Trotski returned from North America in May 1917 and was horrified to find the Mensheviks collaborating with the Provisional Government. Needing to belong to a party if he was to have any influence, he accepted Lenin’s invitation to join the Bolsheviks. His fluency of tongue and pen were a great asset. He was a handsome fellow, a few inches taller than the average Russian, and he had quick reflexes in dangerous situations. It was he who had saved the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov, despite their political differences, from being torn apart by a mob in midsummer 1917.7 Trotski himself spent weeks in prison after the ‘July Days’, but turned his detention to effect by writing Pravda articles that coruscated with contempt for the Provisional Government. On his release in late August, he had revelled in being the Bolshevik party’s spokesman in the Petrograd Soviet.
His brilliance had been proved before 1918. What took everyone aback was his organizational capacity and ruthlessness as he transformed the Red Army into a fighting force. He ordered deserters to be shot on the spot, and did not give a damn if some of them were communist party activists; and in this fashion he endeared himself to Imperial Army officers whom he encouraged to join the Reds. He sped from unit to unit, rousing the troops with his revolutionary zeal. The hauteur of spirit which made him so annoying to his rival politicians was an asset in situations where hierarchical respect was crucial. His flair, too, paid dividends. He organized a competition to design a Red Army cap and tunic; he had his own railway carriage equipped with its own map room and printing press. He also had an eye for young talent, bringing on his protégés without regard for the length of time they had belonged to the Bolshevik party.
The Red Army’s first task was to retake Kazan. Lenin still suspected Trotski of being weak minded, and wrote urging him not to worry if historic buildings were damaged. Trotski needed no urging. On 10 September the city was recaptured for the communists. Trotski was the hero of the hour. Lenin was delighted, and turned his attention to Red Army commanders whom he suspected of reluctance to press home their advantage. From Moscow he sent telegrams emphasizing the need to clear the Volga region of the Komuch forces.8
The Red Army overran Komuch’s base in Samara on 7 October, and the Czechoslovak Legion retreated to the Urals and then to mid-Siberia before regrouping under the command of Admiral Kolchak, who initially recognized Komuch as Russia’s legitimate government. His loyalty lasted only a few days. On 17 November Kolchak’s officers organized a coup against the Socialist-Revolutionary administration, arresting several ministers. Kolchak was proclaimed ‘Supreme Ruler’ and the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries never again played a leading role upon the Russian national stage. Kolchak’s blood was up. He moved westwards from Omsk into the Urals, capturing the provincial centre of Perm in late December. The Red Army, the soviets and the party crumbled in his path. The Reds briefly counter-attacked and succeeded in taking Ufa, to the south of Perm; but Kolchak’s central group of forces were not deflected from their drive on Moscow.
The last months of 1918 were momentous on the Western front in the Great War. The Allies had seen off the German summer offensive in France, and military disarray ensued for the Central Powers. On 9 November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. The German army had been defeated; and, for the Russian Communist Party, this meant that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk could be disregarded as obsolete. First and foremost, Lenin sought links with German far-left socialists and gave encouragement to the formation of a German Communist Party. Revolutionary opportunities beckoned. Within days of the German military defeat, Red forces were aiding local Bolsheviks to set up Soviet republics in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.
In Russia, violence intensified not only on the war fronts but also in civilian politics as Lenin widened the Cheka’s scope to suppress rival political parties. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were excluded from the soviets in June 1918 on the grounds of being associated with ‘counter-revolutionary’ organizations, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were arrested in large numbers. Many Kadets were already in prison. Lenin, Trotski and Dzierżyński believed that over-killing was better than running the risk of being overthrown. And so, as the anti-Bolshevik forces approached the Urals in the summer, the communist central leadership considered what to do with the Romanovs, who had been held in Yekaterinburg for some months. They opted to murder not only the former Emperor but also his entire family, including his son and daughters. On 17 July the deed was done. Lenin and Sverdlov claimed that the responsibility lay with the Bolsheviks of the Urals region, but the circumstantial evidence strongly points to the Central Committee having inspired the decision.9
On 30 August Lenin himself got it literally in the neck. As he addressed a meeting of workers at the Mikhelson Factory in Moscow, shots were fired at him. His chauffeur Stepan Gil bundled him into the official limousine and drove him away. A woman standing nearby, Fanya Kaplan, was arrested. It is doubtful that she carried out the shooting since she was almost blind;10 but she was a sympathizer with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and may well have been involved in the plot in some form or other. Be that as it may, she was executed as the principal malefactor while Lenin convalesced at the government’s new sanatorium at the Gorki estate, thirty-five kilometres from the capital.
The attempt on Lenin’s life was answered with the promulgation of a Red Terror. In some cities, prisoners were shot out of hand, including 1300 prisoners in Petrograd alone. Fire would be met by fire: Dzierżyński’s Cheka had previously killed on an informal basis and not very often; now their executions became a general phenomenon. Lenin, as he recovered from his wounds, wrote the booklet Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky, in which he advocated dictatorship and terror.11 His confidential telegram to Bolshevik leaders in Penza on 11 August had contained the instruction: ‘Hang no fewer than a hundred well-known kulaks, rich-bags and blood-suckers (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people).’12 Another such telegram went to Petrograd in October 1919 at the time of an offensive by General Yudenich: ‘If the attack is begun, is it impossible to mobilize another 20,000 Petrograd workers plus 10,000 workers of the bourgeoisie, set up cannons behind them, shoot a few hundred of them and obtain a real mass impact upon Yudenich?’13
Terror was to be based on the criterion of class. Martyn Latsis, a Cheka functionary, was in favour of exterminating the entire middle class; and even Lenin made remarks to this effect.14 The purpose was to terrify all hostile social groups. Lenin intended that even the regime’s supporters should be intimidated. His recommendation to the Penza communists had made this explicit: ‘Do it so that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, might tremble!’15 According to official records, 12,733 prisoners were killed by the Cheka in 1918–20; but other estimates put the figure as high as 300,000.16 Other prisoners were held either in prison or in the concentration camps that were sanctioned by official decrees in September 1918 and April 1919.17
The premisses of Bolshevik policy were worked out quickly. The Food-Supplies Dictatorship which had been established in May 1918 was consolidated. The territory under Soviet control was divided into provinces and sub-divided into districts, and quotas of grain were assigned to each of them for delivery to the government. This system of apportionment (or razvërstka) was based upon the statistical evidence available, but Sovnarkom admitted that much guesswork was involved; and in practice the People’s Commissariat of Food Supplies grabbed grain wherever it could find it — and peasant households were often left starving. Sovnarkom had hoped to keep most peasants on its side. In June 1918 Lenin had decreed the establishment of ‘committees of the village poor’ (kombedy), which were meant to report the richer peasant families hoarding grain to the authorities;18 and in return they were to receive a hand-out from the requisitioned stocks. In reality the peasantry resented the entire scheme. Clashes with the urban squads were widespread and the kombedy fell into disrepute.