While mass shootings did not much trouble Lenin, military setbacks did. As head of the Red Army, Trotsky took an implacable position toward the Tsaritsyn events. His feelings were influenced both by a strong personal dislike for Stalin and by pragmatic concerns. In his eyes, the measures taken in Tsaritsyn were a dangerous example of unconstrained action that would hinder the professionalization of the army through the institution of strict discipline and the recruitment of military professionals. He made his position clear to Lenin in a telegram dated 4 October 1918:
I categorically insist that Stalin be recalled. Things are not going well on the Tsaritsyn front, despite an abundance of forces. Voroshilov can command a regiment, but not an army of fifty thousand soldiers.… Tsaritsyn must either submit [to its ranking commanders] or get out of the way. We are seeing success in all armies except the Southern one, especially in Tsaritsyn, where we have a colossal superiority of forces but total anarchy at the top. We could get this under control in 24 hours with your firm and decisive support; in any event, this is the only way forward I see for myself.28
Stalin began to campaign against Trotsky. In telegrams to Lenin, he and Voroshilov accused Trotsky of making a mess of the front and behaving disrespectfully toward “prominent members of the party to please traitors from among military specialists.”29 He traveled to Moscow, hoping to talk to Lenin personally and tip the scales in his favor, but his trip was in vain. The leadership supported Trotsky’s efforts to consolidate the army. In October 1918 Stalin was forced to leave Tsaritsyn. Soon thereafter, Voroshilov and other Stalin allies were also removed. From that point forward, Stalin took every opportunity to scheme against Trotsky and advance the careers of his Tsaritsyn comrades.
The experience acquired in Tsaritsyn seems to have guided Stalin throughout the remaining years of the Civil War. Although he was compelled to recognize the party policy of recruiting military professionals, Stalin apparently remained hostile toward it. He had little respect for professional military men, whom he considered politically suspect, and preferred the enthusiasm and “common sense” of true revolutionaries. In a 16 June 1919 telegram to Lenin from the Petrograd front, he wrote with slightly comical bravado and arrogance: “Naval experts assert that the capture of Krasnaya Gorka [a Petrograd fort] from the sea runs counter to naval science. I can only deplore such so-called science. The swift capture of Gorka was due to the grossest interference in the operations by me and civilians generally, even to the point of countermanding orders on land and sea and imposing our own. I consider it my duty to declare that I shall continue to act in this way in future, despite all my reverence for science.”30 Lenin, who knew that the fort had not, despite Stalin’s claim, fallen from a naval attack, seems to have been amused by Stalin’s swagger. He left a notation on the telegram: “??? Krasnaya Gorka was taken by land.”31
Stalin’s bravado stayed with him through the war’s concluding stages. In the spring and summer of 1920 he was on the Southwestern Front, where the Soviet-Polish War was raging and Soviet forces were facing General Petr Wrangel, the commander of what was left of the White Army who had moved beyond his main stronghold in Crimea. At first the Polish forces dealt the Red Army crushing defeats, but the situation soon changed. The Red Army went on the offensive, made its way to Warsaw, and prepared to take it. Bolshevik leaders were euphoric. They anticipated that revolution would not only prevail in Poland, but (finally!) would also spread to other European countries. “Through Warsaw to Berlin!” was the watchword. On 13 July 1920, in response to Lenin’s question about the advisability of concluding a truce with Poland, Stalin wrote: “The Polish armies are completely falling apart; the Poles have lost communication lines and management; Polish orders, instead of reaching their recipient, are increasingly falling into our hands. In a word, the Poles are experiencing a breakdown from which they won’t soon recover.… I don’t think that imperialism has ever been as weak as it is now, at the moment of Poland’s defeat, and we have never been as strong as we are now, so the more resolutely we behave ourselves, the better it will be for Russia and for international revolution.”32
Stalin’s writings from this period are permeated with the hope that Red Army bayonets would coax along world revolution. On 24 July, in a telegram to Lenin that treated victory over Poland as a foregone conclusion, he proposed “raising the question of organizing an insurrection in Italy and in such still precarious states as Hungary and Czechoslovakia (Romania will have to be crushed).”33 Stalin backed up his words with actions. On the Southwestern Front that had been entrusted to him, he was especially anxious to capture the important city of Lvov. He pressed the leaders of the First Cavalry, urging them to make a decisive charge, but in vain: Lvov evaded his grasp. The Soviet military effort was not going well in another sector of the Southwestern Front, Crimea. Units of Wrangel’s army were entrenched there, and with the Red Army busy on the Polish front, Wrangel undertook successful attacks beyond the peninsula. Stalin, as one of the main officials responsible for the failures outside Lvov and in Crimea, sent reports to Moscow citing objective difficulties and blaming the inaction of the Red Army’s central command. He clearly felt uncomfortable as a military commander incapable of achieving decisive success. This failure was particularly mortifying given the rapid advance on Warsaw by the Red Army that was taking place on the neighboring Western Front.
But the situation soon took another sharp turn. The invasion of Poland bogged down, the Red Army suffered heavy casualties, and the Poles ended up imposing humiliating peace terms on the Bolsheviks. Defeat on the Polish front had a number of causes, one of which can be traced directly to Stalin. It has been suggested the Red Army spread itself too thin by carrying out offensive actions in too many areas at once. For example, the First Cavalry Army, an important force, was trying to take Lvov instead of supporting the troops marching on Warsaw. Not long before the Red Army’s defeat, a decision was made to move the First Cavalry Army west from Lvov, but it was never implemented. Stalin played a part in this failure. On 13 August 1920 he sent the Red Army Main Command a telegram asserting that the redeployment of the cavalry would be harmful, in that it had already begun a new offensive against Lvov. The redeployment should have been ordered earlier, he maintained, when the army was still in reserve. “I refuse to sign the order,” he wrote.34
Stalin’s refusal was probably not a major factor in the Polish debacle. In 1920, when the reasons for the Red Army’s defeat were dissected, most of the blame was laid on the commanders of the Western Front in charge of the invasion of Warsaw. But Stalin’s willful behavior may be why he was recalled from the front just a few days after the incident with the First Cavalry Army. He left for Moscow and never returned to military action. The laurels for victory over Wrangel that soon followed were placed on other heads.