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

. 472 THE PROPHET ARMED
position to state them in a more formal manner or elevate them
to a principle. It was in the nature of such views that they did
not lend themselves to public statement; and the Marxist
tradition could not be openly flouted. That tradition was so
much alive in all Bolshevik leaders that it inhibited the working
of their own minds and prevented them from pursuing the new
line of thought to its conclusion. Even three decades later Stalin
would never admit that he favoured revolution by conquest,
even though he had already practised it on a vast scale. How
much more difficult was it for Bolsheviks to admit the fact even
to themselves in 1920 !
Yet an idea which is in the air soon finds a mouthpiece.
Shortly after the Polish war, Tukhachevsky came forward as
the advocate of revolution by conquest. He had not lived down
the defeat on the Vistula, the only setback-and what a setback--he
had suffered since his meteoric rise. He had come to
Bolshevism only in 1918 as a young officer, and now, at the age
of twenty-six, he was the most brilliant and famous general of
the Red Army. He was unquestionably devoted to the Soviets,
but he was the revolution's soldier, not a revolutionary. He was
not inhibited by the party's traditions; and he drew his inspiration
from Napoleon rather than from l'vfarx. He did not understand
why the Bolsheviks should go on mouthing anathemas
against carrying revolution on the point of bayonets. He expounded
his views in essays and lectures at the Military
Academy and argued that it was both possible and legitimate
for the Red Army to impose revolution on a capitalist country
'from without' . 1 Somewhat later he even proposed the formation
of an international General Staff of the Red Army, which would
direct revolutionary military activities in all countries. Intellectually
impulsive, original, and courageous, he openly attacked
the party's taboo. But he presented his case in so extreme
a form that it did not gain much support. Other leaders of the
civil war were inclined to accept his argument, properly diluted.
There was, at any rate, a logical link between Tukhachevsky's
view and their insistence that the Red Army should adopt an
expressly offensive military doctrine. 2
Trotsky struggled against this new mood. In the aftermath of
1
M. Tukhachevsky, Voina Klasov, see, in particular, his """'Y 'Revolution from
Without', pp. 5-6o.
' See the 'Note on Trotsky's Military Writings'.