T. Derbent: Lenin and the War (2)

The first part of the article “Lenin and the War” appeared in the first issue of Material (October 2023), and covers sections 1 and 2. This second and final part includes sections 3 and 4 of the article. This entire text is included in the recently published Clausewitz et la guerre populaire (“Clausewitz and the People’s War”), which will be released in English by Foreign Languages Press in 2024.

Part 3: War and Revolution

3.1 War and Revolution

The relationship between (imperialist) war and (proletarian) revolution lies at the heart of Lenin’s experience, beginning from his analyses of the Russo-Japanese (1905) and Balkan (1912-1913) wars. This relationship takes two forms:

1. Imperialist war is, if not primarily, at least secondarily, an instrument of counter-revolution. Ideologically, positions based on class struggle and aiming at the unity of the international workers’ movement are attacked by nationalist and chauvinist propaganda. On a practical level, the state of war is used to break up the class’ political and trade union organizations.
2. In an opposite sense (but dialectically linked), imperialist war exacerbates contradictions with its trail of massacres, forced labor, misery, and destruction.

Historically, the international workers’ movement focused on the first aspect. The struggle against war was a humanitarian imperative, but also, for the Second International, a prerequisite for following the “tried and tested tactic”¹: time, the course of history, historical determinism, the development of capitalism and its contradictions, all played in favor of socialism. Since the peaceful progress of the workers’ movement seemed irresistible, they rationalized that preserving the peace meant certain victory. Lenin’s 1907 speech at the International Congress in Stuttgart, where social-democratic leaders were looking for ways to prevent war, was surprising in that he argued that the aim should not only be to prevent war, but also, if necessary, to use the crisis caused by war to overthrow the bourgeoisie. By envisaging the role of war as a catalyst of social contradictions, Lenin distanced himself from those who saw war only as a catastrophe for the workers’ movement. His amendment offended the International’s right-wing leadership. Bebel feared that such a revolutionary declaration could give rise to lawsuits and had it reworded in legally unassailable but ambiguous terms.
Yet Lenin did not theorize that war was necessarily favorable to the revolutionary process. He distanced himself from Radek and the German extreme left, for whom “the convulsions of war” were the shortest route to revolution. Lenin believed that wars were inevitable due to the development of imperialism, but it was the concrete historical conditions, which were extremely difficult to untangle, that would determine whether a war would be a brake or a gas pedal of the class struggle: the latter would sharpen revolutionary contradictions, the former would drag the workers’ movement backwards. What is important for Lenin is that the goal of the Revolution be maintained in war: “the masses will realize the need for revolutionary action in connection with the crises which war inevitably involves.”² At the Zimmerwald and Khienthal conferences, he waged a two-pronged battle: outwardly, against the Social-Chauvinists who had rallied their bourgeoisie, and inwardly, against the Zimmerwaldists who had no other objective than peace, immediate peace, peace without annexation. This pacifist line prevailed in Zimmerwald—even Clara Zetkin and Angelica Balabanov adhered to it,³ while Lenin’s revolutionary thesis received only seven or eight votes out of forty mandates.
But Lenin didn’t wait for Zimmerwald to denounce pacifism:

War is no chance happening, no “sin” as is thought by Christian priests (who are no whit behind the opportunists in preaching patriotism, humanity and peace), but an inevitable stage of capitalism, just as legitimate a form of the capitalist way of life as peace is. Present-day war is a people’s war. What follows from this truth is not that we must swim with the “popular” current of chauvinism, but that the class contradictions dividing the nations continue to exist in wartime and manifest themselves in conditions of war. Refusal to serve with the forces, anti-war strikes, etc., are sheer nonsense, the miserable and cowardly dream of an unarmed struggle against the armed bourgeoisie, vain yearning for the destruction of capitalism without a desperate civil war or a series of wars. It is the duty of every socialist to conduct propaganda of the class struggle, in the army as well; work directed towards turning a war of the nations into civil war is the only socialist activity in the era of an imperialist armed conflict of the bourgeoisie of all nations. Down with mawkishly sanctimonious and fatuous appeals for “peace at any price”! Let us raise high the banner of civil war!⁴

3.2. Kautsky’s The Road to Power

Lenin was horrified by Kautsky’s reversal at the outbreak of the First World War. The 1907 Stuttgart resolution (confirmed in Copenhagen in 1910 and Basel in 1912) obliged socialists in the event of war

to secure the speediest termination of wars that have already begun, [and] utilize the crisis created by the war to hasten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.⁵

In the Neue Zeit of October 2, 1914, Kautsky wrote:

If it comes to war, every nation has to defend itself as best it can. It follows that Social-Democrats of all nations have an equal right or an equal duty to take part in this defense; none should hurl reproaches at another.⁶

In short: proletarians of all countries, kill each other. . . .
Lenin’s unbridled hatred of “the renegade Kautsky” can be explained by the role Kautsky had played in defining proletarian policy on war: as early as 1887, in an article in the Neue Zeit entitled “The Modern Nationality,” Kautsky had laid the foundations for a Marxist theory of the national question and its interaction with the social question. He intervened several times on these issues (notably in 1886 and 1905). In 1907, with the threat of war looming over the Moroccan crisis,⁷ he published a pamphlet entitled “Patriotism and Social-Democracy,” in which he rejected any “Sacred Union”⁸ between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: “At the present time the conflicts between states can bring no war that proletarian interests would not, as a matter of duty, energetically oppose.”⁹
In 1909, Kautsky himself tackled the question of the war-revolution correlation in a work that Lenin was to put forward:¹⁰ The Road to Power. From the moment of its publication, this pamphlet was a central reference for Lenin—and never ceased to be so. And even if in October 1914, Lenin wrote to Shliapnikov: “I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied hypocrisy,”¹¹ he wrote four days later: “Make sure of getting and rereading (or get someone to translate to you) Kautsky’s Weg zur Macht [The Road to Power]—what he wrote there about the revolution of our times!! And what a scoundrel he has become now, renouncing all this!”¹²
Kautsky considered that revolution could be produced by war in three different scenarios:

1. When the country that is on the losing side in the war, wanting to throw all national forces into the balance, calls the proletariat to come to power;
2. When the defeated army, exhausted, turns against the government, and the people rise up to put an end to a disastrous war;
3. When the army and the people rise up against a government that has signed a disgraceful peace.

According to Kautsky, after a generation of stability and progress, Europe and the world were entering a new period of war and revolution of unprecedented magnitude (due to its global dimension and advances in technology, trade, and communications). These upheavals would give rise to socialist revolutions in Europe, as well as revolutions towards democracy and national liberation in subjugated countries. This transition from a non-revolutionary to a revolutionary situation would require radically new tactics. In this sense, when the sharpening of class antagonisms would come to demonstrate the need for socialist revolution, any form of class collaboration would be tantamount to political suicide:

It is to ask the Socialists to commit political suicide to demand that they join in any coalition or “bloc” policy, in any case where the words “reactionary mass” are truly applicable. It is demanding moral suicide of the Socialists to ask them to enter into an alliance with capitalist parties at a time when these have prostituted themselves and compromised themselves to the very bottom.¹³

The interplay between socialist, democratic (i.e., against absolutist monarchies), national, and anti-colonial revolutions implies the rejection of simplistic models in which “advanced” countries show the way to “backward” ones. Kautsky argued that in Russia and the subjugated countries of the East, the interaction of different forms of revolution could open up new paths.¹⁴
The SPD was so undermined by opportunism that the first version of Kautsky’s pamphlet was discarded on Bebel’s orders, because it asserted that “No one would be so naive as to assert that we can pass imperceptibly and without a battle from the military state and absolutism into democracy.”¹⁵ Kautsky agreed to rewrite his pamphlet, removing anything that might provoke a lawsuit, while retaining its revolutionary character:

it is necessary to make clear, what has so often been stated before, that we are not discussing the question of whether labor legislation and similar laws in the interest of the proletariat, and unions and co-operatives are necessary and useful or not. There are no two opinions among us on that point. What is disputed is the view that the exploited class, who control the power of the state, will permit such a development of these factors, as will amount to abolishing capitalist oppression, without first making such a resistance, with all the means at its disposal, that it can be abolished only through a decisive battle.¹⁶

In short, as Lenin summed up:

In 1909 Kautsky voiced the undisputed opinion held by all revolutionary Social-Democrats when he said that revolution in Europe cannot now be premature and that war means revolution.¹⁷

3.3. The Transformation of Imperialist War into Civil War

At its outset, the First World War effectively brought the labor movement to a halt; in July 1914, there had been a surge of political strikes in Russia, with insurrectionary demonstrations, which were interrupted by the declaration of war a month later. Bolshevik deputies who had voted against war credits in the Duma were deported to Siberia, and most businesses came under army control and surveillance. All the hard-won labor rights acquired since the beginning of the century were “suspended” for the duration of the conflict.¹⁸
However, as early as the summer of 1914, in the midst of chauvinist hysteria, Lenin, confident that reactionary propaganda would dissipate in the face of the misery caused by the war, endeavored to “transform the imperialist war into a civil war.”
Georges Haupt points out that the study of Lenin’s writings is complicated by the fact that they blend the demands of revolutionary pedagogy with those of tactical maneuvering.¹⁹ Haupt asserts, for example, that the slogan of “transforming the imperialist war into a civil war” changed in character in the course of the war:

1. In 1914, as a simple reaffirmation of revolutionary principles in the face of the opportunism of the Second International and the Mensheviks, but without any real possibility of realizing such a goal;
2. At the time of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, as a practical possibility;
3. In 1917, as an immediate and tangible objective.

Haupt’s thesis is questionable. As early as 1914, Lenin gave concrete content to this slogan. He knew that the time for civil war had not yet come, but more than a principle to be reaffirmed, it was a concrete objective requiring concrete organization and concrete action, namely

[An] all-embracing propaganda, involving the army and the theater of hostilities as well, for the socialist revolution and the need to use weapons, not against their brothers, the wage slaves in other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries; the urgent necessity of organizing illegal nuclei and groups in the armies of all nations, to conduct such propaganda in all languages; a merciless struggle against the chauvinism and “patriotism” of the philistines and bourgeoisie of all countries without exception. In the struggle against the leaders of the present International, who have betrayed socialism, it is imperative to appeal to the revolutionary consciousness of the working masses, who bear the entire burden of the war and are in most cases hostile to opportunism and chauvinism.²⁰

In reality, it was a strategic project from the outset. It was based on theory, on objective and subjective conditions (as they were and as they were bound to evolve), but also—and this was overlooked by Haupt—on the historical precedents of the Paris Commune and the 1905 Revolution. These two great experiences of revolutionary civil war, to which Lenin referred so many times, had each emerged from an imperialist war: the Franco-German War of 1870 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
As early as 1914, Lenin concretely foresaw the prospect of transforming imperialist war into civil war:

The bourgeoisie is duping the masses by disguising imperialist rapine with the old ideology of a “national war.” This deceit is being shown up by the proletariat, which has brought forward its slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. This was the slogan of the Stuttgart and Basel resolutions, which had in mind, not war in general, but precisely the present war and spoke, not of “defense of the fatherland,” but of “hastening the downfall of capitalism,” of utilizing the war-created crisis for this purpose, and of the example provided by the Paris Commune. The latter was an instance of a war of nations being turned into a civil war.
Of course, such a conversion is no easy matter and cannot be accomplished at the whim of one party or another. That conversion, however, is inherent in the objective conditions of capitalism in general, and of the period of the end of capitalism in particular. It is in that direction, and that direction alone, that socialists must conduct their activities. It is not their business to vote for war credits or to encourage chauvinism in their “own” country (and allied countries), but primarily to strive against the chauvinism of their “own” bourgeoisie, without confining themselves to legal forms of struggle when the crisis has matured and the bourgeoisie has itself taken away the legality it has created. Such is the line of action that leads to civil war, and will bring about civil war at one moment or another of the European conflagration.²¹

As we can see, it’s not a question of preparing for the possibility of civil war, but of following a line of action that leads to it. In this context, Lenin’s thinking is in tune with reality; he is on the lookout for developments, backlashes, and runaway processes, as well as their concrete manifestations. He mentions, for example, a phenomenon that was unknown during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905: fraternization in the trenches:

Clearly, this path tends to develop, strengthen, and consolidate fraternal confidence between the workers of different countries. Clearly, this path is beginning to wreck the hateful discipline of the barrack prisons, the discipline of blind obedience of the soldier to “his” officers and generals, to his capitalists (for most of the officers and generals either belong to the capitalist class or protect its interests). Clearly, fraternization is the revolutionary initiative of the masses, it is the awakening of the conscience, the mind, the courage of the oppressed classes; in other words, it is a rung in the ladder leading up to the socialist proletarian revolution.
In order that fraternization achieve the goal we set it more easily, surely and rapidly, we must see to it that it is well organized and has a clear political program.
In our appeal to the soldiers of all the belligerent countries we have set forth our program for a workers’ revolution in all countries, namely, the transfer of all state power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
Comrades, soldiers, discuss this program among yourselves and with the German soldiers.²²

Moreover, Lenin saw to it that leaflets for soldiers were published in Russian and German, and that joint meetings were organized with interpreters, etc.²³ The Bolsheviks massively distributed a “Trench Pravda”²⁴ calling for fraternization.
Disentangling the tactical from the ideological aspects of a situation proved an almost impossible task for Lenin, who took this art to the highest level: the art of going back and forth dialectically between theory and practice, synthesizing this dialectic into a strategy that was flexible because it was solid—solid because it was flexible—and formulating it for polemical, agitation, and propaganda purposes. If we fail to grasp the depth and richness of this dialectic, we come to speak of Lenin either as an obtuse ideologue hacking away at the century to make it conform to his ideal, or, on the contrary, as an absolute empiricist constantly changing line and discourse whenever it served his purposes.

Part 4: The Revolutionary War

4.1. Insurrection

Lenin’s interest in military questions was also closely linked to the military dimension of the revolutionary struggle. As early as January 1905, before the wave of insurrections struck Russia, the Bolsheviks set about building up a military organization. At the Second London Congress (April 12–27, 1905), a Military-Technical Bureau was set up under the supervision of the Central Committee, and local committees were instructed to draw up an insurrectionary plan and prepare for its implementation.
The 1905 wave of insurrections nevertheless surprised the RSDLP, which had no real military apparatus and no military doctrine other than Engels’ writings on insurrection. The Military-Technical Bureau did its utmost to raise the level of the revolutionary struggle of the masses by carrying out intelligence operations, actions against the regime’s leaders and forces, and expropriations as a way of financing the whole, but its forces and the impact of its actions were insufficient. The Bolsheviks—and Lenin in particular—immediately set about learning from experience to improve the effectiveness of their fighting groups. In October, Lenin wrote to the Combat Organization:

It horrifies me—I give you my word—it horrifies me to find that there has been talk about bombs for over six months, yet not one has been made! . . .Go to the youth. Form fighting squads at once everywhere, among the students, and especially among the workers, etc., etc. Let groups be at once organized of three, ten, thirty, etc., persons. Let them arm themselves at once as best they can, be it with a revolver, a knife, a rag soaked in kerosene for starting fires, etc. Let these detachments at once select leaders, and as far as possible contact the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee. Do not demand any formalities, and, for heaven’s sake, forget all these schemes, and send all “functions, rights, and privileges” to the devil. Do not make membership in the RSDLP an absolute condition—that would be an absurd demand for an armed uprising. Do not refuse to contact any group, even if it consists of only three persons; make it the one sole condition that it should be reliable as far as police spying is concerned and prepared to fight the czar’s troops.²⁵

In her memoirs, N. K. Krupskaya recalls Lenin’s application to the study of military art:

He had given more thought to this than people know, and his talk about fighting squads in partisan war, about the squads of “five and ten,” was not just the idle talk of a layman, but a well-thought-out plan.²⁶

In January 1905, Lenin had reread Marx’s articles on insurrection and translated the chapter on street fighting in the memoirs of Cluseret, the general of the Paris Commune. Cluseret’s memoirs were published in Vperiod with a preface and biographical note written by Lenin.²⁷
On December 5, the Moscow Bolshevik conference unanimously decided to proclaim an insurrectionary general strike, followed on December 7 by the Moscow Soviet (composed of a majority of Bolsheviks). The strike and demonstrations turned into an armed confrontation, but the Bolshevik-minority Joint Council of Volunteer Fighting Squads²⁸ proved incapable of acting as the insurrectionary headquarters. The Moscow workers resisted, but only 8,000 of them were militarily organized. The RSDLP tried to help the insurrection in every way possible (notably by trying to stop the trains taking the troops to Moscow²⁹), but on December 18, their last entrenched fighters fell in the Presnia district to the west of the city.
For the Mensheviks, starting with Plekhanov, the lesson drawn from the 1905 surge of the revolutionary movement, and particularly from the Moscow insurrection, was that it was a “tactical folly” of “incredible lightness.”³⁰ But the Bolsheviks, even after the defeats in Moscow, Donetsk, and Rostov, declared that the problem was the lack of forces and organizational, military, and doctrinal preparation:

Thus, nothing could be more short-sighted than Plekhanov’s view, seized upon by all the opportunists, that the strike was untimely and should not have been started, and that “they should not have taken to arms.” On the contrary, we should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary. And now we must at last openly and publicly admit that political strikes are inadequate; we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favor of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about “preliminary stages,” or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.³¹

Lenin also drew tactical lessons similar to those outlined by Kautsky in “Prospects of the Russian Revolution.” The fact that the Moscow insurgents offered such resistance to the regime’s elite troops shows that Engels’ condemnation of the barricade struggle needed to be refined‚ that it was a particular kind of barricade tactic that he condemned because of the appearance of the cannon, and so on. However, a new tactic could be formulated from the Moscow experience.
The lessons drawn from this experience led to the insurrectionary doctrine put into practice in October 1917. This doctrine was no longer based on the barricade struggle or spontaneous mass demonstrations, but on concerted, planned offensive actions carried out by trained and disciplined units of armed workers,³² on the mastery of military techniques,³³ and on the fragmentation of the bourgeois army through agitation and propaganda.³⁴ Lastly, this doctrine was founded on a precise analysis of the objective and subjective conditions required for its implementation: political crisis of the system; mass dissatisfaction; the existence of a recognized revolutionary vanguard; and peasant support for proletarian revolution. This doctrine presupposes a long process of preparation, accumulation, and qualification of military forces. The final act—insurrection—is preceded by a long politico-military phase, examined at length by Lenin in The Partisan War. This doctrine attributes three roles to armed struggle: a subjective role of political mobilization of activists and the masses; a role of accumulation of forces in non-revolutionary periods; and the final, decisive role of armed insurrection.

4.2. Partisan War

Lenin had to lead the battle against Plekhanov, who wanted to dissolve the combat groups and conduct politics solely through the actions of elected members of the Duma. In spite of this, the Bolsheviks approved and practiced bank robberies (the earnings from which were needed to run an underground party), and armed action against members of the repressive apparatus, particularly spies.
A school for military instructors was set up in Kiev, and another was opened in Lemberg to teach bomb use. In November 1906, Lenin had the Military-Technical Bureau convene a conference of combat groups in Tammersfor,³⁵ Finland. In preparation for this conference, Yaroslavsky, one of the leading Bolshevik military leaders, met Lenin:

I arrived in Finland and saw Vladimir Ilyich, who bombarded me with questions. I immediately sensed that I was dealing with a comrade who knew our work inside out and was seriously interested in it. Vladimir Ilyich was not content with general answers; he wanted to know the details, the mechanics of our work, our projects, our contacts. He took a keen interest in the military instructors’ school we had organized, where we taught our activists how to handle and make explosives, maneuver machine guns and other weapons, learn the trade of the mine-sapper, street-fighting tactics—in a word, prepare the cadres of our combat detachment commanders for the coming revolution.³⁶

In addition to the official Central Committee (controlled by the Mensheviks), there was a Bolshevik center (the Bureau of the Majority Committee) within the leadership of the RSDLP, whose military organization (the Committee for Financial and Military Affairs) was headed by Lenin, Krassin, and Bogdanov.
In preparation for the Stockholm Congress (April 10–20, 1906), Lenin wrote the following draft resolution:

Whereas:

1. scarcely anywhere in Russia since the December uprising has there been a complete cessation of the hostilities, which the revolutionary people are now conducting in the form of sporadic guerrilla attacks upon the enemy;
2. these guerrilla operations, which are inevitable when two hostile armed forces face each other, and when repression by the temporarily triumphant military is rampant, serve to disorganize the enemy’s forces and pave the way for future open and mass armed operations;
3. such operations are also necessary to enable our fighting squads to acquire fighting experience and military training, for in many places during the December uprising they proved to be unprepared for their new tasks;

We are of the opinion, and propose that the Congress should agree:

1. that the Party must regard the fighting guerrilla operations of the squads affiliated to or associated with it as being, in principle, permissible, and advisable in the present period;
2. that the character of these fighting guerrilla operations must be adjusted to the task of training leaders of the masses of workers at a time of insurrection, and of acquiring experience in conducting offensive and surprise military operations;
3. that the paramount immediate object of these operations is to destroy the government, police and military machinery, and to wage a relentless struggle against the active Black-Hundred organizations, which are using violence against the population and intimidating it;
4. that fighting operations are also permissible for the purpose of seizing funds belonging to the enemy, i.e., the autocratic government, to meet the needs of insurrection, particular care being taken that the interests of the people are infringed as little as possible;
5. that fighting guerrilla operations must be conducted under the control of the Party and, furthermore, in such a way as to prevent the forces of the proletariat from being frittered away, and to ensure that the state of the working-class movement and the mood of the broad masses of the given locality are taken into account.³⁷

But the Congress, with its clear majority of Menshevik delegates, did not discuss the question. Lenin returned to the issue in September 1906, asserting that

Guerrilla warfare is an inevitable form of struggle at a time when the mass movement has actually reached the point of an uprising and when fairly large intervals occur between the “big engagements” in the civil war. . . .It is absolutely natural and inevitable that the uprising should assume the higher and more complex form of a prolonged civil war embracing the whole country, i.e., an armed struggle between two sections of the people. Such a war cannot be conceived otherwise than as a series of a few big engagements at comparatively long intervals and a large number of small encounters during these intervals. That being so—and it is undoubtedly so—the Social-Democrats must absolutely make it their duty to create organizations best adapted to lead the masses in these big engagements and, as far as possible, in these small encounters as well.³⁸

Nevertheless, the dissolution of the combat groups was decided by the Menshevik majority at the Third London Congress (May 13–June 1, 1907).

4.3. Lenin, the Military Leader

Lenin’s role as a war leader is underestimated, and Adam Ulam’s judgment on the subject is, unfortunately, widely shared.³⁹ Driven by obvious political interests, sovietologists and Trotskyists have attributed to Trotsky all the military merits of the civil war. No less obvious interests have led Soviet historiography to overemphasize the role of Stalin, Voroshilov, and Frunze. All agree that Lenin played the leading political role, but all neglect his military importance. He himself did nothing to highlight his interest in military affairs; he never visited the general staff nor the trenches and only met Red commanders and soldiers when necessary. As such, there is no military imagery attached to him.
And yet, between December 1 and 24, 1918, he presided over 143 of the 175 meetings of the Defense Council. In 1919 alone, he presided over 14 sessions of the Party Central Committee and 40 sessions of the Political Bureau, which examined military issues. Lenin examined thousands of military questions on these occasions. He sent out at least six hundred letters and telegrams on defense issues.
The Trotskyist version of the story, which sees Lenin giving Trotsky carte blanche on military matters, is contradicted by several incidents, the most famous of which is the replacement of the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, J. Vācietis, by S. S. Kamenev.⁴⁰
It is true that Lenin delegated most of the war’s management to the commanders and commissars he had helped choose, starting with the People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs himself. Yet, rarely did Lenin’s activities interfere with those of the commanders.
In November 1917, Kerensky met up with the armies that had remained loyal to the Provisional Government, in order to march on Petrograd, when said armies had taken Gatchina and were threatening Tsarkoye Selo (today called Pushkin), just 25 km from the capital. During this time Lenin frequently “descended” from the strategic level to the tactical one, provoking an incident with Nikolai Podvoisky, organizer of the Red Guard and the first People’s Commissar for Military and Naval affairs.⁴¹
Several different but concurring accounts describe how Lenin planned to use the fleet as fire support on the Tsarkoye Selo⁴² front.
Lenin called I. I. Vakhrameev, a delegate of the Baltic Fleet, to the command center of the Petrograd military district:

The map of Petrograd and its surroundings was spread out on a large table. The plan to destroy Kerensky’s gang was being discussed. Vladimir Ilyich asked me what, in addition to its detachments, the fleet could provide to help the ground units. Once I knew the disposition of the enemy forces, I explained that the fleet could bomb Kerensky’s troops ambushed in Tsarkoye Selo. The bombardment could be carried out from both sides, with long-range naval guns; to this end, the cruiser Oleg would have to be brought into the Moscow Canal, where it would be possible to bombard the entire Tsarkoye Selo region to the northwest, with its 130 mm guns. In addition, two or three Novik torpedo boats could sail up the Neva, near the village of Rybatskoye, and bombard Tsarkoye Selo from the east with their 100 mm guns. No unit could withstand such a bombardment.
Comrade Lenin took a keen interest in this proposal. He asked me for details, thoroughly checked the feasibility of the proposed operation, and, having convinced himself of its real and rational character, ordered me to undertake its execution immediately, and to keep him regularly informed of the progress of the work.⁴³

But Lenin sought a second opinion (at least one), from another Bolshevik member of the fleet, Fiodor Raskolnikov, who gave an almost identical account: close discussion of the map, study of the depth of the channels, the effect of the tides, firing plans, and so on.
The third account is provided by N. Izmaylov, Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, who relates his telegraphic conversation with Lenin, the latter asking him how many ships he could get underway and within what timeframe, whether they were supplied with provisions and equipped with wireless telegraphy, etc.⁴⁴ The maneuver was carried out, the fleet embarked a short distance from Tsarkoye Selo, and observers were placed on the heights of Pulkovo to direct the fire, but the sudden retreat of Kerensky’s troops rendered this deployment useless.
It is difficult to judge the military relevance of Lenin’s decisions.⁴⁵ Trotsky’s testimony on this point is often suspect, as it tends to make light of Lenin’s alleged “errors of military judgment” in order to make himself look good.
Lenin’s military activity essentially consisted of gathering resources, galvanizing energies, sending the right people to the right places, and giving whoever was entitled a dressing-down. A good example of this is his telegram to Gusev on September 16, 1919:

In reality, we have stagnation, almost collapse.
At the Siberian Front they have put some blackguard Olderogge and the old woman Pozern in charge, and “reassured themselves.” An absolute disgrace! And now we are beginning to get beaten! We shall make the RMCR responsible for this, if energetic steps are not taken! To let victory slip out of our hands is a disgrace.
Inaction against Mamontov. Evidently, there has been one delay after another. The troops marching on Voronezh from the North were late. We were late in transferring the 21st Division to the South. We were late with the armored cars. Late with communications. Whether it was the Commander-in-Chief alone who visited Orel, or whether he went with you, is all one: the job was not done. Communications with Selivachov were not established, supervision of him was not established, in spite of the long-standing and direct demand of the Central Committee.
As a result, inaction against Mamontov and inaction with Selivachov (instead of the “victories” promised from day to day in childish little drawings—do you remember how you showed me these little drawings, and how I said: they’ve forgotten the enemy?!⁴⁶). If Selivachov escapes or his division chief betrays, the Republic’s Revolutionary War Council will be to blame, because he was sleeping and reassuring everyone, but didn’t do what was necessary. We need to send the best, most energetic commissars to the South, and not nightcaps.
We’re falling behind on division formation. We’re letting autumn pass us by, but in the meantime Denikin is tripling his forces, receiving tanks, etc., etc., etc. We can’t go on like this. We have to get rid of this somnolent way of working and move on to a lively pace.⁴⁷

In a paragraph also reproduced by Lenin, Clausewitz wrote that

If an increase in vigor is combined with wise limitation in objective, the result is that combination of brilliant strokes and cautious restraint which we admire in the campaigns of Frederick the Great.⁴⁸

It was this balance of qualities that Lenin demonstrated at the time: boldness when launching the October uprising, prudence during the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. And although Lenin urged commanders and commissars to show initiative, audacity, and combativeness, he never urged them to be reckless—since recklessness and inertia were the twin manifestations of the lack of seriousness he abhorred. Evidence of this attitude can be found in the telegram he sent to Trotsky on June 3, 1920, regarding an offensive plan:

This is sheer Utopia. Won’t it cost too many lives? We will be sacrificing a host of our soldiers. We must think this over and weigh it up ten times. I suggest replying to Stalin: “Your proposal for an offensive against the Crimea is so serious that we should make inquiries and give it most careful consideration. Wait for our reply. Lenin, Trotsky.”⁴⁹

4.4. Attack and Defense

In paragraphs extensively commented on by Lenin, Clausewitz points out that it is easier to hold a position than to take it, and that the defensive is the strongest form of warfare. If the offensive did not only have a positive objective (the conquest of a province, for example), but was in itself superior to the defensive, no belligerent would adopt the defensive. Those who pursue a positive objective necessarily have to go on the offensive and must, therefore, provide themselves with means superior to those of the enemy, in order to compensate for the inherent superiority of the enemy’s defensive position. When one is inferior to the enemy, the choice of the defensive makes up, in part or in whole, for this inferiority.
The defender takes advantage of unforeseen events, weather, and enemy attrition. While the attacker has the advantage of the surprise factor (as in the choice of the moment at which war commences), the defender is able to benefit from said surprise factor at the tactical level. As the defender knows the terrain, he can occupy its strongholds and most advantageous points, and he can opt for strategy of envelopment, seizing objectives in the enemy’s rear ,and allows him to play the interior lines,⁵⁰ and so on. Moreover, the defender’s position wears out less quickly than that of the attacker, and the defender benefits from the support of the population, as well as the sympathies and moral advantages that result from his status as the victim of aggression.
Certain intrinsic advantages of the defensive position operate even before the defender withdraws into the depths of his territory, and these benefits only increase with the extent of the withdrawal. As this retreat is costly (since it involves abandoning territory), it should only be undertaken if the initial imbalance of forces is such that all the advantages of defense are required to compensate for it. Depending on the extent of the imbalance, the defender may choose to confront the enemy as he crosses the border. If he is not strong enough to do so, he may choose to wait and confront the attacker when he has penetrated his territory to the point of arriving at the position chosen to conduct the battle to his advantage (on a river line, for example). Alternatively, if he still feels too weak, he can wait for the enemy to initiate the attack from this position. If the imbalance is still too great to allow for this option, the defender can extend his waiting position until the enemy offensive reaches its climax. Defense does not mean passivity: the defender, retaining the initiative, can retreat to multiply the number of battles, unleash guerrilla warfare at the enemy’s rear, etc.
In 1918, Lenin applied this doctrine step by step. He had been a fierce opponent of the “revolutionary war” against Germany in 1918. But his opposition represented a minority in the party: half the Bolsheviks wanted war, a quarter peace, and a quarter “neither war nor peace” as advocated by Trotsky. Trotsky imposed his line during the peace talks, provoking their breakdown and a new German offensive that proved disastrous for Soviet Russia. On March 3, 1918, Russia was forced to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Germany seized Poland and the Baltic States, and imposed independence on Ukraine, Finland, and the three Transcaucasian republics. The creation of the Red Army on January 15, 1918 had led to initial victories over the White armies in the Urals, on the Don, Donets, and Kuban and in Crimea, but in May 1918 (at the call of bourgeois nationalists threatened by the development of Ukrainian and Finnish revolutionary movements), the German and Austrian armies decisively breached Ukraine and Finland:

Now that we have become representatives of the ruling class, which has begun to organize socialism, we demand that everybody adopt a serious attitude towards defense of the country. And adopting a serious attitude towards defense of the country means thoroughly preparing for it, and strictly calculating the balance of forces. If our forces are obviously small, the best means of defense is retreat into the interior of the country (anyone who regards this as an artificial formula, made up to suit the needs of the moment, should read old Clausewitz, one of the greatest authorities on military matters, concerning the lessons of history to be learned in this connection). . . .It has become our duty to calculate with the utmost accuracy the different forces involved, to weigh with the utmost care the chances of our ally (the international proletariat) being able to come to our aid in time. It is in the interest of capital to destroy its enemy (the revolutionary proletariat) bit by bit, before the workers in all countries have united (actually united, i.e., by beginning the revolution). It is in our interest to do all that is possible, to take advantage of the slightest opportunity to postpone the decisive battle until the moment (or until after the moment) the revolutionary workers’ contingents have united in a single great international army.⁵¹

The German and (to a lesser extent) Austro-Hungarian armies were clearly stronger, better armed, more experienced, and better trained than the young Red Army. The revolutionary war against Germany had been pure adventurism, as its first supporter, Bukharin, would acknowledge ten years later.⁵²
By applying the principle of retreat to the heart of the territory, Lenin opted for the higher form of defensiveness. This defense would allow the revolution to develop its forces (the Red Army was in the process of being formed), the Red Army to exploit the interior lines (units could be sent from north to south, from east to west, according to needs and priorities, and thus obtain in turn the superiority required to win a decisive battle), the German forces were moving away from their supply bases and increasingly exposed to the intense activity of the Ukrainian Red Partisans, while pacifist and revolutionary ideas were spreading within Germany and the German army. Lenin relied heavily on the latter factor. In January 1918, revolutionary political strikes and the creation of workers’ soviets had already broken out in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Kiel, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Essling, and elsewhere, but it was not until November that the revolutionary wave swept across Germany: more than 10,000 workers and soldiers soviets were formed and took control of Berlin. The revolution was crushed, but its effects, combined with those of the armistice, led to the withdrawal of German troops from Ukraine and Crimea.

4.5. The “Militarization” of Marxism?

Lenin’s “militarization” of Marxism is the subject of two indictments:

1. One that asserts this militarization to be a necessary, intrinsic development of Marxism, as Anibal Romero argues:

For Clausewitz, politics does not necessarily require war; for Lenin, politics is class struggle—the state being merely an instrument of oppression—and the triumph of the proletariat, which can only be achieved by an act of force, through extreme violence leading to the elimination of the state and ultimately to the disappearance of politics itself.⁵³

2. For Jacob Kipp, Lenin’s “militarization” of Marxism is a tendency, triggered by the World War, his reading of Clausewitz, and the October Revolution, reaching its climax in 1922–23:

Lenin has come full circle. War and politics have been transposed as subject and object. Here politics have become a continuation of war by other means. The NEP was a tactical device to restore the national economy and regain peasant support in the face of armed uprisings at Kronstadt and in the Tambov region.⁵⁴

Kipp is wrong in general and regarding the timeframe in particular, as Lenin’s position clearly “demilitarized” at the end of the Civil War, as evidenced by his report to the Eleventh Congress of the Communist Party (1922):

In the preceding period of development of our revolution, when all our attention and all our efforts were concentrated mainly on, or almost entirely absorbed by, the task of repelling invasion, we could not devote the necessary attention to this link; we had other things to think about. To some extent we could and had to ignore this bond [with the peasant economy] when we were confronted by the absolutely urgent and overshadowing task of warding off the danger of being immediately crushed by the gigantic forces of world imperialism. . . .The idea of building communist society exclusively with the hands of the Communists is childish, absolutely childish. We Communists are but a drop in the ocean, a drop in the ocean of the people. . . .Rendering the exploiters innocuous . . . we have learned to do it. Here a certain amount of pressure must be exercised; but that is easy. To win the second part of the victory, i.e., to build communism with the hands of non-Communists, to acquire the practical ability to do what is economically necessary, we must establish a link with peasant farming; we must satisfy the peasant.⁵⁵

Civil war against the bourgeoisie, for the conquest of state power, is one of the fundamental parts of Leninism, but no more so than the rallying of the small and medium-sized peasantry and the intelligentsia to the proletariat. The outreach to these classes and social groups is just as political as the war against the landed gentry and the capitalists. Peace with some and war with others form a general policy, and are an integral part of the Leninist project.⁵⁶
The battle of Kronstadt and the crushing of the Tambov uprising or the Makhnovshchina have a different character than the war against the White and interventionist armies. For Lenin, whose main reference was the Paris Commune, a war against the forces of the ruling classes of the old regime, against the Versailles reactionaries, had to be waged.
This was not the case with Kronstadt, Tambov, or the Makhnovshchina, which were wars “imposed” on the Bolsheviks, in the sense that they were not “part of the program,” so to speak. Of course, the decisions of the commissars were decisive in the emergence of such conflicts, particularly the draft and prodrazverstka—the requisitioning of agricultural surpluses to feed the cities—but the Bolsheviks hoped not to have to fight such wars in the future anyway. Leaving aside the agents of counterrevolution adding fuel to the fire, the enemies of the Bolsheviks in Kronstadt, Tambov, and Ukraine consisted of social groups, starting with the middle peasants,⁵⁷ with whom Lenin hoped to form an alliance. The insurgents positioned themselves as enemies of the Soviet government because they perceived it as an antagonistic force. It is true that from the moment they took up arms, they were treated as enemies, but the severity with which they were repressed⁵⁸ was not the result of a general antagonistic policy.
For an insurgent shot by the Cheka, the distinction was of little consolation, but it was crucial to the theoretical question of Lenin’s relationship to war. At a time when opposition to autocracy, big landlords, and capitalists was deemed irreconcilable, the Bolshevik government took steps to accommodate the class interests of the middle peasantry; shortly after the suppression of the Tambov revolt, the Council of People’s Commissars substituted prodrazverstka for prodnalog, a set tax levied in the form of grain, which was much more acceptable to the peasants. Hence, even if Lenin did recommend the reading of Clausewitz to party cadres because political and military tactics are closely related fields,⁵⁹ and even if the public discourse remained martial,⁶⁰ in 1922, contrary to Kipp’s thesis, Lenin’s policies in Russia no longer bore the hallmarks of military confrontation.⁶¹
Reducing Lenin’s politics to war, then, is not only disregarding everything that came before the war (the organization and raising of the political consciousness of the working class at national and international levels; the organization and unification of revolutionaries around a strategic project; the bringing together of classes and social groups with an objective interest in revolutionary change, etc.), but also everything that came after the war (the organization of the new revolutionary government; the transformation of social relations; the reorganization of production and the development of town and countryside; cultural revolution, etc.). And if the objectives of pre-revolutionary politics did indeed make it possible to wage and win the revolutionary war, they also had to make it possible to win the peace.
According to Clausewitz, “we must always consider that with the conclusion of peace, the purpose of the war has been achieved and its business is at an end,”⁶² and this is precisely how Lenin understood it: once the class enemy (Russian reactionaries and imperialist interventionists) had been defeated, the political task was the peaceful construction of socialism. This construction was also a struggle: a struggle for production, for culture, for the improvement of social relations and social consciousness, a struggle against laziness, negligence, selfishness, routine, and bureaucracy, or what Lenin called “oblomovism.” But these struggles did not necessarily amount to war. Peace (which here takes the form of the construction of socialism) is, in accordance with Clausewitz’s conception, the truth of Leninist war.
Only in foreign policy was the situation different. At the Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, speaking of the peace offers that Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson had just made to the Kremlin, Lenin asked the stenographers to put down their pencils so that he could say, without fear of indiscretion, what he thought of them. For Lenin, these offers were dictated by the failure of the military intervention in Russia and the revolutionary vibrancy in Europe, not by the desire to find a modus vivendi with the Bolsheviks.⁶³ For Lenin, the contradiction with the bourgeois states was antagonistic; the relentlessness of the interventionists demonstrated their hostility to the first socialist state. While exhaustion, internal contradictions (mutinies, strikes, etc.), and the collapse of the White Armies forced them to abandon their military operations, they did not put an end to their hostility. Peace and international treaties are nothing more than deferred war. It makes no difference whether the tool of revolutionary war is the insurgent indigenous proletariat or the Red Army; Lenin’s international policy was a policy of war, tempered by the conviction that the enemy’s internal contradictions would play the most important role in its defeat. Lenin did not believe it possible to establish normal relations between Soviet Russia and the capitalist states. He was one who, like Wynn Catlin, saw diplomacy as the art of saying “good boy” while preparing for the next attack.

1. “The tried and tested tactic” (“die alte bewährte Taktik” in German) was an expression used in revolutionary circles at the turn of the last century to mockingly refer to the reformist path advocated by the Social Democratic parties of the time.—Ed.
2. V. I. Lenin, “The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart,” first published in Proletary, no. 17, October 20, 1907. In Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 13 (Moscow: Progress Publishers).
3. A number of Zimmerwaldian pacifists eventually rallied behind Lenin’s positions and became, if not the founders of the Communist Party in their own country, at least the defenders of Soviet Russia in the socialist movement in the West.
4. V. I. Lenin, “The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International,” in Collected Works, vol. 21 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974).
5. V. I. Lenin, “The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart,” in Collected Works, vol. 13.
6. K. Kautsky, “Social-Democracy in the War,” first published in the Neue Zeit, October 2, 1914. Source of the English translation used here: V. I. Lenin, “To Alexandra Kollontai,” in Collected Works, vol. 36 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971).
7. Rival claims to Morocco by France and Germany—one of Africa’s last independent states—brought the two countries to the brink of war in 1905. The crisis was not resolved until 1911, when Germany renounced all claims to Morocco in exchange for a 272,000 km² enlargement of its Cameroon colony at the expense of neighboring French colonies.
8. “Sacred Union” signifies temporary class collaboration orchestrated by the ruling bourgeoisie to maintain power and suppress dissent. It refers to the consensus among French political parties during World War I.—Ed.
9. K. Kautsky, “Patriotism and Social Democracy,” first published in the Neue Zeit, 1907. Source of the English translation used here: Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The “Junius” Pamphlet) (New York: The Socialist Publication Society, 1919), 104.
10. In The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin opposed Kautsky’s anti-Soviet positions with his own writings, particularly The Road to Power, written “when Kautsky was still a Marxist” (chapter “What is Internationalism?”), which stated that “the era of revolutions has begun.” In The State and Revolution, even as he berates Kautsky, he writes that this pamphlet is also his best.
11. V. I. Lenin, “Letter to Alexander Shliapnikov,” October 27, 1914, in Collected Works, vol. 35.
12. V. I. Lenin, “To A. G. Shliapnikov,” October 31, 1914, in Collected Works, vol. 35.
13. K. Kautsky, The Road to Power (Chicago: Samuel A. Bloch, 1909).
14. According to Lars T. Lih, however, not only did Kautsky (who believed in the ability of the workers’ movement to prevent war, if only because of the fear the movement would inspire among the bourgeoisie) consider these eventualities unlikely, he also felt that basing a strategy on them would be tantamount to adventurism. Lars T. Lih, “Lénine en 1914, La ‘nouvelle époque de guerre et révolution’” (“Lenin in 1914, The ‘New Epoch of War and Revolution’”).
15. K. Kautsky, The Road to Power.
16. K. Kautsky, The Road to Power.
17. V. I. Lenin, “Dead Chauvinism and Living Socialism,” in Collected Works, vol. 21.
18. Rémi Adam, La première guerre mondiale : Dix millions de morts pour un repartage du monde (“World War I: Ten million dead for a redivision of the world”) (Pantin: Les bons caractères, 2010), 78.
19. Georges Haupt, “Guerre et révolution chez Lénine” (“War and Revolution in Lenin’s Thought”), first published in Revue française de sciences politiques, no. 2 (1971), reprinted in L’historien et le mouvement social (“The Historian and the Social Movement”) (Paris: Maspéro, 1980).
20. V. I. Lenin, “The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War,” in Collected Works, vol. 21.
21. V. I. Lenin, “The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International,” in Collected Works, vol. 21.
22. V. I. Lenin, “The Significance of Fraternization,” in Collected Works, vol. 24.
23. V. I. Lenin, “Petrograd City RSDLP(b) Conference” (April 14–22, 1917), in Collected Works, vol. 41.
24. The Trench Pravda (“Okopnaia Pravda” in Russian) was a clandestine newspaper produced by Bolshevik activists and soldiers during World War I. It aimed to disseminate Bolshevik propaganda and agitate for socialist revolution among soldiers fighting in the trenches. The “Trench Pravda” played a crucial role in Bolshevik efforts to undermine support for the Provisional Government and the war effort, advocating instead for an end to the conflict and the establishment of a socialist state.—Ed.
25. V. I. Lenin, “To the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee,” in Collected Works, vol. 9.
26. N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959).
27. V. I. Lenin, “Street Fighting (The Advice of a General of the Commune),” in Collected Works, vol. 8.
28. Created in Moscow at the end of October 1905 to resist the ultra-nationalist Black Hundred movement, it brought together representatives of the party’s combat groups from the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, the Moscow Social Democratic Group, the Moscow Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and other combat groups. It was controlled by the Revolutionary Socialists and Mensheviks.
29. Lenin discusses the importance of the railway workers’ situation in the event of insurrection in “The Dissolution of the Duma and the Tasks of the Proletariat,” in Collected Works, vol. 11.
30. Plekhanov made these judgments in Nos. 3 and 4 of the Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata (“Diary of a Social-Democrat”) he edited in Geneva, condemning the insurrection and calling for “more dedicated attention to the workers’ trade-union movement.”
31. V. I. Lenin, “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising,” in Collected Works, vol. 9.
32. “Volunteer fighting units, composed of ‘druzhinniki,’ if we adopt the name made so honorable by the great December days in Moscow, will be of tremendous value at the moment of the outbreak. A ‘druzhina,’ or volunteer squad, that can shoot will be able to disarm a policeman or suddenly attack a patrol and thus procure arms. A volunteer squad which cannot shoot, or which has not procured arms, will assist in building barricades, reconnoitering, organizing liaisons, setting ambushes for the enemy, setting fire to houses occupied by the enemy, occupying rooms to serve as bases for the insurgents—in short, thousands of the most diverse functions can be performed by voluntary units of persons who are determined to fight to the last gasp, who know the locality well, who are most closely connected with the population.” (V. I. Lenin, “The Dissolution of the Duma and the Tasks of the Proletariat,” in Collected Works, vol. 11.)
33. “Military tactics depend on the level of military technique. This plain truth Engels demonstrated and brought home to all Marxists. Military technique today is not what it was in the middle of the nineteenth century. It would be folly to contend against artillery in crowds and defend barricades with revolvers. . . .There have been new advances in military technique in the very recent period. The Japanese War produced the hand grenade. The small-arms factories have placed automatic rifles on the market. Both these weapons are already being successfully used in the Russian Revolution but to a degree that is far from adequate. We can and must take advantage of improvements in technique, teach the workers’ detachments to make bombs in large quantities, help them and our fighting squads to obtain supplies of explosives, fuses and automatic rifles.” (V. I. Lenin, “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising,” in Collected Works, vol. 9.)
34. “Unless the revolution assumes a mass character and affects the troops, there can be no question of serious struggle. That we must work among the troops goes without saying. But we must not imagine that they will come over to our side at one stroke, as a result of persuasion or their own convictions. The Moscow uprising clearly demonstrated how stereotyped and lifeless this view is. As a matter of fact, the wavering of the troops, which is inevitable in every truly popular movement, leads to a real fight for the troops whenever the revolutionary struggle becomes acute.” (V. I. Lenin, “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising,” in Collected Works, vol. 9.)
35. Tammersfor is the Swedish name given to the city of Tampere, in Finnish.—Ed.
36. Yemelian Yaroslavsky, “Vladimir Ilitch dirige les activités combatives du Parti (Une page d’histoire des organisations militaires et de combat de notre parti)” (“Vladimir Ilyich directs the Party’s military activities [A page in the history of our Party’s military and combat organizations]”), in Lénine tel qu’il fut : Souvenirs de contemporains (“Lenin as he was: Recollections by his Contemporaries”), vol. 1 (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1958), 465–466. Translated from French by the Editor.
37. V. I. Lenin, “A Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress,” in Collected Works, vol. 10.
38. V. I. Lenin, “Guerrilla Warfare,” Collected Works, vol. 11.
39. “Lenin had very little of the military leader in his make-up. In the years of the Civil War after the Revolution he would not dream, though he had every opportunity to do so, of assuming the office or the pose of the generalissimo. He would not, unlike Trotsky or Stalin, affect the military uniform or intrude his judgment in technical military affairs.” [Adam B. Ulam, Lenin and the Bolsheviks (London: Collins Clear-Type Press), 343.]
40. Both were former czarist colonels. Kamenev himself reported having been rebuffed by Lenin the day he ventured to point out the sheer “beauty” of the planned maneuver. Lenin curtly told him that his job was to beat the enemy, whether he did it artfully or not being of no importance. . .
41. Lenin ordered the workers at the Putilov factory to armor trains and take them to the front. However, notes Podvoisky, “It’s true that these orders didn’t concern operations or military units but only the mobilization of ‘everything and everyone’ for defense. But this parallelism of work irritated me terribly.” (Nicolai Podovoiski, “Les journées d’Octobre,” [“The October Days”] in Lénine tel qu’il fut, vol. 1, 751. Translated from French by the Editor.)
42. Tsarskoye-Selo, now called Pushkin, is a district belonging to the metropolitan area of the federal city of St. Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd.—Ed.
43. L. Vakhrameev, “Dans les premiers jours d’Octobre” (“During the first days of October”), in Lénine tel qu’il fut, vol. 1, 748. Translated from French by the Editor.
44. N. Izmaylov, “Le Comité central de la flotte de la Baltique (Centrobalte) aux jours de l’insurrection” (“The Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet [Centrobalt] in the days of insurrection”), in L’insurrection armée d’Octobre à Pétrograd : Souvenirs des révolutionnaires (“The October Uprising in Petrograd: Memories of the Revolutionaries”) (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), 397-402. Translated from French by the Editor. Izmaylov’s account differs from the previous ones in that the battleship Respublika (formerly Emperor Paul I), rather than the cruiser Oleg, was mentioned—it was only because the latter’s draught was too great that the cruiser Oleg was finally chosen.
45. Soviet publications naturally present them all as insightful, even pivotal, as when Kedrov, who was in command on the Arkhangelsk front, commented on Lenin’s direct, personal order to send a heavy artillery battery to Kotlas.
46. Typical Clausewitzian irony.
47. V. I. Lenin, “Letter to Sergey Ivanovich Gusev,” in Collected Works, vol. 35.
48. Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 283.
49. V. I. Lenin, “Letter to L. D. Trotsky,” in Collected Works, vol. 44.
50. In a military context, “interior lines” typically refer to the shorter and more direct communication and supply routes that connect various units within a force. By controlling these interior lines, a military force can more efficiently move troops and supplies to where they are needed on the battlefield.—Ed.
51. V. I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness,” in Collected Works, vol. 27.
52. “The external burdens, the very great difficulties within the country, all of this, we felt, had to be dealt with by the sword of revolutionary war.” Quoted by Christian Salmon in Le rêve mathématique de Nicolaï Boukharine (“The Mathematical Dream of Nikolai Bukharin”) (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1980), 116. Translated from French by the Editor.
53. Aníbal Romero, Lenín y la militarización del marxismo, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas 1983. For Romero, this “militarization” stems from the rejection of the “peaceful path” seen as reformist, and thus also concerns Mao Zedong and even, given his use of the category of war, Gramsci. In another document, he also refers to Stalin (Aníbal Romero, Aproximación a la Política, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Instituto de Altos Estudios de América Latina, Caracas, 1990).
54. Jacob W. Kipp, “Lenin and Clausewitz: The Militarization of Marxism, 1914–1921,” in Military Affairs, October 1985, 189.
55. V. I. Lenin, “Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP(b),” in Collected Works, vol. 33.
56. It could be argued that Lenin’s outreach to the peasantry and intelligentsia was dictated by strategic imperatives (the proletariat needed allies in the civil war), but his interest went far beyond these imperatives. Lenin cultivated the alliance between the peasantry and the intelligentsia as part of the peaceful construction of the new society. When Lenin set out to put the intelligentsia at the service of a cultural revolution and to help all the cultural forces emerging from the masses, he didn’t do so in order to provide the Red Army with better-educated recruits. This is one of the components he considered necessary for socialist construction.
57. According to the categories in use: peasants who were sufficiently prosperous to live off their land and livestock but not wealthy enough to employ hired labor.
58. Chemical weapons were used on a massive scale against the Tambov insurgents.
59. It was V. Sorin who, in his article “Marxism, tactics, and Lenin,” which appeared in Pravda, no. 1, 1928, quoted a remark he had heard Lenin make: “Lenin said that ‘political and military tactics are called Grenzgebiet (a borderland) in German and party workers could study with advantage the works of Clausewitz, the greatest of German military theoreticians.’” (Source of the English translation used here: Donald E. Davis and Walter S.G. Kohn, Lenin’s “Notebook on Clausewitz,” [Normal: Illinois State University].)
60. For example, in the previously quoted “Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP(b),” Lenin compares the economic system of the NEP to a retreat: “On the whole, the retreat was fairly orderly, although certain panic-stricken voices, among them that of the Workers’ Opposition . . . caused losses in our ranks, caused a relaxation of discipline, and disturbed the proper order of retreat. The most dangerous thing during a retreat is panic. When a whole army (I speak in the figurative sense) is in retreat, it cannot have the same morale as when it is advancing.” (V. I. Lenin, “Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP(b),” in Collected Works, vol. 33.)
61. The country would in part regain such a character with the revival of class struggle in the countryside following the 1928 grain crisis, which led to the escalation of the farm strike and forced collectivization.
62. Clausewitz, On War, 91.
63. Cf. Marcel Body, “Les groupes communistes français de Russie 1918–1921” (“The French Communist Groups in Russia 1918–1921”), in Contributions à l’histoire du Comintern (“Contributions to the History of the Comintern”), no. 45 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1965), 51.