Adoring talk about “tyranny”, “repression” of Stalin and other mistakes allegedly made by him during his leadership of our country, liberal historians and other representatives of the domestic “democratic community” for some reason very carefully bypass the most interesting question: “Who could become an alternative to him as head of the young Country of Soviets and what would this lead to? Want to know the real reason for this?
The truth is that the most likely "alternative" to Stalin after Lenin's death was Leon Trotsky. By the way, his authority, "weight" and popularity among representatives of the party-Soviet leadership were initially much higher than that of the modest hard worker Stalin. A brilliant orator, tribune and publicist, the founder of the Red Army, who really played a huge role in the victory of the Reds in the Civil War, Trotsky was seen as the best successor for the deceased "leader of the world proletariat" - but he never became one. Why? Let's try to figure it out.
Lev Davidovich was born, raised and joined the revolutionary affairs on the territory of modern Ukraine. By the way, the pseudonym "Trotsky" is, in fact … the surname of the warden of the Odessa prison, in which young Leva was serving his first "imprisonment"! Such is the irony of fate. Twice into Siberian exile (the second sentence was a life sentence) and twice fleeing from it, Trotsky fought against tsarism most of the time from very attractive places - London and Paris, Geneva and Vienna. He also felt quite well in Spain and the United States, from where, by the way, he left in 1917 to "make a revolution" to Petrograd.
It was not for nothing that Trotsky was called the "demon of revolution" - to stand out with such a nickname among people who were by no means meek lambs and shed rivers of blood right and left, one had to try very hard. Trotsky did not recognize half-tones, half-measures and compromises in anything. His fanaticism and cruelty were absolutely outrageous - even for the Bolsheviks and their allies in the revolution. Trotsky's contribution to the fact that from the scattered semi-partisan, semi-bandit "revolutionary detachments", yesterday's military tsarist army and ideological communists, the most combat-ready likeness of the Armed Forces was created, which ultimately managed to defeat both the White movement and foreign invaders, is enormous and undeniable. However, by what methods was this achieved?
The introduction of detachments on the Civilian fronts, the raids on deserters and the burning of the houses of those who sheltered them - this is Trotsky. The appearance in the army of the institute of commissars, who had the right not only to dismiss, but also to shoot "ideologically unstable" commanders - he was. Executions in the units of every tenth that left their positions, by lot (which completely copied the ancient Roman decimation) is also Trotsky's "merit".
His principle was simple: “You cannot build an army without repression, you cannot lead masses of people to death without having a command of the death penalty in your arsenal …” By similar methods, the “demon of revolution” preferred to act always and everywhere: “If you shoot, then indiscriminately, if in the camps - to put them all, regardless of the attitude to specific orders and actions of the authorities, if the hostages - no matter who: women, children, old people, the main thing is that they were listed in the "counter-revolutionary department."
His work "Terrorism and Communism" was published when the main battles and battles of the Civil had already died down - in 1920. In it, Trotsky cruelly ridiculed the very idea of "human rights", equating them with "priestly tales" and "Christian spiritualism." The theory of the need for the most severe terror during the formation of the "proletarian dictatorship" is his ideological legacy. And Trotsky put it into practice with his inherent devilish energy and fanaticism. The question is - what did this ultimately lead to …
In the same 1920, Trotsky became the leader of the so-called "1st Labor Army" - a formation generated by the "War Communist" regime, the basis of which was made up of the Red units freed after the defeat of Kolchak. Oh, they did it … According to various estimates, from 10 to 23% of this fraternity was engaged in really useful activities, and the "labor desertion" from the "labor army" took on a truly phantasmagoric scale. Trotsky immediately decided to fight him with the most severe punishments and the creation of "penalty teams." Did you think that penal battalions were Stalin's idea? Haha …
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Having headed a little later the People's Commissariat of Railways, the "demon of revolution" immediately turned it into an absolute hell. Complete militarization, "revvoengeldortribunals", punishing "simulators and truants" by brutal methods and again … detachments! Only this time they did not even drive the railroad workers to work, but were engaged in taking away from the train passengers all the products "transported in excess of the established norms." And the railway workers, by the way, among other things, completely deprived of vacations and days off "until further notice", at that very time fled from the NKPS, so that only the heels sparkled.
Agriculture? Well, Trotsky was Trotsky here too … "As long as we have a shortage of grain, the peasant will have to give the Soviet economy a tax in kind in the form of bread on pain of merciless reprisals …" By the way, another quote on the same occasion: "What is our Russian peasant sick with is herd, lack of personality …" In spite of all the declarations of their liberation, Trotsky, in general, did not consider Russian peasants to be people.
Now let's imagine for a second that this very "demon" would be at the head of the Soviet Union. I will not assert anything, but, in my opinion, all the "excesses" and the "repression" of Stalin's times mourned by the democrats many times would look like childish babble in comparison with what Trotsky would have turned the country into. Most likely, it would be the worst hybrid of a military camp with a concentration camp. However, these reflections are negated by the extremely high probability that with such a "ruler" the USSR simply would not exist. Why?
The idea of a fix, the highest goal and dream of Leon Trotsky was not Soviet Russia, but not less than the World Revolution! The conclusion by him in the role of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the most difficult and shameful Brest Peace, which his contemporaries called "obscene" - is the best proof of this. And the point is not that, as many wrote then, Lenin, Trotsky and their other associates "grabbed huge bribes from the Germans for getting out of the war." The Bolsheviks may have taken money from "foreign sponsors" (and who of the revolutionaries does not do that!), But exclusively - "for the cause of the revolution", and not for personal gain. And giving the vast territories of the Russian Empire to the Teutons, the same Trotsky quite sincerely believed that it was he who left his opponents in the fools - all the same, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires were about to be swept away by the world proletarian revolution!
In the same way, he continued to think in the future - that's what is scary! At a time when Stalin and his comrades-in-arms in the 1920s completely soberly assessed the prospects of a "world conflagration" as zero and called for the construction of socialism in the USSR, when, above all, they were concerned with preparing the country for absolutely inevitable aggression against it, Trotsky, with his comrades continued to shout in a frenzy about the need to "carry the revolution with bayonets" - to Europe, and further, throughout the world. The only campaign of this kind - against the "landlord Poland", ended for the Red Army in the most shameful way. Lying in complete devastation, the country was no longer ready for any war at all, without industry, infrastructure, and, by and large, and an efficient army.
Trotsky and his followers categorically refused to admit this. In the completely fruitless and hopeless "revolutionary" adventures of Trotsky's favorite brainchild - the Comintern (the Communist International, created just to transform the whole world into a "land-locked republic of Soviets"), huge funds were invested over and over again, torn away from starving Soviet Russia. Moreover, attempts to organize here and there another revolutionary mess, only miraculously did not end with the declaration of war by the USSR by all European countries, already grinning at it. But Trotsky just dreamed of such an outcome, he was striving for it!
It was not for nothing that the well-known song of the Civil War that the Red Army was the strongest was then performed not with our usual chorus, but with the words: "Comrade Trotsky will lead us into the last battle with the naval detachment!" He would have led, with joy. But this battle would inevitably be the last for our country. Stalin's struggle with Trotsky and the Trotskyists was not at all the embodiment of his "love for power," as some people continue to stubbornly prove to this day. It was a confrontation with madmen who were determined to commit suicide - and at the same time drag an entire huge country into oblivion! The undoubted merit of the Generalissimo is that he, at least, managed (albeit by the most severe, even cruel methods) to prepare the USSR for the Great Patriotic War enough to win it.
In any case, Trotsky certainly could not have been the best option and even the "lesser evil" for Soviet Russia and the USSR. When criticizing one or another leader of the country, it is always worthwhile, first of all, to ask the question of what would await her if his opponent were in the place of the criticized. By the way, the current leader of Russia should also think about it for those who like to wash the bones.
Author: Alexander Necropny