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

REVOLUTION AND CONQUEST 471
Polish nation-state, while Poland was still partitioned. Now
Lenin himself appeared to obliterate his own efforts and to
absolve the violation of any nation's independence, if committed
in the name of revolution.
Lenin grew aware of the incongruity of his role. He admitted
his error.' He spoke out against carrying the revolution abroad
on the point of bayonets. He joined hands with Trotsky in
striving for peace. The great revolutionary prevailed in him
owr the revolutionary gambler.
However, the 'error' was neither fortuitous nor inconsequential.
It had had its origin in the Bolshevik horror of isolation
in the world, a horror shared by all leaders of the party but
affecting their actions differently. The march on Warsaw had
been a desperate attempt to breakout of that isolation. Although
it had failed it was to have a deep influence on the party's
outlook. The idea of revolution by conquest had been injected
into the Bolshevik mind; and it went on to ferment and fester.
Some Bolsheviks, reflecting on the experience, naturally reached
the conclusion that it was not the attempt itself to carry revolution
abroad by force of arms but merely its failure that was
deplorable. If only the Red Army had captured Warsaw, it
could have established a proletarian dictatorship there, whether
the Polish workers liked it or not. It was a petty bourgeois
prejudice that only that revolution rested on solid foundations
which corresponded to the wishes and desires of the people. The
main thing was to be better armed and better prepared for the
next venture of this kind.2
vVe shall discuss in the next chapter the domestic experiences
of the Bolsheviks which fed and reinforced this trend of thought.
Here it is enough tosay that the trend showed itself in the attitude
of those members of the Politbureau who favoured a renewal
of hostilities with Poland. Yet the old Bolsheviks could develop
such views only privately and tentatively. They were not in a
1
Klara Zctkin, Reminisetnct.s of /..£nin, pp. t 9-2 r.
2
The party historian N. Popov writes: 'Trotsky was opposed to the advance on
\Varsaw, not because he considered our forc("S insufficient ... but because of a
Social-Derr1ocratic pre:-judire that it was wrong to carry revolution into a country
from the outside. For these same reasons Tro1sky was opposed to the Red Army
aiding the rebels in Georgia in February 1921. Trotsky's anti-Bolshevik, Kautskyist
reasoning was emphatically rejected by the Central Committee, both in July 1920
in the case of Poland and in February 1921 in the case of ... Georgia.' (Outline
History of the C.P.S.U., vol. ii, p. 101.)