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

THE PROPHET ARMED
and he walked in the fresh glory of that victory. On 3 July the
Central Committee resolved to act on Stalin's advice: Vatutis
was dismissed with honours, and Kamenev was appointed
Commander-in-Chief. Trotsky resisted the change and sulked;
but Kamenev's 'success on the eastern front', as he himself wrote
later, 'bribed Lenin and broke down my resistance'.' This
reverse was bitter enough, but yet another followed. The Central
Committee also decided to overhaul the Revolutiona1y \Var
Council of the Republic. Trotsky was to remain its Chairman,
but his friends (Smirnov, Rosengoltz, RaskolnikoY) were
removed, and their places were taken by Smilga and Gusev, the
commissars who had defended the new Commander-in-Chief
against Trotsky and whose candidatures Stalin favoured.
The double reproof was so hurtful to Trotsky that he resigned
on the spot from the Politbureau, the Commissariat of \Var,
and the Council of \,Y ar. But the Poli tburca u could not permit
the conflict to come into the open. ="o matter with what Trotsky
may have been taunted in the inner councils of the Kremlin, to
the country he remained the leader of the October insurrection,
the founder of the army, the artisan of its victories. His resignation
in the middle of a new emergency would have dismayed the
army and the party. And Lenin, at any rate, was genuinely
anxious that his government should not forfeit Trotsky's
serYices. On Lenin's proposal, the Politbureau rejected Trotsky's
resignation, and it adopted unanimously a resolution solemnly
assuring Trotsky of its deep respect and complete confidence a~d
urging him to continue his 'extremely difficult, dangerous and
important' work on the southern front. It was also on this
occasion that Lenin, obviously perturbed by the incident,
handed to Trotsky as a token of his confidence an endorsement
in blank of any order which Trotsky might issue. 2 On these
terms Trotsky stayed in office.
Another tug-of-war arose at once over the campaign against
Denikin; and in this, too, Trotsky's adversaries worsted him.
By this time Denikin had seized Tsaritsyn, the coal basin of the
Donctz, and KharkoL The a11ti-llolsbn·ik frnnt sprc;td fimn tll'.~
1
Trotsky, Stalin, p. 313.
2
The cndorseme-nt, under Lenin's official stamp. runs as follows: 'Knowing the
stern character of Comrade Trolsky's orders, I am so convinced, so absolutely
convinced, of the correctness,