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

ARMING THE REPUBLIC 431
are clear from the papers of the Polit bureau and from messages
exchanged between Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin.' The Left
Communists and Voroshilov subjected Trotsky to severe criticism;
and even the charges about his shooting of commissars
were brought up again. Lenin made a strong plea in defence
of Trotsky and left to attend to other business. The debate
was then conducted by Zinoviev and Stalin. The defeat of the
opposition was a foregone conclusion after Lenin's intervention.
Both Zinoviev and Stalin were careful to give the impression
that their views were identical with Lenin's; but they supported
Trotsky's policy rather half-heartedly; and they made a few
minor concessions to the opposition which were just enough to
sully Trotsky's triumph. The opposition mustered about one-third
of the votes; and it may be that the concessions helped to reduce
its strength, as Zinoviev later reported to the Politbureau. In a
public vote the congress fully approved Trotsky's activity and
adopted his 'Theses'. But the approval was qualified by an
instruction, passed in secret by the military section, which
demanded that Trotsky pay more attention to Communist
opinion in the army, hold regular monthly meetings with the
important commissars, and so on. Thus, while the general public
learned that the party had fully endorsed Trotsky's policy, his
opponents in the Bolshevik hierarchy had the satisfaction that
not all the charges against him had been unequivocally dismissed.
Something of the accusation that he was the enemy of
the party man in uniform had indeed stuck to Trotsky. 2
Trotsky first learned that the congress had fully approved
his policy from a telegram, signed by Stalin, which reached him
at the front on 22 or 23 of March. Soon afterwards he received
a message from the Central Committee, written by Zinoviev,
who informed him about the concessions made to the opposition
and urged him to treat this as a 'warning'. Trotsky refused to
accept the 'warning'. He replied in writing that he could not
recall commissars from the front every month to hold conferences
with them. The 'warning' was in any case dictated
by 'a shameful, crude, plebeian bias', which permeated all of
' Tht Trotsky Archives. Also Vosmoi S,re~d RKP, pp. 337-8.
2
In later controversy Trotsky dwelt on the public vote of the congress, while
Stalinist sources spoke about the rebuff which the congress had administered to
him in secret. Both versions arc true, but ea