The Red Army and Mass Mobilization During the Russian Civil War 1918-1920 Author(S): Orlando Figes Source: Past & Present, No

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The Red Army and Mass Mobilization during the Russian Civil War 1918-1920 Author(s): Orlando Figes Source: Past & Present, No. 129 (Nov., 1990), pp. 168-211 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650938 . Accessed: 15/11/2013 18:56

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This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION DURING THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR 1918-1920

The Red Armybegan life in 1918 as a smallvolunteer force of proletariansfrom the major urban citadels of Bolshevikpower in northernand centralRussia. By theend of the civil war against the Whitesand the various armies of foreign intervention, in the autumn of 1920,it had growninto a massconscript army of fivemillion soldiers,75 percent of them peasants1 by birth - a figureroughly proportionateto the size ofthe peasant population in Russia.2 For theBolsheviks, this represented a tremendous social change. In October1917 their support had beenconfined to theworking- classdistricts of thebig industrialcities, the Baltic Fleet, and the (soonto be demobilized) garrisons and armies of northern and western Russia.Without support in thecountryside, where the vast majority ofthe population lived, no onehad expected the Bolsheviks to hold on to powerfor more than a fewweeks. The peasants,it was widely assumed,would rise up againstthem, joining the various armies of counter-revolution.Yet,contrary toexpectations, the Red Army won thecivil war, and it did so preciselybecause of its superior success, comparedwith the Whites, in mobilizingmillions of peasantsfor militaryservice. "In thissocial fact", concluded Trotsky, was "rooted thefinal cause of our victories".3 The massconscription of thepeasantry gave rise to a numberof majordebates within the Bolshevik party. Most Bolsheviks viewed thepeasantry as an alienforce, hostile to thesocialist revolution I "Peasants"are definedhere (and throughout)as householdmembers of small- scalefamily farms. 2 N. Gorlov,"O sotsial'noistrukture krasnoi armii" [On theSocial Structure ofthe Red Army],Politrabotnika (1922), no. 2, p. 55. The 1920census of the Red Army and Navygave the slightly higher figure of 77 percent: see V. Efremov,"Profes- sional'nyisostav krasnoi armii i flotapo perepisi1920 g." [TheProfessional Compo- sitionof the Red Armyand Fleet According to the Census of 1920], Biulleten' TsSU (1922),no. 66, p. 2. Accordingto the Red Army census, only 66 percent of soldiers registeredfarming as theirmain occupation: Biulleten' TsSU (1922),no. 59, p. 41. Peasantscounting domestic industry astheir main occupation represented a significant componentof theRed Army.Military service was also a popularmeans of social mobilityfrom the peasantry to othersocial groups, especially the bureaucracy. 3 L. Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, trans. B. Pearce,in TheMilitary Writings and Speechesof Leon Trotsky,5 vols. (London, 1979), i, p. 15.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 169 becauseof its "petty-bourgeois" nature (its social inclination towards small-scaleproperty rights and marketrelations). The Bolshevik partyhad alwayssupported the ideal of a "class" army- one dominatedby theproletariat, as opposedto an armybased upon universalmilitary service.4 Although the rapid escalation of the civil warin thesummer of 1918had forcedthe Bolsheviks to adoptthe latterprinciple, many in theparty continued to expresstheir belief thata smallbut "pure" proletarianarmy, like the Red Guardsor factorymilitia of 1917, would prove more reliable and effective than a massconscript army infiltrated and weakenedby non-proletarian elements.This was one of the centralarguments of the Military Oppositionin theBolshevik party to Trotsky's policy of constructing a regularconscript army commanded by "bourgeois" military special- istsunder the political supervision of Bolshevikcommissars.5 The need to preservethe hegemony of theindustrial worker over the peasantwas also an importantconsideration for those (including Trotskyhimself) who stressed the desirability ofmoving - as soon as themilitary situation permitted - awayfrom the mass conscript armytowards a militiasystem.6 Theseissues went far beyond the question of military organization. Theprinciples upon which the Red Army was built served as a model forthe rest of the Soviet system. The centralizationofthe Bolshevik stateapparatus ran parallel to similarchanges in theRed Army's politicaland commandstructure. Trotsky compared the transition fromworkers' control to one-manmanagement in industrywith the transferof military authority in theRed Armyfrom elected officers tomilitary specialists, appointed by the Revolutionary Military Coun- cil of theRepublic (RVSR).7 The experienceof mass mobilization gainedby the Bolsheviksthrough the Red Armyfundamentally shapedtheir governmental attitudes not only during the period of WarCommunism (1918-21), when the whole of Sovietsociety was militarized,but also duringthe Stalinist period. Even the language of theBolsheviks - withits continual references to "campaigns", "combats","fronts" and "brigades"- had militaryovertones. The problemsof militaryorganization associated with the mass 4 Ibid.,i, pp. 134,420-1, iii, pp. 4, 8,passim. 5 F. Benvenuti,The Bolsheviks and theRed Army,1918-1922 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 66. 6 J. Erickson,"Some Military and Political Aspects of the 'Militia Army' Contro- versy,1919-1920", in C. Abramskyand B. Williams(eds.), Essaysin Honourof E. H. Carr(London, 1974), p. 217. 7 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, p. 105.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 170 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 conscriptionofthe peasantry had particular relevance to these broader issuesof government. The difficultiesofregistering the rural popu- lationeligible for military service and of enforcingthe Red Army conscriptionsin thecountryside pointed towards the general problemsof administration which the Bolsheviks were bound to confront outsidetheir strongholds in themajor industrial cities. The tasksof trainingand discipliningthe unruly peasant recruits served as an importantlesson in themethods of rule for those (mostly Bolshevik and working-class)officers who were to enterthe provincial organs ofSoviet government intheir thousands after the end of the civil war. The contemptand hatred felt by many of the proletarian officers for thepeasantry was expressed in suchbrutal punishments (sanctioned bythe disciplinary code of the Red Army)as hittingsoldiers in the teethwith the butt of a rifle.Beneath this naked violence lay a deeper politicalstruggle, as D. D. F. Whiteput it, "between the anarchistic, anti-centralisttendencies of the village and the centralist, dictatorial trendsof the Communist party. It wasnot merely a conflictbetween groupswith different economic and political interests. It wasa deep- rootedantagonism between two ways of living, two different cultural practicesand concepts".8 Isaac Babelsymbolized this conflict in hisbrilliant story, Konnaia armiia(Red Cavalry),in theepisode when one of Budenny's61ite cavalrybrigades charges on a groupof their own peasant infantrymen, thrashingthem with whips to asserttheir superiority over them. Of all theproblems of militaryorganization associated with the massconscription of the peasantry, none was as serious,or had as manyconsequences for the civilian sector, as thedifficulties ofmilitary supply.The decisionto maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, ratherthan one or twomillion, necessitated the militarization ofthe Sovieteconomy (War Communism) tosupply it with food, uniforms, boots,weapons, transport and medicalservices. But the Red Army grewmuch faster than the productivecapacity of the economy. Materialshortages in thearmy increased. Living conditions deteriorated.Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accel- eratedout of control,so that hastilymobilized - and often untrained- reinforcementshad increasinglytobe sentto the front- lineunits, although these were precisely those most likely to desert. The problemwas made more acute by the fact that the army became dependenton peasantrecruits, whose technical incompetence and

8 D. D. F. White, The Growthof theRed Army(Princeton, 1944), p. 121.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 171 naturalhoming instincts during the agricultural season made them harderto train and discipline than skilled industrial workers.' It was thisconsideration that had largelydetermined the decision of the Bolsheviksto go fora patternof "extensiverecruitment" - to mobilizeall thepossible age groupsof therural population in the hopeof finding among them a sufficientnumber of reliable recruits. Yet optingfor quantity rather than quality only exacerbated the problemsof supply and desertion.In short,the Red Armybecame inextricablylocked into a viciouscircle, in which its fighting capacity was largelydependent upon the efficiencyof its own socialand economicorganization. (See Diagram.) DIAGRAM THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF MASS CONSCRIPTION

Mass Problems conscription ofsupply and training

Mass desertion

TheWhite armies suffered similar problems of organization as they attemptedto expandfrom their social base of 1918(small but well- disciplinedvolunteer forces, mainly consisting of Cossacks and officers)into the mass peasant-conscript armies which were ultimately

9 Manysources noted that the best-disciplined Red Armyunits tended to havea higherproportion of workers in them:see ibid.,p. 105.The Bolshevikspursued a consciouspolicy of reinforcingas manymilitary units as possible- especially thoseon theimportant fronts - withworkers and partymembers. See Efremov, "Professional'nyisostav", p. 4; M. A. Molodtsygin,Raboche-krest'ianskii soiuz,1918- 1920[The Workers' and Peasants' Union, 1918-1920] (Moscow, 1987), pp. 149-54.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 172 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 to decide the militarystruggles of 1919-20.The morepeasants the Whitearmies recruited, the weaker they became, as thefamiliar problemsof military supply, training and indisciplineincreased.' In the summerof 1919, Lenin predictedthat mass conscriptionwould destabilizeDenikin's army,as it had alreadyweakened Kolchak's armyduring the previousspring: universalmobilization will be theruin of Denikin as itwas of Kolchak; as longas hehad a classarmy of volunteers who hated socialism it was strong and sound,but when he beganuniversal recruitment he did, of course, getan armytogether more quickly, but the army became the weaker, and itsclass character less pronounced. Peasants recruited into Denikin's army willdo thesame in thatarmy as theSiberian peasants did in Kolchak's army- theybrought complete disintegration into the army. " The importanceof the civil war armies' social and economic organizationcan onlybe understoodif we bear in mindtwo specific featuresof the Russian civil war. First,there was the sheer speed withwhich the two armieswere forcedto mobilizethe peasants,an aliensocial element to both.Neither had thetime or theinfrastructure to establisha solid territorial-militarybase amongthe peasantry,as the Red Armywas able to do in China between 1927 and 1940. Secondly,the rapidly shifting fronts of the Russian civil war disrupted regularsupply lines and local statestructures, so thatthe two armies werefrequently forced to mobilizereinforcements and militarysupplies fromareas close to the fighting. The effectof thesetwo factors was to militarizevast civilian areas, so thatterror and coercionby themilitary against the population - as wellas popularrebellions against the military authorities - became an integralelement of the civil war. Civilian dead and wounded accounted for 91 per cent of all losses in the Russian civil war, comparedwith 63 per centduring the First World War.12 The ability ofthe armies to mobilizethe peasantry and theireconomic resources depended almostentirely upon theirrelations with the ruralpopu- lation at large. Indiscriminatelooting and confiscationof peasant propertyby militaryunits was invariablyfollowed by peasantupris-

0oSee, forexample, Poslednie dni kolchakovshchiny[The Last Days of the Kolchak Regime],ed. M. M. Konstantinov(Moscow and Leningrad, 1926), pp. 9-10; facsimile repr.in Kolchaki Sibir': Dokumentyi issledovaniia, 1919-1926 [Kolchak and Siberia: Documentsand Research, 1919-1926], ed. D. Collinsand J. Smerle, 2 vols.(Pubns. ofthe Study Group on theRussian Revolution, xi, New York, 1988); E. Wollenberg, TheRed Army, trans. C. Sykes(London, 1978), pp. 97-8;Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed,iii, pp. 6-7. " V. I. Lenin,Collected Works, 4th edn., 47 vols.(London, 1960-80), xxix, p. 460. 12 A. Bubnov,Grazhdanskaia voina, partiia i voennoedelo [The CivilWar, theParty andMilitary Science] (Moscow, 1928), p. 29.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 173 ings againstconscription and the requisitioningsof food and other supplies,as well as an increasein peasantdesertion from the army itself. It is rathersurprising, in view of all this,that Western historians have chosen to writeabout the Russian civilwar almostexclusively fromthe perspectiveof traditionalmilitary history.13 True, its outcome, like anywar, was decidedby forceof arms. Military organization, strategyand performanceon the battlefieldwere, in the end, decisive.But the civilwar was also an exercisein mass mobilization and state-building.It was a testof how farthe two military regimes, the Reds and the Whites, were able to enlist the supportof the populationwhich they aspired to rule. Teodor Shaninexplains: Muchhas beenargued about the reasons why the "White Cause" (Beloe delo)was defeatedby theReds, who lacked, at leastinitially, the state- administrativeknow-how, the organized military forces, foreign support, basic equipmentand internationallegitimation ... The reasonssince offeredfor the Bolsheviks' victory ranged from the stupidity of their foes andthe marvels of Lenin's party organization, togeography (the centrality ofMoscow and the country's size) and the mistaken military tactics adopted bythe White Generals. All this,relevant as itmay have been, disregards thefact that the civil war was fought not between Bolshevik party members and monarchistofficers, but between armies in whichboth these groups werein a minority.In theconditions of civil war those armies' loyalties couldnot be takenfor granted, and they thereby became a decisiveelement in definingthe outcome of the battles. The abilityto mobiliseresources necessaryfor army operations was equally important . . . therecruits and theresources were not volunteered, but the question continually was how muchwould be volunteered,how mucheffort would be spenttaking the rest,and how muchwas eventuallyat the disposalof thearmies' command.14 This shortcomingin theWestern literature is particularlysurpris- ing in the case of the Whites,given the abundant archival materials available on thissubject in the West. We stilllack a detailedsocial historyof the counter-revolution and itsarmies. But theshortcoming is especiallyapparent in thecase ofthe Reds, whereaccess to archival materialshas hithertobeen very limitedfor Westernhistorians. Consequently,there has been a markedreliance in theWest on the

13Typical of thisapproach are D. Footman,Civil War in Russia (London, 1961); R. Luckett,The White Generals (London, 1971); J. Bradley,Civil War in Russia, 1917- 1920 (London, 1975); P. Kenez, Civil Warin South Russia, 1918: TheFirst Year of the VolunteerArmy (Berkeley, 1971); P. Kenez, Civil Warin South Russia, 1919-1920: The Defeatof the Whites (Berkeley, 1977); E. Mawdsley,The Russian Civil War (London, 1987). 14 T. Shanin, The Rootsof Otherness: Russia's Turnof Century, ii, Russia, 1905-07: Revolutionas a Momentof Truth (London, 1986), pp. 200-1(grammatical corrections madeto publishedsource).

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 174 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 worksof Soviet historians for information about the organization of the Red Army.Yet the latterhave tendedto underestimateand simplifythe particular problems faced by the Bolsheviks in themass mobilizationof thepeasants. It is to thissubject, in thehope of redressingsome of the imbalance in theliterature, that the following pagesare devoted. I THE RED ARMY IN 1918 Thedisintegration ofthe imperial army during the autumn and winter of 1917,and the absence of an adequateadministrative apparatus in thecountryside toenforce the conscription ofthe war-weary peasants, necessitatedthe foundation of the Red Army on volunteer principles duringthe early months of 1918.For thoseBolsheviks who put a premiumon theRed Guards, formed by the factory workers in 1917, as theproletarian nucleus of the revolutionary army, the volunteer principlehad virtues in itself.'"But, by and large, the first volunteer brigadesof the Red Armycame into being as a pragmaticand hasty responseby local revolutionariesto the threat of Cossackor other counter-revolutionaryforces. Most were formed by their local town sovietor tradeunions to defendthe railways and roads,although ruralbrigades were also common. They were small, irregular infantry brigades,numbering anything between 25 and1,200 partisans, under theloose command of elected "officers". The majorityfunctioned in a disorganizedand eccentricmanner. It was not uncommonfor operativeplans - whichusually consisted of driving the enemy out ofthe immediate locality and then abandoning the military struggle - tobe decidedcollectively by a showof soldiers' hands. Attacks were launchedwithout adequate scouting of the enemy terrain, sometimes usingno morethan a schoolgeography map. The soldiersfought in a fiercebut undisciplinedmanner, too frequentlysuccumbing to panicfiring and breakingup rankson firstsight of the enemy. The militarydefeats of May and Juneat thehands of well-disciplined Cossackand Czech units made it clear to the majority of the Bolshevik leadersthat there was an urgent need to reorganize the Red Army into anequally disciplined force, with regular regiments and divisions, and a centralizedchain of command.16 "5See J. Erickson,"The Originsof the Red Army",in R. Pipes (ed.), Revolutionary Russia (Harvard, 1968), pp. 233, 242; Benvenuti,Bolsheviks, p. 20. 16 0. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The VolgaCountryside in Revolution(1917- 1921) (Oxford,1989), p. 308; Tsentral'nyigosudarstvennyi arkhiv oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii,Moscow (hereafterTsGAOR), f. 130, op. 2, d. 120, 1. 27.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 175 The majorityof theearliest volunteers for the Red Armywere eitherurban workers, or "vagabond,unstable elements that" - in Trotsky'swords - "wereso numerousat thattime".17 The former wereprobably in theminority. Of the 306,000 Red Armyvolunteers registeredon 10May 1918,only 34,000 were from the Red Guards, while24,000 were from various other brigades (for example, party formationsand food-requisitioningdetachments).'8 Whereas N. I. Podvoiskii,the firstPeople's Commissar of MilitaryAffairs, had expected300,000 urban workers from Moscow to join the Red Army duringFebruary 1918, the actual number amounted to no morethan 20,000(in Petrogradthe figure was 6,000),and eventhese few had to be recruited"with the party's military organization working flat out".19Many of the volunteers - 70 percent according to a survey bythe Supreme Military Inspectorate in theautumn of 1918 - had previouslybeen soldiersin theimperial army.20 They had grown used to militarylife, or simplyfound it preferableto the harsh conditionsand difficultadjustments of post-war civilian life (armed robberywas theeasiest way for many of them to feedthemselves in thesemi-anarchic and hungry conditions of early 1918).21 The urban unemployed,migrants, "hooligans" and criminal elements also made up a largecontingent of thefirst Red Armyvolunteer units - as, indeed,they are almostbound to in anyarmde revolutionnaire.22 Partlybecause of their social origins, the volunteer brigades proved a highlyunstable form of military organization. Too manysigned up justto geta gun and someuniform before running off home, or desertingto selltheir booty and startthe process over again. Conse- quentlythe turnover of volunteers was veryhigh. Many recruiting stationswere even left without supplies for the new volunteers.23 Too 17Trotsky, How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 5. 18 N. Movchin,Komplektovanie krasnoi armii [The Recruitmentof the Red Army] (Moscow, 1926), p. 36. 19Ibid., p. 26. 20 IzvestiiaNarodnogo Komissariata po VoennymDelam [News of thePeople's Com- missariatfor Military Affairs], no. 10, 16 Jan. 1919, p. 3. See also V. D. Polikarpov, "Dobrovol'tsy1918 goda" [The Volunteersof 1918], Voprosyistorii (1983), no. 2. 21 The firstRed Armydetachments were knownto rob and loot villagesin many localities,especiallywhere they were responsiblefor food requisitioning.See, for example,TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 2, d. 443, 11.38, 112; f. 393, op. 3, d. 327, 11.278-9, 282; d. 334, 1. 105; d. 337, 1. 64; Figes, PeasantRussia, p. 101; I. N. Shteinberg,In theWorkshop of theRevolution (London, 1953), pp. 153-5. 22 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 85; Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 165. On the Jacobinarmies, which sufferedfrom similar problems, see R. Cobb, The People'sArmies, trans. M. Elliot (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. 150-5. 23 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 26; Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, pp. 138- 9; White,Growth of theRed Army,p. 31.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 176 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 manybrigades were formed in responseto theimmediate military threat,only to be disbandedonce that threat had died away.The SupremeMilitary Inspectorate found that during the summer of 1918 theproportion of adultmen volunteering for the Red Armyfrom regionsclose to the civil war front was four times as highas inregions furtheraway from the fighting. Above all, toofew volunteers came fromthe stable farming peasantry, the majority of the toiling population.Even in the predominantly agricultural provinces of Voronezh and Kursk,only 49 per centof the Red Armyvolunteers were registeredas peasants,whereas industrial and unskilledworkers comprised43 percent. In thesemi-industrial provinces of Tver and Moscow,the latter provided as manyas 62 percent of the recruits. A similarproportion were bachelors (68 percent were younger than thirty-one)- in otherwords, young men without a peasantfamily farm.24Most of those who had their own farm were more concerned to workon it and restoreit to orderafter four years of war than to volunteerfor military service in theRed Army.25 Giventhe inadequacies of thevolunteer system, the Bolsheviks had littlechoice but to opt fora systemof compulsoryuniversal mobilizationat theend of May, when the revolt of the Czech Legion and the establishmentof the Samaragovernment initiated a new periodof full-scale civil war. In viewof the weakness of the Soviet apparatus,and the impossibility ofcarrying out a nationwidemobil- ization,it wasdecided to callup onlythe most reliable recruits: the 21 to 22-year-oldworkers (born 1897-1896) of Moscow and Petro- grad;and the 21 to25-year-olds (1897-1893) in those military districts (Volga,Urals, Western Siberia) closest to themilitary front against the Samararegime. Similar mobilizations were called during the summeron a localbasis, mainly in thenorthern and central regions ofRussia (for example, in Vladimir,Perm and Viatka). Finally, the localparty cells and the kombedy (Committees ofPoor Peasants) each mobilized,in addition,approximately forty thousand Red Army recruits.26 The resultsof the mobilization reflected a wide discrepancy be-

24 IzvestiiaNarodnogo Komissariata po VoennymDelam, no. 10, p. 3. See further, Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 310. 25 This may help to explainwhy the surveyby the SupremeMilitary Inspectorate noteda generalincrease in thenumber of volunteers in Septemberand October,after the end of the agriculturalpeak season. The establishmentof volunteerbrigades by thekombedy (Committees of Poor Peasants)and local partycells also accountsfor the increaseduring these months. 26 Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 42-50; Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 311.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 177 tweenthe ability of theBolsheviks to mobilizeworkers and their abilityto mobilizepeasants. Of thefifteen compulsory mobilizations between12 June and 29 August,no lessthan eleven applied exclus- ivelyto urbanworkers. The mobilizationof Moscow and Petrograd workersborn between 1897-1896 went "without a hitch", according toTrotsky.27 Of the ten to twelve thousand recruits anticipated from Moscow,nine thousand actually appeared.28 Overall, as manyas 200,000workers were mobilized from Moscow and Petrograd during thesummer and autumn of 1918.29Since it was well known that the authoritieslacked the means, even in thebiggest cities, to enforce the conscriptions(which should thus be seenas semi-voluntary), thesefigures should be seenas a reflectionofthe willingness of large numbersof workers to signup formilitary service, given growing unemploymentand food shortages in the cities. The urban population ofRussia was at leasthalved during the civil war, as workersflooded intothe Red Armyand thecountryside.3" Themobilization ofthe peasants, by contrast, produced disappoint- ingresults. Of the275,000 recruits anticipated from the call-up of 1897-1893in the civil war areas, only 40,000 actually appeared during thefirst two months (June and July).31 Later mobilizations were more successful(overall, 890,000 recruits were registered between June 1918and February1919),32 especially those called after the agricul- turalseason. Peasants were reluctant to leavetheir farms before the harvest;most of thoseconscripted from the rural areas during the summercame from the mobile and proletarianmargins of peasant society.33Also, by theautumn many peasants had sufferedunder Whiterule in theVolga and the Urals, and were consequently more likelyto supportthe Red Army,at leaston conditionalterms.34

27 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 300. 28 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 44. 29 Sovetskievooruzhenye sily: istoriiastroitel'stva [The Soviet Armed Forces: A Historyof theirDevelopment] (Moscow, 1978), p. 49. 30 See generallyD. Koenker, "Urbanizationand Deurbanizationin the Russian Revolutionand Civil War", Ji. Mod. Hist., Ivii (1985). 3' Molodtsygin,Raboche-krest'ianksii soiuz, p. 57. 32 Velikiioktiabr' i zashchitaego zavoevanii[Great October and the Defence of its Conquests] (Moscow, 1987), pp. 41-2. 33Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 310-11. Trotskycited the devastatingeffect on army moraleof a telegramfrom Volokolamsk uezd (district) in Moscowprovince, threatening to depriveof their "peasant status" (i.e. theirrights in thepeasant commune) all those soldierswho failedto returnto theirvillages by 30 June,the beginning of theharvest season: see Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 429. 34 On the relationshipbetween the peasants' experienceof White rule and their readinessto servein the Red Army,see Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 177-83,314.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 178 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 However,throughout 1918 the Red Armycontinued to experience difficultiesin mobilizing the peasantry. Therewere three main difficulties, according to a secretmemor- andumto Trotskywritten in mid-Mayby M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, head of the SupremeMilitary Council: the lack of adequatefood supplies,uniforms, boots, weapons, barracks accommodation and cashto providefor the new recruits; the shortage of officers to train and organizethe recruits into proper military units; and the almost completeabsence of a militaryapparatus in thelocalities.35 The first was a problemfor the Red Armythroughout the civil war.36 The shortageof officers (put at 55,000in theearly summer of 1918)was partiallyovercome during the summer by thecall-up of N.C.O.s fromthe imperial army. It was latereradicated by the mobilization of"military specialists" (officers) from the same source.37 But the last ofthe three problems - theweakness of the military apparatus in thelocalities - was probablythe most serious difficulty facing the Bolsheviksin 1918. All the militaryauthorities reporting on the progressof the mobilization campaign in theprovinces during that summerand autumnstressed as theirmain problem the absence of experiencedadministrators, agitators and instructors.38Few volosti (ruraltownships) had their own military committee (Voenkom) inte- gratedinto the national structure of military command. One survey foundthat only 28 per centof thevolosti in EuropeanRussia had establisheda Voenkom as lateas 1919.39 Refusingto set up a Voenkomin theirlocality proved a highly effectivemeans for the peasants to sabotagethe Red Armymobil- ization,since that organ was exclusivelyresponsible for making an accountof the population eligible for military service, enforcing the recruitment,arming and training the recruits, and sending them on to thehigher authorities. Where a Voenkomwas establishedat the volost'level, its workcould easilybe sloweddown - and even broughtto a halt- by the non-co-operationof the mir(village commune),since the register of those eligible for the military call-up 3 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 2, d. 120, 11.67-8. 36 See below, sectionIII, pp. 190-8. 37 Velikiioktiabr', p. 48. On the Red Army'smobilization of N.C.O.s, see White, Growthof the Red Army,pp. 52-5. On themobilization of "Tsaristofficers" and other personnelfrom the imperial army, see A. G. Kavtaradze,Voennye spetsialisty na sluzhbe respublikisovetov, 1917-1920 gg. [MilitarySpecialists in the Service of the Soviet Republic, 1917-1920](Moscow, 1988). 38 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 2, d. 120, 1. 41. 39A. I. Lepeshkin,Mestnye organy vlasti sovetskogo gosudarstva (1917-1920 gg.) [Local Organs of the Soviet State(1917-1920)] (Moscow, 1957), p. 257.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 179 requiredup tofifty different categories of information, most of which wereavailable only from the mir. Throughout the early phases of the civilwar, the Red Armysuffered from grossly inaccurate methods of accounting.People were often called up whohad died, disappeared or emigrated(migration, and employment on therailways, were two commonways to avoidmilitary service). Sometimes more recruits turnedup at themobilization point than had been anticipated. The firstfull register of thepopulation eligible for military service was notcompleted until the beginning of 1919, and it was only later that year,with the introduction ofroll-call meetings (poverochnye sbory) at placesof work, that it becameremotely systematic. Until then the compulsorymobilizations were in effectsemi-voluntary for, without reliableregisters or a militaryinfrastructure in the rural localities, theRed Armycould not compel anyone to joinit.40 Peasantresistance to the mobilization was widespread - andhighly effective- in 1918. Manyvillage communes and sovietspassed resolutionscondemning the civil war as anunnecessary "war between brothers"(bratoubiistvennaia voina) and calling on bothsides to end it throughnegotiations.41 Some even declared themselves "neutral zones"or "neutral republics" and formed their own brigades to keep the civil war armiesout of theirterritory.42 Others refused to implementthe compulsorymobilization, but allowedvolunteers to joinup.43 Where the military authorities sent recruiting brigades toenforce the conscription order, the latter were likely to meet open, and armed,peasant opposition. In Pskovprovince, peasant uprisings - manyof themled by bands of deserterswere noted in dozensof volosti during the autumn of 1918 in protest against the Red Armymobilization." Similar uprisings were noted during November and Decemberin Moscow,Tula, Kaluga,Riazan', Tambov, Smo- lensk,Vitebsk, Mogilev and Samara provinces. Some involved peas- antsrefusing to be conscriptedor trained. Others consisted of newly mobilizedrecruits protesting against the requisitioningof their family'slivestock (the households of Red Armysoldiers were legally 40Movchin, Komplektovanie, pp. 43, 61, 154-7, 162-7. 41' TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 2, d. 120, 1. 54; Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 312-13; M. Gavrilova,"Moe uchastiev grazhdanskoivoine" [My Part in the Civil War], Krest'ianka(1925), no. 5, p. 5. 42 N. Rabichev,"Krasnaia armiiai rabotana sele" [The Red Armyand Work in the Village], Proletarskaiamysl' (1923), no. 2, p. 41. 43Movchin, Komplektovanie, p. 49. 44 "Iz istoriiorganizatsii krasnoi armii v Pskovskoigubernii v 1918-19gg." [From the Historyof the Organizationof the Red Armyin Pskov Provincein 1918-19], Krasnaia letopis'(1930), no. 34 (1), pp. 73-5, 79.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 180 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 exemptfrom taxes), the shortsupply of uniformsand foodrations, or simplythe lack of heatingin armybarracks.45 A reportby the chairmanof theMilitary Revolutionary Tribunal, P. G. Smidovich, to theAll-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) on thebig peasant risingsin Tula and Riazan' provincesduring November concludedthat one oftheir primary causes was thepoor organization of the Red Armymobilization. Hundreds of horses requisitioned fromthe peasantshad died forlack of feed. Some of the peasant recruits,having been forciblyconscripted, had been sentback home for want of a gun. Many others,fed up with conditionsin the barracks,had deserted,taking with themtheir guns and forming armeddetachments. These "Greens" (so called because theymade the woods theirstrongholds) played a leading role in the peasant uprisings.Not surprisingly,the destructionof all local militaryrec- ords was one of theirmajor objectives."Where we wentwrong", concludedSmidovich, was to declarethe mobilizationsimultaneously throughout the region, sincethis enabled the peasants to uniteagainst the central authorities, whilemaking it difficult for the latter to concentrate their military forces and interveneeffectively toenforce the recruitment. In future, the mobilizations shouldbe spreadout over time, and the conscripts taken out of the region in whichthey signed up as quicklyas possible.46

II MASS CONSCRIPTION The Red Army'scapture of Kazan' on 10 Septemberproved a major turning-pointin the historyof the civil war. Until then, the Red Army had been in constantretreat on the crucial easternfront, surrenderingtown after town to thesmall but well-disciplined Czech and volunteerforces of the Samaragovernment. The fallof Kazan', on 6 August,marked the high point of theanti-Bolsheviks' fortunes in the summerof 1918, bringingthem within striking distance of Moscow itself."For the firsttime", recalled Trotsky,"everyone realisedthat the countrywas facingmortal danger", and thatSoviet power mightfall.47 It was this realization,argued Trotsky,that broughtdiscipline back intoRed Armyranks, and made possiblethe organizationof a mass conscriptarmy based on regularunits with a centralizedchain of command.48

45TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 2, d. 120,1. 45; Figes,Peasant Russia, p. 313. 1 TsGAOR,f. 130,op. 2, d. 277,1. 183. 47 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 454. 48 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 181 Trotsky'swas a romanticview, but notwithout an elementof truth.The Kazan' campaigndid indeedmark the beginning of the Red Army'sgrowth on a mass scale. The experience- or fearof Whiterule galvanized thousands of peasantsinto joining the Red Army.It is not coincidentalthat after 1918 morepeasants were mobilizedfrom the Volga military district than from any other in the SovietRepublic, since it was here that the peasantry had gained most fromthe redivision of gentry land during the revolution, and it was herethat the threat of theWhite counter-revolution was greatest, withall the lossesof land thiswould entailfor the peasantry.49 The Kazan' campaignalso markedthe startof the Red Army's reorganizationon moredisciplined and centralizedlines. At the beginningof Septemberthe Soviet Republicwas declaredby theVTsIK tobe a singlemilitary camp, headed by the RVSR under thechairmanship of Trotsky.On 11 September,the day after the captureof Kazan', the RVSR putforward its plan to reorganizethe RedArmy into five army groups, with eleven divisions, each consisting of six to nineregiments plus reserveunits, on threeproperly structuredfronts (eastern, northern and southern)and a fortified westernarea.5o During the followingthree months, as Kolchak's Whiteforces in westernSiberia and Denikin'sin theDon and the Kubanbuilt up, theBolsheviks were primarily concerned to work outhow the fragile economic structure of the Soviet Republic could supportthe maximumnumber of soldiers.On 3 OctoberLenin declaredat an enlargedmeeting of the VTsIK thatit had been "decidedto have an armyof one million men by the spring; now we needan armyof threemillion. We can haveit. Andwe shallhave it".51Lenin's own DefenceCouncil (Sovet oborony) was forcedto concludeon 18 Decemberthat the Soviet economy could actually supportan armyof only 1.5 million, and 300,000 horses.52 However, planswere simultaneously laid to conscript and train another million reservesthrough the Voenkomsof themilitary districts (Voennye okruga).s3Although these reserve units developed slowly at first,we shallsee thatthey were to become- in termsof numbers alone - themost important component of the Red Armyin 1919-20. The Red Armystill experienced difficulties in mobilizingthe

49See Figes,Peasant Russia, pp. 126-8,314. soMovchin, Komplektovanie, pp. 52-3. 5' Lenin, CollectedWorks, xxviii, p. 102. 52 Velikiioktiabr', p. 42. 13 TsGAOR,f. 130,op. 2, d. 120,11. 50-1, 79.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 182 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 peasantryduring 1919. The disorganizationofthe military apparatus continuedto presentproblems, especially in thefar western areas, onlyrecently liberated from German occupation,54 and the Ukraine, whereguerrilla methods continued to be effective."5 Most recruitment stationsexperienced shortages of uniforms, boots, weapons and food; someeven had to sendconscripts home when the problem became too acute.56In partsof the northand west,such as Novgorod and Gomel',it was reportedthat famine conditions had madethe conscriptionofthe peasants impossible." Even more so thanin 1918, peasantuprisings against the mobilization were commonplace, many ofthem organized by the "Green" bands of deserters. At the height ofthe agricultural season, in June (when the rate of desertion reached itsseasonal peak), the whole of the Red Armyrear was engulfed by peasantuprisings. In Voronezh,Tambov and Saratovprovinces the"Greens" numbered several thousand, and werewell armed in organizedbands that at timesposed a seriousthreat to the Red Army rearon thesouthern front. The presenceof "Green" bands several thousandstrong, and a waveof peasant uprisings against the mobil- izationin Gomel',Vitebsk, Minsk and Smolenskprovinces, were saidto have presented a major threat to the Red Army on the western frontduring the summer,when it was pushedback towardsthe Dnepr by Polishforces. In Pskov,Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl', Kostroma,Vologda, Cherepovets, Moscow and Riazan'provinces, peasantuprisings were said to havecombined in a highlyeffective mannerwith the deserters' bands to disrupt the mobilization, destroy the railwaysand linesof communication,and terrorizethe local officialsof Soviet power: "suppressed in one region, they soon broke outagain in anotheras large-scalerebellions, sometimes with well- armedbands of up to severalthousand men".s8 Despitethese problems, the Red Army grew rapidly in size during 1919.(See Table 1.) Two millionrecruits were enlisted in 1919and a furthertwo million by the end of 1920, when the overall size of the RedArmy was estimated at over five million. Over 80 percent of the 54 See the reportsfrom Vilna and Smolenskat the beginningof February1919, in TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 11.2-3, 6. " Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, pp. 457-9. 56 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 449, 11. 1-2; d. 529, 1. 12; Molodtsygin,Raboche- krest'ianskiisoiuz, p. 63. s' TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 422, 1. 244; d. 529, 1. 55. 58TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 198, 1. 14. See also S. Olikov,Dezertirstvo v krasnoi armiii bor'bas nim[Desertion in theRed Armyand theStruggle against it] (Leningrad, 1926), p. 27; Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 138. For similarreports from 1920, see TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 4, d. 281.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 183 TABLE 1 THE GROWTH OF THE RED ARMY IN 1919* Totalsize of the army Recruitsjoining at beginningof month thearmy during month January 800,000 65,000 February 1,000,000 240,000 March 1,400,000 345,000 April 1,500,000 110,000 May 1,700,000 155,000 June 1,900,000 200,000 July 2,100,000 200,000 August 2,300,000 110,000 September 2,400,000 95,000 October 2,500,000 70,000 November 2,600,000 225,000 December 2,800,000 160,000 January1920 3,000,000 * Source: N. Movchin,Komplektovanie krasnoi armii [The Recruitmentof the Red Army](Moscow, 1926), pp. 100-1. recruitsmobilized in 1919were registered as peasants,a dispropor- tionatenumber of them from central Russia itself." Given the limi- tationsof Bolshevikpower in thecountryside, how can we explain thisrapid numerical growth? First,a noteof caution has to be addedto thefigures themselves. Thenumber of registered Red Army men at any one moment included notonly the active fighters, but also the wounded and sick, reserves, trainees,those on labourduty and in transitto thefront. It also includedthose - a numberrunning into tens of thousands- whohad disappeared,or desertedfrom their unit and had notyet surrenderedorbeen caught. Most of the apprehended deserters from the units- a numberrunning into hundreds of thousands- were sentback to thereserves, where they were registered as Red Army menfor a secondtime. Since the Bolsheviks had no effectivemeans ofchecking, man by man, the deserters who left from one unit against thosewho returned to another, many Red Army men must have been countedmore than once (and someeven more than twice). Indeed, sincethe individual units were in fiercecompetition with each other overscarce supplies, they had a vestedinterest in concealingtheir lossesthrough desertion in orderto keepthe number of men on Red Armyrations artificially high. Thus theRed Army'sreal strength

9 Thus the Red Armyin the Ukrainewas moreRussian than Ukrainian:Gorlov, "O sotsial'noistrukture krasnoi armii", p. 57.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 184 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 was a good deal smaller- and morevariable - thansuggested by thegrandiloquent statistic of five million men so oftencited in both Sovietand Western history books. It reallyonly approximated tothat numberfor the last three months of 1920, after which the Red Army wasrapidly demobilized (only 1,428,000 soldiers were left by January 1922).60At theheight of thecivil war in thespring of 1919,there were383,000 active fighters on thevarious fronts out of a totalRed Armyforce of 1.8 millionmen - a ratioof fightersto eatersof 1:4.7.61That ratio varied during the civil war as a wholefrom about 1:3 in theunits in thefield to about 1:10 in theentire Red Army.It fluctuatedseasonally in line with the rates of desertion and the general TABLE 2 "EATERS" AND FIGHTERS IN THE RED ARMY 1920* Number on Numberof Ratio of fighters rations fighters to eaters Troops in the field 1 June 1920 873,829 294,349 1: 3 1 August 1920 948,728 393,683 1: 2.4 Red Armyin general 1 June 1920 4,587,061 337,620 1: 13.6 1 August 1920 4,876,110 494,572 1: 9.9 * Source: Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 229. supplyof foodstuffs. (See Table2.) Evenat the height of its strength, inOctober 1920, when the Red Army amounted to nearly 5.5 million men,there were 2,250,000 recruits undergoing training who had still notbeen formed into military units; 391,000 in reserve units; 159,000 in labourarmies; and only2,250,000 in thearmies at thefront, of whomno morethan 700,000 would have been active fighters (and nomore than 500,000 of these properly armed).62 Given its enormous socialand politicalsignificance, the Russian civil war was actually foughtbetween miniscule armies (the forces deployed by either side on a givenfront rarely exceeded 100,000). Proportionate to the civilianpopulation, this was no morethan the number of fighters in theEnglish civil wars of the 1640s.63 6 Movchin,Komplektovafiie, pp. 237-9, 259. 61 Velikiioktiabr', pp. 112-13. 62 Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 228-9. JohnMaynard was not faroff the mark whenhe wrote:"Though the Red Armyin theCivil War ultimatelytotalled over five millionmen, it neverhad morethan half a millionrifles, and themaximum number ofcombatants in it neverexceeded 600,000, with 700 gunsand 2,800 machine-guns": H. J. Maynard,The RussianPeasant: And OtherStudies (London, 1942), p. 116. 63 During the Englishcivil wars about 140,000men were under arms out ofa total populationof about fivemillion (2.8 per cent). Duringthe Russiancivil war perhaps fourmillion men were armed and put into activeunits out of a totalpopulation of about 160 million(2.5 per cent).

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 185 The growthof theRed Armyduring 1919-20 was facilitatedby severalpolitical factors. The completionof themilitary register al- lowedthe Red Armyto abandonthe semi-voluntary "volost' mobilization"called at theend of April (whereby each volost' was to enlist andequip between ten and twenty recruits) and to concentrate instead on theuniversal mobilization of particular age groups.The results of the formerhad proveddisappointing: of the 118,000recruits anticipated(on thebasis of twentyper volost')from twenty-seven provincesin EuropeanRussia, only 13,633(11.5 per cent)had actuallyappeared by the middle of June.64 Part of the problem was thatthe volost' mobilization represented an unfairlyheavy burden for thesmaller volosti, whose authorities thus felt justified in ignoring it.65The conscriptionofall themales born in oneyear, to which the peasantshad grownaccustomed during the First World War, was seento be fairersince it affectedeveryone equally (sometimes the peasantscast lots to see who shouldgo to thearmy from the age groupscalled up).66 It alsocreated fewer administrative problems - themain one nowbeing the tendency of the peasant communes to send to thearmy only those enlisted from the biggest household farms,on thegrounds that the loss of an adultmale worker was more likelyto harmthe smallerfamily farms.6' This was said to have resultedin "kulak"elements joining the Red Army,which some commandersused to explain the poor military discipline and perform- anceof their units.68 The enforcementofthe universal mobilization was facilitated by a secondpolitical factor: the general strengthening ofthe Soviet appar- atusin ruralareas.69 During 1919-20 the volost' soviets became more reliable,centralized and bureaucratized organs, under the domination

64Molodtsygin, Raboche-krest'ianskii soiuz, pp. 135, 254. 65 For this reason,the instructionson the volost'mobilization were revisedon 20 May to allow the smallervolosti to lowertheir recruitment quotas: ibid., p. 134. 6 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 1. 61; Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 72-3; Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 314. 67TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 11.68, 70, 107. The resultof thisselection bias was thatthe larger peasant households tended to lose a higherproportion of their adult males to thearmy, which left them with a muchless favourableratio of consumers to workerscompared with the smaller households, since they contained a relativelylarger numberof dependants.Thus the militaryconscription was likelyto have encouraged the biggerhouseholds to partition- itselfalready a mass phenomenonduring this periodbecause of the threat of revolutionary expropriation: Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 315-16. 68 Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 314. 69 On thissubject generally, see ibid., ch. 5.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 186 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 of localBolshevik party cadres. The wholeapparatus of the volost' sovietwas supposedto be subordinatedto theimmediate tasks of recruitmentduring the call-up period. The head of the Voenkom was to becomethe chairman of thesoviet. The Voenkomsthemselves wereincreasingly appointed by the higher military authorities rather thanelected by the peasants, so thaturban workers and party mem- berstended to becomea dominantelement within them.70 A final politicalfactor behind the growth of the Red Armyduring 1919-20 was the tremendouseffect of Bolshevikpropaganda - a subject discussed elsewhere." The RedArmy grew on an extensive rather than an intensivebasis. In otherwords it calledup moreand moreage groupsrather than tryingto increasethe rate of recruitmentfrom targetted groups or reducingthe rate of desertion(this only became a priorityafter all theeligible age groups had been called up). The extensivesystem of mobilizationinevitably developed into a viciousand recurrent cycle: as thenumber of recruits grew, so toodid thepressure on military supplies;the number of deserters increased as a consequence,so that moreand morereinforcements were required. As thechairman of theMilitary Inspectorate put it to Trotsky:"each new mobilization producesa diminishingpercentage increase in thesize of our armed forces".72 ByJune 1919, all theeligible age groups - barthe very youngest (1901)- hadbeen mobilized. The call-upof 1901 was held back for as longas possible(and was onlyimplemented during the war with Polandin 1920).73This was probablybecause of the burden which thecall-up of this age group was likely to place on militarysupplies. Forthe younger age groups tended (with the exception of 1898-1897) to producea higherrate of recruitment.(See Table 3.) Whenthe RevolutionaryMilitary Council of the Southern Front found itself in desperateneed of reinforcementstowards the end ofJune 1919, it calledon Leninand Trotskyto call up theyoungest possible age groups,since "experience shows that the older the age group,the smallertends to be thepercentage of those called up actuallybeing recruited.The shortfallranges from 34 percent in the youngest years to 90 per centin theoldest".74 This was no doubtpartly because 70Ibid., pp. 312-13. 7' For an introductionto this subject,see P. Kenez, The Birthof thePropaganda State: SovietMethods of Mass Mobilization,1917-1929 (Cambridge, 1985). 72 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 131. 73Molodtsygin, Raboche-krest'ianskii soiuz, pp. 204-5. 74TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 529,1. 89.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 187 TABLE 3 MOBILIZATION OF VARIOUSAGE GROUPS 1918-1919* Yearof birth Numberturning up forrecruitment 1901 550,000(approx.) 1900 228,546 1899 292,139 1898 341,780 1898-1897 1,056,809 1896-1892 232,848 1892-1891 120,000 1890-1899 130,238 1890-1886 80,666 * Source: Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 57, 268-9. youngermen tended to be morehealthy: 70 percent of the 1900 cohortpassed their army medical, compared with only 56 percent ofthe 1890-1889 cohort." It wasalso because a higherproportion of the olderage groupscomprised family men, with farms of their own.They had alreadyfought in the 1914-17war, and werenow understandablyreluctant to join any army. A finalexplanation of this phenomenonmay be foundin thegreater revolutionary enthusiasm ofthe young, a factorconstantly stressed by Trotsky himself: "We mustdraw into the work of creating the army the younger generations, theyouth who have not yet experienced war, and whoare always distinguishedbythe ilan of their revolutionary spirit and their display of enthusiasm".76 Thereis anothersense in which the growth of the Red Army could be characterizedas "extensive". From the early summer of 1919, the Red Armypushed eastwards into the Uralsand Siberia,forcing intoheadlong retreat both Kolchak's White army and theAllied interventionaryforces. During the following autumn and winter, the Redspushed southwards, forcing the Whites back into the Don, and thenthrough the Kuban to the coast.The expansionof territory underRed occupationduring the latterhalf of 1919enabled the Bolsheviksto carryout mobilizations in theareas recently liberated fromthe Whites. This marked a shiftin theconscription policies of theRed Armyaway from the principle of raising troops in therear, andtowards the practice of both mobilizing conscripts and forming militaryunits directly behind the front. In factmobilizations at the

7 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 169. 76 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 166.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 188 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 fronthad long since becomea practicalnecessity for both civil wararmies, since the to-and-fro movements of the front disrupted transportand supplylines from the rear,making the question of raisingadequate reinforcements a constant headache for the military authorities.Less than30 per centof theRed Army'sdemand for reinforcementson the eastern,southern and northernfronts was satisfiedfrom its rear army reserves during the winter of 1918-19.77 On theeastern and southernfronts during the early months of 1919 thesoldiers in thefront-line units were deserting and falling sick or woundedmuch faster than reinforcements could be trained, equipped or despatched.To makematters worse, a largeproportion of the reinforcementsdeserted en route to thefront, or arrivedthere unfit todo anyfighting because of illness, or lack of equipment or training. Trotskycalled the Red Armyreversals on theeastern front during thespring of 1919,which brought Kolchak's army to withina few days'march of the River Volga, a "crisisof reinforcements". Much thesame verdict could be appliedto virtuallyall theRed Army's major defeats.78 Trotsky,as headof the RVSR, was reluctant to allow front mobil- izationsto becomea generalpractice given all theobvious military considerations:the importance ofnot antagonizing the civilian popu- lationbehind the frontthrough rapidly improvised mobilizations thatwere likely to breakdown into coercive methods; the poor discipline- and questionablemotives - of so manyof those re- cruitedat the front; and (for Trotsky this was the key) the decentraliza- tionof theRed Army'smilitary organization entailed by thefront mobilizations(that is adoptingthe "guerrilla" or "partisan" methods advocatedby the Military Opposition).7 During the winter of 1918- 19 the RVSR had sanctionedfront mobilizations strictly in cases wherethe supply of trained reinforcements from the rear had com- pletelybroken down. But as thisbecame the norm in 1919,it was forcedto endorsethe stop-gapmeasure of despatchinguntrained reinforcementstothe front. This effectively gave the front armies the rightto form their own military units, while turning the rear reserve armies,which had previously done this for them, into no morethan temporaryholding-stations for the mass of raw recruitsawaiting

7 P. Dmitrev,"Sozdanie strategicheskikh rezervov krasnoi armii v godygrazhdan- skoivoiny" [The Creation of Strategic Reserves of the Red Armyin theCivil War], Voenno-istoricheskiizhurnal (1974), no. 6, pp. 67-8. 78Movchin, Komplektovanie, pp. 79, 109-10,272. 7 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 353, 377.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 189 transfertothe front. According to one recent Soviet source, "the vast majorityof militaryformations and unitsduring the civil war ... wereformed not in therear, but directly at thefronts, in thecourse ofthe fighting itself"'.8 From forming their own units, it was buta shortstep for the front armies to carryout their own mobilizations as well. Indeed,during the courseof 1919, theydid thiswith increasingfrequency, often with official approval from the central militaryauthorities.81 In all, probablysomething in theregion of half a millionsoldiers weremobilized on theRed Armyfronts, usually when and where thecivil war was at its fiercest. Some front mobilizations were carried outover a widearea prior to a majorretreat so as notto leave potential recruitsto theenemy. The entiremale population between the ages ofeighteen and forty was usually conscripted inthese circumstances.82 A morecommon type of front mobilization was thatcarried out by individualunits in urgentneed of reinforcements. Where there was enoughtime for the army to establishpolitical structures and carry out agitation,such mobilizations could prove moderately effective, sincemany peasants were afraid of theWhites, and couldbe per- suadedto jointhe Red Armyif it was seento refrainfrom violence andlooting.83 A typical example was the mobilization carried out by the1st Brigade of the 41st Division during the struggle against the Polesand Petliura's Ukrainian forces near Odessa in May 1920. First, it mobilizedthe Odessa partyorganization, whose members were assignedto thepolitical departments ofthe various regiments. Over thenext two weeks, it raised six hundred volunteers through agitation, andorganized them into recruitment brigades, along with pro-Com- munistsoldiers selected from the regularunits by theirpolitical departments.The recruitment brigades then went around the villages, agitating,shooting "traitors to therevolution" and mobilizing - by forceif necessary - theable-bodied peasants. In thecourse of three anda halfmonths, three thousand recruits were raised, along with a heavy-artillerydivision and a 645-manbattalion. Two light-artillery 80 Dmitrev,"Sozdanie", p. 66. S. I. Gusev,one of the Red Army's top commanders, put theproportion of unitsformed at thefronts at abouttwo-thirds: S. I. Gusev, Grazhdanskaiavoina i krasnaiaarmiia [The Civil War and the Red Army](Moscow, 1958),p. 81. 8 Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 89, 111-15. 82 Ibid., pp. 90-2. 83 On therelationship between the peasants' fear of the Whites and their willingness to jointhe Red Army,see themilitary reports in TsGAOR,f. 130,op. 3, d. 449,1. 24. See also Olikov,Dezertirstvo, pp. 28-9; Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, p. 275; Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 176-83,314.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 190 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 divisionswere also reinforced.84Of course,it was commonfor mobil- izationsat the frontto be done in a hurry,with the use of coercion. During May 1919 unitsof the 8thand 13thArmies in the Donbass regioncarried out forciblemobilizations at the Bakhmutcoal-mines by occupyingthe pits and simplyrounding up at gunpointall the minersunder the age of forty.When the Bakhmutauthorities com- plainedto theDefence Council in Moscow thatthis would bring coal productionto a halt,Lenin wroteback defendingthe actionsof the armyas a necessaryevil in timeof civilwar.8"

III PROBLEMS OF SUPPLY AND DISCIPLINE A bad-temperedTrotsky told a conferenceof Red Armypolitical workersin December 1919: We havemobilized millions, but our bayonets are numbered in hundreds of thousands.Somehow, an enormousnumber of soldiershave slipped throughour fingers! . .. theexpenditure of material that takes place in thearmy goes beyond our resources. The figuresof the indents made by the CentralSupply Administration or the CentralArmy Procurement Departmentare fantastic:tens of millions of pairsof underwear,many millionsof overcoats, boots - forexample, three or fourpairs of boots peryear per man! .. . Comrades,I don'twant to frightenyou, but I do wantto saythat, although we havenot been brought down by Denikin or Kolchak,we mayyet be broughtdown by overcoats or boots.86 The problemunderlying Trotsky's observation was quite simple. The Red Armywas growingtoo quickly- and losing too many deserters- for the Soviet economic systemto supportit. The problemwent back to the winterof 1918-19,when the proliferation of the civil war on a nationalscale and the move towardsmass conscriptionhad coincidedwith - and directlycontributed to - the almostcomplete collapse of the Sovieteconomy. The occupationat thattime of the Ukraine, the Caucasus and theUrals by anti-Bolshevik forces,together with the blockade of the Baltic, the Black and the Caspian Seas by Allied and Whitenaval forces,deprived the Soviet Republic of vital food and fuel supplies. Industrialdiscipline and productionfell sharply in thehungry north, as workersflooded into thecountryside in searchof food, and factoriesclosed down for want

84 Sbornikvospominanii neposredstvennykh uchastnikov grazhdanskoi voiny [A Collec- tionof Reminiscencesby Direct Participantsin the Civil War], ii (Moscow, 1922), pp. 129-33. 85TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 11.33-4, 50. See similarlyf. 130, op. 3, d. 422, 1. 183. 86 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 108-9.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 191 of fueland rawmaterials. The transportsystem came to a virtual halt- or ratherceased to workfor the state, becoming instead the mainartery of the black-market network through which most Russi- anssupported themselves during the civil war. Without the industrial base,the distribution system or indeed the political infrastructure to organizea stablemarket-based system of staterelations with the peasantry,the Bolsheviks used increasing levels of coercion in order to obtainthe peasant foodstuffs and recruits necessary for their civil warcampaign. Yet, even by making production for the Red Armya toppriority, they were unable to supply the millions of conscripts with adequatefoodstuffs, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport, medical servicesand all theother paraphernalia of war. Supplyand distribution- ratherthan productionitself - lay at the heartof the problem.The devaluationof moneyand therampant inflation of industrialprices resulted in thepeasants reducing their food sales to thestate and enteringthe black market, where exchange and barter withthe townsmen proved more profitable. Thus the Bolsheviks were constantlyfaced with the problem of getting adequate stocks of food notonly to theRed Army,but also to thoseworkers in munitions and otherstate industries essential for the supply of basicmilitary goods.The difficultiesoftransport in fuel-deprivedSoviet Russia, especiallyduring the winter and spring,when the climate became an added factor,exacerbated the distribution problem, as did the disorganizationand voraciouscorruption of Sovietsupply officials. Giventhese obstacles it was, as Trotskydetected, becoming an almost Sisypheantask to supplyan armyin whichfor every active fighter therewere ten inactive men, and perhaps another five or so whohad alreadydeserted (taking with them, of course, their gun and their armycoat). The militaryreports on thesupply situation received by the De- fenceCouncil during 1919-20 showed that virtually every division in theRed Armyhad at least some units with shortages of food, fodder, uniforms,footwear, weapons and bedding,or othergoods of lesser importance,such as soap,tobacco, sugar and salt.It was notlong beforethe Red Armyration set in February1919 (0.4 kg. ofbread perday) was recalled by the average soldier as onlya distantfantasy.87 Someunfortunate units, having advanced too farand beencut off

"7The Red Armyration is detailedin IzvestiiaNarodnogo Kommissariatapo Voennym Delam, no. 36, 20 Feb. 1919, p. 4. The rationin the imperialarmy during the First World War was loweredto this level only at the end of 1916; it contributedto the mutinyof the Petrogradgarrison during the Februaryrevolution of 1917.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 192 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 fromtheir supply stations, were forced to go severaldays, and sometimeseven weeks, without food, during which time some men inevitablystarved.88 Horses died or simply fell from exhaustion inall partsof the army throughout the civil war, partly because of disease, butmuch more often because of simpleshortages of fodder.89 The supplyof uniforms was so bad - with60 percent, and even up to 90 percent, of the men in some units going without one - thatfights oftenbroke out betweenthe soldiers, especially during the winter, whenthe possession of a warmarmy coat could make the difference betweenlife and death. Thousands of Red Army men fell ill, or died fromthe cold, during the harsh winter of 1919-20.90The supplyof shoeswas not such a seriousproblem, if only because most infantry- menwore bast shoes, which were easily fabricated by local peasant craftsmen.9'But lack of adequate footwear was sometimes known to preventwhole units leaving the confines of their barracks.92 By all accounts,the outward appearance of the Red Armyunits wasragged.93 Even Lenin was taken aback by the model troops taking partin the Red Squareparade on thefirst anniversary ofthe October revolution."Look at them,how they march", he washeard to say, "like bagsof sand".94As forthe supply of weapons, once Tsarist stocksran out in 1919, Sovietproduction - especiallyof rifle ammunition- fellincreasingly behind demand.95 In May 1919, as his easternand southernfronts collapsed, I. I. Vatsetis,Main Commander-in-Chief,reported to the Defence Council that the supplyof ammunition was headingfor "catastrophe". While the army was firingbetween seventy and ninetymillion rounds a month,the mainarsenal at Tula was producingonly twenty million. Moreover importantarmaments factories on theeastern front (for example, Votkinsk,Izhevsk and Lugansk)had recently been captured by the Whites.96Trotsky was to lookback on thisperiod as a criticalcrisis, 8 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 192, 1. 30; d. 414, 11.109-13; d. 422, 11.184, 202; d. 443, 1. 4; Tsentral'nyigosudarstvennyi arkhiv narodnogo khoziaistva, Moscow (hereafterTsGANKh), f. 3429, op. 1, d. 1487, 11.33, 121. For a generalreport on foodsupply conditions in the Red Armyat theend of 1920,see TsGANKh, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 1586, 11.8 ff. 9 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 414, 11.109-13. 9 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 414, 11.109-13; d. 436, 1. 9. 91 On the supplyof bast shoes and otherproducts to the Red Armyby peasant craftsmen,see Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 293. 92TsGANKh, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 1487, 1. 88. 93 White,Growth of the Red Army,pp. 115-17. 94 Ibid., p. 118. 95 Mawdsley,Russian Civil War, pp. 183-4. 96 Direktivyglavnogo komandovaniia krasnoi armii (1917-1920): sbornikdokumentov [Directivesof the High Command of the Red Army(1917-1920): A Collectionof Documents](Moscow, 1969), p. 320; Velikiioktiabr', p. 136.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 193 when "everyone of a soldier'sstock of cartridgescounted . . and when a delay in the arrivalof a special trainbringing ammunition resultedin whole divisionsretreating".97 Anothermajor problem for the Red Armywas the spread of epidemics.More people died in thecivil war fromdisease than from battle.98Typhus, influenza, smallpox, cholera, typhoid and venereal diseases were the main killers,but manymore men sufferedfrom various skin rashes, stomachbugs, dysenteryand toothache.On average,perhaps about 10-15 per cent of the men in a givenunit would be ill on any one day. But it was not unusualfor a unitto be takenout of operationby ratesof illnessof up to 80 per cent.99The inadequacy of medical checks on new recruitsmeant that many broughtillnesses with them into the army.'"0But the real cause of the problemlay elsewhere:first, in the unhygienicconditions of an armywhere soap was a rarity,and themen were known to be on the move withoutwashing for several weeks on end; and secondly,in the chronicshortages of doctors,nurses, hospital space, transport facilitiesfor the sick and wounded, medicines,alcohol, bandages, antiseptic,food and so on.10'Part of the problemwas thatthe rapid to-and-fromovements of the civil war frontsmade it impossibleto setup properfield hospitals and dressingstations with good transport connectionsto therear. In thesecircumstances - whichwere all too common(especially in the Ukraine)- the sick and woundedcould neitherbe swiftlyevacuated, nor properlycared forat the front.102 Trotskycomplained bitterly in June1919 about the poor treatment receivedby wounded Red Armymen on the southernfront: Transportsarrived by rail at Liskistation containing wounded men who werein a frightfulcondition. The truckswere without bedding. Many of themen lay, wounded and sick,without clothes, dressed only in their underwear,which had longremained unchanged: many of themwere

97 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 13. 9 For a briefsurvey of thepublished figures, see Mawdsley,Russian Civil War,pp. 285-6. 99TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 192, 11.3, 5; d. 347, 11.47, 122, 149, 209, 253, 332; d. 414, 1. 114; d. 105, 1. 21; d. 436, 1. 15; TsGANKh, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 1487,1. 151; IzvestiiaNarodnogo Kommissariata po VoennymDelam, no. 8, 14 Jan. 1919, p. 4. '0 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 167. 1'0 On such matters,see particularlyTsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 414, 1. 114; d. 192, 1. 5; d. 436, 1. 8; f. 5451, op. 3, d. 78, 1. 7; G. S. Pukhov,"Stroitel'stvo krasnoi armii v Petrogradei okruge" [The Developmentof the Red Armyin Petrogradand its District],Krasnaia letopis'(1929), no. 6 (33), p. 95. 102 IzvestiiaNarodnogo Kommissariata po VoennymDelam, no. 175, 12 Aug. 1919, p. 1; ibid., no. 192, 3 Sept. 1919, p. 1.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 194 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 infectious.There were no medicalpersonnel, no nursesand nobodyin chargeof the trains. One ofthe trains, containing over 400 wounded and sickRed Army men, stood in the station from early morning until evening, withoutthe men being given anything toeat. It is hardto imagine anything morecriminal and shameful!103 Trotskyblamed bad managementand red tape forthe problem. But therewas in facta policy, at least fromNovember 1919, of deliberatelynot evacuatingthose with infectiousdiseases, and of forbiddingpassenger transport into the infected front-line zones, for fearof spreading the diseases to thecivilian rear.104 It was thispolicy, above all, thatwas to blame forthe overcrowdingin hospitalsnear thecivil war fronts, and thetruly horrific scenes of sick and wounded men sittingfor days on end, withoutfood or attention,in unheated third-classcarriages at God-forsakenrailway stations. The problemsof supplyingthe army fromstores in the rear encouragedmany units to supplythemselves from local armydepots, civilianinstitutions and, indeed,the population itself. Virtually every armyunit was forcedto practise"self-feeding" at some pointin its life,especially when it was cutoff from the main supply base becauseit had advancedinto enemy - or inaccessible- terrain.The Caucasus ArmyGroup, forexample, having advanced deep intothe northern Caucasus(hundreds of miles from its supply base at Tsaritsyn)during the winterof 1919-20,had littlechoice but to feed itselffrom the local population;between 71 per cent(in the case of millet)and 97 per cent(vegetables) of its foodwas suppliedin thisfashion between October 1919 and March 1920.105 In partsof the Ukraine,where muchof the Red Army'sfighting was done by peasant-guerrillaunits (such as Makhno's)without a supplybase at all, self-feedingremained thenorm throughout the civil war.'06 Elsewhere, it was oftenno more than the sheer incompetenceand corruptionof the Soviet officials runningthe armysupply system that forced the unitsto feedthemselves fromlocal resources.Trotsky, whose impatiencewith the "criminalred-tape-ism of the armysupply organs" was notorious, advocated legalizingindependent procurements by the local Red Armyunits - and evenprivate trade! - in thestruggle to overcome

103 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, p. 298. 104TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 347, 11. 35, 84, 110. It was the Main Military- SanitaryAdministration that, in November1919, passed theresolution "categorically forbiddingthe evacuation from the front to therear of anyone infected with contagious diseases,with the exception of theTurkestan front". Those fromthe latter were to be evacuatedonly as farwest as Syzran',Simbirsk or Kazan'. 105 Bubnov, Grazhdanskaiavoina, partiia i voennoedelo, p. 44. '06 M. Malet, NestorMakhno in theRussian Civil War (London, 1982), p. 99.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 195 shortages.This was a farcry from his views on strictcentralization, whichhe appliedin all otherareas of military organization.107 As inthe White Army (and no doubt every army since time began), the practiceof independentprocurements often broke down into looting,uncontrolled requisitioning, and conflict between Red Army units.It wasnot uncommon for the latter to carry around with them theirown supplies (and sometimes their families too) in long lines of carts,for fear of beingleft without them. Sometimes the units occupiedlocal factories and farms in orderto control the production ofbasic goods.108 This inevitably antagonized the local Soviet organs ofpower, as did theRed Army'sseizure of foodstuffs from railway stations,government granaries and food collection points under the controlof Narkomprod (the People's Commissariat ofFood Supply). Hundredsof local provisions committees complained to thecentral authoritiesduring the autumn and winter of 1918-19 that Red Army unitsinterfered intheir work, redirecting foodstuffs from the civilian sectorto the military.109Even greaterfriction was causedwhen theRed Armyresorted to requisitioningdirectly from the civilian populationitself, as theyall toofrequently did, for this often broke downinto violence and robbery.Although the Red Armyprobably managedto maintain a better record on thisissue than the Whites,11 itsrank-and-file soldiers frequently became involved in violent looting,especially when passing through non-Russian (particularly Jew- ish) areas. The Red Army,it is importantto bearin mind,was predominantlyRussian in its ethniccomposition. Even unitscon- scriptedin theUkraine and other non-Russian regions (for example, the Tatar Republic)were largely made up of Russians."' Anti- Semitismwas a powerfuland growing force in the Red Armyduring thecivil war, despite the fact that a Jew,Lev DavidovichTrotsky

'07Trotsky, How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 72-4 (July1919). 108 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 2, d. 743, 1. 118; op. 3, d. 192, 1. 34; TsGANKh, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 857, 11.63-4; d. 1245, 1. 27; d. 1485, 1. 450; Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed,i, p. 13. It maybe thatsuch practicesowed somethingto thetraditions of the imperialarmy before 1914, whenthe soldierswere made largelyresponsible for their own upkeep. Sometimesorganized into regimentalartels, they spent much of their timein economicactivities: J. Bushnell,Mutiny and Repression:Russian Soldiers in theRevolution of 1905-06 (Indiana, 1985), pp. 11-15.During the civil war, Red Army unitswere deployed for specific economic tasks, such as harvestwork, timber-felling or road-repairs. 109See, forexample, TsGANKh, f. 1943, op. 1, d. 448, 1. 87; d. 223, 11.113, 223, 224, 273, 351; d. 513, 11.99, 242; op. 4, d. 116, 1. 82. 10 See D. V. Lehovich,White against Red: TheLife of General Anton Denikin (New York, 1974), pp. 325-7. " Gorlov,"O sotsial'noistrukture krasnoi armii", p. 57.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 196 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 (Bronstein),stood at itspolitical head. Trotskyreceived hundreds of reportsabout his own soldiers'violence and lootingin Jewish- Ukrainiansettlements, some of which he musthave known from his youth.112Mass murders and robberies of the civilian population were also carriedout by the Red Armyin Bashkirregions during March 1919,partly as a resultof antagonisms between the Russian regulars and Bashkirvolunteer units allied to theReds."3 Withinthe Red Armyitself, the poorand irregularsupply of foodstuffsand goods resulted in the frequent breakdown ofdiscipline. Drunkennesswas perhapsthe mostcommon - one mightsay universal- formof indiscipline, along with card-playing and gener- allyrowdy behaviour. As theRed Armypushed southwards into the Ukraineduring the autumn and winterof 1919,one of Trotsky's mainanxieties was that this was a region"well-stocked with alcohol in all itsforms, and we maytake a heavyfall as a resultof that".114 Soldiersfound drinking were ordered to be shotin a numberof Red Armyunits on thesouthern front during this campaign.'15 The other reallymajor problem - therefusal of units to carryout orders, or to recognizethe authority of officers appointed by Moscow - was also broadlyassociated with the Red Army'sadvance into the Ukraine,where the authorityof the Sovietregime (or any state authority)was almostnon-existent, and guerrilla-stylewarfare by partisanbrigades still predominated. Several top commanders blamed thereverses suffered by theRed Armyin theUkraine during the springand earlysummer of 1919 on the influenceof anarchist elements(for example Makhno), whose agitation among the rank- and-filesoldiers, calling on themto obeyonly their elected officers and to returnto theprinciples of army democracy embodied in the soldiers'committees of1917, was said to have undermined allmilitary discipline.Daily reportswere received about soldiers demanding leaveand better provisions; refusing to take up positions;lapsing into banditryand looting;killing army officers, Jews and Communists; and desertingin wholeunits to therear. Some units were also said to havecalled for Ukrainian independence.116 112 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 192, 11.26-35; d. 422, 11.256, 267; d. 436, 1. 12; d. 449, 11.118-19, 142, 143, 180. "3 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 184, 11.37-8, 72, 76. On the alliancebetween the Bashkirforces and the Red Army,see furtherR. Pipes, TheFormation of theSoviet Union:Communism and Nationalism,1917-1923 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964),pp. 162-3. 114 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, p. 113. In so faras theWhites occupied the alcohol-richregions for most of the civil war, it is logical to assume thatthey sufferedmore than the Reds fromthis problem. "~ TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 414, 1. 117; d. 422, 1. 267. 16 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 192, 11.27-30; d. 422, 11.164, 267; d. 449, 1. 139. (cont.on p. 197)

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 197 But such indisciplinewas notlimited to theUkraine. Virtually everyRed Armydivision had unitsto reportwhere the men had refusedto carryout orders,or had threatenednot to fightuntil promisedleave or betterconditions. Some reported cases where the men had protestedagainst taking in new recruitsand prisoners, becauseof the added burden on food supplies that this would entail."117 It was commonplacefor officers and administrativestaff to receive threats- and become the victims- of physicalviolence from the rank-and-filesoldiers, especially if they were suspected (often with justification)ofcorruption in handlingarmy supplies and wages; or ifthey were simply seen to be toowell dressed, fed and supplied with vodkaand women; or if - indeed,worst of all - theywere accused of restoringthe disciplinarianism ofthe old imperialarmy, authorizing capitaland otherphysical punishments for soldiers failing to carry out orders. It was oftensaid - thoughnot proved - that the "Tsaristofficers" appointed by Trotsky from the imperial staff were particularlymistrusted by thesoldiers because of their upper-class originsand allegedrecord of treason."11 Soldiers'uprisings were also widespread, most of them sparked by materialshortages, official corruption or somepunishment popularly deemedby the soldiers as unjust.These uprisings usually culminated in theoccupation of the military headquarters, the arrest or murder ofthe officers and commissars, and the election of new commanders. But somespread into the civiliansector, often on accountof ru- mours- manyof themno doubttrue - thatthe Soviet organs had heldup militarysupplies or provisionsfor soldiers' families. Army

(n. 116 cont.) Trotskyagreed that "guerrilla-ism" had been largelyto blame forthe collapse of the Ukrainianfront, perhaps because it suitedhis argumentsfor strict military centraliza- tionagainst the demands of the Military Opposition for looser partisan units: Trotsky, How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 109-10,308, 323. 117TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 105, 11.207-8; d. 422, 11.34, 43, 59, 61, 208; d. 449, 1. 97; d. 192, 11.26-7, 34. 118 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 414, 11.17-21, 105-6; d. 422, 11.11, 20, 31, 43, 191; d. 525, 1. 27; f. 4085, op. 1, d. 14, 11.25-6, 63-4; TsGANKh, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 857, 11.57-8. See also Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 113, 116. On thesoldiers' attitudestowards "Tsarist officers", see ibid., p. 140; Benvenuti,Bolsheviks, pp. 37, 66-70; White, Growthof theRed Army,pp. 50-3, 60-1. In factthere is evidenceto suggestthat the "Tsaristofficers" were less likelythan "Red officers"or others(e.g. formerN.C.O.s and untrainedofficers) to desertto the enemyor commita criminal offence(such as theftof militarystores). Between 3 Augustand 12 November1919 therewere sixtyreported cases of desertionto the enemyand sixtyreported cases of flightfrom battle by former("Tsarist") officers,compared with 373 reportedcases of desertionto theenemy and 416 reportedcases of flightfrom battle by "Red" or other officers:TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 453, 11.2-46.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 198 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 depotswere seized and ransacked,or thelocal townoccupied, where shopsand storeswere usually looted and Communistofficials arrested or shot. In some towns,especially where a garrisonwas situated, the soldiersinstalled in power a new sovietdominated by soldiers' delegates.119 Even wherethe officersretained enough authority to marchtheir men into battle,they could do littleto preventthem from running away as soon as the firstshots were fired.The Red Army,in more or less any battle,was likelyto lose more soldiersthrough panic desertionsthan actual fighting:of the 294,000 "lost" by the Reds betweenFebruary and April 1920, forexample, only 20,000 were killedor wounded.20 On severaloccasions during 1918-19, Trotsky had cause to complainabout the ways in whichRed Armyoperational reportswere writtento "conceal and cover up one's failuresand exaggerateone's successes": Whenour units capture some locality, this never happens, if the reports areto be believed,otherwise than after a fiercebattle. Yet this "battle" is, moreoften than not, an affairof aimless and fruitless shooting, that is, of squanderingof cartridgesand shells... Whenour unitsretreat, this happens,if one is to believethese same reports, only as a resultof the onslaughtof superior enemy forces and, again, never without a battle. Yet whatis oftenhidden under these phrases is thesad realityof a panicky abandonmentof theirpositions by largeunits at the sightof isolated mountedpatrols, or evenjust under the influence of panicand provo- cationalrumours about the enemy's approach.121 All thisis reminiscentof Jaroslav Hasek's Schweikianhero, Gashek, theRed Commissarin the Bugulmastories. When theWhites break throughhis unit'slines on theRiver Ik and attackfrom the right, he ordershis troopsto retreatto theleft, and sendsa telegramto military headquarters:"Great victory.Positions on the river Ik broken through.We are attackingfrom all directions.Cavalry in enemy's rear. Heaps of prisoners".22

IV DESERTION The problemsof supplyand disciplinewere largely to blamefor the astronomicalrates of desertionfrom the Red Armyduring 1919-20.

119TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 184,1. 4; d. 422,11. 4, 31, 107,247; d. 414,1. 25; op. 2, d. 631,11. 4, 6, 8, 13-14,32, 38, 42-3;d. 648,11. 1, 7, 8, 12; d. 751,1. 99. 120 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 225. 121 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 287, 288; see also ibid.,i, p. 483. 122 J. Hasek,The Red Commissar,trans. C. Parrott(London, 1983), p. 23.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 199 Table4 showsthat from June 1919 to June 1920 as manyas 2,638,000 deserterswere registered by the CentralCommittee for Struggle againstDesertion (Ts.K. po bor'bes dezertirstvom)and itslocal organs, uponwhose figures the table is based. (See Table 4.) Duringthe same period,the overallsize of the Red Armygrew from about 1,900,000to 4,600,000 - anincrease of 2,700,000.123 In other words, theRed Armywas losingthrough desertion as manymen as itwas successfullyrecruiting. Ifwe add thebest available estimates for the numberof deserters from the summer of 1918 to the summer of 1919 (576,000),and for the latter half of 1920 (500,000), then we arriveat a roughfigure for the whole of the civil war period of 3,714,000.124 The numberof unregistered deserters is anyone'sguess - perhaps somethingin theregion of one million. Mostof the deserters in Table4 wereregistered as "weak-willed" (poslabosti voli), meaning they had gone missing for less than fourteen days,or had turned up after fourteen days with a "reasonableexcuse". "Malicious"(zlostnye) deserters were deemed to be thosewho had gonefor more than fourteen days; run away with Red Army property; deliberatelyconcealed themselves at thetime of the call-up; resisted arrest;or desertedmore than once.'25 A commonform of "hiddendesertion" by the "weak-willed" in therear was to finda job in a Sovietinstitution, orin someessential sectorof the economy (such as therailways or timber-felling) where, on accountof theshortage of manpower,it was in theinterests of theiremployer to apply on theirbehalf to the relevant authorities for an exemptionfrom military service.126 However, the majority in this categorywere registered as "deserters"simply because they had failedto turn up on timeat the recruiting station. Sometimes this was forno otherreason than the late arrival of the army's conscription apparatus(that is agitators,copies of instructions and decrees,and so on). S. Olikov,the major authority on desertionfrom the Red Army,who had first-handexperience of dealingwith it, knewof wholedistricts during the civil war where even the representatives of theSoviet regime knew nothing of the mobilization orders.127 Many ofthese "deserters" did eventuallyappear at therecruiting station,

123Movchin, Komplektovanie, pp. 101, 229. 124 Ibid., p. 130; Olikov,Dezertirstvo, p. 33. 125 Olikov,Dezertirstvo, p. 27; Molodtsygin,Raboche-krest'ianskii soiuz, p. 138. 126 TsGANKh, f. 3429,op. 1, d. 529,1. 10; Olikov,Dezertirstvo, p. 76; Trotsky, How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 127, 199; Figes, PeasantRussia, p. 311. 127 Olikov,Dezertirstvo, pp. 38, 82.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TABLE 4 DESERTION FROM THE RED ARMY 1919-1920* Registereddeserters (in thousands) Total Malicious Weak-willedFrom units in Surrendered Caughtin Caughton Caught military voluntarily raids railways elsewhere 1919 districtsa June 200 8 192 - 156 31 3 10 July 266 4 262 17(c) 205 54 2 5 August 284 14 270 40 188 78 6 12 September 262 18 244 13(c) 155 90 10 7 October 191 13 178 14(c) 91 78 7 15 November 170 8 162 30 93 64 6 7 December 172 30 142 12(b) 87 61 6 8 1920 January 175 25 150 35 101 60 6 8 February 137 21 116 19(b) 62 54 4 17 March 188 30 158 22(b) 88 70 9 21 April 129 22 107 48 42 61 8 18 May 214 35 179 33(b) 108 78 11 17 June 250 30 220 28() 155 58 11 26 Total (13 months) 2,638 258 2,380 - 1,531 837 89 181 * Notesand source: Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii, Moscow, f. 130,op. 3, d. 198,11. 17-18, 26, 33, 36,42, 60, 63, 70, 72, 100-1,105-6, 115, 125-6; op. 4, d. 281,11. 5, 10, 16-17,21-2, 24, 26, 30, 32,42-3, 50-1, 56-7; Movchin, Komplektovanie, p. 133. (a) Figuresincomplete (b) Figuresfor first half of month only (c) Figuresfor second halfof monthonly

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 201 someof them calling themselves "volunteers".128 This explainsthe largenumber of deserters registered inTable 4 as havingsurrendered voluntarilyto theauthorities. The primarymotivation of thesedeserters was economic.Some justwanted a temporaryescape from the appalling conditions of army life.Others went off for a fewdays to provide for their families, most ofwhom had never received the welfare benefits (state pensions, food and clothingrations, and agriculturalassistance) promised to them by thegovernment during the recruitment campaigns.129 But there wereprobably just as manycases of soldiers running away to get food fromthe local villages, especially when their army rations failed to comethrough. A good pairof armyboots and a rifle,or a winter coat,could usuallybuy enoughbread for a dozenor so hungry men.'30In theautumn, large numbers of Red Armymen without a warmcoat ran off to get one for the winter campaign.'t But the level oftemporary desertions reached its peak in thesummer, when the peasantsoldiers returned to their farms'for the agricultural season.132 (See Table4.) Thisseasonal variation was obviously most pronounced in thecentral agricultural region (mainly contained in themilitary districtof Orel),where the weekly number of registereddeserters fromJuly to September(between twenty thousand and fortythou- sand)was up to tentimes higher than the corresponding figures for Octoberto December(two thousandto seventhousand). In the semi-industrialmilitary district of Moscow, by contrast, the weekly summerfigures (five thousand to twenty-fourthousand) were only slightlyhigher, overall, than the weekly figures for October to Decem- ber(nine thousand to twelvethousand).'33 The tendencyof soldiers to desert during the harvest season posed one of themajor problems of constructinga national army out of peasantconscripts. During the early phases of the civil war, when mostof the fighting was done on a localbasis, the Red Army partisan brigadeshad managed to retainclose ties with the villages: the latter fedand equippedtheir own soldiers, who returned home between

128TsGAOR, f. 5451, op. 3, d. 113, 1. 8; Olikov,Dezertirstvo, p. 84. 129Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 318-19. 130 TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 198,1. 113;Trotsky, How theRevolution Armed, iii, p. 18. In thecities deserters from the Red Armywere known to sellforged ration cards:TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 4, d. 281,1. 12. 131Olikov, Dezertirstvo,p. 29. 132TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 422, 11.22, 59; op. 3, d. 198, 1. 35; Olikov, Dezertirstvo,p. 51. 133TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 198,11. 18, 26, 33, 36, 42, 72, 101,106, 115, 126.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 202 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 militarycampaigns. The spreadof the civil war, and consequently thereorganization ofthe Red Armyon a nationalscale, threatened theseties, since the peasant conscript was likely to be sentoff to fight a longway from his village. Indeed it becamea matterof deliberate policy,as partof the struggle against desertion, to sendrecruits as faraway as possiblefrom their native region.134 Hence many deser- tionstook place from the military units in transitfrom their place of formationin therear to the armies at thefront (one source estimated thatthe figure accounted for 18 to 20 percent of all desertions)."' Accordingto a surveyby theMoscow military authorities in 1919, 23 percent of deserters questioned had run away because their unit was due to go to thefront, while 44 percent had desertedbecause theirunit was close to - or passingby - theirhome village.'36 The numberof soldierslost from any one echelonen route to thefront varied,on average,between 10 and 20 per cent,but at timesthe figurecrept up to50 per cent, 70 percent and sometimes even higher, ifthe men were badly fed and supervisedduring the journey.1" Fewersoldiers deserted from the front-line units - a number,in all, representingperhaps 5 to 7 per centof the totalnumber of desertionsfrom the Red Army."38Some came under the category of "malicious"deserters, since they would not return voluntarily tothe ranks,and ifarrested, were likely to runoff again, perhaps joining one of themany "Green" bands which roamed the woods, living frombanditry.139 Panic flight from the battlefield to therear or (less likely)to theenemy probably accounted for the majority of those desertingfrom the front-line units, especially during a general retreat. "The nativesof districts being abandoned", explained one of the Red Army'stop commanders,"desert in orderto remainnear their homes.Thus, during an offensive the advancing party is continuously strengthened,while the retreatingparty is continuouslyweak- ened".140 134 For figureson the locationof armyrecruits relative to theirplace of birth,see Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 246. 135Ibid., p. 124. 136Molodtsygin, Raboche-krest'ianskii soiuz, p. 141. 137TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 184, 1. 34; d. 198, 11.16, 22, 24, 38, 103-4,124; d. 199,11.28-9; d. 422,1. 21; op. 4, d. 281,11.29, 65; d. 282,11.19-21; Olikov, Dezertirstvo, pp. 30-1; White, Growthof the Red Army,p. 102; Movchin, Komplektovanie,p. 117. 138 Movchin,Komplektovanie, p. 124. 139 In all, fiftythousand Red Armydeserters were said to have desertedmore than once betweenJune 1919 and June1920: ibid., p. 137. 140M. N. Tukhachevskii,Izbrannye proizvedeniia [Collected Works], i (Moscow, 1964), pp. 41-2.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 203 One ofthe main causes of desertion from the front-line units - in theWhite as wellas theRed Army- was thepoor training and preparationgiven to reinforcementsbefore being despatched to the front.4"'The lack of facilitiesand personnelto organizemilitary trainingin therear, and theconstant demand for reinforcements, meantthat units were sent to the front often with no morethan a few daystraining (and increasingly without any training at all).142 By the summerof 1919, only 800,000 recruits had been trained out of a total Red Armyforce of 2,177,000(37 per cent).Thereafter spiralling desertionand demands for reinforcements dashed all hopesof a fully trainedarmy.143 In politicalterms, most of thereinforcements were also poorly equipped.Few hadanything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom- theywere fighting. There was littleparty agitation in the unitsaccording to mostreports, and whattook place was all too quicklybroken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at whichit was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officersand politicalcommissars, in therevolutionary spirit of the earlypartisan detachments.'"44 Not surprisingly,the front-line units couldbe severelyweakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latterwere taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry washostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd ArtilleryBrigade of the23rd Division (9th Army), at thecore of whichstood a Communistbrigade and a numberof volunteer workers.Having suffered heavy losses in August1919, it wasreinforced bylocal peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom wereinfected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack,two hundred of thepeasant conscripts broke off from the mainforce, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to theenemy. The resultwas furtherlosses, and a collapsein the moraleof the restof the troops,necessitating the break-upand reformationofthe whole brigade.'45 Mass desertionfrom the Red Armywas a directexpression of generalpeasant protest against the Bolsheviks. The struggleagainst desertionwas the struggle to win the active support of the peasantry,

'41On the Whites,see Lehovich, Whiteagainst Red, p. 358. 142 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 184, 11.4, 8-9; Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, p. 482, ii, p. 66; Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 65, 111-15;White, Growth of the Red Army,p. 118. 143Movchin, Komplektovanie, pp. 64-5, 202. '" TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 184, 11.3, 6-7, 34. 145TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 449, 1. 68.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 204 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 thesilent majority of the Russian population. To wagethat struggle byadministrative means alone was obviously futile. Only a verysmall numberof deserters- no doubtthe most hardened, anti-Soviet types- were shot. (See Table 5.) Trotsky'sinfamous order of November1918 to execute all deserters on the spot was a propaganda exerciseat a timewhen there was no realapparatus to dealwith the problem,and it was not - and nevercould have been - carried out: therewere simply too many deserters to shoot.146By thesame token,only the most dangerous from the category of "malicious" deserterswere brought before the courts, sent into penal units (shtraf- nyechasti) or imprisoned(the prospect of imprisonment, safe from thedangers of war, would have encouraged many more to desert!). The greatmajority of deserters (those registered as "weak-willed") werehanded back to themilitary authorities, and formed into units fortransfer to one ofthe rear armies or directlyto thefront. Even thoseregistered as "malicious"deserters were returned to theranks whenthe demand for reinforcements became desperate. On 20 Au- gust1920 the general staff (Vseroglavshtab) ordered that only "the veryworst of the malicious" deserters should be formallypunished, while"as manyas possiblewho could feasibly return to thearmy" shouldbe putinto reserve units.147 The practice of returning deserters to theiroriginal unit - usuallywith a blackarm-band sewn on to theiruniforms to setthem apart from the other soldiers - hadbeen popularin 1919,but it was phased out at the beginning of 1920, since itantagonized the rest of the soldiers, who were known to beat up or evenkill former deserters.148 Equallyunsuccessful were the purely punitive measures increas- inglyadopted by the military authorities, especially in areasclose to thefront: confiscating property and land allotmentsfrom anyone suspectedof concealing deserters; taking as hostagesthe relatives or fellow-villagersof deserters; occupying the villages thought to be strongholdsofdeserters; imposing fines on them; shooting the village leaders;or even settingfire to thevillages. Such measuresrarely had theintended effect, since they were bound to strengthenthe oppositionof not only the deserters, but also thewhole of the rural population.Wherever these measures were adopted, the "Greens" invariablygrew in strength.They often united with the peasants, embitteredby the grain requisitionings and other Bolshevik policies,

'6 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, i, pp. 487-8. 117TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 4, d. 282,1. 10. 148TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 449, 1. 68.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TABLE 5 MEASURESTAKEN AGAINSTDESERTION FROM THE RED ARMY*

Rejecteddeserters sent to Rejecteddeserters sentenced by court

Own Reserve VoenkomUnit assigned Court To penal To To be Condition- 1919 unit unit to front unit prison shot ally June 38,000 65,000 52,000 18,000 7,000 12,000 1,300 70 760 July 1,000 159,000 38,000 32,000 6,000 8,000 900 75 550 August 4,000 177,000 17,000 118,000 6,000 4,000 354 53 521 September 6,000 190,000 24,000 75,000 7,000 6,000 950 100 320 October 6,000 131,000 29,000 29,000 5,000 8,000 1,302 188 911 November 7,000 137,000 13,000 4,000 3,000 4,000 378 38 162 December 4,000 123,000 19,000 10,000 6,000 13,000 750 88 888 Total 66,000 982,000 192,000 286,000 40,000 55,000 5,934 612 4,112 * Source: Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 140, 146.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 206 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 to turntheir localities into "no-go" areas. Railwaysand linesof communicationwere destroyed, local Communists and Soviet officials wereterrorized, and guerrilla attacks were launched on passingunits ofthe Red Army.'49Much moreeffective in thestruggle against desertionwas the introductionof a wholeseries of politicaland agitationalmeasures. The establishment ofCommittees for the Strug- gle againstDesertion at thevolost' level - and theirmerger at all levelswith the Voenkoms- broughtthe punitivepower of the statecloser to therural strongholds of desertion.5`0Raids on Soviet institutions,railway stations, factories, timber-felling teams and other economicorgans in competitionwith the army for manpower pro- ducedmuch the same effect, and flushedout thousands of hidden deserters."'As the numberof deserterssurrendering voluntarily declinedduring 1919-20, the importance of suchraids increased. (See Table4.) Propagandaand other means of moral persuasion were also knownto be effective,particularly the show-trials of captured deserters,and the encouragement ofloyal Red Army soldiers to write homeappealing to theirfellow-villagers notto help deserters.152 But themost successful means of combatting desertion were the amnesty weeks,the biggest of which was calledon 3-9June 1919. As many as 98,000deserters returned voluntarily tothe Red Army during that weekin theknowledge that no punitivemeasures would be taken againstthem. During the next week, while the amnesty was extended, thefigure rose to 132,000.153It is fromthis moment that deserters beganto returnto theRed Armyin massivewaves. (See Table4.) The sharpincrease in the number of deserters returning tothe Red Armyduring the summerof 1919was also explainedby another factor- onewhich says a greatdeal about the nature of the civil war and whythe Bolsheviks won it. In May and June1919 on thesouthern front the Red Armyhad beendesperately short of recruits:the numbers lost daily through desertion,disease and battle far outstripped the number of reinforce- mentsarriving at thefront. On 6 Julythe Command of the Southern Frontsent the last of a longseries of urgent telegrams to Trotskyand

149 Figes, PeasantRussia, pp. 319-20; Olikov,Dezertirstvo, pp. 53, 61-2; Movchin, Komplektovanie,p. 142. Detailed accountsof the propertyand finesexacted from villagesare in TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 198; op. 4, dd. 281, 282. 150Olikov, Dezertirstvo,pp. 17-24. '51TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 580, 1. 21; op. 4, d. 281, 11.12, 15, 57, 66-7; d. 282, 1. 9; Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 142-4. 152 Olikov,Dezertirstvo, p. 59; TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 199, 1. 12. 153Olikov, Dezertirstvo, pp. 27, 42.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 207 Lenindemanding the immediate mobilization of several age groups (including1901) in the military districts ofKharkov and Orel, situated immediatelyon thefront. It wasclaimed that "four of our divisions are missing80 per centto 90 per centof theirmen, horses and carts".154These shortages were largely to blame for the White advance towardsMoscow during June and July - promptingLenin's famous circularof 9 July,"All Out forthe Fightagainst Denikin!", in whichhe calledfor the Soviet Republic to be turnedinto a "single militarycamp"."' Yetit was precisely this threat of a Whitevictory thatgalvanized thousands of peasants,previously registered as deserters,to return to the Red Army between July and September 1919. (See Table 4.) In fact,so manydeserters returned during these monthsthat a seriousshortage of riflesand uniformsresulted."56 The Commandof theSouthern Front dropped its demand for the mobilizationof more recruits, and beganto complaininstead about chronicmaterial shortages. A telegramto Leninsent from Orel on 22 Julycomplained that: "because of the enormousnumbers of desertersreturning toour ranks, all the reserve units of Orel province are completelyoverfilled . . . New recruitsare arrivingevery day. The supplysituation is critical.Bread shortages in Mtsenskhave resultedin rebellions,with the soldiersbreaking into private houses".'"1 Despite such problems, the massive influx of these former desertersgave the Red Armythe numerical strength to launcha successfulcounter-offensive during the autumn and winter of 1919. Pushedsouth by theReds, and constantlyattacked in therear by Makhno'sUkrainian peasant guerrillas, Denikin's army retreated deepinto the Kuban, and finally fled for the Crimea, where in 1920 theWhites made their last stand under Wrangel.'58 Manyof the deserters who returned to the Red Army during these monthscalled themselves "volunteers", ready to fightagainst the '54 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 11.82, 89-90. Similarestimates of the situation on the southernfront by the militarycommand may be foundin TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 525, 11.118-19. "'55Lenin, CollectedWorks, xxix, pp. 436-55. The importanceof the Red Army's "crisisof reinforcements" has been neglectedby Western historians seeking to explain the Whites' advance on the southernfront during this period. See, for example, Mawdsley,Russian Civil War, pp. 166-77. '56 Trotsky,How theRevolution Armed, ii, pp. 315, 361; Movchin,Komplektovanie, pp. 111, 122. 157 TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 3, d. 529, 1. 111. '58Again, the influxof formerdeserters into the Red Armyduring the summerof 1919 has been overlookedby Westernhistorians seeking to explain the Bolshevik victoryagainst Denikin. See, forexample, Mawdsley, Russian Civil War,pp. 202-15; Kenez, Civil War in SouthRussia.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 208 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 129 Whitesin defenceof theland gained from the gentry in 1917-18. Thisexplains why so manyof them came from the military districts ofOrel and Moscow, the central agricultural regions of Russia, where theWhites had directed the brunt of their attack during the summer of1919. No lessthan 230,000 deserters from these two districts alone returnedto theRed Armyduring July and August - morethan 40 percent of the total for the whole of the Soviet Republic.'59 These wereregions in whichthe peasantry had made substantial land gains fromthe gentry during the revolution. In Orelprovince, for example, the amountof land in peasantuse had increasedby 28 per cent between1917-19, mainly as a resultof the seizureof theprivate estates,which before the revolution had occupied 23.5 per cent of all theagricultural land in the province. In thefive provinces of Moscow militarydistrict (Kaluga, Tula, Riazan',Tambov and Moscow) the amountof land in peasantuse had increasedby as muchas 35 per centsince 1917. Before the revolution, private landowners had owned 28 per centof all theagricultural land in theseprovinces.160 The threatof a Whitevictory signalled to thepeasants of these regions theprospect of losing their newly acquired land to the gentry squires, whosesons dominatedthe officer corps of Denikin'sarmy. Such fearswere played on by theBolsheviks, whose propaganda in the countrysidepresented the Red Armyas the sole protectorof the peasantry'sland gains against the White gentry counter-revolution. The factthat so manypeasants of centralRussia ralliedto the Red Armyon thetwo occasions when the Whites really threatened Moscow- firston theVolga in 1918;and thenin theOrel region in 1919- suggeststhat such propaganda was not without effect. The defeatof theWhites was determined,above all, bytheir failure to winover the peasantry of central Russia, because of their opposition to theland redistribution of 1917-18. The victoryof the Bolsheviks was assuredby theirability to call on thepeasants of thesesame regionswhenever the Whites threatened tobreak through from their basesin theperiphery. The centralRussian peasants were bitterly opposedto theBolshevik policies of War Communism, but the fact thatthey would take up armsin defenceof Sovietpower, when -

is9TsGAOR, f. 130,op. 3, d. 198,11. 18, 26, 33, 36. 160 V. P. Danilov,"Pereraspredelenie zemel'nogo fonda Rossii v rezul'tatevelikoi oktiabr'skoirevoliutsii" [The Redistribution ofRussia's Land Fund as a Resultof the OctoberRevolution], in Leninskiidekret o zemlev deistvii:sbornik statei [The Appli- cationof Lenin's Decree on theLand: A Collectionof Articles] (Moscow, 1979), pp. 284-7.

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 209 and onlywhen - itwas threatenedby the Whites, proved decisive in determiningthe outcome of the civil war.

Of all theproblems confronting the two civil war armies, the mass mobilizationof the Russian peasantry proved the most difficult, and themost decisive in militaryterms. The supportof the peasantry was essentialto the conduct of all military campaigns in Russia. Any mass armywould have to be madeup largelyof peasants. It wouldhave to be fedand even transported by them. Yet the vast majority of the Russianpeasantry, having consolidated its hold on the land and villageaffairs during 1917-18, proved reluctant to becomeinvolved infighting a civil war, a "warbetween brothers". Neither the Whites northe Reds had anyreal political authority in thecountryside to securethe mass mobilization of thepeasantry. The Whiteleaders weretoo closely associated with the old landowning class to have any lastinginfluence over the peasantry. The Tsaristepaulettes worn by theWhite officers were associated by the peasants with the old regime and the disciplineof the imperialarmy, both of whichthey had rejectedin 1917.The Reds, on theother hand, lacked a reliable politicalor military infrastructure inthe countryside. They also lacked theactive support of the rural population, although, as wehave seen, whenthe peasants sensed the imminent threat of a Whitevictory, theywould rally behind the Reds. The peasants'mistrust of the Bolsheviks,itwould seem, was not as powerful,and certainly not as ingrained,as theirhatred and fearof the old landedorder. The Red Army,with its hold over the densely populated agricul- turalregions of central Russia, succeeded in mobilizing more peasants thanthe Whites. In thisfact, as Trotskyacknowledged, was rooted thecause of its victoryduring the civil war. Yet becausethe Red Armyconsisted mainly of peasants,it was moresusceptible to the seasonalfluctuations ofpeasant life when compared with the White armies,which remained largely non-peasant in theircomposition. In the summerpeak seasonof the agriculturalyear the Red Army sufferedfrom high rates of desertion, as foodstocks ran down and the peasantrecruits ran offto theirfarms in preparationfor the harvest.After the harvest, the Red Armysuffered less from either problem.The food-supply situation improved and desertion declined. Indeedmany peasants, having deserted from the Red Armybefore theharvest, voluntarily returned to it for the winter low season of the

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 210 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER129 agriculturalyear. Perhaps it is notcoincidental that the Red Army tendedto sufferits worst setbacks in thespring and early summer, butusually made advances in theperiod immediately following the harvest. Atthe centre of the Red Army's"peasant problem" lay the issues ofmass conscription, supply and desertion. The Bolsheviks' decision at theend of 1918 to go foran extensivesystem of mass mobilization createdenormous problems of supplyand trainingwithin the Red Army.Material conditions deteriorated, discipline broke down and desertionincreased, so that untrained reinforcements hadincreasingly tobe sentinto the front-line units. The military system, in short, was beingoverloaded. Mass desertionwas theinevitable outcome of an armygrowing too fastfor the economyto supplyit withall the necessarymeans. The largesize of the army in turn dictated the need to maintainthe system of War Communism.Large sectors of the economyhad to be militarizedin orderto keep afloat an armyfull of holes. The policyof massmobilization was decidedin theautumn of 1918.Lenin's call at thattime for an armyof three million men was a panicresponse to the threatof Alliedintervention, a threat he almostcertainly overestimated. But does thismean that the Red Armywas largerthan necessary, or thata smallerarmy would have beenmore effective as a fightingforce? There is no doubtthat the relianceof the Red Armyon largenumbers of peasant recruits, and theconsequent problems of supply and training, made it muchless effectivethan the White armies. To overcomethe latter, the Red Armyhad to outnumber them in soldiersby at least four to one, and sometimesby as manyas tenor evenfifteen to one. It is logicalto supposethat after the defeat of Kolchak, ludenich and Denikin,at thebeginning of 1920,the Red Armycould have been reduced in size withoutposing a dangerto defenceinterests. Such reductions mighteven have increasedthe Red Army'seffectiveness. As A. Potiaev,a memberof the MilitaryRevolutionary Council of the WesternFront, recommended to Leninin a memowritten on 18 December1919: "In theinterests ofincreasing the might and combat- fitnessof the Red Army it is a thousandtimes more expedient to have no morethan a millionRed Armymen in all, butwell-fed, clothed and shodones, rather than three million half-starved, half-naked, half-shodones".'6' In theautumn of 1918, however, when the White

161The Trotsky Papers, ed. J.M. Meijer,2 vols.(The Hague,1964-71), i, p. 797

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:56:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION 1918-1920 211 armieswere growing in strength, and the threat of large-scale foreign interventionappeared imminent, the Bolsheviks probably had no real alternativeto themass mobilization of the peasantry, in spiteof the far-reachingpolitical and economicconsequences which this policy was to havefor the Red Armyand theSoviet system. TrinityCollege, Cambridge OrlandoFiges

Past and PresentConference on PECULIAR SUBSTANCES: ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS

to be heldat The GeologicalSociety, BurlingtonHouse, Piccadilly,London W1 Tuesday,2 July1991

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