APPENDIX 1

"FRONT AND REAR IN WAR OF THE FUTURE"·

Reappraisal of the question of the role and importance of the rear in the general course of military operations is a basic and most important con• clusion from the experience of the past imperialist war of 1914-1918. The thesis that states that "the outcome of war will be decided not only directly on the battle front but also on those lines where the civil forces of the country are located" has now become the current axiom. The experi• ences of the war show that the attainment of the goals of war under con• temporary conditions has become a matter which is significantly more com• plicated than it formerly was. Contemporary armies possess a colossal vi• tality. Even the achievement of the utter defeat of the opponent at a definite moment does not assure the final victory so long as there is, behind the defeated units, a rear which is economically and morally strong. Given the presence of time and space which permit a new mobilization of hwnan and material resources which are needed for the restoration of the fighting capacity of the army, such defeated units may easily reestablish the front and carry the struggle forward with hope of success. On the other hand, difficulties of guaranteeing the mobilizational readi• ness of the army have grown to incredible dimensions. The means need~ for this are not hundreds of millions, but rather billions of rubles. Such figures, it goes without saying, can not be maintained by any budget, even that of the richest country. Finally, the rapid progress of contemporary military technology also operates in the same direction. That which is, today, the most absolute will, tomorrow, become obsolete and will not provide success. Hence, the in• expedience and real danger of colossal financial expenditures for the ready- • Translated from the text which appeared in M. V. Frunze, lzbrannye proizve• deniia (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1957), II, pp. 133-143. with footnotes by the editors of that collection. This essay first a,ppeared as the introduction to P. Karatygin, Obshchie osnovy mobilitzatsii promyshlennosti dlia nuzhd voiny (Moscow: Voenny vestnik, 1925). 168 APPENDICES ing of mobilizational expenses. The center of gravity is transferred to the corresponding organization of industry and, most of all, of the economy of the country. The inevitability of a review of the very principles of strategy flows from what has been set out here. In clashes between first-rate opponents, the decision will not be achieved by a single blow. War will assume the char• acter of a protracted and severe contest which puts all the economic and political foundations of the fighting sides to the test. Expressed in the language of strategy, this signifies the transition from the strategy of light• ning, decisive blows to the strategy of attrition.1 This basically correct conclusion must be supplemented by an amend• ment which flows from the class character of future wars. The essence of this amendment is contained in the fact that, with the acute exacerbation of class contradictions, the moral steadfastness of a certain fighting side may prove to be very weak and may not withstand the operations of the first serious military blow. The circumstance of fighting sides with contrasting types of class systems will be especially characteristic in this respect. For example, the clash of a bourgeois country with our Soviet Union. It is obvious that a strong military blow from our side might result in giving full scope to elements of the proletarian class movement within the opposing side and the seizure of power by the working class, which would signify the automatic cessation of war, might become possible. Without doubt, reasoning of this sort is also applicable to us so long as internal enemies of the workers' and peasants' state system are able to raise their heads. This accounts, by the way, for the fact that remnants of the old armed White Guards (Wrangel) and others continue, up to the present, to

1 At the basis of the concept of the "strategy of attrition" as applied by M. V. Fnmze lies the idea that contemporary war between powerful opponents can not be concluded by one battle or in a short period. Contemporary wars, M. V. Frunze stressed, stretch into protracted contests which demand the thorough effort of the strength of the people and the state. Victory can be achieved only by active combat actions in which maneuver plays a great role. In the course of these actions, the anny of the qpponent must be destroyed and the economic and moral basis of his resistance must be undermined. This concept of M. V. Frunze has nothing in common with the far-fetched "strategy of starvation" of Delbriick. By the "strategy of starvation." the latter under• stood those actions which resulted in the seizure of territory of the opponent by means of maneuver without the destruction of his vital forces and combat technology. Delbrllck did not consider tIm fabricated "strategy" suitable to the conditions of the war of 1914-1918, although it allegedly had application to past wars; he justified the theory of "lightning war" which the German General Staff followed in the First World War. APPENDICES 169 profit by the notorious patronage of the government of the bourgeois coun• tries.2 It, thus, by no means follows from the reasoning which has been set out above that there is a necessity for us absolutely to reject the strategy of lightning blows (this strategy, by the way, is not rejected by the bourgeois states). On the contrary, the stronger the exacerbation of class contradic• tions in the camp of the enemy becomes, the greater are the chances and essential qualities for the success and advantageousness of just this strategy. With all this, however, the necessity of the preparation for protracted and stubborn war always remains compulsory for us. In so far as it is a matter of clashes of two different worlds, this signifies a fight to the death. The workers' and peasants' republic has many enemies and, therefore, the struggle under any conditions will be protracted. Thus, in our time, the union of the front with the rear must become much closer, more direct and decisive. The life and work of the front at any given moment is conditioned by the work and condition of the rear. And, in this sense, the center of gravity in the waging of war has moved back from the front - to the rear. Another force which is connected with the development of military tech• nology and the perfection of the means of destruction also acts in this di• rection. The transformation of aviation into a decisive arm of the fighting services, the perfection of means of chemical warfare, the possible use of infectious microbes,3 and so forth and so on - all this, in essence, overturns the very notion of "front" and "rear" in the old sense of these words.

! After the defeat of Wrangel, about 100,000 White Guarc:i!, of which not less than 50,000 were combat personnel, were evacuated (or rather, fled) from the Crimea. In accordance with an agreement concluded in November, 1920. between Wrangel and the French Supreme Commander, de Martel, and the Commander of the French Squadron in the Black Sea. Admiral Liumenil [sic - "Dumesnil" is probably what is intended, WOJ], all those White Guards were evacuated from the Crimea under the patronage of France. In 1921, Wrangel's entire evacuated army (about 45,000 men) was formed into three corps - The First Army, the Don, and the Kuban. In May of that year, remnants of the Wrangel army began to settle in the Balkan countries but parts of the army were sent to the French colonies. By the time of the appearance of the article by Mikai! Vasil'evich Frunze, groups of Wrangelians who remained in a series of countries played an unportant role, helping the bourgeois countries in their capacity as military-political forces to suppress the workers' movement. In this manner, the national uprising in Bulgaria in 1923 was suppressed by the Bulgarian government with the assitance of the Wrangeiians. a The question of the possibility of the use of infectious microbes for military purposes was openly discussed in the pamphlet of the French military doctor Georges Louis, L'armee bacteriologique, published in Paris in 1922. This pamphlet attracted the attention of M. V. Frunze and he was compelled to draw the attention of the military community to the possibility of the use of infectious microbes as a means of 170 APPENDICES The front, in the sense of a region directly comprehended by military activities, loses the character of the previous vital barrier which blocks the enemy's access to the "rear." The rear is now united with the front, if not completely, then, in any case, in a significant part of it (depending mainly on the dimensions of the territory of a given country). From this it follows that there are new tasks and new methods of the preparation of the coun• try's defenses and, in particular, a new role of the rear itself as a direct participant in the struggle. Once the direct burden of waging war falls on the entire people, on the whole country, once the rear acquires such im• portance in the general course of military operations, then, naturally, the task of its thorough and systematic preparation in time of peace appears in the premier place. This preparation should have the goal, in the first place, of the uninter• rupted supply of the front with everything necessary for the conduct of com• bat operations, and, in the second place, the providing to the rear itself of all that is needed for the maintenance of its working energy and moral stead• fastness at the proper level. Such a task looms before all contemporary world powers and they are striving to reach a practical solution to it. For us, the problem - the problem of the organization of the Soviet state in the event of war - has exceptional significance. The vastness of our ter• ritories, the comparative scarcity of population, the insufficiency of rail networks, the weak development of industry, the general technological backwardness, and so forth and so on - all this puts us in a most disadvan• tageous position in the sense of mobilizational preparedness in comparison with possible enemies. Our regular army should be the means by which the systematic execution of the mobilization of our country is guaranteed. But on this score, no one in our Union should create any illusions for himself. We have arrived at the extreme limit in our attempts to make the military service easier for the population. In 1924, we reduced the army by 50,000 men and, thus, in place of the previous 610,000, we have remaining 560,000 men in all. And since a significant part of this number is in the rear apparatus and all sorts of "maintenance men," the army has at its disposal a much lower figure of actual combat elements. It is clear, in such a situation, that a regular army in the true sense of the word - that is, a sufficient, effective armed force which is prepared to take the blows of the enemy on itself - is not available

warfare. Scanty information about this new method of warfare made it impossible to prophesy with great accuracy it role in future wars. but is can not be denied that the belligerent sides must consider bacteriological weapons seriously. APPENDICES 171 to us. We have only cadres, only the skeleton of a future army, and even that is of insufficient strength. From this follows the urgent, burning, and pressing task - to intensify the general work of the preparation of the country for defense; to organize the country in peacetime so that it can change over to war methods quickly, easily, and painlessly. The route to this lies in the adoption of the resolute course of the militarization in time of peace of the entire civil apparatus. We shall now see what this will probably mean. Te task of the preparation of the country for defense in contemporary conditions is far from being confined to the limits of the resources available to the army and to a single military department. This task should become the business of the entire country, of the entire Soviet apparatus. The matter may appear, at first glance, to be unrealizable. This is incorrect. The diffi• culties here are, it is true, very great but it will be easier for us, with the character of our state power, to overcome them than it would be for any• one else. Here are several examples which indicate the direction in which the work should now proceed. The training of command personnel. Up to the present, this has lain ex• clusively within the military department. A whole network of military• educational institutions of all types, specialities, and ranks exists for this purpose. Is such a system satisfactory? Hardly. In the first place, it costs very much; in the second place, there is, all the same, an insufficiency of those trained for war purposes (command personnel of the reserve). Can this task be decided differently? Without doubt, it can. A living ex• ample of this is America where the training of officers of the reserve lies wholly within the department of Comrade Lunacharskii.4 In the pages of the magazine "War and Peace" [Voina i mir], we can find an indication of how this question has been posed and what results it yields, when he read:

The method of making up the staff of officers of the reserve (troops of the second line which do not exist in peacetime - M. F.) from the personnel of students of institutions of higher education has reached a very high development in America because it is democratic and cheap. At the present time, the military training of volunteer-students amounting to 60,000 men who comprise the "Reserve Officers' Training Corp" is conducted there in 123 institutions of higher education. The matter of military training itself is so arranged in universitIes that it is of benefit to the students and so that it arouses competition and interest by diver• sions and physical and sports improvement. Subsequently, the student of the

4 By "the department of Comrade Lunacharskii," M. V. Frunze has in mind the Peoples' Commissariat of Public Education. 172 APPENDICES military course is considered a special service and is accompanied by definite advantages (prius, material assistance, and so on). Finally, military science studies are arranged in a fascinating and exemplary manner. The organization of specialities is done in cooperation with the speciality of the university or faculty; for instance, students of the technical faculty are trained for service in the coast artillery, and so on. Every university or college is divided into a certain number of groups according to the type of troops or speciality, depending on the speci• ality of the faculty and the number of students who are registered. All groups, as a whole, make up the "military faculty" of the educational institution. The faculty is headed by an officer, the Professor of Military Science, who has at his disposal lectures in military science as well as troop officers and non-commis• sioned officers. The university rector designates a definite number of hours in the week for military science lectures and assigns the necessary facilities for the maintenance of the material factors (instruments, tractors, weapons, etc.) which belong to the military faculty. All the work of the Commissariat of Public Education should, in general, be arranged so that it takes into account and serves the needs of defense. Its militarization, at all levels and in all branches, is necessary. It is possible that fear of this type of "militarism" will be manifest among certain sectors of educational workers. This indicates only the presence among them of Philistine-sentimental moods and a complete misunder• standing of the essence and character of the tasks which lie before the Re• public of Workers and Peasants. The profound contradiction in principle which exists between the Soviet Union and the rest, the bourgeoi.&-capitalist world, will sooner or later take the form of an open, decisive clash. The facts of contemporary international life are clear proof of this. It can not be said with confidence that the result of the anti-Soviet blocS which Eng• land is now organizing will be a new intervention in the very near future. But it can be said, and it must definitely be asserted that such a clash is altogether inevitable. The initiative of attack will not be ours. So far as the matter concerns us, we could alone confidently await the results - our cultural-economic successes. Sooner or later, but inevitably, socialist ideas will triumph in other countries as well. But our opponents will scarcely per• mit us the opportunity of a peaceful socialist construction which carries with

S The anti-Soviet bloc organized in 1924 is meant. After the coming to power of the Conservatives and the abolition of the agreement with the Soviet Union, which had already been signed by the cabinet of MacDonald, the relations between the USSR and England were strained. The Soviet government declared its readiness to renew conversations concerning an agreement with England, but the English government d'id not take advantage of this. More than that, the English government employed all its influence in Eur~ in order to prevent the economic rapprochment of the Soviet Union with any West European country. APPENDICES 173 it a threat to the very existence of capitalism. Therefore, our task. is firmly, consistently, and steadfastly to prepare for the struggle and to provide the conditions of our victory. Among this sort of condition, the most important is the proper manner of raising and directing the work of the Peoples' Commissariat of Popular Education of the union republics. As a result of its work, the army should receive a cultured, literate, and politically educated soldier-citizen. When this is resolved, the outcome of any clash is nine-tenths decided beforehand. Any success in this direction at the present will make all work in the time of war itself easier. The concrete program of the immediate year should be the formulation of the goal of the liquidation of illiteracy in the contingent called up to service. Hitherto, this problem has had to be solved in the army with the resultant sacrifice of a great number of its other tasks. This can and must be solved by the Peoples' Commissariat of Public Education by the time of the call-up. The inclusion of a minimal course of military studies and military training in the program of beginning and middle schools should be another most immediate goal. This is especially important with respect to the country• side which supplies the main mass of the armed forces. At the present time, this contingent, thanks to its lack of culture and, at times, stark illiteracy, does not offer especially good combat material in the conditions of con• temporary battle. These deficiences should be remedied by the appropriate formulation of the matter of education, beginning at the school bench. In this connection, the role of our teachers is boundless. With small additional efforts they can produce a colossal service in the matter of the defense of the country. The role of the village teacher can be no less important and useful in the strengthening of the system of the construction of the militia, on which our system turns. The military department has neither the forces nor the means for the organization of the continuing work of temporary personnel in periods between sessions. Here, a great service can be rendered by the village intelligentsia and, first and foremost, by the national teacher by taking part in the creation and development of the work of "military cor• ners," sporting circles, and so on. The same thing can also be said about all other departments. Let us take, for example, the Peoples' Commissariat of Health. Experience has demonstrated that, in the territorial system, the success of training in short• term sessions suffers from the fact that territorial army personnel appear at sessions with a variety of diseases (mange, venereal disease, and so forth). As a result, instead of training in military affairs, they must receive medical 174 APPENDICES treatment. It should not be thus and the business of the Peoples' Commis• sariat of Health is to formulate its work so that all temporary personnel pass through the appropriate sanitary processing in advance of the call-up and before the sessions. Transportation is another example. There will be a great need for it during the mobilization of the army. To think of the procurement of mobil• izational supplies at the expense of the budget of the military department is the purest illusion inasmuch as its resources are insufficient for the satis• faction even of urgent day-to-day needs. The very system of procurement is really extremely impractical in view of the expensiveness of these latter items. But the needs of mobilization could be fully satisfied if our economic organs set themselves the goal, in place of the unrealizable goals of the creation of such stocks, of the elaboration and dissemination among the peasantry of vehicles of those types which, while fully satisfying the ec0- nomic needs of the population, would be suitable for military purposes at the same time. The introduction of encouraging measures and the broad support of this undertaking by the army would, undoubtedly, assure the success of themattet. Here is another example. We are beginning to develop tractor building. As is known, tractors will playa very prominent role on the battle fields of the future. In addition to the "tanks" which are already known to everyone, the track-laying tractor will find wide application in other areas of military affairs; for example, in a number of countries the movement of artillery has been changed over from horse-drawn to tractor-drawn. In order to achieve this, however, the types of tractors which are used for peaceful purposes should simultaneously satisfy definite minimal military needs - this is a matter which is fully realizable and necessary. Means of communication and transportation play an especially important role in the course of military activities. In its essence, all mobilizational• preparational work in this area lies outside the sphere of activity of the military department. Providing the army in wartime with mobilizational stocks of communications and transportation equipment at the expense of the state budget is a Utopia, and a pernicious Utopia. All this must be prepared in the process of the normal peacetime work of the appropriate Peoples' Commissariat. This work already has the necessary bent. Several results, especial1y in communications, are already available to us. As a result of a whole series of productions, we are already liberated from the domi• nation of foreign countries. We should be still more energetic and move still further and wider with such means. We must establish and strengthen organizationally a still closer union between the indicated commissariats APPENDICES 175 and the appropriate sections and administrations of the military department. These latter must become mobilization-instructor staffs with respect to the former. Such "militarizing" is entirely feasible and possible, but only under two conditions: firstly, the clear realization by the rear, and first of all by its civil apparatus, of its role in future wars and the necessity of advance pre• paration for it; and, secondly, the establishment of a vital, direct union of the military apparatus with the civil apparatus. This union should be strengthened organizationally by means of the entry of representatives of the army into corresponding civil organs and institutions in conformity with the speciality of the former. An especially important role falls to our business executives in this re• spect. They must keep in mind the fact that war call for the mobilization of "all economic resources of the nation - industrial, agricultural, and financial - which must be coordinated by the same strategy which directs the operation of the purely combatant forces."6 The leaders of our trusts and combines and the directors of our factories and plants should proceed from these perspectives in their peacetime activi• ties. In every new undertaking - economic, cultural, or other - the question must be asked: How will the results of this undertaking accord with the guaranteeing of the defense of the country? It is not possible, without pre• judice to the peaceful needs involved, to do this so that the attainment of definite military goals is also guaranteed? On the other hand, our military business executives must examine the specimens of supply, especially military items, which are accepted now for the peacetime army. It is necessary to strive for the maximum use of those specimens which are objects of consumer consumption in time of peace and, which, consequently, are already required to be items of mass production. Here, all details which do not have a decisive effect on the matter may and should be foregone. Minor shortages of these items are atoned for by the possibility of obtaining them in the mass in time of war, without any supple• mentary efforts or expenditures. It is of course understood that one must not demand from all our busi• ness executives that schooling and knowledge of military affairs which would automatically guarantee the fulfilment of these demands. To help with this, first of all, is a task of the military department. The military department is

6 The words enclosed in quotation marks are taken by M. V. Fru.nz.e from the pamphlet of P. Karatygin, General Bases of the Mobilization of Industry for the Needs of War, published by the Military Herald [Voennyi Vestnik]. During the period of the defeat of Wrangel, P. Karatygin was the chief of the Operational Section of the Southern Front and the Chief of Staff of the front. 176 APPENDICES obliged, with the help of definite organizational forms of work of the ap• paratus and also through various social organizations (Society of Friends of the Air Forces, Dobrokhim, ** VNO, *** etc.) to influence the character of the work of the economic organs and the direction of that work. Finally, there is the question of the mobilization of industry and of the economy of the country in general. The experience of the imperialistic war has provided rich material in this respect. Our civil war, in its turn, brought forth a series of the most valuable data which flow from the peculiarities of the structure of our state. It must be regretted that this experience has received very little illumination in our post-war literature. The work of our supply organs (Chusosnabarm7 and the oprodkomarmys), quite apart from a great historical significance, has enormous practical importance. The particular importance of a systematic, planned, and careful formu• lation and preparation of the question of industrial mobilization is clear to all. It should nevertheless be stated that what has been done by us in this respect is extraordinarily little. The work must be arranged so that it can be posed in general staffs in relation to the purely military elements of war. It must be composed of the same operational plan for the development of the economy of the country in time of war which we develop for the troops. All our needs and all our resources must be exactly taken into account in the plan. The proper and uninterrupted supply of both the front and the rear must be guaranteed. This work is uncommonly complicated but it is necessary and it is realizable. It should be noted that its realization is facili• tated for us, to an extraordinary degree, by the state character of the basic branches of our industry; herein lies our immense advantage over the bour• geois countries and it would be unpardonable not to know how properly to utilize this advantage. ** (Translator's note) Voluntary Society for the Support of Chemistry. *.. (Translator's note) Voenno-nauchnye organizatsii - Military Research Organi• zations. 7 Chusosnabarm is the Extraordinary Authority of the Council of Labor and Defense for the Supply of the Red Army. The administration of Chusosnabarm was created by a directive of the VTsIK [All-Union Central Executive Committee] of July 8, 1919. Its goals were the uniting of all matters of the supply of the Red Army (with the exception of foodstuffs), the raising of the productive level of factories which were working on defense, and the rapid and proper distribution of items of supply both in the rear and at the front. Chusosnabarm had its representatives on every front and it directed the work of the supply organs through them. Chusosn~ barm was abolished on August 16, 1921. B Oprodkomarmy are local organs of the Main Administration of th eSupply of the Red Army with Foodstuffs [Glavsnabprodarm], created under the Peoples' Com• missariat of FoodStuffs on August 10, 1919. The oprodkomarmy functioned inde• pendently of the military department. On January 4, 1922, the supply of the army with foodstuffs was placed directly under the military department. APPENDICES 177 We are almost completely lacking in works which are devoted to an elaboration of this important theme. But thus must not continue any longer. It is to be desired that the elaboration of these questions would take their proper places in our military and civil press. This is a matter, first of all, for our suppliers. I would like to remind them again and again that they must have done with, as quickly as possible and as radically as possible, the leavings of an epoch which has fallen into oblivion. The task of the sup• pliers is not only to distribute articles among the units - it would be a most uncomplicated matter if it were only a question of distribution. The center of gravity in their work is procurement. Procurement is in the hands of the civil and state organs. To concentrate this matter simply and straightaway in their hands is a Utopia. It is necessary, consequently, to approach the matter somewhat differently so as not only to be well-informed about every• thing that happens "there," but also to have an influence on the character of the production itself which proceeds from the requirements of defense. In this, supply must have in mind not only the satisfaction of current army requirements but also, to no less an extent, the guaranteeing of its mobiliza• tional supplies as well. With reference to the preparation of these latter items, it is necessary to learn well the truth that the center of our attention should be transferred to the definite raising of the corresponding areas of industry. Our supply administration should set for itself the steadfast goal of guaranteeing the organic reciprocal union with all the industrial world of the country, just as with the scientific world. This union should not be limited to the central organs - it should also be carried into the localities. Here a role of exceptional importance falls to the lot of our territorial units. They should, first of all, without waiting for urgings from on high, establish a firm alliance with the local apparatuses and persistently carry out the line set out above. Any production work is conceivable only with the existence of suitable organizations, practices, skills, and methods. Work of such a vast scale, the schematic outline of which I have given above, requires this to a high degree. We are not especially rich in good organizers. All the practice of our work sins with thousands of all sorts of deficiencies. There are many among them - they are by no means the result of a lack of skill but rather of simple carelessness, slovenliness, and the absence of systematization. From this comes our poor successes in many areas in spite of colossal possibilities. The realization of the program which is set out above is greatly facilitated by the state character of the basic elements of our economy. It would be a scandalous crime if we, amid the existence of such possibilities, did not know how to raise the matter of the defense of the Soviet Union up to the 178 APPENDICES mark. Only the existence of good will, both on the part of the civil workers an on the part of the workers of the military department, is needed and then - planned, systematic, and persistent work. Only with such an approach will the matter of the mobilization of the country for the needs of defense be properly formulated. The significance of the "rear," that is, of the preparation of the entire economic and state apparatus of the country, places a most serious task before the workers of the civil establishments - in the sense of the calcu• lations of the requirements of a future war and the accomodation of pro• duction to the needs of the latter - and before the workers of the military department in the matter of the establishment of the closest alliance with the appropriate civil departments. At the same time, this exceptionally import• ant role of the rear does not, in any case, lessen, but on the contrary, in• creases the problems and cares of regular army cadres by many times. The problem of the education and training of millions of reserves under conditions of the continuing complication of military affairs and of the com• paratively short period of service; the problem of the best organization of troops under contemporary conditions of technology and with our practi• cable technical potentialities; the task of the daily verification and steady perfection of the bases of military affairs from the angle of view of future mass wars; and, finally, the establishment in the Red Army of a firm tone of clear-cut, systematic, and reliable work down to the smallest cog - all these problems must be solved by none other than the Red Army itself in order that future mobilization will provide, with the least expenditure of energy, the possibility of the creation of a strong, well-proportioned combat army. This is why an especially large responsibility lies on the permanent per• sonnel of the Red Army - and first of all, naturally, on the command, political, and administrative-economic personnel. Every fraction of the Red Army which exists at the present time will have, in case of war, a rather significant multiple factor which, if it is put into action, will increase by many times, both in its qUalities and in its deficiencies. This must be taken into consideration by the commanding per• sonnel of the Red Army and they must work zealously and work creatively, for on their work, to a very considerable extent, depends our victory - the victory of the international proletariat in our coming clash with capital. [September 25, 1924] APPENDIX 2

"OUR MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND THE TASKS OF THE MILITARY-SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES" *

Comrades, questions on the activities of the Military-Scientific Society [VNO] have been subjected to long and searching discussion both in the pages of our military press and in a series of regional and local conferences and congresses.! In the process of this discussion, many questions which at first seemed unclear, indefinite, and contradictory to us have now obtained a sufficiently complete and clear elucidation. On the other hand, on a series of questions about which there have been differences of opinion among the military workers, we have not obtained, thanks to these same discussions, an equally satisfactory complete mutual understanding and harmony of opinion. As a result of this, broad paths for lively practical activities open up before us. What are these paths? What are the demands, what are the questions which must be answered by the activities of the VNO? How important are these needs and, consequently, how important and necessary is the very work in the VNO? In other words, what role, what place should our society occupy in the system of our defense? If we attempt to approach the answer to this question on the basis of the past experience of the work of the VNO, then we see that the basic direction of this work has already taken shape and has taken this shape because the interests of our defense demand it. With the creation of the first military-scientific societies, or more cor• rectly, circles, we satisfactorily met two basic burning needs of the Red • Translated from the text which appeared in M. V. Frunze, Izbrannye proiz• vedeniia (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1957), II, pp. 340-355, with footnotes by the editors of that collection. This is the text of an address delivered at the First All-Union Conference of the Military-Scientific Society of the USSR on May 22,1925. 1 M. V. Frunze has in mind the discussion which were taking place before the meeting, in the course of which there were especially heated quarrels on the organi• zational question. AN the quarrels were finally decided at the First Congress of the Military-Scientific Society. 180 APPENDICES Army: in the first place, the necessity of interpreting the experience of the Civil War which was just finished and of the previous imperialistic war; in the second place, facilitation of the work of retraining and of raising the level of military education of our command personnel. There are the tasks, the necessity of which was understood and clear for one and all and which demanded immediate and urgent solution. And our military-scientific thought began to work in this direction. You remember that in the development of these activities of yours, our military-scientific societies at first encountered not a few obstacles. These obstacles consisted first of all of the difficult objective conditions of army work, of the instability of the Red Army situation, the irregularity of a series of basic matters of organization, mode of life, and so on. On the other hand, the activity of the military-scientific societies lay stress on the fact of a great difference of opinion on many basic questions of our military construction and on the very character of the activity of the Society. This difference of opinion became especially sharp, by the way, because it was in a definite connection with the social groupings among our command per• sonnel and got, in this way, backing at the expense of certain group in• terests. A part of the command personnel which we received as an inheritance from the old tsarlst army was inclined to underestimate the experience of the Civil War, to follow a line of thought which was formulated in the womb of the old tsarist army and, in conformity with these views, to manifest a tendency to base its opinions mainly on the experience of the imperialistic and other wars of a national character. On the other hand, the other part of our military workers which was educated and trained in the womb of the Red Army itself, socially and polit• ically united with the working class and the peasants, had taken another path. In contrast to the first group, it was inclined to overestimate the ex• perience of the Civil War and to put in the forefront the need for the study of just that experience and problems connected with that experience. At the present time, glancing back, we can say that objective truth was, to a definite extent, on the side of the second group and not of the first. With all its exuberance, mistakes, and errors, which at times were serious enough, this group basically took the line which undoubtedly was correct and which was more in conformity with the interests of the country, with the interests of our military construction. Now this is evident to all and it must be regretted that the military-scientific work which has now begun to unfold after the liquidation of the civil fronts did not attain a sufficiently full and broad scale at the proper time. Thus, for instance, for this reason APPENDICES 181 we were doubtless delayed in the working out of a whole series of questions connected with the Ovil War. The working out of them by no means has only theoretical interest but has direct practical significance also, both for our Soviet Union and for the revolutionary proletarian movement in general. Both in the experiences of the German events of 1923 and in the series of events and incidents of 19242 we saw how our foreign comrades were lacking in the theoretical and practical lessons of our experience. Both the development of the revolutionary class struggle on an international scale and the character of the future clashes which await us - all this adds special interest to the study of this experience and dictates the necessity of its speediest working out. Another direction of military-sicentific advity, proceeding along the line of raising the military educational level of command personnel, was in no less a degree burning and urgent. In 1921, a great majority of our command personnel possessed only a smattering of military theoretical training. The percentage of those having no military education was excep-

2 In January, 1923, under the pretence of the establishment of a guarantee of the fulfilment of the delivery of reparations by Germany, Fran~Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr and the Rhineland. This disrupted the economic life of Germany, sharply curtailed production, increased unemployment, caused higher prices. and brought about a serious worsening of the life of the toiling masses. The serious financial crisis led to inflation, which the German capitalists, realizing colossal profits, utilized for the robbery of the people. Throughout all of Germany, mass strike movements and hunger riots developed. Armed detachments began to be organm:d in a number of cities and settlements. The workers' movement carried the petit bourgeoisie of the cities and the peasants along with them. Acting on orders and with the support of the occupiers. the government declared a state of siege and took a series of other extraordlinary measures for the liquidation of the burgeoning revolution. The workers began. to abandon. the Social• Democratic Party, whose representatives were in the government, and turned to the side of the Communists. The question of armed uprising and the seizure of power by the working class was on the agenda. The proletariat of the Ruhr, Saxony, Thuringia, and Hamburg headed the revo• lutionary forces. In Saxony and Thuringia, a Social-Democratic government was formed in which the traitors to Marxism - the German Trotskyites - headed by Brandler and Thalheimer participated. Instead of achieving the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the bourgeoisie, the Brandlerites, by their action&, disorganized the workers, frustrated their armed struggle, and redUced the whole matter to parliamentary reforms. The "Workers' Governments" of Saxony and Thuringia, in which the Brandlerites participated. did nothing for the arming of the workers and undertook no action against the counterrevolutiOll&"y bourgeoisie. Only in Hamburg. under the leadership of E. Thalmann, did the workers wage an unequal armed battle of the barricades. Their battle stood out sharply against the background of the events which transpired. The ca,pitulationist policy of the Brandlerites and their collaboration with the leaders of social-democracy led to the defeat of the working class in the revolutionary battles on 1923. 182 APPENDICES tionally high. It amounted to almost three quarters of all our command personnel. Therefore, this side of the activity of the military-sicentific s0- cieties should have found and did find the widest response in the ranks of our command personnel. This movement, although it proceeded along purely practical routes and did not arise from any preconceived or elaborated system of the notion of the character of our defense, nevertheless fully coincided in the most es• sential points with the needs of the latter. Now, when in a space of five years after the liquidation of the Civil War, we obtain the possibility of some sum• ming up of our practical work and of somewhat interpreting and defining our understanding of the character and tasks of military construction, we see that their relationship has its place in the fullest measure. As a matter of fact, on what is the system of the defense of our Union based? It is based on three fundamental factors: first, on a clear and exact notion of the character of future wars; second, on a correct and exact calculation of those forces and means which will be at the disposal of our possible 0p• ponents; and, third, on a similar calculation of our own resources. What will be the character of future war? The work which has been done by our VNO's and by our military• scientific technical thought in general, even now, provides sufficient data in order to give a rather comprehensive answer to that question. The first element which determines the character of future war, of that war which the USSR will be forced to wage, it its peculiar class character. The war which we will wage will not be a national war. It will be a revolutionary class war.3 This means that our army will fight not for the interests of the nation taken as a whole, nor will it fight in order to effect conquests, to infringe on the property of some other people, but it will fight in order to secure the achieve• ments of our revolution from the attempts of internal and external class enemies of the proletariat. This factor is reflected in all our construction. It is precisely the class workers' and peasants' character of our army. It permeates the entire system of our organization and finds its reflection in the methods of training and education of the army and in a whole series of other practical conclusions. Another factor which I consider to be characteristic of future wars is their universally decisive character. These will not be clashes over trifles which are capable of quick decisions. No - they will be wars of two different,

I In this case, M. V. Frunze was stressing the fact that, in future wars, the peoples of the Soviet Union will defend their socialist Fatherland, their freedom and inde• pendence. APPENDICES 183 mutually exclusive socio-political and economic systems. From what does this result? From the same class nature of our state. Both politically and economically, our state is organized on absolutely different principles from those of the bourgeois world which surrounds us. At the base of our economic and political organization and the organization of the bourgeois states there is a profound, irreconcilable contradiction, and this contradiction, once it begins to find its solution by military methods, leads to a sharp, profound, and, in all probability, prolonged clash. The latter factor is connected with the fact: that, in the first place, we - our Union itself - represent a rather serious quantity, both from the point of view of size of population and from the point of view of economic resources, but on the other side, we will have against us all or a significant part of the bour• geois capitalist world which, for its part, will raise great forces against us. That is why, when it is a question of a serious clash, it can hardly be con• cluded in a short period of time by the plotting of a destructive blow. The third factor which decisively influences the character of future war is the technological factor. The experience of the imperialistic war showed what a great role will be played by technology on the fields of future battle. With the development of aviation, chemistry, radio, and so on, the widest perspectives are opened in this connection. At the present moment, it is difficult for us even to imagine what the armies of the most advanced bourgeois countries can introduce into the battlefields of the future. Certainly, those weapons which they will possess will differ in many particulars from those which we saw in the course of the imperialistic war. War of the future will be, to a significant degree if not wholly, a war of machines. This fact thus produces a whole series of needs for us. Finally, the fourth force which, in my opinion, will be characteristic for wars of the future is the factor of mass. I consider that once it is a matter of deciding a serious conflict, then all the forces which are at the disposal of the belligerent sides will be thrown onto the scene. At least for us, one cannot imagine a future clash which we would be able to decide with limited armed forces, which would not affect broad masses of the population, and which would not draw into the affair all the resources which the state has at its disposal. I say "at least for us" because for bourgeois armies, one may assume that the fact of the aggrevation of the inter-class struggle may com• pel them not to travel the route of the arming of the masses but rather the route of depending on technology. Even now we can observe indications of this. But even under this condition, they will thrust forces forward so that 184 APPENDICES we shall be able to fight them only by bringing the armed masses onto the scene. Here, comrades, are four basic factors which, in my opinion, force us to come to definited conclusions concerning the character of the future war we shall be forced to wage. How should the work of our VNO be posed in relation to this character of war? What practical conclusions should we make from this in relation to its goals, tasks, and the character of its activities? If we pause on the first factor, on the factor of the class-revolutionary character of future war, it is not difficult to see that it brings forward a whole series of practical tasks for the activity of our Society. One of the measures which should guarantee the success of the Red Army in future clashes is work on the appropriate political processing of our population. This work, its character, direction, and content is deter• mined precisely by the revolutionary class character of future war. Our VNO is obliged to conduct its work so that, for the broadest and most back• ward strata of our population, it will be clear that we will wage defensive, legitimate, just war, and that this war will be waged for the most vital in• terests of the toilers, that it is not for conquest, not for enslavement but for the defense of our achievements and for the securing of our peaceful labor. Both inside and outside the army, the work of propaganda - the work of political education, the strengthening of the rear in a psychological respect - should go forward, proceeding from just this evaluation of the character of future war. The scientific-research work of the VNO should be erected on this. If we take another factor - the factor of its decisive character - then again we also make a series of practical conclusions for our Society there• from. The first and most important of these is the conducting of large scale explanatory work on the necessity of the advance preparation and organi• zation of the rear. We must inculcate the concept that contemporary war is waged not by the army alone but by all the country as a whole, that war demands the exertion of all the national forces and means, that war will be a mortal war, a war to the death, and that, therefore, detailed and careful preparation for it in time of peace is necessary more strongly in the cons• ciousness of the entire population of our Union. We must think everything through thoroughly and distinctly, and realize the importance of the fact that the USSR remains a besieged fortress. We will have to explain - and not only to explain but also to consolidate the practical work of our Society• these conclusion. We will have to keep an eye on the work of the appropriate economic, cultural-enlightenment, sporting, and other organizations, to take APPENDICES ISS active, organic part in their work, to inculcate the leaders with the correct understanding of the character of future war and those needs which flow from it in respect to the work of these organizations. Parallel with this, it is necessary to conduct work on education, on the consolidation of those feelings and frames of mind which will determine the strength of our rear. In a discussion of the probable outcome of the imperialistic war, the present head of the German Republic, Field Marshal Hindenburg once said that "In this war, he will win who has the strongest nerves"; this is a correct evaluation and a valid thought. But strength of nerves is determined by the strength of the rear in general and, in the first place, by the stability of the economy. Therefore, we must also conduct our work so that our future is insured against any accidental shocks or storms in the areas of economics and moral steadfastness. A whole series of practical tasks are also connected with the third factor - the factor of technology. The first of these tasks is work on the strengthening of the technological power of the army. It is known to all that our most vulnerable soft spot lies here and our goal is to raise and conduct our work so that this deficiency of ours will be definitely reduced, if not completely removed, in the near future. How can this be achieved? In the first place, by appropriate propaganda. High and low in the work of our military-scientific organizations, we should illuminate the role and importance of technology and of technological im• provement, and we should turn the attention of all establishments, of all organizations, and of the entire mass of the toiling population of the Union toward this matter. On the other hand, we should take part in practical work on the devel• opment and improvement of our technology. We now have a whole series of scientific-research organizations and circles. In almost all trusts and also in a number of individual factories and plants, there are construction, scien• tific-technical, and other cells which are occupied with the working out of the problems of the given undertaking. But any undertaking, and in par• ticular those which are most closely contiguous with military matters, such us, for example, chemistry, aviation, and so forth, could, while pursuing peaceful goals, take into account the aims of defense at the same time. The task of giving such a direction to the work of our economic organizations falls on us. Practically, this must be archieved by our military-scientific societies through the organizing of circles in the appropriate enterprises and groups of enterprises, by being occupied with and being interested in 186 APPENDICES questions of peaceful economic activities, considering them from the angle of view of defense. This work has the most enormous significance. I call your attention to it because I know from practice how the interests of defense suffer if insuf• ficient attention is given to this side of the matter. I know from conversations with a whole series of our scientists, inventors, technologists, chemists, and others that they, not knowing the requirements of the army, do not work from the standpoint from which their work could and should be carried on. This is the task - to bring them into the circle of our inquiries, of our re• quirements, to tell them that use could be found for them precisely in the conditions of a given concrete enterprise, of a given undertaking - this task falls on the workers of our military scientific societies and our military scientific circles. This is one side of the activity which we should develop in connection with the question of the importance of technology on the fields of future battle. But at the same time with this, we must take into account the fact that technology will have, on the fields of future conflict, not only a direct sig• nificance, in the sense of causing this or that material damage, but also an importance that is indirect and collateral, in the sense of moral effect. This latter often very far oversteps the limits of causing material damage. Quite often succes is determined not by the fact that a unit of the military combat strength of the opponent is physically withdrawn from the ranks, but by the fact that this factor acts oppressively on the psyche of all the remaining units, destroying their capacity for resistance. In clashes with a whole series of opponents, we shall, in all probability, be in a technologically disadvan• tageous position.4 We should take this into account and provide a correct understanding of the actual role of technology and its actual importance by our work in advance, both in the army and among the population. All the same, we should say that the decisive role does not belong to technology - behind technology there is always a living man, without whom technology is lifeless. That side which possesses personnel who are trained in all respects and who have a proper idea of technology, of its true significance and strength,

, This statement by M. V. Frunze refers to the period of transition to peaceful work on the restoration of the national economy and was correct with reference to that period. As a result of revolutionary changes which were aa::ompliSoviet Armed Forces have received from industry a first-class military technology which, in its quality, is not inferior to the best model of West European armament. APPENDICES 187 will never be crushed by the technological advantage of an enemy. Although more weakly armed technologically, it will be fully capable of fighting be• cause, to a definite extent, the decisive word always remains with man. In my opinion, too large an exaggeration is made by many in the area of the evaluation of material technology. Of course, an underestimation of the role of technology is most dangerous, and permitting oneself to by hypno• tized by it is prohibited. The events which are now unfolding in Northern Morocco speak clearly so far as technology, in itself, is still not the decisive means. There, we have a clash of two forces and, on one side all the tech• nological advantages and even a numerical preponderance are located, while, on the other side, there is knowledge of the locality, an enormous staying power, a great steadfastness, and, in the main, a strong morale and a capacity and readiness to accept the greatest hardships and to make heroic sacrifices. Here, we see that, under such conditions, the preponderance is not always in favor of the side which is technologically the more powerful. It goes without saying that no decisive conclusions can be drawn from this fact. One should remember that the conditions of war in Morocco are exceptional in their peculiarity and that this experience can by no means be generalized and applied to other countries. But it should be remembered so that we will have correct perspectives and correct concepts of the actual role of technology. We should strive further to overcome our technological deficiencies and to achieve the condition in which every Red Army man and, if possible, all the population will have a notion of those technical resources which will be used, at least at the present time, on the side of the opponent. If we provide this understanding, if everyone sees and knows what might be used against him and examines the application of the technical resources in practice, then we will have achieved much in the sense of combat training and the combat tempering of the personnel of our Red Army. This is the task which, in my opinion, is unfolding before us and the Military Scientific Society in connection with the significance and role of technology in future war. Finally, in connection with the latter factor, the factor of mass armies which will be thrust onto the fields of future battle, a most colossal task is there unfolding before our Society. Here, in the first place, we should inculcate into the consciousness of the population, into the consciousness of the workers of the civil apparatus the correct concept of war from this viewpoint. We should attempt to convince those persons who think that concern for the defense of the country and preparation of that defense should lie solely with the military department and that no other department has any relation to it - we should attempt to 188 APPENDICES convince them of their profound mistake. We must demonstrate to all that our peacetime Red Army is only a cadre, only a weak skeleton of that future army which we shall raise in wartime and which will be made up of the toiling peoples of the Union as a whole; the wartime army, which will also be the real Red Army, will consist of the entire armed Soviet people. I repeat, this concept is not held by nearly all and our task is to inculcate it deeply into the consciousness and minds of the workers of the civil apparatus. The question of the character of our military construction is connected with the same question. Up to the present time, we have had to listen, from time to time - although not too often to be sure - to conversations about how it would be better to organize a small but well-armed and well-trained cadre army, from the point of view of the fulfilment of military tasks, would be a better army than the army which we are building, an army which offers a combination of two principles: the permanent cadre army and the militia army. This type of reasoning demonstrates the complete ignorance and military illiteracy of its creators. If we were not threatened by external danger, if our army could be built considering only the interests of the struggle with pos• sible internal counterrevolutions, then, of course, such a proposal would make some sense. But if we look at our international situation, we see at once that we need a powerful army capable of protecting the Soviet Union from possible intervention. And that could be the army which, in the end, includes the entire toiling population of our Union and which is efficient and capable of battle. Only in this manner will the course of history place the question before us. In my address to the Congress of Soviets, I have enu• merated, in detailed form, all the forces which compel us to follow just this course in our construction. I dwelt on the characteristics of our international situation and on the content of our military work on construction from the military-technical point of view. I tried to show that the international situation has taken a form for us so that we must be ready for a serious clash and that, for this purpose, we must train not only our cadre personnel but also all those groups of the population which must join the ranks of our Red Army with the declaration of mobili• zation. And I built this evidence of mine on a whole series of facts which are quite without doubt and which strike one full in the eye. You all read the newspapers and see that each subsequent day brings forth ever newer and newer evidence of the fact that this external danger stands before us as a danger which is a completely real one. You know that the tempo of the arming of foreign states is not being slowed down but, on the contrary, is APPENDICES 189 broadening and extending. The contradiction between the separate countries is growing and the danger of new wars is approaching in earnest. Only recently, in the pages of the central organ of the English Workers' Party, a report appeared on the organization of a new offensive against the Soviet Union. As regards this, an inquiry was made by a member of the Workers' Party to the English government at a sitting of the House of Com• mons and the answer given by the government was most evasive and vague. It was such that the representatives of the English Workers' Party were not at all satisfied with it. They think that a combined action by the bourgeois states based on the presentation of us of an ultimatum demanding the dis• solution of the Comentern and its expulsion from Moscow is being prepared and that this is coming about on the initiative of the English government. I do not know whether or not these reports are true but when even the English Workers' Party, which is not distinguished by an especially revo• lutionary nature nor is it sympathetic to communism, thinks they are, then it is all the more necessary for us to be cautious and to take the worst pos• sibilities into consideration. That, comrades, is why we must mercilessly dispel these illusions, this childlike prattle that we can manage in the modern world situation with a small army, with only a cadre army. This cadre army is not equal to the task of the defense of the Union with its enormous extent of borders. We must have an army numbering sufficient personnel and strength which is equal to the tasks of defense and, on the basis of a permanent army, this would mean having an army numbering many times more than that which we now have. That is why the path along which we are travelling is the only correct one and is completely responsive to the interests of our defense, and that is why it is necessary to put an end to discussions in this depart• ment. The line of our work is marked out. We have a whole series of diffi• culties, but we hope to overcome them an the tasks of our Military Scientific Society will consist of helping to study the data of practical experience, to correct them, and to seek those paths - organizational, and any other - which will help us to correct these deficiences and thereby to strengthen the system of our military construction. Thus, comrades, I have presented the goals of our Military Scientific Societies in connection with the character of future war and the character of that system of defense we are now following and which proceeds from this concept. If we take another activity of the VNO - work inside the Red Army - then, it seems to me, it is necessary for us simply to continue the line of work which was begun in the first days of the existence of the military 190 APPENDICES scientific societies. It is also correct for the present time. It is true that several changes have taken place here. These changes I see, in the first place, in the approach to the study of theoretical military questions. The present approach, in my view, should be changed, to a definite degree, from what it was in 1921-1922. At that time, we were changing over to a new area of military life and still did not have before us any conclusions, any inferences which summed up our previous military experience. We are, therefore, talking of a period in which we were forced to pose the question in all its broadness and completeness of principle. This added a strong abstract theoretical inclination to our work and arguments. We attempted to subject questions of strategy and tactice of our army, the basis of its organization, education, training, and so forth, to a revision. Now that work has already been done, that experience which we gained and are gaining permits us to pose this work differently in many respects and not only permits but demands that it be posed differently. Basically, we are finished with all the elementary factors of military construction. The general principles and the basic landmarks have already been designated for us. Beyond that, we are now finishing the publication of the majority of our regulations which mold the work of the army into quite definite and finished forms. Thus, it is necessary here only to continue abstract work on the further systematization of our experience and knowledge together with our concepts on the character of future operations, on the methods of solution of various types of organizational questions, and so on; this work will necessarily have an abstract-individual character and can hardly be the concern of the entire body of our Military Scientific Society. The scientific research character of this work, however, should remain now as well. Its line will only be somewhat changed. Instead of being 0c• cupied with abstract theoretical questions, the center of gravity should now be transferred to the study of practical every-day contemporary life. Whether it is a question of organization, of tactics, of training, and so forth - every circle of a separate unit should first of all place itself on the plane of adaptability to the task at the level of precisely that troop unit. Thus, for example, they will examine questions of attack and defense - they should be studied, first of all, on the scale of their own organization and it is necessary to study how to organize it, how to secure it, and how to behave in one or another situation. This is what the Military Scientific Society should master in its mass scientific research work. I draw your special attention to that side of the matter because I see in it a fundamental deficiency in the training of our command personnel. I have a whole series of facts which confirm this. A number of works of the APPENDICES 191 Military Academy, war games conducted in divisions, corps, and so on, reveal that, as a rule, the general plan of operations is properly organized, as are the individual tasks flowing from the plan - as concerns the organi• zations, the coordination of its separate elements, security - but from the point of view of the organization of the rear, supply, communications, the interaction of different types of arms, then, great defects are observed here. For example, from the report of the Chief of the Military Academy, I know that the recent works of our Military Academy, in the sense of the correct• ness of the formulation of general goals and their solution, are not only satisfactory but are even good; at least, they are quite satisfactory in eighty per cent of the cases. But if we tum to the matter of the second point of view which I mentioned - the viewpoint of the accomplishment of projects - then, that satisfaction declines to forty per cent and even lower. Such a picture also exists in the army. What does this prove? It proves that, as for general orientation, as for the width of political and military horizons, our command personnel can not be considered to be sufficiently trained. In this respect, it is, I think, superior to the command personnel of the old tsarist army which, as is known, was distinguished by its unusually narrow views not only in the political area but also in the specialized military area. In this connection, if we compare our command personnel with the con• temporary armies of the bourgeois countries, then I consider that here also it not only is not inferior to any of them, but proves itself superior to the command personnel of any bourgeois army. But if we the comparison in the second respect - in the matter of the technological preparation of our command personnel, in the matter of skills in the coordination of all the factors which are connected with the conduct of operations - then, I am compelled to say that our command personnel, on the whole, must be con• sidered as being the poorer. This is a conclusion that is absolutely inescapable for me and this is the great deficienty in the training of our command personnel. We are now beginning the period of the summer training of the troops when we will test in practice all that which was learned in the wintertime and, through you, I draw attention of all command personnel of the army to that side of the matter. Let us have a little bit less of general discussions and a bit more of general works on the details and technical conduct of operations! In particular, I advance the same goal in relation to the VNO of our academy. Particular attention must be paid to this side of the matter in all our higher military schools, and also in normal schools. Practically, instruc- 192 APPENDICES tions have been given by me with respect to the Military Academy that the cycle of lectures on strategy should be retrenched in favor of the cycle 011 tactics. For us, it is required that the Military Academy give the Red Army now those leaders who will allow us to overcome this tactical feebleness and who will help all command personnel of the Red Army to prepare itself in this respect which has been a weakness for us. The business of our methodical education and training is progressing feebly - very feebly. In many cases, we continue to work in the old manner even though life has long since gone forward. The working out of these questions by our Society will be a great service for the Red Army. Thus, work on the raising of the military educational level of our com• mand personnel continues to be no less serious an important that it was in the years which followed directly after the Civil War. At the congress, I have given information on the fact that, even now, in the fifth year after the liquidation of the Civil War, we have in the ranks of the Red Army 9.5 percent of the command personnel who do not have any military education. Of course, in comparison with what once was, this is not much, but all the same, a tenth part of the command personnel is some• thing to think about. Consequently, the work of the VNO within the Red Army, directed toward the raising of the military educational level of com• mand personnel, should play an enormous role and should occupy an emi• nent place in our military scientific activity. Permit me a few words, comrades, concerning one factor which, perhaps, will not have wide application in the practice of our construction but which, without doubt, will have to be considered in the future. I have in mind the application of psycho-techniques to the practice of our work. With a two-year period of service for cadre personnel and with our terri• torial system where the period of service is still more curtailed, the factor of the correct approach to the distribution of those contingents called up for service among the various types of arms is, in many instances, almost de• cisive for us. If, in the navy, in the special technical troops, in aviation, we assign con• tingents which are, by nature of their physical structure and by nature of their psychology, unfit for the performance of service in these types of arms, then we strike more and more at their combat capacity. That is why this question should occupy an appropriate place in the program of works of the VNO's. You know that in the country which is most farest advanced along the path of capitalist development - in America - this factor has been studied most widely in time of war. The American War Ministry made wide use in APPENDICES 193 its army of psychological methods in the selection of the personnel of the army and in their assignment to types of arms. In any case, I would prefer that our military scientific societies not let this question escape from the field of their view. We have a large period of pre-induction training and if we combine, for the time, our controls over the physical conditions, over the training of pre• inductees with the scientific methods of psycho-technical research, then we would facilitate the question of the supply of every type of arm with its necessary contingents. This is especially important for aviation, because, for every pilot, excellent vision, hearing, and a whole series of other qualities which are not found in everyone, are required. That is why this question should attract the attention of our VNO's. The last factor is the factor of the alliance of our VNO's with other social organizational groups. We have two of them - The Society of Friends of the Air Force [ODVF] and Dobrokhim [Voluntary Society for the Support of Chemistry]. These societies will merge shortly. The appropriate decisions have already been taken and the merger will soon be formalized. In the process of the foregoing discussions on the question of the tasks of the VNO and its organization, this factor, by the way, has also been touched on - the factor of the organizational and professional union with Dobrokhim and the ODVF. Now, of course, it is early to put the question of working out, in this connection, of definite, concrete forms, whatever they may be, but it seems entirely clear to me that the necessity of the establishment of that sort of alliance flows from the character of the general tasks of the military scientific movement. Let this alliance not be organi• zational, let these societies exist separately - but, the conditions for cooper• ation must be worked out without fail. With respect to Dobrokhim and the ODVF, the Military Scientific Society should be that institution which provides the basic, guiding ideas and the institutions which exert influence on the entire character and on the entire direction of the activity of these organizations. It should, so to speak, give the demands of the military department; it should give indications of the direction in which work should proceed - what needs, for example, we will raise as concerns aircraft construction, as concerns motor construction, or one or another branch of the chemical industry. This sort of connection of our VNO should also be established with other societies, for instance, with the "Friends of Radio" and so on. An enormous process of technical development is taking place in the field 194 APPENDICES of radio affairs and it is capable of having a decisive influence on the course of future operations. You have heard news about various inventions which are connected with the improvement of radio. You have heard beams with whose help the action of the motor of an airplane can be stopped. It is difficult to say at tnis time how much of this is fantasy, how much of it is theoretically solved, and how much of it is already accomplished in practice. The practical reali• zation of the matter has scarcely been achieved. I have remarked on this so that you would know that, in any technological area, in any area of indus• trial development, there is now being accomplished an enormous, profound, and grandiose work, the results of which can have an influence, in the most forceful manner, on the course of future war. That is why it is necessary to establish the closest connection with all societies which are working in one or another area of economic activity. Only such an approach to the matter will permit the VNO to know the place which, by right, belongs to it - the place of the high-principled leader of the work of social organizations which are capable of having one or another relationship to the question of defense. It should not be restricted to the limits of purely military, narrow interests. No, it should, considering the character of future war and considering the character of the system of our defense, develop broad work within the ranks of the Red Army. I think that this will help us not only to establish the closest connection of the Red Army with the rear but it will also help us, in the greatest measure, to speed the process of the liquidation of our tech• nological backwardness. If we are able to cope with these tasks, if we are able somewhat correctly to pose that enormous, colossal work which unfolds before our Military Scientific Society, then the VNO will occupy its most suitable place in the system of our defense. It will then know how to answer those requirements which are burning and read and the solution to which is conceivable only with the drawing into this work of the widest circles not only of military workers but also of our toiling population in general. With this, I venture to conclude my report and to express my profound confidence in the fact that our VNO will at last stand on its own feet after today's conference. Having accepted those proposals which were indicated by the commission on the convocation of the congress and which I consider to be basically correct and responsive to the desires of the localities, we are laying a firm base, a firm fundament for our activities in the future. From the heart, I wish you and all the workers of our unified All-Union VNO success in this difficult, but noble and interesting work which is strengthening our defense. APPENDIX 3

A NOTE ON FRUNZE'S CAMPAIGNS

(This note is included in order to provide a more detailed description of Frunze's military actions than seemed appropriate in the body of Chapter 1. There is very little written in Western literature on Frunze's military campaigns even though Frunze is one of the leading Soviet military figures. This note, there• fore, is based largely on Soviet sources.)

A. The Eastern Front (January 1919 - August 1919) On January 31,1919, Mikhail Vasil'evich Frunze arrived in Samara (now Kuibyshev) and took command of the Fourth Army of the Eastern Front.! Frunze thus embarked on a military career to which he brought little formal training or experience. A later critic has commented that Frunze, "as a good communist, was much more experienced in criminal affairs than in winning battles."2 There is some truth in this observation (which refers to Frunze's arrest on a charge of complicity in the attempted killing of a policeman) but it is also true that Frunze had something of a military background. In addition to having fired a shot at a provincial policeman, he had fought in some of the Moscow skirmishes in the 1905 revolution. He may have been in the "Bloody Sunday" disturbances. He had served on the Western Front during the First World War in an administrative position. He had led an impromptu detachment of irregulars during the 1917 revolution. These troops, under Frunze's command, stormed the Metropole Hotel in Moscow. Frunze had put down an anti-bolshevik Putsch in Iaroslavl', shortly after the revolution. And he had some other military experiences of a rather tangential sort. This varied but limited practical experience had not been supplemented

1 Mikhail Vasil'evich Frunze: Polkovodcheskaia deiatel'no~t': Sbornik statei (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1951), p. 31. This work is cited hereafter as Deiatel'• nost'. 2 G. V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, V Krymu pri Vrangele: Fakty i itogi (Berlin: Oldenburg, 1922), p. 105. 196 APPENDICES by attendance at a military academy or a staff college. He had, to be sure, participated in military discussion circles while in exile and had done rather extensive reading (in English and German, as well as in Russian) in the classics of military science. Frunze, none the less, was largely inexperienced when he planted a com• mand flag in front of his tent at the age of thirty-three (a few days before his thirty-fourth birthday). He achieved an army command at a somewhat youthful age and without the experience which would normally have been required of a professional soldier called to such a high post. Occurrences of this nature, however, were not uncommon in the Red Army during the Civil War. The examples of Kork, Bliukher, and Tukhachevskii can be cited.3 There are others. There are, even so, few examples in Soviet history of so young a commander enjoying such immediate, significant, and con• tinuing success as did Frunze. He arrived on the Eastern Front when the young Soviet republic was in difficult days. The Eastern Front was then under the command of S. S. Kamenev (not to be confused with L. B. Kamenev). The Front was based generally on the Volga and was under sharp and persistent pressure from the troops of Admiral Kolchak. The White armies were pushing toward Samara and Kazan' on the Volga. The situation along the front line was fluid. The keys to the Red defenses had been Perm', Ufa, and Orenburg. By the time of the arrival of Frunze in the area, Admiral Kolchak had captured Perm' and was threatening to sweep on toward Kazan', farther in the rear and on the road to Moscow. The armies lined up generally as follows: The Second (Shorin) and Third (Mezheninov) Red Armies were defending behind Perm' against General Gaida's Siberian Army which was driving toward Kazan'. In the general area of Ufa, the Fifth Red Army (Bliurnberg) was opposed by General Khanzhin's Western Army which was oriented on Samara. The Orenburg area was defended by a coign with the First Red Army (Gai) on the line of the Ural River to Orsk. At Orsk, the Red front turned sharply to the West along the Ural River. Defending along this line and oriented toward the south were the Turkestan (Zinov'ev) and Fourth (Frunze) Armies (with the Fourth Army anchored on Ural'sk. The Fourth Army position was a key to the entire front. A White attack through it to the north toward Samara and Kazan' could outflank the main Soviet groupings along the length of the Eastern Front. In strength, the opposing groups of forces were almost equal. In all, on a

3 These officers had some previous formal military experience. APPENDICES 197 front of approximately 1,700 kilometers in length, Kamenev disposed about 99,000 troops against Kolchak's 107,000. The Reds were heavy in infantry with less than 10,000 sabers while the Whites had over 30,000 cavalry troopers.4 On February 4, Frunze ordered a local attack toward the south in order "to secure the avenue of approach leading to the Saratov-Syzran' area of the Volga."5 The attack gained local objectives but in the course of pre• parations for it Frunze discovered that his command was in a pitiful state of morale and discipline. He issued a series of frantic orders designed to shore up his shaky subordinates. In one of these orders he listed eight sepa• rate instances of breaches of discipline which he had observed. He deplored these breaches and said that the discipline of the Red Army was based mainly on a "high sense of revolutionary duty." He added, Our army, which has been summoned to solve the great tasks charged to it by the Workers'-Peasants' government, must be a formidable force against all the enemies of the toiling popUlation and this can be achieved only if all units of the army are welded together by an iron discipline.6 On March 5, Kamenev gave Frunze a new command and a new, ambi• tious mission. The Front Commander consolidated the Fourth Army with the Turkestan Army into the Southern [Army] Group. Frunze was desig• nated the Group Commander. Kamenev then directed Frunze to secure the Ural'sk and Orenburg areas and to "maintain contact with Tashkent."7 Kamenev's ambitious plan envisioned not only sending Frunze's group to Tashkent but also pushing his other units toward Cheliabinsk and Ekate• rinburg, well behind the White front lines. Kamenev was in the midst of preparations for his front's offensive when Kolchak hit him with a renewed offensive of his own. Kolchak's main effort, under General Khanzhin, was in the Ufa-Samara direction. While Khanzhin achieved initial successes and created a real threat to the Volga line, Frunze reacted in his sector of the front by pushing forward. This was possible because elements of the White forces had been removed from his sector in order to strengthen the Khanzhin blow. On March 8, Frunze attacked toward the south and drove the remaining Whites in the area about 120 kilometers to the south.s After this shacp local success,

4 Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 33. The Reds also had 1,182 machine guns and 374 artillery pieces while the Whites had 548 machine guns and 169 artillery pieces. 5 Mikhail Vasil'evich Frunze, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'- stvo, 1957), I, p. 131. 6 Ibid., pp. 140-142. 7 Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 36. 8 Ibid., p. 38. 198 APPENDICES Frunze turned to the securing of his own rear against expected White counterattacks. Frunze's limited successes, while significant on a local level, did not cause a halt in Khanzhin's crive. By the beginning of April, the Red situation on the Eastern Front was deteriorating rapidly and actually approaching a state of desperation. In response to this serious situation, Kamenev reorganized his forces with the new groupings based generally on the shoulders of the Khanzhin pene• tration. Kamenev formed two groups and gave the Southern Group to Frunze. The Frunze command consisted of the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Turkestan Armies. The S0'.lthern Group under Frunze was assigned the mission of attempting to halt Kolchak's westward thrust by striking him in his southern flank.9 After somewhat sluggish preparations, Frunze finally got his counter• attack underway on April 28.10 Frunze had 64,348 infantrymen and 7,081 mounted troops against a White force in the area of 51,502 foot soldiers and 28,475 cavalrymen.ll Frunze characterized the goal of his operation as a flank attack between units of the Third and Sixth White Corps in the general direction of Bugu• ruslan. He intended to separate these units and "defeat them in detail."12 He put his plan into action in spite of the desertion of one of his brigade commanders, a certain Avilov, to Kolchak. Avilov was thought to have taken Frunze's detailed operational plans for the counterattack with him, but Frunze called on the shade of Suvorov (who had counseled, "Speed, coup d'oeil, charge, victory!") and proceeded as planned.13 The Frunze blow took its original objectives without great difficulty. The Whites, intent in the drive on the Volga, did not react at once to the Frunze thrust. This slowness on Kolchak's part enabled Frunze to reinforce his initial success and to push his plans for deeper thrusts into the White flank. Frunze added to the inability of the Whites to react by concealing the direc• tion of his main attack. By May 2 the Whites began to realize the serious• ness of the threat presented by the inroads which Frunze had made in their

D Ibid., pp. 47-49. 10 Trotsky is re;ported to have visited the Eastern Front on April 16 and suggested a withdrawal of the Red forces behind the Volga. See "M. V. Frunze v organizatsii razgroma Kolchaka," Krasnyi arkhiv, No.2 [93],1939, p. 6. 11 Deiate/'nost', op. cit., p. 50. I! Frunze, op. cit., I, p. 176. 13 Sergei Arkad'evich Sirotinskii, Put' Arsenii: Biograficheskii ocherk M. V. Frunze (MOSCOW: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1956), pp. 143-144. APPENDICES 199 flank. The White commander then decided to abandon the drive on the Volga and turned to contain the now dangerous Red counterattack. The White reaction, however, was too slow and too indecisive. On May 4, the Red forces under Frunze occupied Buguruslan and were preparing to continue the thrust toward Belebei and, eventually, toward Ufa.14 Frunze also sent a column toward Buful'ma with the mission of cutting off the retreat route of the White forces toward the Belaia River and Ufa. The point force of this maneuver group was the 25th Rifle Division under the legendary Chapaev. By a rapid movement, Chapaev was able to take Bugul'ma by May 13 but he was unable to cut the route of retirement open to the White forces toward Ufa. 15 Even with evidence of these striking and brilliant successes, Lenin, in Moscow, was still far from calm and cool. He rushed a telegram to Frunze, asking him, "Don't you know about the difficult situation in Orenburg?"!8 This harassment from the far rear caused Frunze to detach troops from his reserve in order to deal with a strategically unimportant threat. Nervous harassments from the rear were not Frunze's only troubles. The new front commander, A. A. Samoilo (who had replaced Kamenev in early May), took a view in opposition to Frunze on several operational matters. Samoilo was eager to mop up the threats in the rear, such as those at Oren• burg and Ural'sk, while Frunze wanted to plunge on at once for Ufa.17 As a sort of compromise, an operation against Belebei was agreed upon. In this action, Frunze planned to attack the White General Kappel' from the south with his 31 st Rifle Division while his 25th Division under Chapaev was to sweep in from the north with the mission of cutting the White's com• munications to Ufa and blocking the exist from Belebei.18 The plan was successfully executed. The southern force attack group entered Belebei on May 17. General Kappel' refused to make a stand before the Belaia River and began to pull out of Belebei during the day of May 16 with the intention of retiring on Ufa.19 Belebei was the last White strong point on the west side of the Belaia River. The next logical move for the Reds was to attempt to seize crossings over that river, preferably, with the least expenditure of forces. Frunze was in favor of an immediate assault on any Belaia River position that could

14 Ibid., p. 145. 16 "M. V. Frunze v organizatsii razgroma Kolchaka," op. cit., p. 6. 18 V. Y. Lenin, Voennaia perepiska (1917-1920) (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1957), p. 119. 17 Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 59. 18 Ibid., p. 60. 11 Ibid., p. 61. 200 APPENDICES be located. This view was opposed by Samoilo and by the Supreme Com• mander, I. I. Vatsetis, both of whom favored mopping up before assaulting the Belaia River line.20 The dispute reached such intensity among the higher commanders of the Red Army that Lenin himself had to intervene. On May 29 Lenin relieved Samoilo as Eastern Front Commander and put Kamenev back in his place.21 He also ordered an attack of Ufa.!! The Soviet leader was not so taken up with high level strategic decisions as to forget his paper work. On May 22 he had sent Frunze a telegram which demanded a reply. The telegram said,

I still haven't received a reply to my telegram of the twentieth of May. What does this silence of your means? Meanwhile, as before, complaints and requests for help are coming from Orenburg. In the future I expect more accurate an• swers to my telegrams. I await your response.23

Frunze replied straightaway that he had done everything that he could do.24 Lenin also sent a telegram to his new Front Commander, Kamenev. He told him, not once but twice, that "If we do not take the Urals before winter, then I consider the defeat of the revolution inevitable. ''25 The Ufa attack got underway on May 28. The Turkestan Anny was given the mission of attacking toward the Belaia River line with the additional mission of attacking toward the Belaia River line with the additional mission of disrupting White concentrations on the west side of the river. It was also to secure crossings. At the same time, cavalry was to cross the Belaia River north of Ufa and to operate on the Whites' communications lines east of Ufa.26 With the attack of Frunze's forces, Kappel' abandoned Chishma, the last important communications center still in the hands of the Whites to the west of the Balaia, and began to retire on Ufa.27 Frunze attempted to react quickly and ordered the Turkestan Army to secure crossings over the river no later than June 4. The 24th Rifle Division

28 Colonel Danil Maksimovich Grinisbin, VoenntJia deiatel'nost' V. I. Lenina (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1957), pp. 321-322. It should be noted that the sources used here may reflect a Soviet rewriting of history. Z1 Leonid Mi.khaiI:ovic:b. SpiriD, Razgrom armii Kolchaka (Moscow: Gosudarst- vennoe izdate1'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), p. 162. II Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 62. II Lenin, op. cit., pp. 128-129. 2f Ibid., p. 129, note 1. !S Ibid., pp. 132-133 and pp. 137-138. 28 Deiaternost', op. cit., p. 61. 27 Ibid., p. 63. APPENDICES 201 was to cross southeast of Ufa and then to operate on the Whites's communi• cations behind Ufa. The 2d Rifle Division was to execute a similar crossing and to attack Ufa from the east, that is, from behind. The 3d Cavalry Divi• sion was to be in a position to operate against the railroads leading east from Ufa by June 7.28 In the north, Frunze directed the Fifth Army to cross about ninety kilo• meters north of Ufa and to be prepared to continue to the east or to tum south and join in the assault on Ufa.29 In freshness of conception, the Frunze plan was a masterpiece of mobile warfare. It took into account the capabilities and characteristics of cavalry. It sought to take advantage of the successes which Frunze's earlier actions had created. His plan, essentially, was designed to deny time to the enemy to regroup and to prepare extensive defenses along the natural defensive line of the Belaia. The Frunze plan was not overawed by the obstacle represented by the river. The plan was designed to destroy the enemy's communications and to create the conditions for a defeat on the strategic scale. The boldness of Frunze's conception exemplifies all the best teachings of offensive or mobile warfare. The outline of the operation seems to be a sort of precursor to many of the operations executed by General George S. Patton in Europe during World War II. Frunze had a plan which ultilized maneuver to alter the relative combat power of the forces and to alter it in his favor. At the time of the operation, Frunze disposed about 49,000 troops of all sorts to about 40,000 on the side of the Whites.30 The Fronze forces pressed the attack. On June 4 the 25th and 26th Rifle Divisions reached the west bank of the Belaia River north of Ufa. No enemy was observed on the east bank of the river. During the night of June 4-5, Chapaev threw his 25th Division across the Belaia about twenty kilometers north of Ufa. Further to the north of this crossing, the 26th Division also crossed. By June 7, Frunze was across the river in force. He had achieved local surprise and a strategic breakthrough. During the night of June 7-8 he supervised the crossing of reserves, including a regiment of weavers from Ivanovo-Voznesensk. The Whites reacted to the attempt at reinforcement with a strong counterattack designed to throw the entire Red force back into the river obstacle. In the course of the ensuing battle, the Red troops showed signs of

28 Ibid., p. 64. 29 Ibid. 30 F. N. Petrov, ed., M. V. Frunze: Zhizn' i deiatel'nost' (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1962), p. 170. 202 APPENDICES breaking. Frunze is reported to have taken a rifle in hand and personally to have l~ his Ivanovo troops in charges against the Whites. He was injured by the concussion from an exploding shell but did not leave the field of battle.31 In the same action, Chapaev was wounded by machine gun fire from an attacking aircraft. On June 9 the White forces organized another counterattack against the Red Belaia River bridgehead. The Reds met the White column while both forces were in the march formation. The resulting meeting engagement cul• minated in a sharp defeat with severe losses for the Kolchak forces. The road to Ufa was now open and the critical city was quickly occupied by the Chapaev 25th Division.3'2 The fate of the White forces in the Ufa area was not decided, however, until the Turkestan Army got across the Belaia. This is succeeded in doing only on June 15 and was able to reach Ufa on June 19.33 Frunze was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his action at Ufa.34 The results of the Ufa operation were too spectacular even for the Com• munists. Instead of pushing at once to the east and thereby denying any rest to a harried and defeated enemy, the Reds turned to mopping up. Perm' was recaptured from the Whites. Lenin was heard from on the situation in Ural'sk. He was worried about the actions of the White forces along the southern edge of the Eastern Front. In a telegram of July 1 to Frunze he directed attention to the situation in Nikolaevsk. "Inform me precisely," he demanded, "are you paying sufficient attention to this area?"35 Frunze replied that he certainly was and that Ural'sk would be cleansed of all Whites within a fortnight.s6 As good as his word, Frunze occupied Ural'sk on July 11. At this critical time in the history of the young Soviet republic and in spite of brilliant military successes on the Eastern Front, the politicians back in the Western cities of Moscow and Leningrad began to have their dif• ferences with the troop leaders at the front. One view (which was supported by Trotsky and Vatsetis, according to a later Soviet source37) held that the Red Army should defend on the Belaia River line and transfer some of its unneeded troops to regional political

31 Frunze, op. cit., I, p. 451. III Deiaternost', op. cit., p. 67. 33 Ibid. M Frunze, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1929), I, p.685. as Lenin, op. cit., p. 159. 38 Frunze, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, pp. 215-216. 37 Grinishin, op. cit., p. 322. APPENDICES 203 activities and to the Southern Front for action against Denikin. Another view (which was supported by Frunze and his political commissar, V. V. Kuibyshev) was for the reinforcing of the attack on the Eastern Front with the aim of driving Kolchak rapidly to the east in order to accomplish his final defeat. Lenin took a course which seemed to support Frunze in fact while sup• porting Trotsky in principle. In his report to the Central Committee of the Party in early July, Lenin chose to put the greater emphasis on the threat to the Soviet republic represented by Denikin. He entitled his report "All for the Struggle with Denikin," but he did not neglect some discussions about the threat from Kolchak. Lenin said that the weakening of the forces opposing Kolchak by the transfer of some soldiers to local political duties would be a "crime before the revolution." He insisted that the attack must not, in any event, be weakened. s8 Thus encouraged, Frunze continued the attack against Kolchak's forces. On July 13 Frunze became the commander of the Eastern Front. He continued his operations against the remnants of the Kolchak armies. He operated, simultaneously, in the Orsk, Aktiubinsk, and Cheliabinsk areas. As the result of the battle of Ufa and of subsequent Red operations, the Kolchak forces were tending to split into two groups. One was retiring di• rectly to the east and the other toward the southeast, or toward Tukestan. On August 13 the Supreme Command reorganized the forces of the Red Army in the east into two armies. The group of Red forces designated the Eastern Front was to pursue the White forces toward and into Siberia. Com• mand of this front went to Ol'derogge. The other front, the Turkestan Front, was charged with the pursuit of the southern group of Kolchak's retiring forces. Command of the Turkestan Front was assigned to a native of Turke• stan, Mikhail Frunze. After a delay of almost a half year, Frunze was at last in a position to begin execution of Kamenev's order of March 5 to "maintain contact with Tashkent." Astride the communications line to Tashkent and the whole of Central Asia, lay the Southern (White) Army of General Belov.

88 V.I. Lenin 0 voine, armii i voennoi nauke (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1957), II, p. 420. B. The Turkestan Front (August 1919 - September 1920)

Stalin viewed Turkestan as a bridge which connected "socialist Russia with the oppressed countries of the East" and thought that a consolidation of Soviet power in Turkestan could "exert a supreme revolutionizing in• fluence on the entire East. "1 Consolidation of the Soviet power was hindered by a number of factors. The Osipov Putsch had brought no credit to the Bolsheviks. The Basmachis and other local opposition groups were not reconciled to communist rule. There was even a semblance of British armed force in the area. Finally, the results of the Ufa operation had caused a large grouping of the Kolchak forces to retire toward the Central Asian and Turkestan area.2 Frunze viewed his mission as commander of the Turkestan Front as being nothing less than the subjugation of all Turkestan (an area larger, even, than Texas). While still commanding the Eastern Front, he had written,

A military expedition to Turkestan should have the immediate aim of occupy• ing all of Turkestan and of drawing all the local toiling population of Turkestan to the side of the Soviet power.3

It was in this spirit of imperialism that Frunze executed his command from the first day of his assignment until relieved in order to be transferred to the command of the Southern Front. The chief military force blocking Frunze's occupation of all Turkestan

1 J. V. Stalin, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), IV, p.239. ! On the situation in Central Asia in 1919 see Alexander Park, Balshevism in Turkestan, 1917-19Z7 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), and Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954). a Quoted in E. Voskoboinikovand A. Zeyelev. Turkkomissiia VTslK i Sovnarkhom RSFSR i Turkbiuro TsK RKP (b) v borbe za ukrepienie Sovetskoi viasti v Turkestane (M. V. Frunze, V. V. Kuibyshev, L. M. Kaganovich v Turkestane) (Tashkent: Gosu• darstvennoe izdatel'stvo Uzbekskoi SSR, 19S1), p. 67. APPENDICES 205 was the army of General Belov and detachments under Annenkov and Dutov. To oppose these forces, Frunze had the First, Fourth, and Eleventh Red Armies. The Eleventh Army, however, was operating in the Caspian Sea area (near the city of Astrakhan' and also in Tsaritsyn) and was not available for the operations against Belov which Frunze opened in mid• August. For the campaign against Belov, Frunze disposed about 27,000 foot troops and 3,000 cavalrymen compared to Belov's approximately 21,000 combat troops of all typeS.4 Both Frunze and Belov oriented their forces along the railroad leading form Samara through Aktiubinsk to Tashkent. Frunze conceived a bold and rather complicated plan for fixing Belov in the Orsk-Aktiubinsk area and then surrounding and destroying him. Frunze's plan stressed flank and rear attacks. His operation was planned to take advantage of the preponderance in force he possessed, as well as the weakened position of the Whites. The first stage of the operation was devoted to the creation of penetra• tions of Belov's defenses. Frunze devoted the week of August 13-20 to this task. By the end of the week, Belov was attempting to withdraw without panic and to establish defenses on a new line.5 The second stage of the operation was taken up in attempts to cut the Belov forces into segments. The 3d Cavalry Division operated behind the White forces. It ended a classical "ride around" Belov on September 2. On that date, the 3d Cavalry Division was able to contact another group of Reds and Belov was surrounded even though the encirclement was only with the weakest strength.8 Belov realized his critical situation and attempted to make good a with• drawal toward evacuation ports on the Aral Sea. The internal order of the Whites was showing signs of beginning to deteriorate. On September 5, a regiment of Whites went over to the Reds. On September 8, an additional 10,000 White troops surrendered. On the evening of that day, General Belov sent a surrender delegation to Frunze.7 A Soviet commentator has remarked, with some justice, that "there are not many such victories in the history of the military art."8 The brilliance of conception of the encirclement of General Belov and the decisiveness of its execution are not to be undervaluated as examples of

4 Deiatel'nosf, op. cit., pp. 72-73. 5 Ibid., p. 83. 6 Ibid., p. 89. 1 Ibid., pp. 91-92. 9 Colonel E. Boltin, "Proletarskii polkovodets M. V. Frunze," Novyi mir, No.4, 1939, p. 166. 206 APPENDICES the military art, but it should also not be forgotten that the operation was conducted during the pursuit phase of the Ufa and Ural operation. When Kolchak: split his forces after Ufa, the fate of Belov was in the hands of Frunze - if Frunze was able to attack with boldness and speed. He was. His actions were a good example of a commander exploiting a success. The professional level of his anti-Belov operation can be measured against the fact that history has many examples of missed opportunities in rather similar situations. The Wehrmacht may have had such an opportunity to destroy the British Army on the beaches of Dunkirk (although consider• ations other than professional competence may also have been involved there). While Frunze was operating with his First Army in the Orsk-Aktiubinsk area against General Belov, his Eleventh Army was still operating in another direction. It had the mission of attacking in the direction of Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad and, still later, Volgograd) in order to draw troops from Wrangel's armies, which at that time were attacking with success along the Southern Front.9 Frunze spent ten days with the Eleventh Army during this diversion. Also with him were his old comrade, V. V. Kuibyshev, and the Eleventh Army's political officer, S. M. Kirov. The diversion accomplished its mis• sion of drawing strength from Wrangel, and Frunze was able to tum to the task of "liquidating" the forces of General Tolstov. The Tsaritsyn raid was not central to the mission of the Turkestan Front but Tolstov represented a serious threat to the maintenance of communications with Tashkent. Tolstov was located between Ural'sk and the Caspian Sea port of Gur'ev with about 13,000 men. To oppose him locally, Frunze had only the Fourth Army of about 22,000 troops since the Eleventh Army was still off raiding Tsaritsyn and the First Army was busy in the Belov encirclement.1o Frunze set about at once prying Tolstov out of his defenses near Ural'sk. It proved to be a slow job. Early Red attacks achieved local successes but did not deprive Tolstov of his basic strength. (Chapaev was killed in an action against Tolstov during early September.) Throughout September and October, Tolstov kept the Reds on their heels and frequently was able to send his cavalry deep into Frunze's rear. Lenin became impatient. On October 18, he sent Frunze a telegram advising him to speed up the liquidation of the Tolstov forces.ll

8 Deiatefnost', op. cit., pp. 99-100. 10 Ibid., p. 106. 11 Lenin, op. cit., p. 213. Lenin said, "Do not give all your attention to Turkestan but rather to the liquidation of the Ural Cossacks in any way possible, even with diplomatic measures." APPENDICES Thus prodded, Frunze got off a new attack against Tolstov by October 29. On November 2 Frunze got still another telegram from Lenin. It said,

The battle with the Ural Cossacks is dragging out and I don't see what measures have been taken to liquidate this front quickly in spite of the fact that I have demanded that you give all your attention to the matter. I tell you that the enemy is getting stronger, using the breathing spell which you have given him and attempting to wind up the affair through conciliation. Report immedi ately what measures you have taken to defeat the enemy.12 Frunze replied in a hurt tone that "the Ural Cossacks have not been given a breathing spell. "13 He said that he had never thought of conciliation with the Whites and claimed that the delay had been caused by three circum• stances beyond his own control. These were: 1) the transfer of troops to other fronts, 2) the capture of large numbers of prisoners of war, and 3) the outbreak of a typhus epidemic. "In any case," he concluded, "we have done and are doing everything possible in our circumstances." Frunze did not get over his "slows" at once. He sent his troops against Tolstov's flanks. The White general was forced back - slowly. On December 22 the Red troops took Gorskaia, the last important center above the port of Gur'ev.14 On December 30 Frunze ordered an attack on Gur'ev itself.15 By January 5, 1920, Frunze was able to send Lenin a telegram reporting that the "Ural front is liquidated."16 The successful completion of the Gur'ev operation eliminated the last reason for Frunze to continue delaying his trip to Tashkent. Before setting out along the path of Skobelev and Cherniaev, Frunze made a repon to his troops on past operations. He stated that over 150,000 prisoners of war had been taken in the period from October 7,1918, to January 5,1920.17 Frunze arrived in Tashkent on February 22. The communists were not welcomed in Turkestan with salt and bread. From the time of his arrival in the country of his origin until his transfer to the Southern Front in September, 1920, Frunze was forced to conduct cam• paigns against dissidents who were not ready to accept the communist salva• tion in Central Asia. Frunze campaigned in Khiva, in Bukhara, and in the Semirech area. He opposed the Basmachis, local emirs, and indigenous peasants. He even

12 Ibid., p. 220. 13 Frunze, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, p. 270. 14 Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 114. 15 Frunze,Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, p. 277. 18 Ibid., p. 278. 17 Ibid., p. 297. 208 APPENDICES joined with Dmitri Furmanov in subduing the garrison in Vemyi, the city where Frunze had attended secondary school.18 The actions which Frunze conducted from February to September added little to his military reputation and glory. The irregular Basmachis and the Fergana and Bukbara semi-regulars led him a rather spirited chase about the countryside. Frunze did not succeed in finally defeating them (although they were later put down by other Soviet commanders). His operations did help to add Central Asia to the Soviet empire. They do provide an illuminating example of what the communists meant by "self determination." His Central Asian campaigns also provide a scale against which to measure Frunze's assertion that

While there is suffering, oppression, and enslavement in the world, the Russian Soviet Republic and the developing Soviet republics must have armed forces. This force - our Red Army - has fulfilled its duty to its people and to other oppressed peoples, especially in the East.19

Frunze's measure of military success in Turkestan can be judged from the comment of a Soviet observer who wrote,

The basic tactics employed by M. V. Fronze in his struggles against the Bas• machies consisted of conducting large scale political work among the population - and first of all, among the toilers.20

In the end, the Bolsheviks, through the political efforts of Kuibyshev, Kaganovich, and Frunze - and especially through the military efforts of Frunze - were successful in bringing Turkestan under Soviet rule and in producing a Soviet type constitution in 1920.

18 K. I. Ivanovicb., M. V. Frunze na turkestanskom fronte (avgust 1919 - septiabr' 1920 gg.) (Frunze: Obshchestvo po rasprostraneniia politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii Kirgizskoi SSR, 1958), p. 18. 19 Quoted in Sali Ashurovich Radzhabov, Rol' velikogo russkogo naroda v istoricheskikh sub'bakh narodov Srednei Azii (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe izda.tel'stvo Uzbekskoi SSR, 1955), p. 140. 20 Boltin, op. cit., p. 166. Frunze himself said, in Sobranie sochinenii, op. cit., I, pp. 129-131, that the situation in Turkestan was not favorable to a group seeking to organize the proletariat. He wrote: "There is only an insignificant group of working proletariat here. The peasants are on the fence and may be our enemies tomorrow.... There is small possibility of uniting the masses on the pnnciples of international• ism.... The cement of the union has been Islam and the idea of Pan-Slavism." C. The Southern Front (September 1920 - November 1920)

BefDre Frunze tODk up his duties as cDmmander Df the SDuthern Front, he repDrted to' Lenin in MDSCOW. The twO' went fDr a strDll along the streets Df the city. "We do not have the right," Lenin said to the young veteran, "to subject the people to the horrors and sufferings Df anDther winter campaign." After delivering himself Df this pointed DbservatiDn, he asked Frunze what he thought wDuld be the time by which Wrangel wDuld be finished off. "In December, Vladimir Il'ich," answered Frunze. "In December," musingly repeated Lenin. "By December," the new cDmmander Df the SDuthern Front CDrrected himself. 1 Frunze arrived on the SDuthern Front Dn September 27, 1920. His com• mand cDnsisted Df the Fourth, Sixth, Thirteenth, and Second HDrse Armies. Wrangel's armies had been operating in Norther Tavriia (the Taurides). Frunze was presented with twO' pDssibilities. He cDuld fight Wrangel in the Tavriia area and hDpe to' defeat him in terrain suited to' cavalry actions and wide maneuver. TO' accomplish this, Frunze would have to' block Wrangel from the Crimea. This was nDt an easy task because the Reds were facing a cDmmander skilled in rapid movements and the artful use of cavalry. Frunze's secDnd possibility was to apply pressure on Wrangel in an at• tempt to force him intO' the Crimea. Once he had Wrangel in that peninsula, he could either contain Wrangel there Dr assault his defenses. Frunze chose the first alternative. He repeatedly emphasized the tactical necessity of denying Wrangel entry intO' the Crimea. He planned to trap the Baron in the plains of NDrthern Tavriia and thus to avoid the necessity of an assault against the prepared positions leading into the Crimea. The Tavriia campaign has been described as a "campaign of encirclement. "2 In reality, it was an attempt at encirclement that miscarried.

1 Sirotinskii, op. cit., p. 188. 2 Boitin, op. cit., p. 167. 210 APPENDICES Wrangel was an active enemy. Frunze arrived at the front at a time when Wrangel was driving for Kakhovka on the Dnepr River. If Wrangel could take Kakhovka, he could split the Red forces in the area. On October 14, following a week-long series of minor engagements along the way in which the Red forces continued to give ground, Wrangel arrived in the Kakhovka area in force. Frunze's command, nevertheless, maintained a bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnepr. Frunze launched a counterattack against the Wrangel thrust on October 15. This counterblow served to throw Wrangel temporarily off balance. Frunze did not follow up his temporary advantage but he did succeed in wresting the initiative from the Whites. He was also able to secure the Kakhovka bridgehead. He was so elated with the results of his first engage• ment with Wrangel that he wrote, "There is not the slightest doubt that we [shall defeat him] and in the very shortest period."3 Frunze's already good situation was improved on October 12 when an armistice was signed with Poland. This freed some of the Soviet forces which had been operating there under Tukhachevskii. Among those sent to the Southern Front was the First Horse Army of Budennyi and Voroshilov. On October 19 Frunze conceived a plan designed to trap Wrangel in the plans of Northern Tavriia. He envisioned a two-pronged operation. One prong was to attack out of the Kakhovka bridgehead area toward Melitopol' with units of the Sixth Army blocking the entries into the Crimea at Perekop and Sal'kovo. The other prong was to attack east from Nikopol'. The idea was to force Wrangel to make a deployment on the poor defensive terrain of the plains.4 Wrangel perceived the essence of the Frunze plan and conducted a with• drawal along the Melitopol' -Chongar railway line. He executed an active retirement. In spite of the fact that the Red forces grealty outnumbered the Whites (by 133,000 to 34,000), Wrangel darted out at his pursuers in frequent stinging raids.oS By the beginning of November (and nothwithstand• ing Frunze's orders of October 196 and October 267 giving his subordinates explicit instructions to deny entry into the peninsula to Wrangel, and not• withstanding the fact that Voroshilov and Budennyi were operating with the First Horse Army in the rear of Wrangel along the route into the Crimea

3 Frunze,Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, p. 383. 40 Ibid., pp. 384-386. 5 Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 163. 8 Frunze, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I. p. 384. 7 Ibid., w. 394-396. APPENDICES 211 on October 29 and 3{)8), Wrangel had retired behind the Perekop-Chongar line into the Crimea. The work on the Perekop and Chongar positions had been done by General Makeev. It was later reported that the engineering work had actu• ally been done only on paper.9 Wrangel himself made an inspection tour on October 30 and concluded, "Much has been done and much remains to be done, but even now the Crimea is impregnable. "10 All the natural entrants into the peninsula had been blocked by some sort of defensive works. Starting from the West, the Perekop Isthmus, bordered on the West by the Karkinit Bay of the Black Sea and the east by the Sivash (or Putrid Sea), was the largest and most likely avenue of approach. This isthmus has an average width of about eight to eleven kilometers. Extending across its waist was the so-called Turkish Rampart, a remnant of wars of an earlier epoch. In front of the rampart was a ditch ten meters deep and twenty meters wide. From the bottom of the ditch to the crest of the rampart was a distance of eighteen meters. The slope into the rampart was at an angle of 45° while its exit slope (toward the defenders) was somewhat more gentle. Baron Wrangel had improved this legacy from the Russian past and had established a supplementary line of emplacements about two kilometers to the north, with still another line about a kilometer and a half closer to the Reds. 11 Wrangel entrusted the defense of the Turkish Rampart lines to the 1st and 4th Drozdov Regiments and the Composite Infantry Guard Regiment. He had the 2d and 3d Drozdov Regiments in reserve in the Armenian Bazaar, a large level area surrounding the town of Armiansk, four kilo• meters to the south of the prepared positions along the Turkish Rampart line. 12 About twenty kilometers to the south of the main Perekop position, Wrangel set up the Iushun' line at the point where the Perekop Isthmus joins the mainland of the Crimea. The line was organized in depth. A series of inland lakes (the Old, Red, Round, and others) were located along the for-

8 A. S. Bubnov, S. S. Kamenev, M. N. Tukhachevskii, and R. P. Eideman, oos., Grazhdanskaia voina 1918-1921 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1930), III, p.514. 9 Grigorii N. Rakovskii, Konets belykh: ot Dnepra do Bosfora (Prague: Volia Rosii, 1921), p. 176. 10 Quoted in N. Datiuk, Shturm Perekopa (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1939), p. 39. 11 Colonel Iosif Stepanovich Korotkov, Razgrom Vrange/ia (3d 00.: Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1955), pp. 43-44. 12 A. V. Golubev, ed., Perekop i Chongar (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1933), p.53. 212 APPENDICES ward edge of the battle area. The Kornilov and Markov Infantry Divisions were improving these positions. 13 Between the Perekop and Iushun' lines, a small peninsula jutted out from the eastern side of the Perekop Isthmus into the Sivash and pointed back toward the Ukrainian mainland. This strategically located little finger of land was called the Lithuanian Peninsula. It had served as the terminal point for fords across the four to five kilometer width of the Sivash in the past. The White position on the Lithuanian Peninsula was organized and held by General Fostikov's Kuban Brigade. The Kuban Brigade was made up of infantry and dismounted cavalry.14 About fifty kilometers to the east of the Lithuanian Peninsula is another finger of land, the Chongar Peninsula, which is joined to the mainland and which reaches to within a few meters of the Crimea. The Chongar Penin• sula and the Crimea have, in fact, been joined by the Sivash bridge (on the Melitopol'-Sal'kovo-Chongar-Taganash-Simferopol' rail line) and by the wooden Chongar bridge. Both bridges had been destroyed by the Whites when they retired into the Crimea from Northern Tavriia. The Chongar positions were held by troops of the 7th Infantry Division, the 34th Infantry Division, the 42d Don Regiment, and a para-military regiment of German colonists. 15 Finally, still further to the east, was the long, slender finger of the Arabat Spit, which extended its narrow width from the Kerch Peninsula on the southeast extremity of the Crimea north almost up to Genichesk on the mainland. It was connected to the mainland by a railway and by a highway bridge. The Arabat Spit is quite narrow throughout its length and does not exceed two or three kilometers in average width. It is washed by the Sivash on the west and by the Azov Sea on the east. It had a most significant lo• cation since it ran almost parallel with the main bulk of the Crimean Penin• sula. It would permit an attacker to utilize its conformation to follow it south from Genichesk and to cross the narrow Sivash into the Crimea near the estuary of the Salgir. Such a maneuver would place the attacker behind the prepared defensive positions and main groupings of the defenders. Frunze recalled that such a turning maneuver had been executed by a Russian army under the command of the famed Field Marshal Lassi in 1732.16 In 1920, however, the Arabat Spit was not shielded from the surveillance of the well-gunned Azov Sea Fleet which was supporting Baron Wrangel. As a

13 Ibid., p. 76. 14 Korotkov, op. cit., p. 254. 15 Golubev, op. cit., p. 53. II Fnmze, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., II, pp. 110-111. This maneuver actually took place in 1737 during the RUSBO-Turkish War of 1736-1739. APPENDICES 213 result of the presence of this fleet, it was possible for the White Army to organize this entry only lightly and to assign only a single regiment (the 7th Cossack) to its defense.17 Along the southern shores of the Sivash, between the several entrants into the Crimea, General Wrangel disposed a number of troops and engineer detachments. Wrangel was preparing a competent defense in which the terrain was well utilized. "Everything," he said, "that is within human strength has been done."18 His defense was weakened, however, by the great disparity in strength between the combat forces available to the Reds and to him. As the Red Army prepared to attempt the forcing of his defenses, General Wrangel had from 25,000 to 28,000 combat troops at his disposal inside the Crimea. Of these, about 10,000 were posted along the Perekop defensive line, about 3,000 were in the Chongar area, about 6,000 were in general reserve, and the remainder were on the Arabat Spit in the throes of battle with pro-Bolshevik partisan operating within the Crimea. In equipment, Wrangel had about 200 ordnance pieces of various sizes, about 1,500 machine guns, five armored trains, about twenty armored cars, and three Reno tanks.1 9 For his part, Frunze had well over 100,000 effective combat troops under his command and deployed for the assault into the Crimea.20

17 Golubev, op. cit., p. 53. 18 Quoted in Aleksandr lvanovich Levochkin, Geroi Kakhovki i Perekopa (Moscow: Tzdatel'stvo DOSAAF, 1958), p. 84. 19 One of the most difficult matters for a researcher to establish, when dealing with Soviet military history, is the actual strength of forces involved in combat operations. These figures are from Korotkov, op. cit., p. 236, with the exeption of the figures on machine guns which are from Bubnov, et 01., op. cit., ill, p. 513. As for troop strengths, Bubnov, et aI., op. cit., III, p. 513, gives Wrangel's Crimean effectives as 41,000 infantrymen and cavalrymen, of which 25,000 were lister as front line troops; the editor of Frunze, Sobranie sochinenii, op. cit., I, p. xxiii, states that Wrangel evacuated 150,000 troops from the Crimea in November, 1920; Golubev, op. cit., p. 47, gives Wrangel's strength as 17,070; Levochkin, op. cit., p. 47, states that the Wrangel forces in the Crimea in November, 1920, numbered from 25,000 to 28,000; and N. Kakurin, Kak srazhalas' revoliutsiia (Moscow: Gosudantvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1926), II, p. 387, quoting a Triandofillov article in Sbornik voenno• nauchnogo obshchestva, Book N, gives the White Army strength as 19,610. (The VNO Sbornik is not available in the Lenin State Library in Moscow.) The Wrangel memoirs, Always With Honour (New York: Robert Speller, 1957) tend to confirm the estimates made by Korotkov although the Baron does not give exact troop strengths for the period of the Crimean operations. The Korotkov figures are probably the most nearly accurate of the various Soviet sources, all of which are very likely only estimates in any case. Colonel Korotkov apparently was able to examine all available communist documents including military records and reports which are not available to the non-Soviet researcher. 20 Korotkov, op. cit., p. 236. Kakurin, op. cit., p. 387, gives Frunze's strength as 214 APPENDICES By early November, the Southern Front armies were lined up from the bank of the Dn.epr River in the west to the Arabat Spit in the east. They had completed, or were completing, their regroupings and resupply for the as• sault on Wrangel's defensive works. The Sixth Army (made up of the 1st, 15th, 51st, 52d, and Latysh Rifle Divisions) was deployed for offensive action before the Perekop positions. The Fourth Army (9th, 23d [later redesignated the 3d Rifle Division], 30th, 46th, and Composite Student Rifle Divisions, 7th Cavalry Division, Makhno Army, and the International Cavalry Brigade) was similarly arrayed before the Chongar positions. Behind these foot armies were located the First Horse (4th, 6th, 11th, and 14th Cavalry Divisions, and a special cavalry brigade) and the Second Horse (2d, 16th, and 21st Cavalry Divi• sions, and a special cavalry brigade) Armies. These horse armies were pre• pared to move toward either the Chongar or Perekop areas but were basically oriented on the Perekop lines. A special task force, built around the 9th Rifle Division (the reserve III Cavalry Corps, which was made up of the 5th and 9th Cavalry Divisions, was also assigned to this task force), was in the Genichesk area poised for a dash down the Arabat Spit. Its advance guard was near the Schastlivets Farm, about eighteen kilometers to the south of Genichesk. The Thirteenth Army (42d Rifle Division, 2d Don Division, 44th Boguchar Infantry Brigade, and elements of the III Cavalry Corps) was in general reserve for the Front Commander and was located in the vicinity of Melitopol'.21

133,951. In his article, "M. V. Frunze - Komanduiushchii iuzhnom frontom," Deiatel'nost', op. cit., p. 163, Korotkov states that Frunze's command in late October amounted to 133,185, with 14,000 of these in reserve. This agrees with the figures given in Krasnyi arkhiv, No.6 (73), p. 22. The most detailed listing of troop strengths under the command of the Southern Front Headquarters is found in Bubnov et aI., op. cit., III, p. 513. This list is ap• parently taken from official Soviet military archives and may be considered the most accurate accounting available. In view of its probable reliability, it is reproduced here without change from the original: Unit Command Infantry Cavalry Troops in General Personnel Sixth Army 3,983 37,157 3,661 51,432 Second Horse Army 715 7;1JJ3 11,253 First Horse Army 1,819 2,672 17,758 21,581 Fourth Army 3,246 27,823 8,077 64,464 Makhno Forces 4,000 1,000 6,000 Thirteenth Army 1,107 11,243 957 17,310 Composite Division 758 10,245 913 16,731

Total 11,628 103,140 39,569 188,771 21 Korotkov, op. cit., pp. 245-255. APPENDICES 215 After extensive land and aerial reconnaissance, Frunze decided that the best plan would be to assault the Crimean redoubt by means of the Arabat Spit in an end run in the Lassi manner. He hoped to apply simultaneous frontal pressure on the Perekop and Chongar positions and to send a force down the Arabat Spit to the Salgir Estuary, where it could execute a sharp turn to the west in order to establish itself in a location from which it could move on the prepared positions of the Whites from the rear. The letter of instructions which Frunze issued at 3:15 a.m. on Novem• ber 5 envisaged such a maneuver.22 He ordered the Black Sea and Azov Sea Fleets of the Red Navy to concentrate in the Genichesk area no later than November 9 in order to provide fire support to the troops making the sweep down the Spit toward the Salgir area. His reconnaissance had shown him that the Whites held the Spit with mounted security units only. This plan of maneuver in the grand style proved to be stiIIbom. The Red Fleets did not succeed in getting out of the Taganrog Bay. They were unable to steam under the prevailing conditions of ice and frost. The White Fleet, however, continued to operate in the Genichesk area and along the Spit. Such unopposed enemy fleet action made large scale Red troop movements along the Arabat Spit unthinkable and compelled Frunze to forsake his first-found formula for the forcing of the Crimea. Frunze could not, however, forsake the basic directive issued by Glavkom [the Supreme Command] on September 24 which ordered him to effect the "liquidation of Wrangel in the shortest possible time.''23 Nor was he likely to forget his impetuous promise to Lenin to make the Crimea Soviet by December. The second best plan was decided upon. This involved attacking into the prepared White positions on the Perekop and Chongar Peninsulas in order to effect penetrations by frontal assault. The last great formal battle of the Russian Civil War began on the day marking the third anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power. Earlier in the day, Frunze, Voroshilov, and Budennyi had sent an anniversary greeting to Lenin. Along with the greeting, they sent a promise. Their telegram said,

The iron infantry, the dashing cavalry, the unconquerable artillery, and the sharp-eyed and swift aviation will, through their unanimous efforts, liberate the last bit of Soviet soil from all enemies.24

l!lI Frunze, lzbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, pp. 406-409. Notes for a tactical study of the operations against Wrangel which Frunze was preparing at the time of his death suggest that Frunze had also considered a landing on the Kerch Peninsula. IS Krasnyi arkhiv, No.6 (72),1935, p. 12. 24 Levochnik, op. cit., p. 98. 216 APPENDICES The battle of Perekop began at about ten o'clock p.m. of November 7 when units of the Sixth Army (specifically, the 15th and 52d Rifle Divisions, the 153rd Rifle Brigade, and the Cavalry Brigade of the 51 st Rifle Division) began crossing the Sivash toward the Lithuanian Peninsula. The fords utilized by the Sixth Army had been discovered by an earlier reconnais• sance25 and had been improved by engineers using locally available materials such as brushwood, straw, logs, twigs, and the like. The engineer work had been done under cover of darkness and during periods of fog. This activity apparently had not been observed by the White troops on the lightly-held Lithuanian Peninsula. The movement of the Sixth Army across the Sivash likewise was un• observed at its outset. The crossing was blessed by a rather unusual and friendly act of nature. A strong wind from the west blew the waters of the Sivash toward the east and made wading along the fords quite feasible and, indeed, simple but for the effects of a lowered temperature and a frosty wind26 - and the fear of enemy reaction. When the Sixth Army assault forces approached to within about one kilometer of the Lithuanian Peninsula, they were finally observed by General Fostikov's outposts at about two o'clock in the morning of Novem• ber 8. They were taken under machine gun and artillery fire. Nevertheless, the Sixth Army had attained a measure of tactical surprise and this, com• bined with the relative weakness of the defending Kuban Brigade, as well as its paucity of improved defensive positions, served to maintain the mo• mentum of the Red Army attack. By seven o'clock, the Reds had pushed Wrangel's forces back from the northern part of the small peninsula. By nine o'clock in the morning the entire striking force under the command of General Bliukher was ashore and a reasonably secure beachhead had been established.27 All this time there had been a strange silence along the Perekop line. The planned frontal assault on the Turkish Rampart positions had not begun

2S These fords are quite prominent in Soviet military history. They are reported to have been used by Soviet troops in 1943 actions against the Germans. In both 1920 and 1943, according to Soviet lore, the local guide for the Soviet armed forces was Ivan Ivanovich Olenchuk. See Iosif Stepa.novich Korotkov and! Grigorii Avtonomo• vich Koltunov, Ozvobozhdenie Kryma (M06COW: Voennoe izdate1'stvo. 1959). pp. 9-10. !8 Korotkov, op. cit., pp. 255-256. The story in Dennis Whea.tly, Red Eagle (Lon• don: Hutchinson. 1938), p. 264, which has Bliukher crossing the Sivash on a bottom frozen solid after the wind had blown the water completely out can only be considered a sort of journalistic exaggeration. Frunze. in lzbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., n, p. 112, states that the troops waded across and came ashore covered with slime and frozen water. while Wheatly has them emerging bone dry. !'I Korotkov, op. cit., p. 256, and Golubev. op. cit., pp. 70-71. APPENDICES 217 nor had the artillery preparations which were scheduled to precede it. Some Soviet authorities have suggested that this delay in artillery actions was caused by a dense fog over the Perekop area.28 This inability of the Red artillery to fire a preparation in the fog could only have resulted from a failure to have conducted artillery registration on the positions around Perekop during earlier periods of good visibility in accord with standard artillery practice. Such a failure can be blamed either on the inexperience and low professional competence of the firing batteries or on the failure of local commanders to see to the accomplishment of this basic gunnery mis• sion. In any event, there was no Red frontal action at Perekop and Wrangel was left free to use his local reserves against the Lithuanian Peninsula beachhead and to reinforce the fires of his counterattackin forces with artillery inside the Perekop positions. This artillery probably would not have been available to the White counterattack had the Reds got their assault on Perekop off on time. The first White unites to come to the aid of the beleagured General Fostikov were the 2d and 3d Regiments of the Drozhdov Division which had been in the Armiansk area. The counterattack hit the 15th Red Brigade near Karadzhanai at the base of the Lithuanian Peninsula. Shortly after this initial action, the 13th and 34th Infantry Divisions of Wrangel's command moved against the 15th Rifle Division. The counterattack was able to con• centrate considerable combat power against the Red Sixth Army forces and gained its intermediate objectives. The Reds soon stiffened, however, and seemed to be holding their beachhead. The situation remained serious for the Red forces on the Lithuanian Peninsula throughout the day with pres• sure from the White forces not letting up until evening. The fog along the Perekop lines began to lift with the rising of the morning sun of the new day. It did not clear completely, however, and the Red artillery preparations, once they got underway, were sporadic and did not produce telling results.2'9 Frunze got his delayed assault on Perekop into motion around one o'clock in the afternoon. It was easily repulsed by the defenders with sizeable losses to the attackers. The artillery preparations were resumed and a second assault was made at 1:35 p. m. This, too, was beaten back with severe losses to the Reds. The pattern of assault and repulse was repeated throughout the day and into the night. Several of the charges were made without artillery preparations or support. During these actions against the Perekop lines on

28 Golubev, op. cit., p. 71. 28 Ibid., pp. 71-72. 218 APPENDICES November 8, some of Frunze's regiments suffered losses amounting to sixty per cent of their total combat strength.30 The situation was not much more encouraging for Frunze on the other sectors of the front. The White counterattack on the Lithuanian Peninsula abated by seven o'clock in the evening and when darkness settled on the area it was accompanied by an end to combat actions. Nature, which had previously been so generous to Frunze, suddenly turned against the Red forces. The waters of the Sivash, to the rear, now, of the Sixth Army assault force, were rising and the commander ashore could see his route of supply, communication, and reinforcement disappearing. While communications~ still existed, he sent an appeal to Frunze for help.31 Frunze realized that the "most resolute measures" would have to be taken at once or "otherwise, the whole affair might be lost."32 He ordered an im• mediate, decisive attack into the Turkish Rampart. He also mobilized the local population for work on the improvement of the fords across the Sivash. The 7th Cavalry Division, the 16th Cavalry Division ,and the Makhno Army were ordered to mount up and to be prepared to move to reinforce the Sixth Army on the Lithuanian Peninsula. 33 The next assault by Frunze on Wrangel's Perekop positions crossed the line of departure in the early morning hours of November 9. It succeeded in taking the Turkish Rampart by storm. This Red success induced Wrangel to pull back to the Iushun' line in order to overcome the threat to the rear of his Perekop position which was represented by the now largely relieved Soviet Sixth Army troops on the Lithuanian Peninsula. The troops there on the peninsula discovered that Wrangel had retired to the Iushun' line only when morning light revealed that the positions to their front were vacant.M Wrangel also utilized the night of November 8-9 to move reinforcements to the Iushun' line from areas deeper in the Crimea. In other areas where the Reds faced the Whites, the situation was fluid. In the Chongar area, preparations for a Red assault were continuing. These preparations included reconnaissance, engineering work on the two bridges destroyed by the Whites, and some artillery preparations. In the Genichesk area, the advance guard of the 9th Rifle Division had been halted in its move down the Arabat Spit by enemy naval action. 35

30 Korotkov, op. cit., p. 257, and Golubev, op. cit., p. 56. Golubev reports, at p. 72, on a reconna.issance patrol which lost eighteen of its twenty members. 31 Frunze, lzbrannye proizvetieniia, op. cit., 114, and Korotkov, op. cit., p. 258. lIZ Frunze, loc. cit. aa Korotkov, op. cit., pp. 260-261. M Golubev, op. cit., p. 90. 115 Korotkov, op. cit., p. 258. APPENDICES 219 Frunze had gained a toe-hold on the base of the Perekop Isthmus which he held in some force. The best defensive positions which the Whites pos• sessed had been taken and Wrangel was pushed down to the Iushun' area. Wrangel, however, had suffered no major losses in the action of Novem• ber 7 and 8 and early November 9. He was emplaced in a fairly good de• fensive line at Iushun'. Frunze was still several stages away from the fulfill• ment of his mission of the liquidation of the White forces. Several factors, however, were operating in favor of his eventual success. First, Frunze had an overwhelming superiority of force in the area. Second, Frunze had the momentum and the psychological advantage of the offensive. The October and November actions by Wrangel in Northern Tavriia and in the Perekop Isthmus, however well conceived and executed, had none the less been retirements with a consequent lowering of troop morale. Third, Wrangel was harassed by the operations of partisans in his rear. Fourth, the Baron knew that he was not required to make a life or death stand in the Crimea. A fleet was waiting in the Black Sea to evacuate his force. Fifth, Wrangel could count on getting continued, enthusiastic support from his non-Russian patrons only if he could produce victories of a scale capable of impressing British and French public opinion. While Wrangel may have been able to maneuver around the Reds in Tavriia and in the Perekop Isthmus area, he did not have the men and material necessary for a striking offensive victory. His best hope was to stand off Frunze and hope for a comparatively inactive period of winter which he could use to regroup and reinforce his army with the prospect of beginning offensive thrusts in the spring. This was to prove a forlorn hope. Frunze reacted rapidly to the withdrawal of the Whites to the Iushun' line. He pushed his troops to the south and by three o'clock in the afternoon of November 9 they had approached to within small arms range of the Iushun' positions.36 The attempt to attack these prepared positions without pausing in assembly areas was, however, unsuccessful. Wrangel had prepared the Iushun' line with some care and he intended to force Frunze to deploy before his works. The evening of November 9 found Frunze positioned against the forward edge of Wrangel's battle area which was itself split in two by Red Lake. East of Red Lake, stretching to the Sivash, were the 52d and 15th Rifle Divisions. To the west of Red Lake, stretching to Karkinit Bay, were two other divisions with a cavalry group and a cavalry brigade in local reserve.

38 Goolubev, op. cit., p. 76. 220 APPENDICES In the early morning hours of November 10, the 51st Division attacked toward the south with good initial results. By nine o'clock, a penetration had been effected. At the opposite end of the forward Iushun' line, Wrangel organized a sharp counterattack and hurled it against the Red's eastern positions on the Perekop Peninsula. It reeled the 15th and 52d Divisions back to the base of the Lithuanian Peninsula. Its success presented Wrangel with the possibility of a strike into the Armenian Bazaar. Such a maneuver would have put powerful White forces in the rear of Frunze's main deploy• ments on the Perekop Isthmus. In face of this new danger, the Reds stif• fened. By nightfall, the perilous Wrangel thrust had been contained by means of local counterattacks. For some time, Frunze had been forced by the flow of events to give his attention principally to the epic battle in the Perekop area. With the situa• tion somewhat successfully stabilized there, he turned his attention to the Chongar Peninsula. There, by the same evening of November 10, the Fourth Army had still not been able to fight its way across the narrow Sivash and into the Crimea. The tactical perspectives which could have been opened by a crossing in force into the Chongar area should have been most pleasing to a com• mander devoted to the twin principles of maneuver and mobility. A Chongar penetration or breakthrough would serve to draw White reserves away from the Perekop area or, if Wrangel chose to use his reserves in Perekop rather than in Chongar, it would outflank the Iushun' positions from the rear. To realize these promising possibilities, immediate pressure would have to be applied in the Chongar areas at the sites of the Chongar and Sivash bridges. Earlier in the anti-Wrangel campaign, Frunze had missed a most sug• gestive opportunity in this area. 37 He could not afford to miss another.

37 When Wrangel was operating in Northern Tavriia during October. he was retiring along het Melitopol'-Sal'kovo-Chongar- Taganash-Simferopol' railroad line. The character of his operations made it fairly apparent that he planned to use that route of retirement into the Crimea if the Red Army was able to force him to abandon Tavriia. In the period of October 29 and 30, the Red First Horse Army of Budennyi and Voroshilov was operating in the vicinity of Sal'tovo and Chougar. The main actions between the Reds and the Whites were taking place to the north. The Sal'tow area, which overlooks the chief rail entry into the Crimea, was lightly held by the Whites. Wrangel became anxious over Buddennyi's operations in the vicinity and rushed the 7th Infantry Division to the area in order to keI:p the route to the Crimea open. The 7th Division, however, got lost in the cold and darkness and became com• pletely disorganized and, consequently, of no combat value. For a time, the Baron said. "access to the Crimea was open to the Reds." Rapid action by Frunze. or locally by Budennyi, might have trapped Wrangel north of the Crimea. But the Reds did not APPENDICES 221 Frunze made a personal visit to the command post of the 30th Rifle Division. Once there, he urged the division commander to put an end to delay and to cross into the Crimea in the Chongar area at once. The operation was conceived as a sort of reconnaissance in force with the option of striking further inland if the attackers gained initial success. The 226th and 268th Rifle Regiments were designated as the advance bodies with the former orienting its direction of attack on the village of Tiup• Dzhankoi while the 268th pointed toward the settlement called Taganash.38 The attack jumped off at midnight of November 10-11 with the 268th guiding along a small dam leading toward the White position. The advance was observed and the Reds were immediately taken under observed artillery and small arms fire. This fire was so intense tl.at the Reds were force into a retreat. 39 The second attempt at a crossing was made by the 268th at about six o'clock in the morning of November 11. By eight o'clock, it had secured a small bridgehead and was reorganizing in preparation for the assault on Wrangel's defensive lines. The attack of the 266th Rifle Regiment got under way at two a. m. It got ashor about five o'clock and, in spite of its exposed position, organized an assault on the White lines which began at 6:30 a. m. The assault overran the 42d Don Infantry and the regiment of German colonists. The town of Tiup-Dzhankoi was taken. With only a short halt, the 266th reorganized and continued the prosecution of its attack.40 The day of November 11 was critical for Wrangel. His forces were engaged in heavy fighting in the lushun' sector. In the Chongar area, a major breakthrough by the 266th appeared to be in the making. Yet, at the same time, he was enjoying some success. Parts of the Iushun' line were not only holding but also were inflicting severe losses on the Reds by means of local counterattacks. In the Chongar area, the Red 268th Regiment held only a most insecure toe-hold on the Crimea. Overall, however, there could be no gainsaying the fact that Wrangel was in a thoroughly precarious situation. The overwhelming preponderence in troop strength which was in Frunze's hands made his victory virtaully react and the opportunity vanished. Wrangel was pennitted to make good his retire• ment and Frunze was forced to execute the costly operations at Perekop and Cbongar. See Bubnov et aI., op. cit., III, p. 514. 38 Bubnov et aI., op. cit., III, p. 539. 39 Korotkov, op. cit., p. 266. 40 For its actions at Chongar, the 266th Rifle Regiment was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. See Boevye padvigi chastei Krasnoi Armii, 1918-1922 (Moscow: Voennoe izdate1'stvo, 1957), p. 157. 222 APPENDICES certain if the Reds were willing to pay the price in human life. The repeated head-on assaults against the Iushun', Chongar, and Perekop lines were clear proof that Frunze considered the human resources he controlled to be the most expendable item in his arsenal.41 Tiup-Dzbankoi might be viewed as the key to the tactical situation which faced Wran.gel by nightfall of November 11. His failure to oust the Red penetration in this area was fatal to any plans he may have had for a further determined stand in the Crimea and, indeed, in Russia. The unchecked action of the 266th Regiment presented Frunze with the possibility of an attack into the rear of Wrangel's main groupings in the Iushun' area. During the night of Noycmber 11-12, Wrangel began to pull his troops out of the entire defensive network based on the southern shore of the Sivash. He had decided to evacuate the Crimea and, thereby, to depart Russia.42 At midnight of November 11-12, Frunze sent a radiogram to Wrangel in which he demanded the surrender of all White forces in the Crimea.43 The Red Commander offered full pardon to Wrangel and his troops for any

41 The wounded and killed in the 266th Regiment amounted to ninety per cent of its total strength. Golubev, op. cit., p. 60. Soviet sources give no indication of how Frunze was able to maintain morale and discipline in the face of such losses. 42 Rakovskii, op. cit., p. 185. 43 A version of the surrender demand, as printed in Krasnyi arkhiv, No.6 (73), 1935, p. 62, reads: "In view of the manifest hopelessness of any further resistance by your troops, which are threatened only with the senseless spilling of new streams of blood, I suggest that you immediately discontinue the battle and surrender with all the troops of the army and the navy which are subordinate to you. In the event of your acceptance of the aforesaid suggestion, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Army of the Southern Front, on the basis of authority granted to it by the Central Soviet Power, guarantees to you and to all who surrender their weapons, full pardon for all delin• quencies connected with the civil struggle. To all those who do not wish to work in Soviet Russia, the possibility of unhindered exit abroad will be guaranteed on con• dition of the execution of a promise not to participate in any further battles against Soviet Russia. An answer by radio is expected no later than 2400 of November 12 of this year. "Commander of the Southern Front - Mikhail Frunze "Member of the Revvoensovet: Miron Vladimirov "Sta. Melitopol', November 11, 2400." The version of the ultimatum in Frunze, lzbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I, p. 418, is slightly different. The first sentence says that the White troops "are threatened only with the spilling of new streams of blood." Further along, it states, ''To all those who do not wish to stay and work in socialist Russia, the possibility of unhindered exit abroad will be given on condition of the execution of a promise not to participate in further battles against workers'-peasa.nts' Russia and the Soviet power." This version is signed only by "Commander of the Southern Front - Mikhail Frunze." The place of issue is not given. No explanation is offered fo·r the difference in texts. APPENDICES 223 past offenses and also suggested a system of voluntary repatriation (or ex• patriation) for those of the White Army who did not wish to submit to the Soviet power. When Lenin heard about this offer to Wrangel, he was less than pleased. He shot off a telegram to Frunze which said, I have only just learned of your suggestion to Wrangel that he surrender. Greatly astonished at the excessive pliancy of the conditions. If the opponent accepts them, then it will be necessary realistically to guarantee the capture of the fleet and not to let a single ship escape; if the opponent does not accept these conditions, in my opinion they should not be repeated and he should be finished off without mercy.44 Wrangel, apparently unaware and uninterested with reference to the dif• ferences of opinion between Frunze and Lenin, ignored the surrender de• mand. Indeed, there is no evidence to indicate that he even knew of its existence. He was too busy with his evacuation operations. In spite of Frunze's great bulk of cavalry (two armies and several smaller units) and his professed great devotion to the principles of mobility and maneuver, the Red commander was slow in initiating the exploitation and the pursuit. As a consequence, Wrangel was able to retire without harass• ment to his evacuation portS.45 Frunze moved slowly, but he did arrive at a Crimean port in time to catch a glimpse through binoculars of Wrangel's departing fleet. "It's a pity," he mourned, "that we don't have a fleet here so that we could finish him off once and for all."46 On November 16, Frunze sent a telegram to Lenin which reported, "To• day our cavalry occupied Kerch'. The Southern Front is liquidated."47 Indeed, the Southern Front was "liquidated" but Wrangel's army was not. It was, to be sure, no longer an effective fighting force nor was it on Russian soil. Several thousand Russians, nevertheless, had voted ''with their feet" against the new communist government and had foresaken their home• land rather than live under the Reds. Wrangel's troops were among the first in history's long of stream of refugees away from communist rule. In their own opinion, the Reds won one of their most brilliant victories at Perekop and Chongar. It was certainly a brilliant assemblage. Besides Frunze, there were such outstanding figures among the Reds as Voroshilov, Budennyi, Bliukher, Bela Kun, Smilga, and others. And the opposition

44 Lenin, op. cit., Pl'. 257-258. 45 Bubnov et aI., op. cit., ill, pp. 539-540. C8 Quoted in N. Siniavskii, .. s tovarishchem Frunze na Perekope," Sputnik politra• botnika, No. 27-28 (November, 1925), p. 34. 47 Frunze, lzbrannye proizvedeniia. op. cit., I, p. 425. 224 APPENDICES provided by Wrangel was first rate, even though, by the time of Perekop and Chongar, it was somewhat fatigued and greatly depleted. The scale of the operations at the entrances to the Crimea, both in numbers of troops involved and in range of geography, was epic. Western opinion contemporary to the battle did not share the wild com• munist praise of Frunze and the Red forces.48 Lenin summed up the communist attitude on the battles of Perekop and Chongar when he said, (T)he complete, decisive, and remarkably rapid victory which we gained over Wrangel is one of the most brilliant pages in the history of the Red Army.... The party organized this victory.49 There is much in this Leninist paen with which to differ. The victory was hardly rapid. It can be characterized as complete and decisive only from the purely political point of view. The role of the Communist Party in gaining the laurels is a moot one. In the military aspects of the operation, several traits stand out. Fmt, Frunze's command displayed an almost complete failure in the coordination of arms. The Soviet artillery was conspicuous by its lethargy and ineffectiveness. Cavalry was not utilized so as to exploit its capabilities and characteristics. No use was made of available sea power. Second, from beginning to end, Frunze displayed a most remarkable slowness. His rapid reactions, when they occurred, were almost always tactical and not strategic. He had several chances for a quick liquidation of Wrangel which he failed to redeem due to that slowness. Third, the Red commander showed an almost psychotic preference for the frontal assault. The actions at the Perekop line, at the Iushun' line, and by the 266th Regiment in the Chongar attack are reminiscent of the most costly operations of the Fmt World War in the West. Fourth, Frunze failed to exploit the advantages which his cavalry pro• vided to him. The shock action and maneuver of cavalry were not utilized in the Crimea. If Budennyi and Voroshllov had not made their miltaI'y reputations earlier, it is doubtful that they would have any place in military history today. " A Fadeev, Geroi grazhdanskoi voiny Mikhail Varifevich Frunze (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozb.estvennoi literatury, 1941), pp. 11-12, reports that the English journal, Aeroplane, said that Frunze was "a very competent military man." I have been unable to locate this journal in American libraries. " Quoted in Golubev, op. cit., p. 62. This quotation is repeated, without further citation, in the November 16, 1965, issue of KrQSnaia Zvezda. p. 2. in an observance of the forty-fifth anniversary of Perekop and Chongar. This observance stresses the role of Frunze. of course, but also gives considerable credit to Bliukber for the victory over Wrangel. APPENDICES 22S F"lfth, the decisive actions in the Crimean campaign resulted, in most cases, from the initiative of individual actions rather than developing from elaborated plans. The crossing of the Sivash is a case in point. Sixth, non-communist forces played an important role in the Perekop battle. (Among such troops were those of the Ukrainian anarchist Makhno. Without Makhno's actions at Perekop the war might well have gone into the winter campaign which Lenin feared so much. The role of Makhno is ignored, minimized, or distorted by contemporary Soviet authorities. This is probably a result of the fact that Makhno later proved to be a foe of com• munist power, requiring a rewriting of history.) These considerations registered, it should be stated that Frunze accom• plished his mission. He liquidated the Southern Front and spared a weakened Soviet state the rigors and sufferings of another winter campaign against a first rate enemy. The price which he paid was certainly not too high for the communists, because Frunze has been established and rema.im one of the prime military heroes of communism and of the Soviet Union. He deserves the accolades of the communists. His tactics were repeated again and again by the Soviet Army in the Second World War. They were the essence of the Chinese tactics in Korea. Frunze took the available resources of a country rich in manpower. Without marked resort to resourcefulness and imagination, he purchased the victory. On November 25, 1925, M. V. Frunze was declared to be a People's Hero.50 On November 26, People's Hero Frunze issued an order in which he declared that his former subordinate, Nester Makhno,51 was an enemy of the Soviet Republic and of the revolution.52 Makhno became a people's enemy by refusing to surrender his arms and submit to the Soviet authorities after the Perekop-Chongar operations. As an "enemy of the people," Makhno operated against the communists in the Ukraine for some time. Frunze was unable to obtain a battleground where Makhno would fix himself in order to be liquidated. The Reds finally adopted Makhno's own tactics and formed flying columns to fight Makhno wherever he might be found. This operational plan had the merit of not exposing large detachments of Red troops to Makhno's own flying columns It may have contributed to the final defeat of the anarchist.

50 Viacheslav Alekseevich Lebedev and Konstantin VasU'evich Anan'ev, M. V. Frunze, 1885-1925 (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1957), p. 272. 51 Even though he was always averse to taking orders, Makhno was nominally "subordinate" to Frunze on the Southern Front. 52 Frunze, 1zbrannye proizvedeniia, op. cit., I. p. 430. 226 APPENDICES Makhno himself was, in the end, the main cause of his 'own failure. He had little taste for any sort of organization. beyond the battlefield Makhno kept up the fight against Fronze and the communists (and against some of his own rivals) until 1921 when he finally fled to Romania.53 Lenin and the communists were so pleased with Fronze's "anti-Makhno" campaign that they awarded him a second Order of the Red Banner when Makhno fled the Soviet Union. Fronze campaigned in a similar fashion, without decisive and dramatic results, against other anti-Soviet groups in the Ukraine. Lenin, however, seemed to be interested chiefly in salt. In 1921, he wrote to Frunze telling him to get on with the campaign with the anth communist groups, but Lenin was more concerned with salt. The communist leader stressed that salt was a matter of "live and death. "54 He gave explicit instructions. Lenin calculated that the Soviet state needed two or three million puds of salt. He told Frunze, Do it in a military manner. Designate the responsible persons for every operation. Give me their names (everything through Glavsol'). You are the Supreme Salt Commander. You are responsible for everything. 55 In this manner, the hero of Ufa and Perekop, twice winner of the Order of the Red Banner, and a People's Hero by official order, ended his active days of campaigning in dreary actions against "bandits" in the Ukraine and in quartermaster service "operations" to deliver salt to Moscow. People's Hero Mikhail Frunze also campaigned at Kronstadt. The Kronstadt fighting took place in 1921. Delegates to the Tenth Party Con• gress were sent by Lenin to subdue the revolt there. Among those who took arms in hand in order to put down the rebels was M. V. Frunze. At his side was Lev Trotsky. It was one action about which Trotsky and Frunze had no disagreement.

sa Sirotinskii, op. cit., p. 220. 51 Leninskii sbornik (Moscow: G06Udarstvennoe izeJatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury 1942), XXXIV, pp. 31R and pp. 414-415. " Ibid., p. 415. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The most nearly complete edition of Frunze's works yet published in the Soviet Union was the three-volume collected works (Sobranie sochineniz). It appeared in the years 1926 to 1929 under the editorship of Andrei Sergeevich Bubnov. In addition to containing most of Frunze's published works, this edition includes an exhaustive bibliography of Soviet publica• tions on Frunze and some party questionnaires which Frunze executed. The volumes of the collected works are divided chronologically: Volume One is devoted to the years 1905 to 1923, Volume Two is given to 1924, and the final volume is made up of material produced in 1925. (This work was consulted in the New York Public Library.) Various editions of Frunze's selected works (lzbrannye proizvedeniia) have appeared. Almost identical one-volume editions were published in 1934,1940,1950,1951, and 1965. A two-volume edition appeared in 1957 and contains most of Frunze's significant writings. Although the 1965 edition has an introduction by Marshal Malinovskii, the 1957 edition is probably the more useful. (The 1957 and 1965 editions are generally availa• ble in United States libraries.) Frunze's selected works have appeared in translation in German (Aus• gewiihlte Schriften, 1956), in Polish (Dziela wybrane, 1953), in Romanian (Opere alese, 1957), in Albanian (Vepra te zojedhura, 1947), in Bulgarian (lzbrani proizvedeniia, 1954), and in Czech (Vybrana dila, 1953), in edi• tions published in the various satellite capitals. The existence of translations into Chinese has not been discovered. Some of Frunze's works were trans• lated into English in Kenneth B. Whiting, Readings in Soviet Military Theory (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: The Air University, 1952). While the 1957 edition of Frunze's selected works contains some of the more important military dispatches and plans produced by Frunze, a col• lection which appeared in 1941 (M. V. Frunze na frontakh grazhdanskoi voiny: Sbornik dokumentov) is truly remarkable in that it apparently in- 228 BmLlOGRAPHICAL NOTE cludes everything that Frunze signed in any command capacity during the Civil War. (This collection was consulted in the Lenin State Library in Moscow.) Some minor collections of Frunze's works have also appeared in the USSR. They include the 1925 Na novykh putiakh: stat'i i doklady, which has the material Frunze published in 1924, the 1926 0 molodezhi (with K. E. Voroshilov), the 1936 Stari i rechi, the 1927 0 molodezhi, and Reor• ganizatsiia RKKA, which was produced in 1921. The article, "Edinaia voennaia doktrina i Krasnaia armiia," which ap• peared in Krasnaia nov', No.2, 1921, is also available in monographic editions which appeared in Khar'kov in 1921 and in Moscow in 1941. A convenient listing of Frunze's more important articles and speeches is contained in Volume Three of the Sobranie sochinenii. A later compilation is in the unpublished dissertation of I. Z. Lesman, Voennaia i partiino• politicheskaia deiatel'nost' M. V. Frunze na Ukraine v period perekhoda ot grazhdanskoi voiny k mirnomu sotsialisticheskomu stroitel-stvu (Noiabr' 1920 g. - Mart 1924 g.), which was accepted at the Khar'kov State Uni• versity in 1955. There are also useful bibliographies in the dissertations of Blokh, Bogomolv, Dokhlova, Kokonkov, Kolosov, Kornienko, Levitskii, Sharapov, Viktorov, and Zhemosek. These dissertations, like all dissertations accepted in Soviet universities, are available for examination at the Lenin State Library in Moscow. Separate bibliographical guides to Frunze's works, and works about Frunze, have appeared frequently in the USSR. Among the most useful are the bibliography which Anna lsaevna El'evich produced for the Central House of the Red Army in 1945 on the occassion of the twentieth anni• versary of Frunze's death, Anna L'vovna Krastilevskaia's guide to the literature which was published in 1925, the Lenin State Library's guide published in 1950, and another bibliography by Miss Krastilevskaia which appeared in V oprosy istorii, No. 11, 1950, at pp. 153-157. Some of Frunze's speeches while at the Military Academy are published in the periodical Krasnye zori and are missing from some editions of the selected works. These include "Armiia i akademiki" in No. 7-8, 1924, pp. 7-8; "Otkrytie kursov usovershenstvovaiia" in No. 11 (23), 1924, pp. 5-9; "Rech' Nachal'nika Akademii tOY. Frunze pered nachalom novogo ucheb• nogo goda" in No. 10 (22), 1924, pp. 4-9; and "Rech' tov. Frunze, 7 dek. 1924" in No. 12(24), 1924,pp. 7-15. Frunze's speech at the Third All-Union Congress of Soviets was published at Rostov-on-the-Don in 1925 under the title Krasnaia armiia i oborona BffiLIOGRAPIUCAL NOTE 229 SSSR. This article is reprinted in the 1957 edition of the selected works, but in an edited version. There are numerous works, of all sorts, about Frunze published in the Soviet Union. These works have appeared since 1925. The outpouring shows no sign of lessening. INDEX

Agitation, 82 Furmanov, 1 Air forces, 121, 122, 152, 169, 183 General Staff, 140, 153 Alma Ata (see Vernyi) Grechko, A. A., 142 Attrition, strategy of, 105, 168 Gusev, S. 1. (I. D. Drabkin), 25-31, 35, 38 Basmachi, 3, 27, 204-208 Iaroslavl', 12, 195 Belaia river, 199 International civil war, 43 and passim. Belebei, 195 Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 7, 11, 12, 201 Belov (White general), 203-206 Kalinin, M. I., 1 Berkhin, D'ia Borisovich, 3 Kamenev, S. S., 196, 197 Bloody Sunday, 4, 7, 195 Kapper (White general), 199 Brezhnev, Leonid 1., 46 Kemal, Mustafa, 14 Bubnov, A. S., 94, 95 Khalkin-Gol, 106, 154 Budennyi, Semen, 1,93,210,215,223,224 Khanzhin (White general), 197, 198 Bugruslan, 199 Khrushchev, N. S., 46, 74-75 Chapaev, V. I., 1, 199,202 Kikvidze,1 Chemical warfare, 121, 122, 169, 183 Kirov, S. M. (Kostrikov), 1 Chongar, 210, 211 ; battle of, 213-223 Kolchak, A. V., 3, 14, 111, 115, 154, 197 Civil War, passim.; heroes of, 1 Kosygin, A. N., 46 Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Kotovskii, 1 20th Party Congress, 100, 101 Kronstadt, 14,24,34,226 Crimea, 209-223 Krupskaia, N. K., 8 Dictatorship of the proletariat, Frunze on, Kuibyshev, V. V., 1,206,208 55 Kuibyshev, city of, see Samara Docbine,military,147-149 Lazo,l Doubet, Guillo, 151-152 Lenin, V. I., passim.; see, esp., 8, 9, 13, Dzerzhinskii, Felix, 1 14,102 Eastern Front, 12, 13, 195-203 Litvinov, M. M. (Vallakh), 8 Engels, Friedrich, passim., see, esp., 9, 77, Makhno, Nestor, 3, 27, 29, 115, 225-226 96, 128; Anti-Diihring 9 Malinovskii, R. Ia., 142 Fabritsius, Jan, 1 Maneuver, 112-113 and passim. Fedotoff White, D. D., 3 Mao Tse-tung, 108, 109, lSO-151, 165 Fort Leavenworth, 137 Marx and Engels, passim.; on militia, 20; Frederick II, King of Prussia, 68 on armed insurrection, 20 Frunze, Konstantine (Kostia), 5, 6 Metropole Hotel, Moscow, 12, 195 Frunze, Mavra B., 6 Mikhailov (pseudonym), 11 Frunze, Mikhail V., every page Militarization of economy, 117-127, 167- Frunze, Vasilii, 6 178 INDEX 231 Military Communists, 35, 69, 82, 92 Shchors,1 Military Opposition, 13, 35 Shuia, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12 Military-production propaganda, 67 Sivash (Putrid) Sea, 211 Military reforms of 1925,3 Smirnov, V. M., 13 Military Scientific Societies (VNO), 179-194 Southern Front, 209-226 Militia, 19, 30-31, 128-136 Specialists (spetsy), 35, 147 New Economic Policy (NEP), 66, 97,126 Staff college, 138-143 Nuclear weapons, 108, 152 Stalin, Josef, 1, 8, 13, 21, 163, and passim. Old Bolsheviks, 2-3 Standing army, 19, 119, 128-136 Offensive, 110-112, 153, and passim. Surprise attach, 108-169 One-man command, 140 Suvorov, A. V., 73, 104, 161 Ordzhonikidze, Sergo, 1 Svechin, A. A., 52, 104, 147 Osipov Putsch, 204 Sverdlov, Yakov, 1 Parkhomenko, I Tachaiskii, Boris K. (pseudonyn), 7, 9 Partisanism, 30, 113, and passim. Taurides, 209 Peaceful coexistence, Frunze on, 41, 101 Timur (Tamerlane), 6 People's war, 117-128 Tolstov (White general), 206 Perekop, 76, 210, 211 ; battle of, 213-223 Trifonych (pseudonym), 7 Petrograd, 11, 12 Trotsky, Lev D. (Bronshtein), passim. Pishpek,6 Tukhachevskii, M. N., 20, 21, 47, 52, 53, Preventive war, Frunze on, 43 83-84,196 Propaganda, 82 Turkestan Front, 204-208 Protracted war, 105, 108 Turkey, 14, 15 Regular army (see standing army) Turkish Rampart, 211, 218 Revolutionary war, Frunze on, 57; Lenin Ufa, 3, 13, 14,66, 76, 153; battle of, 201- on, 83; Trotsky on, 70; Tukhachevskii 202 on, 83-84 Unified military doctrine, 24-99, 147-149, ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps), 156-158,162,164, and passim.; definition 124, 171-172 of, 35; summarized, 47 Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Vasilenko, Vladimir G. (pseudonym), 10 Eighth Congress, 13, 55, 100; Ninth Vatsetis, I. I., 200 Congress, 30; Tenth Congress, 14, 24, Vernyi, 5, 6, 7, 207 36,37,45,62,65; Eleventh Congress, 15, Voroshilov, K. E., 1, 8, 13, 72, 210, 215, 65, 66-68, 141 223,224 Russian Social Democratic Workers Party Vsevobuch (Universal military training), 45 (RSDRP), 5, 7, 8, 10; Fourth Congress, Washington Naval Conference of 1921- 8; Fifth Congress, 9 1922,40 St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute,S, 7, White, D. D. Fedetoff, see Fedotoff White 8,10 Wrangel, Petr, 3, 14,26,111,115,209-223 Samara, 12, 195 Zhdanov, A. A., 1 Samoilo, A. A., 199 Zinoviev, G. E. (Rodomysl'skii), 8