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

ARMING THE REPUBLIC
revolution be exposed to the vengeance of the White Guards.
Amid the panics, the intense suspicions, and the violent passions
of civil war, there were many innocent victims; and all too
often Trotsky had to remind his over-zealous subordinates that
the purpose of the terror was not to destroy potential enemies
but to compel them to serve the revolutionary state.
He placed the commissar by the officer's side. For this, as for
many other institutions, precedents could be found in the
French Revolution, and Kerensky had already appointed
commissars with the army. But hitherto the commissars had been
attached only to the highest commands, and their role had been
vague. Trotsky placed them at every level of the military ladder,
from company commander to Commander-in-Chief. He also
tried clearly to define the duties and responsibilities of commander
and commissar. The former was responsible for military
training and the conduct of operations, the latter for the
commander's loyal behaviour and the morale of the troops.'
:\"o military order was valid unless it was signed by both. But
no matter how clearly duties were assigned in theory, military
authority was split. Rivalry and jealousy were inevitable. The
officer resented the commissar's control; the commissar refused
to reconcile himself to an arrangement which placed a colonel
or a gcnrral under him politically and above him militarily.
Trotsky tried to krep the balance between the two hierarchies.
He sometimes appeared to the commissars as the protector of
the officers and to the officers as the chief instigator of the
commissars; and as he acted without regard for persons, he
made many enemies. But he gained many devoted adherents
among the officers, who were grateful to him for their rehabilitation,
and also among the commissars, who held that the Red
Army owed its political cohesion and power to his scheme. On
the whole the system worked, though not without friction; and
no alternative to it could be devised. Under the uncontrolled
leadership of the former officers the Red Army would have
collaps