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

DEFEAT IN VICTORY 493
laurels the man responsible for victory. But they were even more
eager to get rid of the rigours of wartime discipline; and they
looked for guidance to men who were of less fiery temperament
and less splendid talents, but who were willing to pursue milder
courses of action. Old, battle-hardened Bolsheviks were heard
to declare that they had had enough of the army's impositions,
that the Commissariat of War had long enough kept the country
under terror and sucked its blood, and that they would not
countenance Trotsky's new ambitions.
Matters came to a head on 12.January 1920, when Lenin and
Trotsky appeared before the Bolshevik leaders of the trade
unions and urged them to accept militarization. Trotsky
defended his own record. If his Commissariat, he said, had
'pillaged' the country and exacted severe discipline, it had done
so to win the war. It was a disgrace and a 'sin against the spirit
of the revolution' that this should now be held against him, and
that the working class should be incited against the army. His
opponents were complacl'nt about the country's economic
condition. The newspapers concealed the real state of affairs.
'It is necessary to state openly and frankly in the hearing of the
whole mun try, that our economic condition is a hundred times
worse than our military situation ever was .... Just as we once
issued the order "Proletarians, to horse!", so now we must raise
the cry "Proletarians, back to the factory bench! Proletarians,
back to production!" ' 1 The nation's labour force continued
to shrink and degenerate. It could not be saved, reconstituted,
and rehabilitated without the application of coercive measures.
Lenin spoke in the same vein. Yet the conference almost unanimously
rejected the resolution which he and Trotsky jointly
submitted. Of more than three score Bolshevik leaders only two
men voted for it. Never before had Trotsky or Lenin met with so
striking a rebuff.
Trotsky's strictures on the complacency of his critics were not
unjustified. The critics did not and could not propose any
practical alternative. They, too, clung to war communism and
disavowed only the conclusion Trotsky had drawn from it. He
had little difficulty therefore in exposing their inconsistency.
Y ct there was a certain realism and valuable scruple in their
very lack of consistency. Trotsky's opponents refused to believe
' Trotsky, op. cit., pp. 27-52.