«Разногласие есть и вынесено в печать»: дискуссия по военному вопросу в советской России во второй половине 1918 – начале 1919 г.
“There is a Disagreement and it has found expression in the Press ”: Discussion of the Military Question in Soviet Russia in the second half of 1918 –

Summary/Abstract: This article is based on published and unpublished sources and considers the debate on the military question in the run up to the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) (1919) through the prism of L. D. Trotsky’s “terror” against Bolsheviks. The first stage of the debate has received little attention from historians, although it is crucial to understanding the essence not only of the “military opposition“, but also the internal party struggle in the second half of 1918 - beginning of 1919. In the summer of 1918 a conflict started between two party factions in the Red Army: military experts from the the Red Army’s central administration and “Slayers-Bolsheviks” who felt the army did not need former officers. At the head of the first of these groups stood defense minister, L. D. Trotsky, at the head of the second - Tsaritsyn proconsul, I. V. Stalin. The first was supported by the chairman of VtsIK Y. M. Sverdlov, the second was eventually supported by the leader of the world revolution, the head of the Soviet government, V. I. Lenin (all four of the above were members and leaders of the Bolshevik Central Committee). On 29 July 1918 at the suggestion of Trotsky and Sverdlov the Bolshevik Central Committee approved a draft decree on measures to strengthen the Eastern Front, which marked the beginning of executions for faltering Bolsheviks. However this document was quickly and firmly forgotten by both it’s authors. This circumstance further undermined Trotsky’s diminishing position in the Bolshevik Party. Concerns about undermining the revolutionary gains made by the army since the revolution were brought up in the article of the old Bolshevik T. S. Hvesin. L. D. Trotsky was untimely silent. The result is obvious: the head of the military department had to defend his position at the Eighth Congress of the RCP(b).

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