42 When 64 delegates registered to speak on the resolution, the presidium formed a military section in which 85 members participated, 57 of them with voting rights. The military opposition had a strong majority in the voting contingent. Mostly it was composed of Left Communists, but the Tsaritsyn group was also represented. The Soviet accounts mention Voroshilov, Rukhimovich, Minin, and Myasnikov, and there may have been others as well. The military section was supposed only to have shortened the debate on the floor, but it set its own course and with a Left Communist, Ye. M. Yaroslavskiy, in the chair, rejected the Trotskiy resolution by a vote of 37 to 20 and adopted Smirnov’s as a substitute. On the 21st, the presidium moved, with what appears to have been some urgency, to bring the entire question back to the floor. In the subsequent debate the main speakers opposing the Trotskiy resolution were Smirnov and Voroshilov; those supporting it were Lenin, Okulov, and Stalin. Smirnov and Voroshilov reiterated the opposition to military specialists, centralized command, and stringent discipline. Lenin insisted all those were absolutely indispensable if the Red Army was to continue as a regular army and not revert to partisanism – as, he pointedly added, Tenth Army had done under Voroshilov’s command. (Voroshilov’s biographer states that Voroshilov thereupon realized his mistakes and drew the correct conclusions.43) Okulov, the former Tenth Army commissar, gave the congress an explicit report on Voroshilov’s and his associates’ performance at Tsaritsyn. Stalin seems to have not quite known what to say other than that a regular army was a necessity and peasants could not be made into effective soldiers without strict discipline.44 The congress adopted the Trotskiy resolution by a vote of 174 to 95 with 32 abstentions, by party standards an embarrassingly, even alarmingly, small majority; and the presidium appointed a five-man committee, three from the majority and two from the minority, to negotiate a compromise with the military opposition. G. E. Zinoviev, Stalin, and B. P. Pozern represented the majority and Yaroslavskiy and another Left Communist, G. I. Safarov, the minority. Zinoviev, the chairman, headed the Petrograd bureau of the Central Committee and was a notorious waverer who had flirted with the Left Communists before supporting Lenin on the peace resolution, and Pozern belonged to the Petrograd party group and was the chief commissar at North Front. Their associations, like Stalin’s, bespoke something less than total commitment to the Trotskiy resolution. The committee reported to the congress in its last session that the military section had unanimously accepted the resolution on military policy as initially passed with the addition of certain ‘practical measures’, which were not disclosed to the congress and not included among its published proceedings until 1941. The practical measures were aimed specifically at Trotskiy. As Zinoviev put it in his report to the Central Committee, the congress had given Trotskiy a ‘serious warning’, one he ought not disregard. Two measures echoed Stalin’s report on the Perm disaster in calling for reorganization and tightened administration of the RMCR and the Field Staff. Trotskiy observed that the apparent intent was to tie him and the other RMCR members down at the central headquarters and thereby 84 an armed camp keep them away from the front. A number of the practical measures were clearly devised to give the commissars and party workers greater independence and more power. One would have required Trotskiy to hold monthly meetings with the senior commissars. Another demanded that the All-Russia Bureau of Military Commissars, which was directly under Trotskiy’s control, be abolished and its functions transferred to the RMCR under a member of the Central Committee.45 Trotskiy dismissed the measures as, in the main, the work of disgruntled party intellectuals, on the one hand, and oversimplifiers, on the other, which he could do because the congress did not have authority to give orders to the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. Seeing in the demand pertaining to the bureau of commissars an opportunity to expand and strengthen his own authority, which was not exactly what the military opposition had wanted, he shifted the bureau to the RMCR as the Political Administration of the RMCR and placed a hard-bitten old Bolshevik and Central Committee member, I. T. Smilga, in charge.
42 When 64 delegates registered to speak on the resolution, the presidium formed a military section in which 85 members participated, 57 of them with voting rights. The military opposition had a strong majority in the voting contingent. Mostly it was composed of Left Communists, but the Tsaritsyn group was also represented. The Soviet accounts mention Voroshilov, Rukhimovich, Minin, and Myasnikov, and there may have been others as well. The military section was supposed only to have shortened the debate on the floor, but it set its own course and with a Left Communist, Ye. M. Yaroslavskiy, in the chair, rejected the Trotskiy resolution by a vote of 37 to 20 and adopted Smirnov’s as a substitute. On the 21st, the presidium moved, with what appears to have been some urgency, to bring the entire question back to the floor. In the subsequent debate the main speakers opposing the Trotskiy resolution were Smirnov and Voroshilov; those supporting it were Lenin, Okulov, and Stalin. Smirnov and Voroshilov reiterated the opposition to military specialists, centralized command, and stringent discipline. Lenin insisted all those were absolutely indispensable if the Red Army was to continue as a regular army and not revert to partisanism – as, he pointedly added, Tenth Army had done under Voroshilov’s command. (Voroshilov’s biographer states that Voroshilov thereupon realized his mistakes and drew the correct conclusions.43) Okulov, the former Tenth Army commissar, gave the congress an explicit report on Voroshilov’s and his associates’ performance at Tsaritsyn. Stalin seems to have not quite known what to say other than that a regular army was a necessity and peasants could not be made into effective soldiers without strict discipline.44 The congress adopted the Trotskiy resolution by a vote of 174 to 95 with 32 abstentions, by party standards an embarrassingly, even alarmingly, small majority; and the presidium appointed a five-man committee, three from the majority and two from the minority, to negotiate a compromise with the military opposition. G. E. Zinoviev, Stalin, and B. P. Pozern represented the majority and Yaroslavskiy and another Left Communist, G. I. Safarov, the minority. Zinoviev, the chairman, headed the Petrograd bureau of the Central Committee and was a notorious waverer who had flirted with the Left Communists before supporting Lenin on the peace resolution, and Pozern belonged to the Petrograd party group and was the chief commissar at North Front. Their associations, like Stalin’s, bespoke something less than total commitment to the Trotskiy resolution. The committee reported to the congress in its last session that the military section had unanimously accepted the resolution on military policy as initially passed with the addition of certain ‘practical measures’, which were not disclosed to the congress and not included among its published proceedings until 1941. The practical measures were aimed specifically at Trotskiy. As Zinoviev put it in his report to the Central Committee, the congress had given Trotskiy a ‘serious warning’, one he ought not disregard. Two measures echoed Stalin’s report on the Perm disaster in calling for reorganization and tightened administration of the RMCR and the Field Staff. Trotskiy observed that the apparent intent was to tie him and the other RMCR members down at the central headquarters and thereby 84 an armed camp keep them away from the front. A number of the practical measures were clearly devised to give the commissars and party workers greater independence and more power. One would have required Trotskiy to hold monthly meetings with the senior commissars. Another demanded that the All-Russia Bureau of Military Commissars, which was directly under Trotskiy’s control, be abolished and its functions transferred to the RMCR under a member of the Central Committee.45 Trotskiy dismissed the measures as, in the main, the work of disgruntled party intellectuals, on the one hand, and oversimplifiers, on the other, which he could do because the congress did not have authority to give orders to the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. Seeing in the demand pertaining to the bureau of commissars an opportunity to expand and strengthen his own authority, which was not exactly what the military opposition had wanted, he shifted the bureau to the RMCR as the Political Administration of the RMCR and placed a hard-bitten old Bolshevik and Central Committee member, I. T. Smilga, in charge.