Biography of Stalin

Author: Leon Trotsky / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: During a secret debate at an unpublicized meeting of the 10th Party Congress on the war in Poland, Stalin openly made a shocking, malicious, and untrue statement, claiming that Smirga, a key member of the Western Front Revolutionary Military Committee, "deceived the Central Committee" because he had made a "promise" to take Warsaw at a certain time but failed to fulfill it. The Southwest Front, which was supposedly Stalin's own actions, was said to have already been determined by Smirga's "promise." Therefore, the responsibility for this catastrophic failure should fall on Smirga. The congress listened to the speech of this orator with eyes glowing yellow and a grim face in a silent hostility. Stalin's speech had no effect other than to strike himself. No one voted in his support. On the spot, I protested against this astonishingly veiled accusation: Smirga's "promise" merely meant that he hoped to capture Warsaw; however, this hope did not rule out unforeseen factors, which are common in all wars, and this promise absolutely could not give anyone the right to act according to preconceived notions rather than the actual development of the war. These objections greatly annoyed Lenin, who joined the discussion and said that everyone did not need to blame a specific person. Why did Stalin not publish the stenographic record of this debate? In 1929, Yegorov [he was the commander of the Southwest Front during the Polish campaign and attempted to defend his actions in a public attempt, writing an article titled] "Lwow-Warsaw," [in which he had to admit:] "Our historians are criticizing the Southwest Front's performance in this regard. Anyone who studies this campaign based on available documents will not fail to recognize that the failure of the Western Front is directly related to the actions of the Southwest Front. In this sense, the main accusation against the Southwest Front command can be summarized as follows: the Southwest Front adopted a completely independent operational plan, considering neither the overall situation of the Polish campaign nor the combat situation of the neighboring Western Front. At the decisive moment, it did not provide the necessary support to the Western Front. In short, this is the repeated claim in all works, including those recently published, that discuss the mutual influence on the 1920 front. For example, in a serious and interesting work titled 'Subsequent Battles Based on the Experiences of the Battle of the Marne and the Vistula' (published by the State Publishing House in 1928), we see a passage that directly mentions: 'The Southwest Front did not execute the unambiguous order from the supreme commander to advance the cavalry corps toward Zamosc-Tomashov.'" (Page 74) Our graduates from the Military Academy study the history of the Polish campaign based on these and similar documents, and they carry such impressions with them after leaving school and into our army units. Briefly, the myth that the Southwest Front played a catastrophic role in 1920 is now clearly no longer doubted at all and has been recognized as a historical fact that future strategists and tacticians should study." P.498-499