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Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism
By: Long Knives 88 Date: February 6, 2016, 4:33 pm
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’Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don’t shoot up too
high, so in the practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory
must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil –
experience.’
Clausewitz, On War (The Theory of Strategy) [This translation is
taken from the English translation of Clausewitz’s book by
Michael Howard and Peter Paret (1976), p.61.]
I. Our Method Of Orientation
A quickening of military thought and a heightening of interest
in theory is unquestionably to be observed in the Red Army. For
more than three years we fought and built under fire, and then
we demobilised, and distributed the troops in quarters. This
process still remains unfinished to this day, but the army has
already approached a higher degree of organisational
definiteness and a certain stability. Within it is felt a
growing and increasing need to look back over the road already
travelled, to assess the results and to draw the most necessary
theoretical and practical conclusions, so as to be better
prepared for the morrow.
And what will the morrow bring? New eruptions of civil war, fed
from without? Or an open attack upon us by bourgeois states?
Which ones? How should we prepare to resist? All these questions
require an orientation on the planes of international policy,
internal policy and military policy. The situation is constantly
changing and, consequently, the orientation changes, too – not
in principle but in practice. Up to now we have coped
successfully with the military tasks imposed upon us by the
international and internal situation of Soviet Russia. Our
orientation proved to be more correct, more far-sighted and
profound, than that of the mightiest of the imperialist powers,
which sought, one alter the other or together, to bring us down,
but burnt their fingers in the attempt. Our superiority lies in
our possession of an irreplaceable scientific method of
orientation – Marxism. It is a powerful and at the same time
very subtle instrument – using it does not come easy, one has to
learn how to use it. Our Party’s past has taught us through long
and hard experience how to apply the methods of Marxism to the
most complex combination of factors and forces during this
historical epoch of sharp breaks. We use the instrument of
Marxism also to define the basis for our constructive work in
the military sphere,
It is quite otherwise with our enemies. While in the sphere of
production technique the advanced bourgeoisie has banished
stagnation, routinism and superstition, and has sought to build
each enterprise on the precise foundations of scientific method,
in the sphere of social orientation the bourgeoisie has proved
impotent, because of its class position, to rise to the heights
of scientific method. Our class enemies are empiricists, that
is, they operate from one case to the next, guided not by the
analysis of historical development but by practical experience,
routine, coup d’oeil and flair.
Assuredly, the British imperialist caste has, on the basis of
empiricism, provided an example of far-flung greedy usurpation,
triumphant far-sightedness and class firmness. Not for nothing
has it been said of the British imperialists that they think in
terms of centuries and continents. This habit of weighing and
appraising practically the most important factors and forces has
been acquired by the British ruling caste thanks to the
superiority of its position, on its island vantage-point, and
under the conditions of a comparatively slow and planned
accumulation of capitalist power.
The parliamentary methods of personal combinations, bribery,
rhetoric and fraud, and the colonial methods of bloody
repression, hypocrisy and every form of vileness have entered
equally into the rich arsenal of the ruling clique of the
greatest of empires. The experience of the struggle of British
reaction against the Great French Revolution refined the methods
of British imperialism, made it more flexible, armed it in a
variety of ways, and, consequently, rendered it more secure
against historical surprises.
Nevertheless, the potent class dexterity of the world-ruling
British bourgeoisie is proving inadequate – and more and more so
as time goes by – to the present epoch of volcanic upheavals in
the bourgeois regime. While they tack and veer with great skill,
the British empiricists of the epoch of decline – whose finished
expression is Lloyd George – will inescapably break their necks.
German imperialism rose up as the antipode of British
imperialism. The feverish development of German capitalism
provided the ruling classes of Germany with the opportunity to
accumulate a great deal more in material and technical values
than in habits of international and military-political
orientation. German imperialism appeared in the world arena as
an upstart, went too far, slipped up and was smashed to pieces.
And yet, not so long ago, at Brest-Litovsk, the representatives
of German imperialism looked upon us as visionaries who had been
accidentally and temporarily thrust to the top.
The art of all-sided orientation has been learnt by our Party,
step by step, from the first underground circles through all the
subsequent development, with its interminable theoretical
discussions, practical attempts and failures, advances and
retreats, tactical disputes and turns. Russian émigrés’ garrets
in London, Paris and Geneva turned out, in the final analysis,
to be obsrvatories of immense historical importance.
Revolutionary impatience became disciplined by scientific
analysis of the historical process. The will to action became
combined with self-control. Our Party learned to apply the
Marxist method by acting and thinking. And this method serves
our Party in good stead today ...
While it can be said of the more far-sighted empiricists of
British imperialism that they have a keyring with a considerable
choice of keys, good for many typical historical situations, we
hold in our hands a universal key which enables us to orientate
ourselves correctly in all situations. And while the entire
supply of keys inherited by Lloyd George, Churchill and the
others is obviously no good for opening a way out of the
revolutionary epoch, our Marxist key is predestined above all to
serve this purpose. We are not afraid to speak aloud about this,
our greatest advantage over our adversaries, for it is beyond
their power to acquire our Marxist key for themselves, or to
counterfeit it.
We foresaw the inevitability of the imperialist war, and the
prologue to the epoch of proletarian revolution. From this
standpoint we then followed the course of the war, the methods
used in it, the shift in the groupings of class forces, and on
the basis of these observations there took shape, much more
directly, the ‘doctrine’ – to employ an elevated style – of the
Soviet system and the Red Army. From scientific prediction of
the further course of development we gained unconquerable
confidence that history was working for us. This optimistic
confidence has been and remains the foundation of all our
activity.
Marxism does not supply ready recipes. Least of all could it
provide them in the sphere of military construction. But here,
too, it gave us a method. For, if it is true that war is a
continuation of politics, only by other means, then it follows
that an army is the continuation and culmination of the entire
social and state organisation, but with the bayonet to the fore.
We approached military questions with, as our starting-point,
not any ‘military doctrine’, as a sum-total of dogmatic
postulates, but a Marxist analysis of the requirements for the
self-defence of the working class, which, having taken power,
had to arm itself, disarm the bourgeoisie, fight to maintain
power, lead the peasants against the landlords, prevent the
kulak democracy from arming the peasants against the workers’
state, create for itself a reliable body of commanders, and so
on.
In building the Red Army we utilised Red-Guard detachments, and
the old regulations, and peasant atamans, and former Tsarist
generals; and this, of course, might be described as the absence
of ‘unified doctrine’ in the sphere of the formation of the army
and its commanding personnel. But such an appraisal would be
pedantically banal. We certainly did not take any dogmatic
‘doctrine’ as our point of departure. We actually created the
army out of that historical material which was ready to hand,
unifying all this work from the standpoint of a workers’ state
fighting to preserve, entrench and extend itself. Those who
can’t get along without the metaphysically tainted word
‘doctrine’ might say that, in creating the Red Army, an armed
force on a new class basis, we thereby constructed a new
military doctrine, for, despite the diversity of practical means
and the changes in approach, there could not be, nor was there,
any place in our military constructuve work either for
empiricism devoid of ideas, or for subjective arbitrariness:
from beginning to end, the entire work was cemented by the unity
of a revolutionary class goal, by the unity of will directed
toward that goal and by the unity of the Marxist method of
orientation.
2. With A Doctrine Or Without One?
Attempts have been made, and frequently repeated, to give
proletarian ‘military doctrine’ priority over the actual work of
creating the Red Army. As far back as the end of 1917 the
absolute principle of manoeuvre was being counterposed to the
‘imperialist’ principle of positional warfare. The
organisational form of the army was to be subordinated to the
revolutionary strategy of manoeuvre: corps, divisions, even
brigades, were declared to be formations that were too
ponderous. The heralds of the proletarian ‘military doctrine’
proposed to reduce the entire armed force of the Republic to
individual composite detachments or regiments. In essence this
was the ideology of guerrilla-ism just slicked up a bit. On the
extreme ‘Left’ wing, guerrilla-ism was openly defended. A holy
war was proclaimed against the old regulations, because they
were the expression of an outlived military doctrine, and
against the new ones because they resembled the old ones too
closely. True, even at that time the supporters of the new
doctrine not only failed to provide a draft for new regulations,
they did not even present a single article submitting our
regulations to any kind of serious principled or practical
criticism. Our utilisation of officers of the old army,
especially in positions of command, was proclaimed to be
incompatible with the introduction of a revolutionary military
doctrine; and so on and so forth.
As a matter of fact, the noisy innovators were themselves wholly
captives of the old military doctrine. They merely tried to put
a minus sign wherever previously there was a plus. All their
independent thinking came down to just that. However, the actual
work of creating the armed force of the workers’ state proceeded
along a different path. We tried, especially in the beginning,
to make maximum possible use of the habits, usages, knowledge
and means retained from the past, and we were quite unconcerned
about the extent to which the new army would differ from the
old, in the formally organisational and technical sense, or, on
the contrary, would resemble it. We built the army out of the
human and technical material ready to hand, seeking always and
everywhere to ensure domination by the proletarian vanguard in
the organisation of the army, that is, in the army’s personnel,
in its administration, in its consciousness and in its feelings.
The institution of commissars is not some dogma of Marxism, nor
is it a necessary part of a proletarian ‘military doctrine’:
under certain conditions it was a necessary instrument of
proletarian supervision, leadership and political education in
the army, and for this reason it assumed enormous importance in
the life of the armed forces of the Soviet republic. We combined
the old commanding personnel with the new, and only in this way
did we achieve the needed result: the army proved capable of
fighting in the service of the working class. In its aims, in
the predominant class composition of its body of commanders and
commissars, in its spirit and in its entire political morale,
the Red Army differs radically from all the other armies in the
world and stands in hostile opposition to them. As it continues
to develop, the Red Army has become and is becoming more and
more similar to them in formally organisational and technical
respects. Mere exertions to say something new in this field will
not suffice.
The Red Army is the military expression of the proletarian
dictatorship. Those who require a more solemn formula might say
that the Red Army is the military embodiment of the ‘doctrine’
of the proletarian dictatorship – first, because the
dictatorship of the proletariat is ensured within the Red Army
itself, and, secondly, because the dictatorship of the
proletariat would be impossible without the Red Army.
The trouble is, though, that the awakening of interest in
military theory engendered at the outset a revival of certain
doctrinaire prejudices of the first period – prejudices which,
to be sure, have been given some new formulations, but which
have in no way been improved thereby. Certain perspicacious
innovators have suddenly discovered that we are living, or
rather not living, but vegetating without a military doctrine,
just like the King in Andersen’s story who went about without
any clothes on and didn’t know it. ‘It is necessary, at last, to
create the doctrine of the Red Army’, say some. Others join in
the song with: ‘We are going wrong where all practical questions
of military construction are concerned because we have not yet
solved the basic problems of military doctrine. What is the Red
Army? What are the historical tasks before it? Will it wage
defensive or offensive revolutionary wars?’ – and so on and so
forth.
It emerges that we created the Red Army, and, moreover, a
victorious Red Army, but we failed to give it a military
doctrine. So this army goes on living in a state of perplexity.
To the direct question: what should this Red Army doctrine be?
we get the answer: it must comprise the sumtotal of the
principles of the structure, education and utilisation of our
armed forces. But this answer is purely formal. The Red Army of
today has its principles of ‘structure, education and
utilisation’. What we need to know is, what kind of doctrine do
we lack? That is, what is the content of these new principles
which have to enter into the programme for building the army?
And it is just here that the most confused muddling begins. One
individual makes the sensational discovery that the Red Army is
a class army, the army of the proletarian dictatorship. Another
adds to this that, inasmuch as the Red Army is a revolutionary
and international army, it must be an offensive army. A third
proposes, with a view to this offensiveness, that we pay special
attention to cavalry and aircraft. Finally, a fourth proposes
that we do not forget about the use of Makhno’s tachanki. Around
the world in a tachanka – there’s a doctrine for the Red Army.
It must be said, however, that, in these discoveries, some
grains of sensible thought – not new, but correct – are
smothered beneath the husks of verbiage.
3. What Is A Military Doctrine?
Let us not seek for general logical definitions, because these
will hardly, by themselves, get us out of the difficulty. [2]
Let us rather approach the question historically. According to
the old view, the foundations of military science are eternal
and common to all ages and peoples. But in their concrete
refraction these eternal truths assume a national character.
Hence we get a German military doctrine, a French one, a Russian
one, and so on. If, however, we check the inventory of eternal
truths of military science, we obtain not much more than a few
logical axioms and Euclidean postulates. Flanks must be
protected, means of communication and retreat must be secured,
the blow must be struck at the enemy’s least defended point,
etc. All these truths, in this all-embracing formulation, go far
beyond the limits of the art of war. The donkey that steals oats
from a torn sack (the enemy’s least defended point) and
vigilantly turns its crupper away from the side from which
danger may be expected to come, acts thus in accordance with the
eternal principles of military science. Yet it is unquestionable
that this donkey munching oats has never read Clausewitz, or
even Leer.
War, the subject of our discussion, is a social and historical
phenomenon which arises, develops, changes its forms and must
eventually disappear. For this reason alone war cannot have any
eternal laws. But the subject of war is man, who possesses
certain fixed anatomical and mental traits from which are
derived certain usages and habits. Man operates in a specific
and comparatively stable geographical setting. Thus, in all
wars, in all ages and among all peoples, there have obtained
certain common features, relatively stable but by no means
absolute. Based on these features, an art of war has developed
historically. Its methods and usages undergo change, together
with the social conditions which govern it (technology, class
structure, forms of state power).
The expression ‘national military doctrine’ implied a
comparatively stable but nevertheless temporary complex
(combination) of military calculations, methods, procedures,
habits, slogans, feelings, all corresponding to the structure of
the given society as a whole and, first and foremost, to the
character of its ruling class.
For example, what is Britain’s military doctrine? Into its
composition there obviously enters (or used to enter)
recognition of the need for maritime hegemony, together with a
negative attitude toward a standing land army and toward
conscription for military service – or, more precisely,
recognition of the need for Britain to have a navy stronger than
the combined navies of the next two strongest powers, and, what
was made possible by that situation, the maintenance of a small
army of volunteers. Connected with this was the support of such
an order in Europe as would not allow any one land power to
obtain decisive preponderance on the Continent.
Undoubtedly, this British ‘doctrine’ used to be the most stable
of all military doctrines. Its stability and definiteness were
determined by the prolonged, planned, uninterrupted development
of Britain’s power, without any events and upheavals such as
would have radically altered the relation of forces in the world
(or in Europe, which, formerly, came to the same thing). Now,
however, this situation has been completely disrupted. Britain
dealt her own ‘doctrine’ the biggest blow when, during the war,
she was obliged to build her army on the basis of compulsory
military service. The ‘balance of power’ on the European
Continent has been upset. No-one has confidence in the stability
of the new relation of forces. The power of the United States
rules out the possibility of automatically maintaining any
longer the dominant position of the British navy. It is at
present too early to predict at the outcome of the Washington
Conference will be. But it is quite obvious that, since the
imperialist war, Britain’s ‘military doctrine’ has become
inadequate, bankrupt and quite worthless. It has not yet been
replaced by a new one. And it is very doubtful if there will
ever be a new one, for the epoch of military and revolutionary
upheavals and radical regroupments of world forces leaves very
narrow limits for military doctrine in the sense in which we
have defined it above with respect to Britain: a military
‘doctrine’ presupposes a relatively stable situation, foreign
and domestic.
If we turn to the countries on the continent of Europe, even in
the past epoch, we find that military doctrine assumes there a
far less definitive and stable character. What constituted, even
during the interval of time between the Franco-Prussian war of
1870-71 and the imperialist war of 1914, the content of the
military doctrine of France? Recognition that Germany was the
hereditary and irreconcilable enemy, the idea of revanche,
education of the army and the young generation in the spirit of
this idea, cultivation of an alliance with Russia, worship of
the military might of Tsardom, and, finally, maintenance, though
not very confidently, of the Bonapartist military tradition of
the bold offensive. The protracted era of armed peace, from 1871
to 1914, nevertheless invested France’s military-political
orientation with relative stability. But the purely military
elements of the French doctrine were very meagre. The war
submitted the doctrine of the offensive to a rigorous test.
After the first weeks, the French army dug itself into the
ground, and although the true-French generals and true-French
newspapers did not stop reiterating in the first period of the
war, that trench warfare was a base German invention not at all
in harmony with the heroic spirit of the French fighting man,
the entire war developed, nevertheless, as a positional struggle
of attrition. At the present time the doctrine of the pure
offensive, although it has been included in the new regulations,
is being, as we shall see, sharply opposed in France itself.
The military doctrine of post-Bismarck Germany was incomparably
more aggressive in essence, in line with the country’s policy,
but was much more cautious in its strategic formulations. ‘The
principles of strategy in no way transcend common sense’, was
the instruction given to Germany’s senior commanders. However,
the rapid growth of capitalist wealth and of the population
lifted the ruling circles, and above all the noble officer caste
of Germany to ever greater heights. Germany’s ruling classes
lacked experience in operating on a world scale: they failed to
take forces and resources into account, and gave their diplomacy
and strategy an ultra-aggressive character far removed from
‘common sense’. German militarism fell victim to its own
unbridled offensive spirit.
What follows from this? That the expression ‘national doctrine’
implied in the past a complex of stable guiding ideas in the
diplomatic and military-political spheres and of strategical
directives that were more or less bound up with these.
Furthermore, the so-called military doctrine – the formula for
the military orientation of the ruling class of a given country
in international circumstances – proved to be the more
definitive, the more definite, stable and planned was the
domestic and international position of that country, in the
course of its development.
The imperialist war and the resulting epoch of maximum
instabilty have in all spheres absolutely cut the ground from
under national military doctrines, and placed on the order of
the day the need for swiftly taking into account a changing
situation, with its new groupings and combinations and its
’unprincipled’ tacking and veering, under the sign of today’s
anxieties and alarms. The Washington Conference provides an
instructive picture in this connection. It is quite
incontestable that today, after the test to which the old
military doctrines have been subjected in the imperialist war,
not a single country has retained principles and ideas stable
enough to be designated a national military doctrine.
One might, it is true, venture to presume that national military
doctrines will take shape once again as soon as a new
relationship of forces becomes established in the world,
together with the position therein of each separate state. This
presupposes, however, that the revolutionary epoch of upheavals
will be liquidated, and succeeded by a new epoch of organic
development. But there is no ground for such a presupposition.
4. Commonplaces And Verbiage
It might seem that the struggle against Soviet Russia ought to
be a rather stable element in the ‘military doctrine’ of all
capitalist states in the present epoch. But even this is not the
case. The complexity of the world situation, the monstrous
criss-crossing of contradictory interests, and, primarily, the
unstable social basis of bourgeois governments exclude the
possibility of consistently carrying out even a single ‘military
doctrine’, namely, struggle against Soviet Russia. Or, to put it
more precisely, struggle against Soviet Russia changes its form
so frequently and proceeds in such zigzags that it would be
mortally dangerous for us to lull our vigilance with doctrinaire
phrases and ‘formulas’ concerning international relations. The
sole natural and correct ‘doctrine’ for us is: be on the alert
and keep both eyes open! It is impossible to give an
unconditional answer even when the question is posed in its
crudest form, namely: will our chief field of military activity
in the next few years be in the East or in the West? The world
situation is too complex. The general course of historical
devlopment is clear, but events do not keep to an order fixed in
advance, nor do they mature according to a set schedule. In
practice one must react not to ‘the course of development’ but
to facts, to events. It is not difficult to guess at historical
variants which would compel us to commit our forces
predominantly in the East, or, conversely, in the West, coming
to the aid of revolutions, waging a defensive war, or, on the
other hand, finding ourselves obliged to take the offensive.
Only the Marxist method of international orientation, of
calculating class forces in their combinations and shifts, can
enable us to find the appropriate solution in each concrete
case. It is not possible to invent a general formula that would
express the ‘essence’ of our military tasks in the coming
period.
One can, however, and this is not infrequently done, give the
concept of military doctrine a more concrete and restricted
content, as meaning those fundamental principles of purely
military affairs which regulate all aspects of military
organisation, tactics and strategy. In this sense it can be said
that the content of military regulations is determined directly
by military doctrine. But what kind of principles are these?
Some doctrinaires depict the matter like this: it is necessary
to establish the essence and purpose of the army, the task
before it, and from this definition one then derives its
organisation, strategy and tactics, and embodies these
conclusions in its regulations. Actually, such an approach to
the question is scholastic and lifeless.
How banal and lacking in content are what are taken to be the
basic principles of the military art can be seen from the
solemnly-quoted statement by Foch that the essence of modern war
is: ‘to seek out the enemy’s armies in order to beat and destroy
them; to adopt, with this sole end in view, the direction and
tactics which may lead to it in the quickest and safest way.’
[Foch, The Principles of War, translated by Hilaire Belloc
(1918), page 42.] Extraordinarily profound! How remarkably this
widens our horizon! One need only add that the essence of modern
methods of nutrition consists in locating the aperture of the
mouth, inserting the food therein, and, after it has been
masticated with the least possible expenditure of energy,
swallowing it. Why not try to deduce from this principle, which
is in no way inferior to that propounded by Foch, just what sort
of food is wanted, and how to cook it, and just when and by whom
it should be swallowed; and, above all, how this food is to be
procured.
Military matters are very empirical, very practical matters. It
is a very risky exercise to try and elevate them into a system,
in which field service regulations, the establishment of a
squadron, and the cut of a uniform are derived from fundamental
principles. This was well understood by old Clausewitz: ‘Perhaps
it would not be impossible to write a systematic theory of war,
full of intelligence and substance; but the theories we
presently possess are very different. Quite apart from their
unscientific spirit, they try so hard to make their systems
coherent and complete that they are stuffed with common-places,
truisms and nonsense of every kind. ’[Howard and Paret
translation, page 61.]
5. Have We Or Have We Not A ‘Military Doctrine’?
So, then, do we or do we not need a ‘military doctrine’? I have
been accused by some of ‘evading’ an answer to this question.
But, after all, in order to give an answer one must know what is
being asked about, that is, what is meant by military doctrine.
Until the question is posed clearly and intelligibly one cannot
but ‘evade’ answering it. In order to come closer to the correct
way of formulating the question, let us, following what has been
said earlier, divide the question itself into its component
parts. Looked at in this way, ‘military doctrine’ can be said to
consist of the following elements:
The fundamental (class) orientation of our country, expressed by
its government in matters of the economy, culture, and so on,
that is, in domestic policy.
The international orientation of the workers’ state. The most
important lines of our world policy and, connected with this,
the possible theatres of our military operations.
The composition and structure of the Red Army, in accordance
with the nature of the workers’ and peasants’ state [sic] and
the tasks of its armed forces.
The teaching on the organisation of the army (point 3), together
with the teaching on strategy (point 4), must, obviously,
constitute military doctrine in the proper (or narrow) sense of
the word.
Analysis could be carried further still. Thus, it is possible to
separate out from the points enumerated problems concerning the
technology of the Red Army, or the way in which propaganda is
carried on in it, etc.
Must the Government, the leading Party and the War Department
have definite views on all these matters? Why, of course they
must. How could we build the Red Army if we had no views on what
its social composition should be, on the recruitment of the
officers and commissars, on how the units should be formed,
trained and educated, and so on? And then, one could not answer
these questions without examining the fundamental tasks,
domestic and international, of the workers’ state. In other
words, the War Department must have guiding principles on which
to build, educate and reorganise the army.
Need one (and can one) call the sum-total of these principles a
military doctrine?
To that my answer has been and still is: if anyone wants to call
the sum-total of the Red Army’s principles and practical
methods, a military doctrine, then, while not sharing this
weakness for the faded galloons of old-time officialdom, I am
not going to fight over it (this is my ‘evasion’). But if anyone
is so bold as to assert that we do not have these principles and
practical methods [3], that our collective thinking has not
worked and is not at work upon them, my answer is: you are not
speaking the truth, you are befuddling yourselves and others
with verbiage. Instead of shouting about military doctrine, you
should present us with this doctrine, demonstrate it, show us at
least a particle of this military doctrine which the Red Army
lacks. But the whole trouble is that as soon as our military
‘doctrinaires’ pass from lamentations about how useful a
doctrine would be to attempts to provide us with one, they
either repeat, not very well, what has already been said long
ago, what has entered into our consciousness, what has been
embodied in resolutions of Party and Soviet congresses, decrees,
decisions, regulations and instructions, far better and much
more precisely than is done by our would-be innovators, or they
get confused, stumble, and put forward absolutely inadmissable
concoctions.
We will now prove this, in respect of each of the constituent
elements in the so-called military doctrine.
6. What Kind Of Army Are We Preparing, And For What Tasks?
‘The old army was an instrument of class oppression of the
working people by the bourgeoisie. With the transition of power
to the working and exploited classes there has arisen the need
for a new army as the mainstay of Soviet power at present and
the basis for replacing the regular army by the arming of the
whole people in the near future, and as a support for the coming
socialist revolution in Europe.’
So reads the decree on the formation of the Red Army, issued by
the Council of People’s Commissars on January 12 [sic], 1918.
[4] I much regret that I cannot adduce here everything that has
been said concerning the Red Army in our Party programme and in
the resolutions of our congresses. I strongly recommend the
reader to re-read them: those writings are useful and
instructive. In them it is very clearly stated ‘what kind of
army we are preparing, and for what tasks.’ What are the
newly-arrived military doctrinaires preparing to add to this?
Instead of splitting hairs over the rephrasing of precise and
clear formulations they would do better to devote themselves to
explaining them through propaganda work among the young Red Army
men. That would be far more useful.
But, it may be said, and is said, that the resolutions and
decrees do not sufficiently underscore the international role of
the Red Army, and, in particular, the need to prepare for
offensive revolutionary wars. Solomin is especially emphatic on
this point ... ‘We are preparing the class army of the
proletariat’, he writes on page 22 of his article, ‘a
worker-peasant army, not only for defence against the
bourgeois-landlord counter-revolution but also for revolutionary
wars (both defensive and offensive) against the imperialist
powers, for wars of a semi-civil (?) type in which offensive
strategy may play an important role.’ Such is the revelation,
almost the revolutionary gospel, of Solomin. But, alas, as often
happens with apostles, our author is cruelly mistaken in
thinking that he has discovered something new. He is only
formulating poorly something old. Precisely because war is a
continuation of politics, rifle in hand, there never was and
never could be, in our Party, any dispute in principle about the
place which revolutionary wars can and should occupy in the
development of the world revolution of the working class. This
question we posed and settled in the Russian Marxist press quite
a while ago. I could quote dozens of leading articles from the
Party press, especially in the period of the imperialist war,
which treat of revolutionary war by a workers’ state as
something to be taken for granted. But I will go back even
further and quote some lines which I had occasion to write in
1905-1906.
‘This (the development of the Russian revolution) immediately
gives the events now unfolding an international character, and
opens up a wide horizon. The political emancipation of Russia
led by the working class will raise that class to a height as
yet unknown in history, will transfer to it colossal power and
resources, and will make it the initiator of the liquidation of
world capitalism, for which history has created all the
objective conditions.
‘If the Russian proletariat, having temporarily obtained power,
does not on its own initiative carry the revolution on to
European soil, it will be compelled to do so by the forces of
European feudal-bourgeois reaction. Of course it would be idle
at this moment to determine the methods by which the Russian
revolution will throw itself against old capitalist Europe.
These methods may reveal themselves quite unexpectedly. Let us
take the example of Poland as a link between the revolutionary
East and the revolutionary West, although we take this as an
illustration of our idea rather than as an actual prediction.
‘The triumph of the revolution in Russia will mean the
inevitable victory of the revolution in Poland. It is not
difficult to imagine that the existence of a revolutionary
regime in the nine [sic] provinces [Russian Poland was divided
into ten provinces.] of Russian Poland must lead to the revolt
of Galicia and Poznan. [Let me recall that this was written in
1905. [Note by Trotsky] [Galicia was in Austrian Poland, Poznan
in German Poland – B.P.] The Hohenzollern and Habsburg
Governments will reply to this by sending military forces to the
Polish frontier in order then to cross it for the purpose of
crushing their enemy at his very centre – Warsaw. It is quite
clear that the Russian revolution cannot leave its Western
advance-guard in the hands of the Prusso-Austrian soldiery. War
against the governments of Wilhelm II and Franz Josef under such
circumstances would become an act of self-defence on the part of
the revolutionary government of Russia. What attitude would the
Austrian and German proletariat take up then? It is evident that
they could not remain calm observers while the armies of their
countries were conducting a counter-revolutionary crusade. A war
between feudal-bourgeois Germany and revolutionary Russia would
lead inevitably to a proletarian revolution in Germany. We would
tell those to whom this assertion seems too categorical to try
and think of I any other historical event which would be more
likely to compel the German workers and the German reactionaries
to make an open trial of strength.’ (See Trotsky, Nasha
Revolyutszya (Our Revolution), p.280) [5]
Naturally, events have not unfolded in the historical order
indicated here merely as an example, to illustrate an idea, in
these lines written sixteen years ago. But the basic course of
development has confirmed and continues to confirm the prognosis
that the epoch of proletarian revolution must inevitably thrust
it into the field of battle against the forces of world
reaction. Thus, more than a decade and a half ago, we already
clearly understood, in essence, ‘what kind of army and for what
tasks’ we had to prepare.
7. Revolutionary Politics And Methodism
So, then, no question of principle is involved for us where
revolutionary offensive warfare is concerned. But, regarding
this ‘doctrine’, the proletarian state must say the same as was
said by the last congress of the International regarding the
revolutionary offensive of the worker masses in a bourgeois
state (the doctrine of the offensive): only a traitor can
renounce the offensive, but only a simpleton can reduce our
entire strategy to the offensive.
Unfortunately, there are not a few simpletons of the offensive
among our newly-appeared doctrinaires, who, under the flag of
military doctrine, are trying to introduce into our military
circulation those same one-sided ‘left’ tendencies which at the
Third Communist Congress attained their culminating form as the
theory of the offensive: inasmuch as (!) we are living in a
revolutionary epoch, therefore (!) the Communist Party must
carry out an offensive policy. To translate ‘leftism’ into the
language of military doctrine means to multiply the error. While
preserving the principled foundation of waging an irreconcilable
class struggle, Marxist tendencies are at the same time
distinguished by extraordinary flexibility and mobility, or, to
speak in military language, capacity for manoeuvre. To this
firmness of principle together with flexibility of method and
form is counterposed a rigid methodism which transforms into an
absolute method such questions as our participation or
non-participation in parliamentary work, or our acceptance or
rejection of agreements with non-Communist parties and
organisations – an absolute method allegedly applicable to each
and every set of circumstances.
The actual word ‘methodism’ is used most often in writings on
military strategy. Characteristic of epigones, of mediocre army
leaders and routinists is the striving to turn into a stable
system a certain combination of actions which corresponds to
specific conditions. Since men do not wage war all the time, but
with long intervals between the wars, it is common for the
methods and procedures of the previous war to dominate the
thinking of military men during a period of peace. That is why
methodism is revealed most strikingly in the military sphere.
The mistaken tendencies of methodism unquestionably find
expression in the efforts to construct a doctrine of ‘offensive
revolutionary war’.
This doctrine cTntains two elements: international-political and
operational-strategic. For it is a question, in the first place,
of developing in the language of war an offensive international
policy aimed at hastening the revolutionary denouément, and, in
the second place, of investing the strategy of the Red Army
itself with an offensive character. These two questions must be
separated, even though they are interconnected in certain
respects.
That we do not renounce revolutionary wars is attested not only
by articles and resolutions but also by major historical facts.
After the Polish bourgeoisie had, in the spring of 1920, imposed
a defensive war upon us, we tried to develop our defence into a
revolutionary offensive. True, our attempt was not crowned with
success. But precisely from this follows the not unimportant
supplementary conclusion that revolutionary war, an indisputable
instrument of our policy under certain conditions, can, under
different conditions, lead to a result opposite to that which
was intended.
In the Brest-Litovsk period we were for the first time
constrained to apply on a broad scale a policy of
politico-strategical retreat. It seemed to many at that time
that this would prove fatal to us. But within only a few months
it was shown that time had worked well for us. In February 1918
German militarism, though already undermined, was nevertheless
still strong enough to crush us, with our military forces which
were insignificant at that time. In November German militarism
crumbled to dust. Our retreat in the field of international
politics at Brest was our salvation.
After Brest we were compelled to wage uninterrupted war against
the White-Guard armies and the foreign interventionist
detachments. This small-scale war was both defensive and
offensive, both politically and militarily. On the whole,
however, our international policy, as a state in that period was
predominantly a poltcy of defence and retreat (renouncing
sovietisation of the Baltic states, our frequent offers to
engage in peace negotiations, together with our readiness to
make very big concessions, the ‘new’ economic policy,
recognition of the debts, and so on). In particular, we were
most conciliatory in relation to Poland, offering her conditions
more favourable than those indicated for her by the Entente
countries. Our efforts were not crowned with success. Pilsudski
fell upon us. The war assumed a clearly defensive character on
our part. This fact contributed enormously to the rallying of
public opinion not only among the workers and peasants but also
among many elements of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Successful
defence naturally developed into a victorious offensive. But we
overestimated the revolutionary potentiality of the internal
situation in Poland in that period. This overestimation was
expressed in the excessively offensive character of our
operations, which outstripped our resources. We advanced too
lightly equipped, and the result is well known: we were thrown
back.
Almost at the same time, the mighty revolutionary wave in Italy
was broken – not so much by the resistance of the bourgeoisie as
by the perfidious passivity of the leading workers’
organisations. The failure of our August march on Warsaw and the
defeat of the September movement in Italy changed the relation
of forces in favour of the bourgeoisie throughout Europe. From
that time on, a greater stability has been observable in the
political position of the bourgeoisie, and greater assurance in
its behaviour. The attempt by the German Communist Party to
hasten the denouément by means of an artificial general
offensive did not and could not produce the desired result. The
revolutionary movement has shown that its tempo is slower than
we expected in 1918-1919. The social soil continues, however, to
be sown with mines. The crisis in trade and industry is assuming
monstrous proportions. Abrupt shifts in political development in
the form of revolutionary explosions are wholly possible in the
very near future. But, on the whole, development has assumed a
more protracted character. The Third Congress of the
International called on the Communist Parties to prepare
themselves thoroughly and perseveringly. In many countries the
Communists have been obliged to carry out important strategic
retreats, renouncing the immediate fulfilment of those fighting
tasks which they had only recently set themselves. The
initiative for the offensive has temporarily passed to the
bourgeoisie. The work of the Communist Parties is now
predominantly defensive and organisationally preparatory in
character. Our revolutionary defence remains, as always, elastic
and resilient, that is, capable of being transformed, given a
corresponding change of conditions, into a counter-offensive
which in its turn can culminate in a decisive battle.
The failure of the march on Warsaw, the victory of the
bourgeoisie in Italy and the temporary ebb in Germany compelled
us to execute an abrupt retreat, which began with the Treaty of
Riga and ended with the conditional recognition of the Tsarist
debts.
During this same period we executed a retreat of no less
importance in the field of economic construction: the acceptance
of concessions, the abolition of the grain monopoly, the leasing
out of many industrial enterprises, and so on. The basic reason
for these successive retreats is to be found in the continued
capitalist encirclement, that is, the relative stability of the
bourgeois regime
Just what is it that they want, these proponents of military
doctrine – for the sake of brevity we shall call them the
doctrinaires, a designation they have earned – when they demand
that we orient the Red Army towards offensive revolutionary
warfare? Do they want a simple recognition of the principle? If
so, they are breaking open an already open door. Or do they
consider that conditions have arisen in our international or our
domestic situation which put an offensive revolutionary war on
the agenda? But, in that case, our doctrinaires should aim their
blows not at the War Department but at our Party and at the
Communist International, for it was none other than the World
Congress that, in the summer of this year, rejected the
revolutionary strategy of the offensive as untimely, called on
all parties to undertake careful preparatory work, and approved
the defensive and manoeuvring policy of Soviet Russia as a
policy corresponding to our circumstances.
Or do some of our doctrinaires consider, perhaps, that while the
‘weak’ Communist Parties in the bourgeois states have to carry
on preparatory work, the ‘all-powerful’ Red Army ought to
undertake offensive revolutionary war? Are there, perhaps, some
impatient strategists who really intend to shift on to the
shoulders of the Red Army the burden of the ‘final, decisive
conflict’ in the world, or at least in Europe? Whoever seriously
propagates such a policy would do better to hang a millstone
about his neck and then act in accordance with the subsequent
instructions given in the Gospel. [6]
8. Education ‘in the Spirit of’ the Offensive
Seeking to extricate himself from the contradictions involved in
a doctrine of the offensive put forward during an era of
defensive retreat, Comrade Solomin invests the ‘doctrine’ of
revolutionary war with ... an educational meaning. At the
present time, he concedes, we are indeed interested in peace,
and will do everything to preserve it. But, despite our
defensive policy, revolutionary wars are inevitable. We must
prepare for them, and, consequently, we must cultivate an
offensive ‘spirit’ for future requirements. The offensive is to
be understood, therefore, not in a fleshly sense but in spirit
and in truth. [7] In other words, Comrade Solomin wants to have,
ready for mobilisation, along with a supply of army biscuits,
also a supply of enthusiasm for the offensive. Matters do not
improve as we proceed. While we saw earlier that our most severe
critic lacks understanding of revolutionary strategy, we now
perceive that he also lacks understanding of the laws of
revolutionary psychology.
We need peace not from doctrinal considerations but because the
working people have had enough of war and privation. Our efforts
are directed to safeguarding for the workers and peasants as
long a period of peace as possible. We explain to the army
itself that the only reason why we cannot demobilise is that new
attacks threaten us. From these conditions Solomin draws the
conclusion that we have to ‘educate’ the Red Army in an ideology
of offensive revolutionary war. What an idealistic view of
‘education’! ‘We are not strong enough to go to war and we do
not intend to go to war, but we must be prepared’ – Comrade
Solomin gloomily philosophises – ‘and therefore we must prepare
for the offensive: such is the contradictory formula we arrive
at.’ The formula is indeed contradictory. But if Solomin thinks
that this is a ‘good’, a dialectical contradiction, he is
mistaken: it is confusion, pure and simple.
One of the most important tasks of our domestic policy in recent
times has been to draw closer to the peasant. The peasant
question confronts us with particular acuteness in the army.
Does Solomm seriously believe that today, when immediate danger
of a return of the landlords has been eliminated, and revolution
in Europe still remains only a potentiality, we can rally our
army of more than a million men, nine-tenths of whom are
peasants, under the banner of offensive war for the purpose of
bringing about the denouément of the proletarian revolution?
Such propaganda would be stillborn.
We do not, of course, intend for a moment to hide from the
working people, including the Red Army, that we shall always be,
in principle, for offensive revolutionary war in those
conditions when such war can help to liberate the working people
of other countries. But to suppose that one can, on the basis of
this statement of principle, create or ‘cultivate’ an effective
ideology for the Red Army under existing conditions is to fail
to understand either the Red Army or these conditions. In actual
fact, no sensible Red Army man doubts that, if we are not
attacked this winter, or in the spring, we shall certainly not
disturb the peace ourselves, but shall exert all our efforts to
heal our wounds, taking advantage of the respite. In our
exhausted country we are learning the soldier’s trade, arming
and building a big army in order to defend ourselves against
attack. Here you have a ‘doctrine’ which is clear, simple and in
accordance with reality.
It was precisely because we posed the question like that in the
spring of 1920 that every Red Army man was firmly convinced that
bourgeois Poland had forced upon us a war which we had not
wanted and from which we had tried to protect the people by
making very big concessions. It was just this conviction that
engendered the very great indignation and hatred that was felt
against the enemy. It was due precisely to this that the war,
which began as one of defence, could subsequently be developed
into an offensive war.
The contradiction between defensive propaganda and the offensive
(in the last analysis) character of a war is a ‘good’, viable,
dialectical contradiction. And we have no grounds whatsoever for
altering the character and direction of our educational work in
the army.in order to please muddleheads, even if they speak in
the name of military doctrine.
Those who talk about revolutionary wars usually derive their
inspiration from recollections of the wars of the Great French
Revolution. In France they also began with defence: they created
an army for defence and then went over to the offensive. To the
sound of the Marseillaise the armed sansculottes marched with
their revolutionary broom all across Europe. Historical
analogies are very tempting. But one has to be cautious when
resorting to them. Otherwise, formal features of similarity may
induce one to overlook material features of difference. France
was, at the end of the 18th century, the richest and most
civilised country on the Continent of Europe. In the 20th
century, Russia is the poorest and most backward country in
Europe. Compared with the revolutionary tasks that confront us
today, the revolutionary task of the French army was much more
superficial in character. At that time it was a matter of
overthrowing ‘tyrants’, of abolishing or mitigating feudal
serfdom. Today it is a matter of completely destroying
exploitation and class oppression. But the role of the arms of
France – that is, of an advanced country in relation to backward
Europe – proved to be very limited and transient. With the
downfall of Bonapartism, which had grown out of the
revolutionary war, Europe returned to its Kings and feudal
lords.
In the gigantic class struggle which is unfolding today, the
role of armed intervention from without can have no more than
concomitant, contributory, auxiliary significance. Armed
intervention can hasten the denouément and facilitate the
victory. But for this it is necessary that the revolution be
mature not merely in respect of social relations – that is
already the case – but also in respect of political
consciousness. Armed intervention is like the forceps of the
obstetrician: used at the right moment it can ease the
birth-pangs, but if brought into play prematurely it can only
cause a miscarriage.
9. The Strategical and Technical Content of the ‘Military
Doctrine’ (Capacity for Manoeuvring)
What has been said so far applies not so much to the Red Army,
to its structure and methods of operation, as to the political
tasks set for the Red Army by the workers’ state.
Let us now approach military doctrine in the narrower sense of
the term. We heard from Comrade Solomin that, so long as we fail
to proclaim the doctrine of offensive revolutionary war, we
shall remain confused and shall commit blunders in
organisational, military-educational and strategical and other
matters. However, such a commonplace does not get us far.
Instead of repeating that good practical conclusions must
necessarily follow from a good doctrine, why not try to offer us
these conclusions? Alas! As soon as our doctrinaires try to
reach conclusions, they offer us either a feeble rehash of stale
news or the most pernicious sort of ‘independent thinking’.
Our innovators devote their greatest energy to trying to fix the
anchor of military doctrine in the sphere of operational
questions. According to them, as regards strategy, the Red Army
differs in principle from all other armies, because in our epoch
of positional immobility the basic features of the Red Army’s
operations are capacity for manoeuvring and aggressiveness.
The operations of civil war are, unquestionably, distinguished
by an exceptional element of manoeuvring. But we must ask this
question, quite precisely: does the Red Army’s manoeuvring
result from its inner qualities, its class nature, its
revolutionary spirit, its fighting zeal – or is it due to the
objective conditions, to the vastness of the theatres of war and
the comparatively small numbers of troops involved? This
question is of no small importance if we recognise that
revolutionary wars will be fought not only on the Don and the
Volga but also on the Seine, the Scheldt and the Thames.
But let us, meanwhile, return to our native rivers. Was the Red
Army alone distinguished by capacity for manoeuvring?
No, the strategy of the Whites was wholly a strategy of
manoeuvre. Their troops were, in most cases, inferior to ours in
numbers and in point of morale, but superior in military skill.
Hence the need for a strategy of manoeuvre arose first among the
Whites. In the initial stages we learnt manoeuvring from them.
In the final stage of the civil war we invariably had a
situation of manoeuvre countered by manoeuvre. Finally, the
highest capacity for manoeuvring was characteristic of the
operations of Ungern and Makhno, those degenerate, bandit
outgrowths of the civil war. What conclusion follows from this?
Manoeuvring is characteristic not of a revolutionary army but of
civil war as such.
In national wars, operations are accompanied by fear of
distance. By removing itself from its base, from its own people,
from the area where its own language is spoken, an army, or a
detachment, finds itself in a completely alien environment,
where neither support, nor cover, nor aid is available to it. In
a civil war each side finds sympathy and support, to a greater
or lesser degree, in the opponent’s rear. National wars are
waged (at all events, they used to be waged) by ponderous
masses, with all the national-state resources of both sides
brought into play. Civil war signifies that the forces and
resources of the country convulsed by revolution are divided
into two; that the war is waged, especially in the initial
stage, by an enterprising minority on each side, and,
consequently, by more or less scanty and therefore mobile
masses; and, for this reason, much more depends on improvisation
and accident.
Civil war is characterised by manoeuvring on both sides. One
cannot, therefore, consider capacity for manoeuvring a special
manifestation of the revolutionary character of the Red Army.
We were victorious in the civil war. There are no grounds for us
to doubt that superiority in strategic leadership was on our
side. In the last analysis, however, victory was ensured by the
enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of the working-class vanguard and
the support given by the peasant masses. But these conditions
were not created by the Red Army – they were the historical
preconditions for its rise, development and success.
Comrade Varin remarks, in the journal Voyennaya Nauka i
Revolyutsiya [8], that the mobility of our troops surpasses all
historical precedents. This is a very interesting assertion. It
would be desirable for it to be carefully verified.
Unquestionably, the extraordinary speed of movement, requiring
endurance and self-sacrifice, was conditioned by the army’s
revolutionary spirit, by the élan that was contributed to it by
the Communists. Here is an interesting exercise for the students
of our Military Academy: to compare the marches of the Red Army,
from the standpoint of distances covered, with other examples
from history, particularly with the marches of the army of the
Great French Revolution. On the other hand, a comparison should
be made between these same factors as they existed among the
Reds and the Whites in our civil war. When we advanced, they
retreated, and vice versa. Did we actually show, on the average,
greater endurance during marches, and to what extent was this
one of the factors in our victory? It is incontestable that the
Communist leaven was able to produce a superhuman exertion of
strength in individual cases. But it would require a special
investigation to determine whether the same result held for an
entire campaign, in the course of which the limits of the
organism’s physiological capacity could not but make themselves
felt. Such an investigation does not, of course, promise to turn
all strategy topsy-turvy. But it would undoubtedly enrich with
some valuable factual data our knowledge of the nature of civil
war and of the revolutionary army.
The endeavour to fix as laws and erect into dogmas those
features of the Red Army’s strategy and tactics which were
characteristic of it in the recent period could do a great deal
of harm and could even prove fatal. It is possible to say in
advance that operations by the Red Army on the continent of Asia
– if they are destined to take place there – would of necessity
be profoundly manoeuvring in character. Cavalry would have to
play the most important, and in some cases even the one and only
role. On the other hand, however, there can be no doubt that
military operations in the Western theatre would be far more
constrained. Operations conducted in territory with a different
national composition and more densely populated, with a higher
ratio between the number of troops and the given territory,
would undoubtedly make the war more positional in character and
would, in any case, confine freedom to manoeuvre within
incomparably narrower limits.
Recognition that it was beyond the capacity of the Red Army to
defend fortified positions (Tukhachevsky) sums up correctly, on
the whole, the lessons of the past period, but it certainly
cannot be taken as an absolute rule for the future. Defence of
fortified positions requires fortress troops, or, more
correctly, troops of a high level, welded by experience and
confident in themselves. In the past period, we only began to
accumulate this experience. Every individual regiment, and the
army as a whole, were living improvisations. It was possible to
ensure enthusiasm and élan, and this we achieved, but it was not
possible to create artificially the necessary routine, the
automatic solidarity, the confidence of neighbouring units that
there would be mutual support between them. It is impossible to
create tradition by decree. To some extent this does exist now,
and we shall accumulate more and more as time goes by. We shall
in this way establish the preconditions both for better conduct
of manoeuvring operations and, if need arises, for positional
operations too.
We must renounce attempts at building an absolute revolutionary
strategy out of the elements of our limited experience of the
three years of civil war, during which units of a particular
quality fought under particular conditions. Clausewitz warned
very well against this. ‘What could be more natural,’ he wrote
[9], ‘than the fact that war of the French Revolution had its
characteristic style, and what theory could have been expected
to accommodate it? The danger is that this kind of style,
developed out of a single case, can easily outlive the situation
that gave rise to it: for conditions change imperceptibly. That
danger is the very thing a theory should prevent by lucid,
rational criticism. In 1806 the Prussian generals were under the
sway of this methodism’, and so on. Alas! Prussian generals are
not the only ones with an inclination towards methodism, that
is, towards stereotypes and conventional patterns.
10. Offensive and Defensive in the Light of the Imperialist War
It is proclaimed that the second specific feature of
revolutionary strategy is its aggressiveness. The attempt to
build a doctrine on this foundation appears all the more
one-sided in view of the fact that during the epoch preceding
the world war the strategy of the offensive was cultivated in
the by no means revolutionary general staffs and military
academies of nearly all the major countries of Europe. Contrary
to what Comrade Frunze writes [Art. cit. in Krasnaya Nov (Note
by Trotsky)] the offensive was (and formally still remains to
this day) the official doctrine of the French Republic. Jaurès
fought tirelessly against the doctrinaires of the pure
offensive, counterposing to it the pacifist doctrinairism of
pure defence. A sharp reaction against the traditional official
doctrine of the French general staff came as a result of the
last war. It will not be without value to quote here two
striking pieces of evidence. The French military journal the
Revue militaire française (September 1, 1921, p.336) cites the
following proposition, borrowed from the Germans and
incorporated by the French general staff in 1913 in the
Regulations for the conduct of operations by large units. ‘The
lessons of the past,’ we read, ‘have borne their fruits: the
French army, returning to its traditions, henceforth does not
permit the conduct of operations in accordance with any law but
that of the offensive.’ The journal goes on: ‘This law,
introduced soon afterward into the regulations governing our
general tactics and the tactics peculiar to each arm, was to
dominate the teaching given both to our
marshals-under-instruction and to our commanders, through
conferences, practical exercises on maps or on the ground, and,
finally, through the procedure called les grandes manoeuvres.’
’The result was,’ the journal continues, ‘a veritable
infatuation with the famous law of the offensive, and anyone who
ventured to propose an amendment in favo
#Post#: 20629--------------------------------------------------
Re: Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism
By: Long Knives 88 Date: February 6, 2016, 4:35 pm
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’The result was,’ the journal continues, ‘a veritable
infatuation with the famous law of the offensive, and anyone who
ventured to propose an amendment in favour of the defensive
would have niet with a very poor reception. It was necessary,
though not sufficient, if one was to be a good
marshal-under-instruction, to keep on conjugating the verb “to
attack”.’
The conservative Journal des Débats of October 5, 1921, subjects
to sharp criticism from this standpoint the regulations for
infantry manoeuvres which were issued this summer. ‘At the
beginning of this excellent little work,’ the newspaper writes,
‘a number of principles are set out ... which are presented as
being the official military doctrine for 1921. These principles
are perfect: but why have the editors conformed to old custom,
why have they given the honour of their first page to a
glorification of the offensive? Why do they propound for us, in
a prominent paragraph, this axiom: “He who attacks first makes
an impression on his adversary by demonstrating that his will is
superior”?’
After analysing the experience of two outstanding moments of
struggle on the French front, the newspaper says:
‘The offensive can impress only an adversary who has been bereft
of his resources, or whose mediocrity is such as one never has
the right to count on. An adversary aware of his strength does
not let himself be impressed at all by an attack. He does not
take the enemy’s offensive as any manifestation of a will
superior to his own. If the defensive has been wished for and
prepared, as in August 1914 [by the Germans] or in July 1918 [by
the French], then, on the contrary, it is the defender who
considers that he has the superiority of will, because the other
one is falling into a trap.’ The military critic continues: ‘You
commit a strange psychological mistake in fearing (the
Frenchman’s) passivity and preference for the defensive. The
Frenchman wants nothing better than to take the offensive,
whether he attacks first or second – an offensive, that is,
which is properly organised. But do not tell him any more
Arabian-Nights stories about the gentleman who attacks first
with a superior will.’
’The offensive does not bring success by itself. It brings
success when all resources of every kind have been assembled for
it, and when these are superior to those possessed by the
opponent, because, after all, it is always the one who is
stronger at the point of combat who beats the one who is
weaker.’
One can, of course, try to reject this conclusion on the ground
that it is drawn from the experience of positional warfare. As a
matter of fact, however, it follows from war of manoeuvre with
even greater directness and obviousness, although in a different
form. War of manoeuvre is war of great spaces. In the endeavour
to destroy the enemy’s manpower it sets no great store by space.
Its mobility is expressed not only in offensives but also in
retreats, which are merely changes of position.
11. Aggressiveness, Initiative And Energy
During the first period of the revolution the Red troops
generally shunned the offensive, preferring to fraternise and
discuss. In the period when the revolutionary idea was
spontaneously flooding the country this method proved very
effective. The Whites, on the contrary, tried at that time to
force offensives in order to preserve their troops from
revolutionary disintegration. Even after discussion had ceased
to be the most important resource of revolutionary strategy, the
Whites continued to be distinguished by greater aggressiveness
than we showed. Only gradually did the Red troops develop the
energy and confidence that make decisive actions feasible. The
subsequent operations of the Red Army were marked to an extreme
degree by capacity for manouevring. Cavalry raids were the most
striking expression of this capacity for manoeuvring. However,
these raids, too, were taught us by Mamontov. From the Whites we
also learned to make rapid breakthroughs, enveloping movements,
and penetrations into the enemy’s rear. Let us remember this! In
the initial period we tried to defend Soviet Russia by means of
a cordon, holding on to each other. Only later, when we had
learnt from the enemy, did we gather our forces into fists and
endow these fists with mobility, only later did we put workers
on horseback and learn how to make large-scale cavalry raids.
This little effort of memory is already sufficient for us to
realise how unfounded and one-sided, how theoretically and
practically false, sounds the ‘doctrine’ according to which an
offensive, manoeuvring strategy is characteristic of a
revolutionary army as such. In certain circumstances this
strategy corresponds best of all to a counter-revolutionary army
which is compelled to make up for its lack of numbers by the
activity of skilled cadres.
It is precisely in a war of manoeuvre that the distinction
between defensive and offensive is wiped out to an extraordinary
degree. War of manoeuvre is war of movement. The aim of movement
is destruction of the enemy’s manpower at a distance of 100
versts or so. Manoeuvring promises victory if it keeps the
initiative in our hands. The fundamental features of the
strategy of manoeuvre are not formal aggressiveness but
initiative and energy.
The idea that, at each given moment, the Red Army resolutely
took the offensive on the most important front, while
temporarily weakening itself on the other fronts, and that just
this characterises most graphically the Red Army’s strategy
during the civil war (see Comrade Varin’s article) is correct in
essence but is expressed one-sidedly and therefore does not
provide all the conclusions needed. While taking the offensive
on one front, considered by us at the given moment as being the
most important, for political or military, reasons, we weakened
ourselves on the other fronts, considering it possible to remain
on the defensive there and to retreat. But, you see, what this
shows is, precisely, the fact – how strange that this is
over-looked! – that into our overall operational plans retreat
entered, side by side with attack, as an indispensable link.
Those fronts on which we stayed on the defensive and retreated
were only sectors of our general ring-shaped front. On those
sectors fought units of that same Red Army, its fighters and its
commanders, and if all strategy is to be reduced to the
offensive, then it is obvious that the troops on those fronts
where we confined ourselves to defensive operations, and even
retreated, must have been subject to depression and
demoralisation. The work of educating troops must, obviously,
include the idea that retreat does not mean running away, that
there are strategic retreats due to an endeavour either to
preserve manpower intact, or to shorten the front, or to lure
the enemy in deeper, all the more surely to crush him. And if a
strategical retreat is legitimate, then it is wrong to reduce
all strategy to the offensive. This is especially clear and
incontestable, let us repeat, with regard, precisely, to the
strategy of manoeuvre. A manoeuvre is, obviously, a complex
combination of movements and blows, transfers of forces, marches
and battles, with the ultimate aim of crushing the enemy. But if
strategic retreat is excluded from the concept of manoeuvre,
then, obviously, strategy will acquire an extremely rectiineal
character – that is, will cease to be a strategy of manoeuvre.
12. The Yearning For Stable Schema
‘What kind of an army are we building, and for what purpose?’
asks Comrade Solomin. ‘In other words: what enemies threaten us
and by what strategical methods (defensive or offensive) shall
we deal with them most quickly and economically?’ (Voyennaya
Nauka i Revolyutszya, No.?, p.19)
This formulation of the question testifies most vividly that the
thinking of Solomin himself, the herald of a new military
doctrine, is wholly captive to the methods and prejudices of
old-time doctrinairism. The Austro-Hungarian general staff (like
others) worked out in the course of decades a number of variant
contingency plans for war: variant ‘I’ (against Italy), variant
‘R’ (against Russia), with the appropriate combinations of these
variants. In these plans the numerical strength of the Italian
and Russian forces, their armament, the conditions governing
their mobilisation, the strategical concentrations and
deployments, all constituted magnitudes which, if not constant,
were at least stable. In this way the Austro-Hungarian ‘military
doctrine’, basing itself on specific political suppositions, was
firm in its knowledge of what enemies threatened the empire of
the Habsburgs, and from one year to the next it pondered on how
to cope with these enemies ‘most economically’. The thinking of
the members of the General Staff in all countries ran in the
fixed channels of ‘variants’. The invention of improved armour
by a future enemy was countered by strengthening one’s
artillery, and vice versa. Routinists educated in this tradition
would inevitably feel quite out of place under the conditions in
which we carry on our military construction. ‘What enemies
threaten us?’ – that is, where are our General-Staff variants
for future wars? And by what strategical methods (defensive or
offensive) are we intending to realise these variants, outlined
in advance? Reading Solomin’s article I was involuntarily
reminded of the comic figure of that dogmatist of military
doctrine, General Borisov of the General Staff. Whatever problem
was being discussed, Borisov would invariably raise his two
fingers in order to have the opportunity to say: ‘This question
can be decided only in conjunction with other questions of
military doctrine, and for this reason it is first of all
necessary to institute the post of Chief of the General Staff.’
From the womb of this Chief of the General Staff the tree of
military doctrine would spring up, and produce all the necessary
fruits, just as happened in antiquity with the daughter of the
Eastern king. Solomin, like Borisov, pines essentially for this
lost paradise of stable premises for ‘military doctrine’, when
one knew ten or twenty years ahead who the enemies would be, and
whence and how they threatened. Solomin, like Borisov, needs a
universal Chief of General Staff who would gather up the broken
pieces of crockery, set them on the shelf and paste labels on
them: variant ‘I’, variant ‘R’, and so on. Perhaps Solomin can
at the same time name to us the universal brain he has in view?
So far as we are concerned, we – alas! – know of no such brain,
and are even of the opinion that there can be no such brain,
because the tasks set for it are unrealisable. Talking at every
step about revolutionary wars and revolutionary strategy,
Solomin has overlooked just this: the revolutionary character of
the present epoch, which has brought about the utter disruption
of stability in both international and internal relations.
Germany no longer exists as a military power. Nevertheless,
French militarism is obliged to follow with feverish eyes the
most insignificant events and changes in Germany’s internal life
and on Germany’s frontiers. What if Germany suddenly raises an
army of several million men? What Germany? Perhaps it will be
Ludendorff’s Germany? But perhaps this Germany will merely
provide the impulse that will prove fatal to the present rotten
semi-equilibrium and clear the way for the Germany of Liebknecht
and Luxemburg? How many ‘variants’ must the General Staff have?
How many war plans must one have in order to cope ‘economically’
with all the dangers?
I have in my archives quite a few reports, thick, thin and
medium-sized, the learned authors of which explained to us with
polite pedagogical patience that a self-respecting power must
institute definite, regular relations, elucidate in advance who
its possible enemies are, and acquire suitable allies, or, at
least, neutralise all those that can be neutralised. For, as the
authors of these reports explain, it is not possible to prepare
for future wars ‘in the dark’: it is not possible to determine
either the strength of the army, or its establishments, or its
disposition. I do not recall seeing Solomin’s signature under
these reports, but his ideas were there. All the authors, sad to
say, were of the school of Borisov.
International orientation, including international military
orientation, is more difficult nowadays than in the epoch of the
Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. But there is nothing one
can do about that: the epoch of the greatest upheavals in
history, both military and revolutionary, has disrupted certain
variants and stereotypes. There can be no stable, traditional,
conservative orientation. Orientation must be vigilant, mobile
and urgent – or, if you like, manoeuvring in character. Urgent
does not mean aggressive, but it does mean strictly in
accordance with today’s combination of international relations,
and concentrating maximum forces on the task of today.
Under present international conditions, orientation calls for
much greater mental skill than was needed for elaborating the
conservative elements of military doctrine in the epoch that
lies behind us. But, at the same time, this work is carried out
on a much wider scale and with the use of much more scientific
methods. The basic work in evaluating the international
situation and the tasks for the proletarian revolution and the
Soviet Republic which result from it is being performed by the
Party, by its collective thinking, and the directive forms of
this work are provided by the Party’s congresses and its central
committee. We have in mind not only the Russian Communist Party
but also our international Party. How pedantic seem Solomin’s
demands that we compile a catalogue of our enemies and decide
whether we shall do the attacking and just whom we shall attack,
when we compare it with this work of evaluating all the forces
of the revolution and the counter-revolution, as they now exist
and as they are developing, which was accomplished by the last
congress of the Communist International! What other ‘doctrine’
do you need?
Comrade Tukhachevsky submitted to the Communist International a
proposal that an international general staff be set up and
attached to. [10] This proposal was, of course, incorrect: it
did not correspond to the situation and the tasks formulated by
the Congress itself. If the Communist International could be
created de facto only after strong Communist organisations had
been formed in the most important countries, this applies even
more to an international general staff, which could arise only
on the basis of the national general staffs of several
proletarian states. So long as this basis is lacking, an
international general staff would inevitably become a
caricature. Tukhachevsky thought it necessary to deepen his
error by printing his letter at the end of his interesting
little book The War of Classes. This error is of the same order
as Comrade Tukhachevsky’s impetuous theoretical onslaught on the
militia, which he sees as being in contradiction to the Third
International. Let us note, in passing, that offensives launched
without adequate safeguards constitute, in general, the weak
side of Comrade Tukhachevsky, who is one of the most gifted of
our young military workers.
But even without an international general staff, which does not
correspond to the situation and is therefore impracticable, the
international congress itself, as the representative of the
revolutionary workers’ parties, did accomplish, and through its
Executive Committee continues to accomplish, the fundamental
ideological work of the ‘General Staff’ of the international
revolution: keeping a tally of friends and enemies, neutralising
the vacillators with a view to attracting them later to the side
of the revolution, evaluating the changing situation,
determining the urgent tasks, and concentrating efforts on a
world scale upon these tasks.
The conclusions which follow from this orientation are very
complex. They cannot be fitted into a few General-Staff
variants. But such is the nature of our epoch. The advantage of
our orientation is this, that it corresponds to the nature of
the epoch and its relations. In accordance with this orientation
we align our military policy as well. It is at the present time
actively-temporising, defensive and preparatory. We are above
all concerned to assure for our military ideology, our methods
and our apparatus a flexibility so resilient as to enable us, at
each turn of events, to concentrate our main forces in the
principal direction.
13. The Spirit of Defence and the Spirit of the Offensive
But, after all, says Solomin (p.22), ‘it is impossible to
educate, at one and the same time, in the spirit of the
offensive and in the spirit of defence.’ Now this is sheer
doctrinairism. Where and by whom has it been proved? By nobody
and nowhere, because it is false to the core. The entire art of
our constructive work in Soviet Russia in the military sphere
(and not only in that sphere) consists in combining the
international revolutionary-offensive tendencies of the
proletarian vanguard with the revolutionary-defensive tendencies
of the peasant masses, and even of broad circles of the working
class itself. This combination corresponds to the international
situation as a whole. By explaining its significance to the
advanced elements in the army we thereby teach them to combine
defence and offence correctly, not only in the strategical but
also in the revolutionary-historical sense. Does Solomin think,
perhaps, that this quenches ‘the spirit’? Both he and his
co-thinkers hint at this. But that is the purest Left-SRism!
Clarifying the essence of the international and domestic
situation, and an active, ‘manoeuvring’ adaptation to this
situation, cannot quench the spirit but only temper it.
Or is it, perhaps, impossible in the purely military sense to
prepare the army both for defence and for the offensive? But
that, too, is nonsense. In his book Tukhachevsky stresses the
idea that in civil war it is impossible, or almost impossible,
for the defence to assume positional stability. From this
Tukhachevsky draws the correct conclusion that, under these
conditions, the defence must, like the offensive, necessarily be
active and manoeuvring. If we are too weak to attack, we try to
wrench ourselves out of the enemy’s grip, so as later to gather
our forces into a fist, on his line of subsequent advance, and
strike at his most vulnerable spot. Erroneous to the point of
absurdity is Solomin’ s assertion that an army has to be trained
exclusively for a specific form of warfare – either defensive or
offensive. In reality, an army is trained and educated for
combat and victory. Defensive and offensive operations enter as
variable factors into combat, especially if this involves
manoeuvring. He is victorious who defends himself well when it
is necessary to attack. This is the only sound education we must
give our army, and especially its commanders. A rifle with a
bayonet is good for both defence and attack. The same applies to
the fighter’s hands. The fighter himself, and the unit to which
he belongs, must be prepared for combat, for self-defence, for
resisting the enemy and for routing the enemy. That regiment
attacks best which is able to defend itself. Good defence can be
achieved only by a regiment that has the desire and ability to
attack. The regulations must teach how to fight, and not just
coach for offensive operations.
Being revolutionary is a spiritual state, and not a ready-made
answer to all questions. It can give enthusiasm, it can ensure
élan. Enthusiasm and élan are most precious conditions for
success, but they are not the only ones. One has to have
orientation and one has to have training. And away with
doctrinaire blinkers!
14. The Most Immediate Tasks
But are there not, in the complex intermeshing of international
relations, certain clearer and more distinct factors in
accordance with which we ought to align ourselves in our
military activity in the course of the next few months?
There are such factors, and they speak for themselves too loudly
to be considered secret. In the West there are Poland and
Romania, with, behind them, France. In the Far East there is
Japan. Around and about Caucasia there is Britain. I shall here
dwell only on the question of Poland, as this is the most
striking and instructive.
France’s Premier, Briand, declared in Washington that we are
preparing to attack Poland this spring. Not only every commander
and every Red Army man but also every worker and peasant in our
country knows that this is utter rubbish. Briand knows it too,
of course. Up to now we have paid such a big price to the big
and little bandits, to get them to leave us in peace, that it is
possible to talk about a ‘plan’ on our part to attack Poland
only so as to have a cover for some fiendish plot against us.
What is our actual orientation where Poland is concerned?
We are proving to the Polish masses, firmly and persistently,
not in words but in deeds – and, primarily, by most strict
fulfilment of the Treaty of Riga – that we want peace, and are
thereby helping to preserve it.
Should nevertheless the Polish military clique, incited by the
French stock-exchange clique, fall upon us in the spring, the
war will be, on our side, genuinely defensive, both in essence
and in the way the people will see it. Precisely this clear and
distinct awareness of our guiltlessness in a war thrust upon us
will serve to weld together most closely all the elements in the
army – the advanced Communist proletarian, the specialist who,
though non-Party, is devoted to the Red Army, and the backward
peasant soldier, and will thereby best prepare our army to show
initiative and launch a self-sacrificing offensive in this
defensive war. Whoever thinks this policy is indefinite and
conditional, whoever remains unclear concerning ‘what kind of
army we are preparing, and for what tasks’, whoever thinks that
‘it is impossible at one and the same time to educate both in
the spirit of defence and in the spirit of the offensive’,
understands nothing at all, and would do better to keep quiet
and not hinder others!
But if such a complex combination of factors is to be observed
in the world situation, how can we, nevertheless, orient
ourselves in practice in the sphere of building the army? What
should be the numerical strength of the army? What formations
should it consist of? How should they be distributed?
None of these questions can be given an absolute answer. One can
speak only of empirical approximations and timely rectifications
thereto, depending on changes in the situation. Only helpless
doctrinaires suppose that answers to questions of mobilisation,
formation, training, education, strategy and tactics can be
arrived at by deduction, in a formallogical way, from the
premises of a sacrosanct ‘military doctrine’. What we lack are
not magical, all-saving military formulas, but more careful,
attentive, precise, vigilant and conscientious work based on
those foundations which we have already firmly laid down. Our
regulations, our programmes, our establishments are imperfect.
That is unquestionable. There are plenty of omissions,
inaccuracies, things that are out-of-date or incomplete. They
must be corrected, improved, made more precise. But how and from
what standpoint should this be done?
We are told that we must take the doctrine of offensive warfare
as our basis for the work of review and rectification. ‘This
formula,’ Solomin writes, ‘signifies a most decisive (!) turn
(in the building of the Red Army); it is necessary to reconsider
all (!) the views we have formed, to carry out a complete (!)
reappraisal of values from the standpoint of going over from a
purely defensive to an offensive strategy. The education of the
commanders, the preparation of the individual fighter ...
armament – all this (!) must henceforth proceed under the sign
of the offensive’ (p.22).
’Only with such a unified plan,’ he goes on, ‘will the
reorganisation of the Red Army, which has begun, emerge from a
state of formlessness, disorder, disharmony, vacillation and
absence of a clearly known goal.’ Solomin’s expressions are, as
we see, strictly offensive, but his assertions are absurd. The
formlessness, vacillation and disorder exist only in his own
head. There are, objectively, difficulties and practical
mistakes in our constructive work. But there is no disorder, no
vacillation, no disharmony. And the army will not allow the
Solomins to impose their organisational and strategical
ramblings and thereby to introduce vacillation and disorder.
Our regulations and programmes need revision not from the
standpoint of the doctrinaire formula of the pure offensive but
from that of the experience we have had in the last four years.
We must read, discuss and correct the regulations at conferences
of commanders. It is necessary, while the memory of the combat
operations, large and small, is still vivid, to compare that
experience with the formulas given in the regulations, and each
commander should consciously ask himself whether these words
answer to the practice or not, and, if they differ, should
decide where the difference lies. To collect all this
systematised experience, to sum it up, to evaluate it at the
centre against the criterion of higher experience in strategy,
tactics, organisation and politics, to rid the regulations and
programmes of all out-of-date, superfluous material, to bring
them closer to the army, and to make the army feel to what
extent they are necessary to it, and to what extent they should
replace improvisation – this is a great and vital task!
We possess an orientation which is international in scale and
has great historical scope. One of its sections has already
passed the test of experience: another is now being tested, and
is standing the test. The Communist vanguard is sufficiently
assured of revolutionary initiative and aggressive spirit. We do
not need wordy, noisy innovation in the form of new military
doctrines, nor the bombastic proclamation of these doctrines;
what we need is systematising of experience, improvement in
organisation, attention to details.
The defects in our organisation, our backwardness and poverty,
especially in the technical field, must not be erected by us
into a credo; they must be eliminated by every means in our
power, in an effort to approach, in this respect, the
imperialist armies, which all deserve to be destroyed, but which
are in some ways superior to ours: well-developed aviation,
plentiful means of communication, well-trained and
carefully-selected commanders, precision in calculating
resources, correct mutual relations. This is, of course, only
the organisational and technical integument. Morally and
politically, the bourgeois armies are disintegrating, or heading
towards disintegration. The revolutionary character of our army,
the class homogeneity of our commanders and of the mass of the
fighting men, Communist leadership – here is where our most
powerful and unconquerable strength lies. Nobody can take this
away from us. All our attention must now be directed not toward
a fanciful reconstruction but toward improvement and greater
precision. To supply units properly with food; not to let
foodstuffs go bad; to cook good cabbage soup; to teach how to
exterminate lice and keep the body clean; to conduct training
exercises properly, and to do this rather less indoors and
rather more under the open sky; to prepare political discussions
sensibly and concretely; to provide every Red Army man with a
service book and see to it that the entries are correct; to
teach how to clean rifles and grease boots; to teach how to
shoot; to help the commanders to assimilate thoroughly the
behests of the regulations concerning communications,
reconnaissance, reports and security to learn and to teach how
to adapt oneself to local conditions to wind one’s footcioths
properly, so as to save one’s feet from getting rubbed raw; and,
once again, to grease one’s boots – such is our programme for
the winter and the spring that lie ahead.
Should anyone, on a holiday occasion, call this a military
doctrine, he will not be punished for that.
November 22-December 5, 1921, Moscow
#Post#: 20632--------------------------------------------------
Re: Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism
By: mistermax Date: February 6, 2016, 6:29 pm
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ελα πες την
αλήθεια,
κανεις Phd
στην
ιστορια της
αρχης του 20
αιωνα.
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