The Civil War in Russia between the Reds and the Whites was over by the end of 1919. Once the Red Army had conquered the Russian lands it was a matter of time before the outlying regions of the former empire were overrun. Reds drove the last White army, under General Anton Denikin, into the Crimean peninsula. Denikin handed his command to Pëtr Wrangel, who instantly changed policies towards civilian society. Among these was a promise to the peasants that land would not be restored to the gentry after the Civil War. Realpolitik was overdue if the Whites were to improve their military prospects. Nevertheless the material and logistical position of the forces under Wrangel was hopeless unless the Red political and military command made a fundamental mistake. Wrangel’s men were preparing for their escape abroad.
Victory in the Civil War encouraged communist leaders to seek opportunities to expand ‘Soviet power’ to the West. They itched to spread revolution. In March 1918 Lenin – with help from Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Sverdlov – had adjured the party to be patient at a time when most Bolsheviks had wanted a ‘revolutionary war’. But even before the German military collapse in November 1918 Lenin had given orders to assemble massive supplies of conscripts and grain so that the Red Army might intervene in strength in Germany.1 Expansionist ideas did not disappear with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Communist International (known as the Comintern) had been formed on Lenin’s initiative in Petrograd in March 1919 to inaugurate, expand and coordinate the activities of communist parties in Europe and around the world. The Bolshevik party leadership in the Kremlin sent advisers and finance to the governments briefly established in Munich and Budapest, and the Red Army would have been made available if the fighting in the Civil War in Russia had permitted.2 In summer 1920 Lenin wet his lips as he contemplated the situation in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and northern Italy. It seemed that the chain of Western capitalism in Europe would at last be broken. A military campaign to ‘sovietise’ such countries was anticipated.3
Did Bolshevik leaders genuinely have the resources to instigate the creation of fraternal socialist states? Their answer should have been no: the former Russian Empire was in an economic and administrative mess. But triumph in the Civil War had bred overconfidence among Bolsheviks. They had seen off the Whites, and the British and French expeditionary forces had been withdrawn. Who could now resist them? There was also a second consideration in their minds. The Soviet state was isolated. The expansion of the October Revolution was not just an aim: it was a basic need deriving not only from ideology but also from a practical dilemma. The Politburo – and even the cautious Stalin agreed on this – recognised that the Revolution would remain imperilled until it acquired allied states in the West.
During the early campaigns of the Civil War the operational assumption was that foreign territory began at the borders of the former Russian Empire. For this reason the Politburo acted as if it expected the Red Army to reconquer the borderlands as soon as the fighting in Russia was brought to completion. Progress seemed very satisfactory in 1920. Azerbaijan and Armenia were brought to heel – and Stalin and his friend Sergo Ordzhonikidze were regularly involved in strategic and political discussions at the highest level.4 But the Baltic region remained a problem. Attempts had been made to establish Soviet republics in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; but in each case there were counter-coups, and these countries regained their independence in 1918–19.5 Estonia inaugurated full diplomatic relations with the RSFSR in February 1920. The international situation was unstable. The Bolsheviks did not perceive the western borderlands, any more than those to the south, as foreign places, and Stalin held to this viewpoint with noticeable tenacity.6 But what happened to such countries would depend on what occurred in the broader framework of war and peace in Europe. Bolshevik leaders had to decide on a permanent policy.
Things were brought to a head by armed conflict between Poland and the RSFSR. Clashes had taken place while the Civil War was in spate, and the Polish commander-in-chief Josef Piłsudski had long aspired to form a federal union with Ukraine. In spring 1920 Piłsudski struck deep into Ukrainian territory. On 7 May his forces occupied Kiev, surprising Red Army officers as they waited at bus stops. Sovnarkom appealed for a patriotic war of defence. Sergei Kamenev took supreme military command and his main front commander was the twenty-five-year-old Mikhail Tukhachevski. Volunteers rallied to the Red Army’s banners. Kiev was retaken on 10 June and, after an agreement with the Lithuanian government, a joint offensive seized Vilnius and transferred it to Lithuania. The advance of the Reds was practically unopposed. The British government warned the Soviet leadership to halt its troops, but the Party Central Committee on 16 July took the strategic decision to take the war on to Polish territory, and Lenin informed Stalin and others on the same day.7 (Stalin, based in Kharkov in eastern Ukraine, had been unable to attend.)8 The military command of the Western Front prepared to cross the River Bug and move on Warsaw. European socialist revolution beckoned, and on 23 July the Politburo set up a Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee under Julian Marchlewski.9
The British government tried to prevent the spead of communism by calling for peace negotiations and suggesting a new border between the Soviet state and Poland. This was the Curzon Line, named after the British Foreign Secretary in 1920. The advance of the Red Army into central Europe had to be halted. The Politburo had taken such overtures more seriously earlier in the war when Piłsudski looked like winning. But the rapid march of the Reds across Ukraine changed Lenin’s stance and he started to advocate an invasion of Poland.
Stalin was unenthusiastic. He had been warning all summer about the resurgence of White military capacity in the Crimea, and he questioned the wisdom of taking on the Poles while Wrangel remained a threat.10 Even Trotski and Radek, who had opposed Lenin over Brest-Litovsk, were disconcerted by Lenin’s position.11 Stalin’s objections were not confined to his chronic scepticism about European socialist revolution and his concern about Wrangel. He doubted that the Red Army was adequately co-ordinated and organised. He worried about the length and strength of the lines of supply.12 From his base with Red forces in Ukraine he had reason to think he knew what he was writing about. The Soviet state was insecure from attack by the Whites. Plans for a military breakthrough to Poland and Germany were unrealistic. Stalin repeatedly mentioned the danger posed by Wrangel from the Crimea.13 He also reminded Lenin not to underestimate the strength of nationalism among the Polish working class. Stalin was surprised that Lenin, usually his ally on the national question, failed to sense the danger awaiting the Red Army in this respect. He wanted the care used at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 to be applied to the decision on war or peace with Poland.
Lenin would not be thwarted. He had never envisaged revolutionary war as a crude war of conquest. It was rather his assumption that workers across Europe were expected to rise up in support of the Red Army. The leftist elements in the European socialist parties, he anticipated, would rally to the communist cause and the obstacles to the establishment of revolutionary governments would be removed. The Red Army had only thirty-five divisions. The Imperial Army had assembled nearly a hundred divisions against Germany and Austria– Hungary at the outbreak of the First World War. Lenin brushed this aside. Class conflict in Europe would more than make up for the inadequacies of the Red Army. The die was cast by the Politburo. Warsaw would be taken and the way cleared for an advance on Berlin where, as Lenin believed, the Reds would find political disarray they could exploit. The German communists should make an alliance with the German far right to sweep away the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 which had taken territory and colonies from Germany, imposed heavy reparations and restricted its military reconstruction. Then they should turn against their right-wing enemies, and a revolutionary state would be installed.14
Having lost the discussion at long distance from the Politburo, Stalin accepted the decision. Indeed he developed an eagerness to prove himself in the campaign. He had been spending much time in previous months on yet another dispute about his posting and its responsibilities. In November 1919 he had made a characteristic attempt to intimidate Lenin and the Politburo by threatening to resign.15 His explanation was more colourful than usual: ‘Without this, my work on the Southern Front will become pointless and unnecessary, which gives me the right or rather the duty to move away anywhere – to the Devil even – rather than stay on the Southern Front.’16 The Politburo, already habituated to his tantrums, rejected his ultimatum.17 In January 1920 the Southern Front was re-formed as the South-Western Front with the task of defending Ukraine against both the Poles and Wrangel’s Crimean forces. But Stalin was transferred in February to the Caucasian Front. He did not like this;18 he wanted to be active where the fortunes of the Revolution were crucially threatened: he resented being regarded as the man from the Caucasus whose expertise was limited to Caucasian affairs. On 26 May Stalin’s tenacity was rewarded when he was assigned to the South-Western Front, where battles with the Poles were anticipated.
On 12 July Lenin sent a message to him in Kharkov:19
I request Stalin 1) to accelerate arrangements for a furious intensification of the offensive; 2) to communicate to me his (Stalin’s) opinion. I personally think that [Curzon’s proposal] is pure skulduggery with the idea of annexing Crimea.
Previously sceptical about the Polish campaign, Stalin telegraphed his euphoric agreement:20
The Polish armies are completely collapsing, the Poles have lost their communications and administration and Polish orders, instead of arriving at their address, are falling ever more frequently into our hands; in short, the Poles are experiencing a collapse from which they will not soon recover.
Stalin scoffed at Lord Curzon’s proposal of a truce followed by peace talks in London:21
I think that imperialism has never been so weak as now at a time of Poland’s defeat and we have never been as strong as now. Therefore the more firmly we conduct ourselves, the better it will be both for us and for international revolution. Send on the Politburo’s decision.
Lenin and Stalin, advocates of caution at Brest-Litovsk in 1918, had become the warmongers of the Bolshevik leadership.
In Stalin’s opinion it was imperative ‘to seize the maximum we can’ before any cease-fire might occur. He aimed to take Lwów.22 This was a personal preference: the fall of Lwów would not only benefit the Soviet cause but also bring him kudos as the city’s conqueror. The trouble was that, as Stalin had warned, Wrangel’s forces remained a serious threat. Stalin typically called for a policy of executing White officer POWs to a man.23 Learning that things were not going well for the Red Army in the Crimea,24 he put this failure down to the cowardice of the Soviet Commander-in-Chief Sergei Kamenev. His mind was focused on glory in Poland as he and his command staff moved westward.25
Stalin and Lenin also undertook preliminary planning for the kind of Europe they expected to organise when socialist seizures of power took place. Their grandiose visions take the breath away. Before the Second Comintern Congress, Lenin urged the need for a general federation including Germany, and he made clear that he wanted the economy of such a federation to be ‘administered from a single organ’. Stalin rejected this as impractical:26
If you think you’d ever get Germany to enter a federation with the same rights as Ukraine, you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which has been constituted as a bourgeois state with all its attributes, would enter the Union with the same rights as Ukraine you are mistaken.
Lenin was angry. The implication of Stalin’s comment was that considerations of national pride would impel Russia and Germany to remain separate states for the foreseeable future. Lenin sent him a ‘threatening letter’ which charged him with chauvinism.27 It was Lenin’s objective to set up a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. His vision of ‘European socialist revolution’ was unchanged since 1917. But Stalin held his ground. The Politburo had to acknowledge the realities of nationhood if the spread of socialism in Europe was to be a success.
These discussions were hypothetical since the Red Army had not yet reached Poland, far less set up a revolutionary government in Warsaw. Stalin himself had caused one of the operational snags. This occurred when he ordered his military and political subordinates to regard Lwów as their priority. He failed to mention that such a command would disrupt the general strategic plan approved by Trotski and Tukhachevski on campaign and by Lenin in Moscow. Stalin was ignoring the precedence given by these others to the capture of Warsaw; instead he diverted the armed forces of the South-Western Front away from a line of convergence with those of the Western Front.
The battle for Warsaw took place across four sectors. Lasting from 12 to 25 August, it settled the outcome of the war.28 Tukhachevski’s original plan had been to attack even sooner, before the Poles had time to regroup for defence of their capital. His losses had been substantial. Supplies and reinforcements were unlikely to be forthcoming. The exhausted Red Army, harassed by the Polish inhabitants, had to win a very quick victory or else lose everything.29 Piłsudski grabbed his chance. In successive sectors he repulsed the Red advance. Sergei Kamenev, the Supreme Commander, had planned to move forward on two fronts: the Western under Tukhachevski and Smilga and the South-Western under Yegorov and Stalin. Kamenev failed to co-ordinate them. The South-Western Front was still charged with protecting the Soviet state against Wrangel from the Crimea: it was therefore aimed in two different directions at once. On 22 July, furthermore, Yegorov had pointed his line of march towards Lublin and Lwów and daily increased the gap between himself and Tukhachevski. This was a recipe for confusion and dispute, and Stalin was never one to hold back from aggravating a difficult situation.
The Red Army had urgent need of a revised strategic plan. Such a plan could be devised only at the highest political level. On 2 August the Politburo resolved to split the South-Western Front into two and give half its forces to the Western Front and the other half to a reformed Southern Front tasked with defending Ukraine against Wrangel.30 Yet no action followed until 14 August, when Sergei Kamenev ordered the transfer of forces from the South-Western Front with immediate effect.31
The impracticality of Kamenev’s injunction infuriated Stalin. Yegorov and Stalin were already engaged in their attack on Lwów before the start of the battle of Warsaw. Although the distance between Warsaw and Lwów as the crow flies is two hundred miles, the geography of the region made quick movements of troops impossible. It was swampy and roadless. The Polish inhabitants were almost universally hostile to the Reds, who were regarded as yet another Russian invading force. Stalin, who was always quick to criticise the professional military men inherited from the Imperial Army, told Kamenev in no uncertain terms: ‘Your order pointlessly frustrates the operations of the South-Western Front, which had already started its advance.’32 When Yegorov dutifully complied with Kamenev’s order, Stalin refused to counter-sign the latest dispositions and left the task to his deputy R. Berzins.33 But the Cavalry Army of Stalin’s associate Semën Budënny was heavily involved in fighting in the vicinity and it was not until 20 August that the attack on Lwów was abandoned. By then the battle of Warsaw was nearing its catastrophic conclusion for Tukhachevski and the Western Front.
That Stalin had been obstreperous when reacting to the change in strategy is indisputable. But he was soon accused of something more serious. It came to be said that an obsession with military glory had caused him to withhold forces from Tukhachevski. He therefore appeared to be the culprit for the defeat of the Reds. This is too strong a verdict. In fact he did not block the transfer of troops: he simply refused to give his personal counter-signature. Certainly he was not guiltless. On 12 August he had supported the deployment of the Cavalry Army against Lwów despite knowing about the Politburo’s intention to divide the South-Western Front’s forces between a Western Front and a Southern Front. Even so, it is hardly likely that the forces reassigned to the Western Front would have reached Warsaw in time for the battle even if Stalin had not approved the Lwów operation.34 Yet without acting insubordinately, he undoubtedly did much – and must have done it knowingly – to make it next to impossible for Kamenev and Tukhachevski to carry out any further redeployments of the South-Western Front’s forces. To that extent he acted as he had done throughout the Civil War. He behaved as though he had a monopoly on military judgement and that those who opposed him were either fools or knaves.
By the time the siege of Lwów was lifted, Stalin was far away. Returning to Moscow for the Politburo meeting on 19 August, he was raging to justify himself. Both Lenin and Trotski were present. The fighting before Warsaw was continuing; Wrangel was moving north from the Crimea. At the same time there was an opening for the Red units on the Caucasian Front to push down through Azerbaijan into Persia. The entire military situation was in flux in three directions. Item number one, however, was the strategic confusion left behind at Lwów. Stalin decided that political attack was the best form of defence: he castigated the entire campaign. He stressed the neglect suffered by the armies facing Wrangel, and noted that the result could be a resumption of the Civil War in Russia. His blistering onslaught produced a result; for despite a counter-report from Trotski, the Politburo decided ‘to recognise the Wrangel Front as the main one’.35 In a week when the fate of the Polish campaign was in the balance, this was extraordinary phrasing. To outward appearances Stalin had trounced his enemy Trotski at the Politburo and secured the strategic reorientation he favoured.
Yet his triumph was not what it seemed. There was no acknowledgement in the Politburo that Stalin’s plans and behaviour in the Soviet–Polish War had been appropriate. Lenin and Trotski continued to blame him. A clue to the intensity of the dispute was given by an item further down the agenda sheet, which related to Stalin’s position. After some discussion he was formally awarded a fortnight’s holiday.36 Yet again he was claiming exhaustion and, no doubt, was feeling under-appreciated. This was the pattern of behaviour established in the Civil War whenever he failed to get his way.37
Stalin’s anger went on simmering. He neither took his holiday38 nor dropped his case against the Supreme Command and its patron Trotski. He felt humiliated, and when he went back to the Politburo on 1 September he demanded his own demission from ‘military activity’. No one seriously expected him to serve in the Red Army after the end of armed hostilities in Poland; but the plea was granted and Stalin left the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Republic.39 He had craved to be a member since its creation. But he would no longer serve on it if his counsel was going to be overridden. He refused to forget what he took to be the slights he had suffered. At the same Politburo session there had been hurried discussion about foreign policy, and Trotski had successfully proposed a ‘policy of compromise peace with Poland’.40 For Stalin, this was hard to bear. Trotski and the Supreme Command were in his eyes co-responsible for the war’s mismanagement. Now Trotski apparently wanted to enjoy the plaudits of peacetime. Stalin had warned against the whole Polish campaign. He had sounded the alarm about Wrangel. He had been asked to deal with two military fronts as if they had been one and then been asked to cope with yet another front.
For some days he buried himself in those affairs for which he had been most respected before the Civil War. The Politburo at his instigation was planning to appeal to the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus at the expense of the Cossacks. The decision was taken in principle, and Stalin was asked to supervise implementation on Moscow’s behalf.41 He also took charge of the complex Bashkirian affair. The Bashkirian Revolutionary Committee had behaved disloyally to the Soviet state and several members had been arrested. Stalin proposed to transfer them to Moscow for interrogation.42 This was important political work. Yet at the same time Stalin did not want to be known as a Georgian who specialised in the national question. He belonged to the Central Committee and Sovnarkom in his own right, and he wanted this recognised. He had opinions about general policy. He felt he knew as much as anyone about politics and society in the provinces. Resentment grew like rust on an iron nail. Like everyone in the Politburo, he was also feeling the physical and emotional impact of his exertions of the past few years. Unlike the others, he felt under-appreciated. Nothing indicated that his feelings were going to be spared as the Ninth Party Conference approached.
Lenin arrived at the Conference on 22 September and showed unwonted contrition. Reality had to be faced: it was ‘a deep defeat, a catastrophic situation’. The secret project for the ‘Sovietization of Poland’ had been disastrous. The Red Army, instead of being greeted by Polish workers and peasants, had been repulsed by a ‘patriotic upsurge’. So how had the miscalculation occurred? Lenin admitted that he had thought that Germany was on the boil and that Poland would be a mere bridgehead towards Berlin. He also admitted: ‘I absolutely do not pretend in the slightest fashion to knowledge of military science.’ The Red Army, he conceded, had been set an impossible task. Probably the Politburo should have accepted Curzon’s proposal and parleyed for peace. The best option was to sue for a treaty and wait for a turn of events ‘at the first convenient opportunity’.43
Stalin’s latest resignation was one too many for the stressed Lenin. Stalin’s imperiousness and volatility appeared excessive; Trotski by contrast seemed at least dependable in a crisis. Trotski took his chance and bluntly criticised Stalin’s record in the Soviet–Polish War and accused him of ‘strategic mistakes’.44 Information from returning political commissars confirmed this accusation and Lenin repeated it in the early sessions.45 The Politburo was revealed as a nest of jealousies and criticisms. Several in the audience were aware that Lenin had been less than frank about his own part in the débâcle. The fundamental blunder had been to invade Poland at all and this was primarily Lenin’s error. Indeed he had been warned of the likely consequences by Trotski and Stalin. Trotski had argued that the Red Army was already exhausted, Stalin that the Poles would rise up against the invasion.46 Some Conference delegates indeed castigated Lenin directly and the session ended in an angry dispute. When proceedings were resumed next day, Stalin insisted on the right of reply. It was a brief speech. Having pointed out that he had expressed early doubts about the invasion, he made no defence of his behaviour on campaign, and the Conference moved on to other business.47
From Stalin’s viewpoint, this was very unsatisfactory. He had had his chance to make his case and at the last moment he had thrown it away. And the lasting effect was to fix the primary responsibility for the disastrous campaign in Poland solely on himself. There had been searing controversies in the past. The October 1917 decision to seize power and the November 1917 rejection of a broad socialist coalition government had caused uproar in the Central Committee, and for some weeks a number of Central Committee members refused to sit in government with Lenin. The Brest-Litovsk dispute had been still more raucous: Bukharin and his supporters had seriously contemplated forming a government without Lenin. But the controversy over the Soviet–Polish War introduced a fresh element. Stalin, a leading member of the ruling group, was accused of insubordination, personal ambition and military incompetence. It was a remarkable list of faults.
Stalin’s half-cocked reaction is difficult to explain. He was an extremely proud man. He was jealous too – jealous to an inordinate extent. He deeply resented criticism and was easily slighted. He was also very pugnacious. So why did he decide to mumble a few words about the prehistory of the invasion and then go back to his seat? If the boot had been on the other foot, neither Lenin nor Trotski would have failed to give a lengthy speech of self-justification.48 Probably Stalin felt himself on weak ground and had suffered a last-minute collapse of confidence. The evidence was incontrovertible that he had behaved badly, and in any case it was not the first time that his contumacy had been mentioned. At the Eighth Party Congress he had been reprimanded by Lenin for using tactics that led to far too many Red Army soldiers being killed.49 The difference at the Ninth Party Conference was that nothing positive was said about him to balance the negative. He had been disgraced; none of his friends had taken the trouble to speak on his behalf. He saw no point in prolonging his misery by dragging out the discussion. He hated to be seen whingeing.50 His constant need was to appear tough, determined and practical.
Yet he did not intend to forgive and forget. Trotski’s accusation had added yet another grievance to the list of things for Stalin to brood about. The only wonder about this episode is that he did not cultivate a grudge against Lenin. Stalin continued through to the end of his days to express admiration for him. It has been mooted that Stalin regarded Lenin not just as a hero but also as a substitute father to be emulated.51 This is going beyond the evidence. There were many occasions before and after October 1917 when Stalin clashed virulently with Lenin. But about his fundamental esteem for Lenin there is no serious doubt. There was no deference, still less servility; but Stalin exempted Lenin from the treatment he reserved for the rest of the human race – and he was biding his time to take his revenge on Trotski.