to attack Moscow) and N. N. Iudenich (which had reached the outskirts of Petrograd), when Trotsky persuaded Lenin that Petrograd could not be abandoned (as that would encourage the intervention of Finland and Estonia) and went personally to the city to rally Red forces (for which he won the Order of the Red Banner on 31 December 1919). Equally controversially, in July 1920 he was opposed to pursuing the Red advance during the Soviet–Polish War onto Polish territory, arguing that the Red Army was exhausted and that an invasion would merely stiffen Polish resistance—and he was proved right.

During the civil-war period, Trotsky also became a member of the Politbiuro (from March 1919) a candidate (August 1920–June 1921) and then a full member (July 1921–November 1922) of the Executive Committee of the Komintern, and was briefly People’s Commissar for Food Supply (July 1921).