Much had changed since the formation of the new International, when one could believe revolution was imminent throughout Europe. Soviet Hungary and Bavaria had been crushed by counter-revolutionary forces. Perhaps the Bolsheviks’ strategy was all wrong, Trotsky thought, as he traced his finger across the map on his desk. “Mikhail,” Trotsky said, clearing his throat, “what if we are faced in the wrong direction? What if the road to a Soviet London and a Soviet Paris is not through the west? Could it be through the east?”
The wheels of Glazman’s mind were turning, like those inside a mecha. “We could exert far more influence in Asia than we might in Europe, at least for now,” the stenographer said cautiously, still mulling it over. But Trotsky had reached his conclusion. The chairman stood up, thumping his fist on the desk in excitement. “Mikhail, take this down!” he said. “I want to dictate a policy recommendation for the Central Committee. We must fundamentally reorient our perspective!”
An hour or so later, Glazman marched a few cars down to the train’s telegraph station. He dropped Trotsky’s missive in the outgoing stack of messages and presumably Trotsky’s memorandum was forwarded to the Central Committee, who ignored it. This did not weigh heavily on Trotsky. His political imagination was constantly firing in so many directions at once that, within a few days, he was onto the next thing and had almost completely forgotten his urgent, foreign-policy recommendation. Events in the west would soon demand the chairman’s attention.
Poland had agreed to an informal ceasefire with the Bolsheviks. But pressured by the French, who saw the interests of carnist-capitalism threatened by the Russian experiment, Poland reneged on the agreement. In early March of 1920, Poland attacked Russia. Hearing the news, Trotsky immediately diverted his military train and returned to Moscow, where he knew Lenin would need him. Trotsky was in such a hurry that a half dozen of the smaller mecha, awaiting repairs, were left in the field to be retrieved later.
The next night, Trotsky paced angrily about Lenin’s Kremlin office, as the head of the Soviet government sat passively behind his desk, listening. “Those bourgeois corpse-munchers!” Trotsky exclaimed, gesticulating wildly. “Did I not say the Poles would betray us?” Lenin nodded as he steepled his hands and sighed. “We have to crush them,” Trotsky said. “We have to hit them so hard, capitalists the world over will not think of such a thing again.” He got no resistance from Lenin. “I agree, comrade,” the Soviet leader said, wearily. “I’m only asking what you need.”
On an early day in June, a few miles from Kiev, Trotsky inspected a brigade of his Red Army that was preparing to assist in the retaking of the Ukranian city from Polish forces. Trotsky walked with the unit’s commander, surveying the 4,000 infantrymen and 200 mecha of various sizes standing before them. The chairman paused before a scouting mecha, approximately 20-feet tall. Craining his neck, Trotsky could see the driver inside the cockpit.
“How are the unit rations, soldier?” Trotsky shouted up. The mustachioed man in the upper innards of the machine was a bit taken aback the chairman was speaking to him, let alone asking his opinion of something. So his response was delayed. “They’re good, sir,” the driver answered. “None of that Romanov chow?” Trotsky continued, referring to the animal flesh served pre-revolution. “No sir,” the driver said proudly. This seemed to please Trotsky and he continued on, stopping occasionally to inquire about diesel and ballistic shipments, as well as buck up those soldiers who needed it.
“We must remember that this is not a nationalist war,” Trotsky shouted, in his eventual address to the whole gathering. “Our enemies are not the Polish people, but the Polish capitalists and landlords.” Thirty minutes later, when he’d finished his speech, Trotsky shook the unit commander’s hand, saluted the assembled troops, and boarded his train to inspect a regiment camped some miles away. In less then a week, the Red Army had retaken Kiev.
By July, there was debate within the Soviet leadership as to whether its army should continue into Poland. Lenin, Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin were eating in an otherwise empty Kremlin dining hall. It was late in the evening. “A few months ago, you told me we must crush the Poles,” Lenin said, putting down his fork, as he spoke to Trotsky. “That’s what a march on Warsaw will do.”
Trotsky, for all his militaristic bluster, did not believe the Red Army should enter Poland. “In 1917, we promised the Poles independence,” Trotsky said, paying no attention to the vegan shashlik on his plate. “Whatever provocations their ruling class engaged in, if we march on Warsaw, the Polish proletariat will think us no better than the Tsar.” Lenin waved his hand at Trotsky in exasperation. He turned toward Stalin, who was shoveling vegan stroganoff into his mouth, spilling a bit on his shirt and dipping his mustache in sauce. “What say you, comrade?” Lenin asked.
To be continued….if there’s enough interest.
Por Jon Hochschartner
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