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

412 THE PROPHET ARMED
military skill and knowledge must be considered as part of that
heritage. His exhortations to this effect make up many pages in
the volumes of his military writings and they belong to the
cultural as well a.s to the military history of the Soviet regime.
The combination of the groups opposed to Trotsky's policy
was all the more formidable as Lenin for a long time reserved
judgement on the employment of the officers, although he himself
most emphatically insisted on a considerate and tactful
treatment of the civilian 'specialists'. The military branch of the
party, on whose co-operation so much depended, was firmly
against Trotsky's policy. The conflict came into the open when
Lashevich, the leader of that branch, a member of the Central
Committee and Zinovicv's close friend, publicly boasted that
the party would use the old generals only to 'squeeze them like
lemons and then throw them away'. Zinoviev spoke in the
same manner, as if setting out to wound the officers' self-respect
and to obstruct Trotsky's attempts to enlist them. 1 A General
Novitsky who had of his own accord declared his readiness to
serve under the Bolsheviks wrote an open letter to Trotsky, in
which he refused co-operation, saying that he had no desire to
be 'squeezed and thrown away like a lemon'. Trotsky countered
this with an emphatic repudiation of the attacks on the officers:
'Those former generals', he wrote, 'who work conscientiously
in the present difficult conditions, deserve, even if they arc of
a conservative outlook, infinitely more respect from th.e working
class than pseudo-socialists who engage in intrigue .... "
Trotsky was not merely anxious to reassure the officers. He
was sincerely indignant about Zinoviev's and Lashevich's crude
and offensive language. Even after the civil war, when the need
to employ the old officers was less pressing, he continued to
demand that they should be treated with consideration. He
held that they should be employed even after a new officers'
corps had been raised up, because no civilized and rationally
governed society can waste men of skill, knowledge, and merit.
He also spoke from his own faith in the moral greatness of the
revolution by which even men of conservative upbringing must
1
A. F. Ilin-Zhencvskii, Bolsheviki u Vlasti, pp. 87-89.
' Trotsky, Kak V()()f'udialas Rtvo/utsia, vol. i, p. 135; Ilin-Zhenevskii, op. cit., pp.
!19-90. Trotsky's words were ostensibly directed against the non-Bolshevik opposition,
but they actually aimed at Zinoviev and Lashevich. He explicitly repudiated
the talk about 'squeezing them like a lemon'.