War and Memory: Trotsky’s War Correspondence from the Balkan Wars Maria TODOROVA* Abstract Introduction Based on a critical reading of Trotsky’s In the fall of 1912, Trotsky was sent celebrated The War Correspondence, this from Vienna to the Balkans as a military article addresses the complex links between war and memory. It offers a detailed analysis correspondent of Kievskaya Mysl to cover of the correspondence, arguing for its present the events of the Balkan Wars under relevance in several aspects, beyond its polemical the pen name Antid Oto. Trotsky, born brilliance: firstly, its detailed information and Lev Davidovich Bronstein, had escaped personal evaluation of the socialist movement in the Balkans; secondly, its testimonies of from his exile after the 1905 Russian wounded officers, soldiers, and prisoners of war, Revolution and by 1907 had settled in reproduced in extenso, in combination with Vienna. Most of his efforts were spent interviews with politicians, serve as a rarely on reuniting the different Menshevik preserved primary source. The article considers The War Correspondence’s formative significance and Bolshevik factions in exile. From on Trotsky himself by juxtaposing it with his 1908 until 1912 he published the hugely later autobiography and political activities, and popular Pravda (not to be confused follows his evolution from a passionate defender with the later Leninist Pravda), which of liberalism to one of its most bitter opponents. 1 It finally utilises the distinction between lieux was smuggled into Russia. He also and milieu de mémoire to comment on the contributed to the Bolshevik (Proletary) present memory of wars and the centenary of and the Menshevik (Luch) papers, as the Balkan Wars. well as to German and Belgian socialist periodicals. However, he earned his Key Words living, supporting his family as well as Pravda (co-edited and co-financed by Trotsky, Balkan Wars, memory, war, Adolph Joffe and Matvey Skobelev), socialism, liberalism. almost exclusively from the articles that he contributed to Kievskaya Mysl. At the * Professor of History at the University of Illinois time, this was the paper with the largest at Urbana-Champaign. circulation in Kiev, and the most popular 5 PERCEPTIONS, Summer 2013, Volume XVIII, Number 2, pp. 5-27. Maria Todorova liberal and leftist paper in the south of was translated into English only in Russia. Trotsky wrote on diverse topics, 1980 under the slightly misleading title from Ibsen, Maupassant and Nietzsche The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky. to the plight of the Russian peasantry. The Balkan Wars 1912-13, highlighting He jestingly coined the pen name Antid the second (and, granted, the largest) Oto, having stumbled across the Italian part. It was reprinted in 1993 to great word ‘antidoto’, in order to ‘inject the acclaim as a primary source on the Marxist antidote into legitimate [sic] Balkans, at the height of the Wars for the newspapers’.2 Yugoslav Succession, named the Third Balkan War.4 The War Correspondence From October 1912 until November has been hailed as a masterpiece, and 1913, Trotsky wrote several dozen articles Isaac Deutscher compared Trotsky’s published in Kievskaya Mysl as well as in experience ‘as a conscientious military Luch and Den. These correspondences, correspondent [that] would one day be supplemented by some additional of use to the founder of the Red Army’ articles as well as a few unpublished to Edward Gibbon’s experience as a items from his archive, appeared in book Captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers, form in 1926 as the sixth of the twelve which he utilised as a historian of the volumes of his uncompleted Sochineniya Roman Empire.5 [Works], published between 1924 and 1927.3 The original title of volume When, seventeen years later, in 1929, six was ‘The Balkans and the Balkan Trotsky penned his autobiography in War’ [‘Balkany i balkanskaia voina’] Istanbul, he reiterated the significance and it was part of the second sub-series of his experience: ‘In many respects, this ‘On the Historical Threshold’ [‘Pered was an important preparation not only istoricheskim rubezhom’] of his collected for 1914, but for 1917 as well.’6 Yet works. The editorial introduction of the he devoted barely a page and a half to 1924 volume provided a brief historical this episode, and did not explain in any background of the Eastern Question and depth what it was that was so significant grouped Trotsky’s writing in three parts: about it. He summarised his articles in the first- ‘On the Threshold of War’ one sentence as an ‘attack on the falsity [‘U poroga voiny] - comprising articles of Slavophilism, on chauvinism in written between 1908 and 1912; the general, on the illusions of war, on the second on the war itself [‘Voina’]; the scientifically organised system for duping third dedicated to post-war Romania public opinion’, and on Bulgarian [‘Poslevoennaia Rumynia’]. This volume atrocities against wounded and captured 6 Trotsky’s War Correspondence from the Balkan Wars Turks, which put him at odds with a whole array of politicians and literary the Russian liberal press. This, then, figures (Nikola Pašić, Lazar Paču, Stojan encapsulated Trotsky’s memory of his Novaković, Constantin Dobrogeanu- Balkan experience. While he cautioned Gherea, Christian Rakovsky, Andranik that ‘memory is not an automatic Ozanian); in-depth analyses of great reckoner’ and ‘never disinterested’, he power- especially Russian- diplomacy was somewhat disingenuous about the and its aims in the Balkans. Trotsky is stated deficiencies in his memories of especially informative on the state of different types. He claimed that his social democracy in these countries, in topographical and musical memories particular Bulgaria, where the socialist were weak, his visual and linguistic parties were strong. His descriptions of memories fairly mediocre, but his and conversations with wounded soldiers memory for ideas considerably above and officers as well as with prisoners of average.7 In fact, only some of his earlier war are heart-rending. He also writes ideas persisted, i.e., were remembered, powerfully on the larger framework of only the ones that did not contradict the the War, describing in detail the feelings narrative persona that was constructed to in the rear, the queues, the anticipation make sense of his memory. His brilliant, and the fear. Throughout, his prose biting and not always fair attacks on shines with vitality, often with verbal liberals, both in The War Correspondence brilliance, especially when his polemicist and especially in My Life,8 neatly omitted temperament is challenged. the liberal persona he himself inhabited in 1912. Trotsky welcomed the 1908 The War Correspondence moves from revolution and the newly analytical pieces to impressionistic convened parliament, but in a dispatches, to what de facto amounts succinct and prescient analysis to interviews, and to political portraits. clearly described the fault There are excellent surveys of the internal lines between centralisers and economic, social and political situation in federalists. each of the belligerent countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire after the Young Turk Revolution, and Romania) as And still, one wonders what is left well as their mutual relations; a prescient of these articles today, one hundred section on the Armenian Question; years after they were written? While the colourful and well-informed portraits of analyses are interesting, do they have a 7 Maria Todorova cognitive significance aside from their war correspondence is the curious mix historical value of being written by of conventional Marxist dogma, Russian such a major figure as Trotsky? Are they revolutionary patriotism with notes of more informative than the dispatches great power condescendence and, most of dozens of other war correspondents surprisingly, classical liberal posturing of major European papers? Were they reminiscent of this undying breed in revolutionary in their analysis even at praise of Western civilisation. the time? Apart from being a testimony The first section of the volume provides to Trotsky’s rhetorical and polemical the background to the Balkan Crisis of brilliance, would we care to go back to them? Some people actually did go back 1912 by collecting Trotsky’s newspaper to them in the 1990s, in order to find articles on the Young Turk Revolution confirmation of their often completely of 1908, as well as on issues of Balkan opposing political preferences or social democracy (mostly on the prejudices.9 Bulgarian but also partly on the Serbian case). The two articles on the Ottoman There are three aspects that make Empire [‘The Turkish Revolution and them interesting and relevant today. the Tasks of the Proletariat’ and ‘The One is the very detailed information and New Turkey’] came out in Pravda (# 2, personal evaluation that Trotsky gives of 17/30 December 1908) and Kievskaya the socialist movement in the Balkans Mysl (#3, 3 January 1909). Turkey, at the time. This, to my knowledge, has this ‘hornet’s nest of the Near East’ been little if at all utilised. Secondly, had been a tyrannical state ‘from times there are the several sections made 10 from testimonies of wounded Bulgarian immemorial’; it was unreformable, the officers and soldiers, as well as witness epitome of backwardness, stagnation and accounts of Turkish prisoners of war, despotism. Its industrial development reproduced in extenso as quotes. There are was obstructed because of the Sultan’s 11 also lengthy citations from the interviews fear of the proletariat; had they read with politicians. Lastly, there is the his writing, the Young Turks would have question of The War Correspondence’s been surprised to learn that their 1908 formative significance on Trotsky himself revolution was ‘the most recent echo as well as the question of memory in of the Russian Revolution’ [of 1905], general, which is the principal topic of which caused a fiery surge of proletarian this article.