isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

410 THE PROPHET ARMED
employment of officers, the Mt'nsheviks raised an outcry. 'Thus
the Napoleons make their appearance!' Dan exclaimed. Martov
accused Trotsky of paving the way for a new Kornilov. These
charges carried little conviction when they came from a party
which had all but delivered the revolution to Kornilov.' More
serious were the objections of the Left Social Revolutionaries,
to whom this was no mere debating point. But the most pt'rsistent
and influential opposition arose within the Bolshevik
party itself. This opposition was actuated by the most diverse
motives. Most of the Left Communists, who had opposed the
peace of Brest, repudiated Trotsky's policy in the name of the
revolution's libertarian spirit. They refused to countenance a
centralized standing army, let alone one officered by Tsarist
generals and colonels. Led by I. N. Smirnov, Bukharin, Pyatakov,
and Bubnov, the Left Communists came out against Trotsky
as frankly and bitterly as they had come out against Lenin in
the controversy over Brest; they saw in their present opposition
a continuation of their previous struggle: they refused to accept
any compromise with forces of the old regime, whether in
foreign or in domestic policy.
The other clement in the opposition was formed by men who
belonged to the inner Bolshevik hierarchy. As a rule these men
stood for centralized authority and strict discipline and they
viewed the Left Communists as irresponsible trouble-makers.
They were not fundamentally opposed to Trotsky's idea of the
new army; but they viewed with suspicion his solicitations of the
former officers' corps. They suspected, not quite without reason,
that the officers would enlist in order to betray the Red Army
from within; and some were jealous for newly-acquired positions
of power which' they were now being asked to share in the
'I undertake to observe revolutionary discipline strictly and unflaggingly ....
'I undertake to abstain and to restrain other comradrs from deeds which might
harm and lower the dignity of' a citizen of the Soviet Republic, and to direct all my
actions and thoughts towards the great goal of the emancipation of all working
people.
~1 undcrtakr- to comr- forward on the first rail of th