Army subversion in the Civil War and the 1920s
The Red Army was perceived as a target of internal and external subversion from its formation in early 1918 and during the Civil War against the White forces. However, much of this was self-imposed. Due to a skills shortage in the new Red Army, War Commissar Leon Trotsky was forced to rely on officers from the old Imperial Army, so-called ‘military specialists’, who quickly came to dominate the higher ranks.3 Even though political commissars flanked the military specialists and monitored their political reliability, many in the Bolshevik Party, including Stalin, distrusted the Imperial officers. Notably, fears of treachery were vocally aired at the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919.4 Even Trotsky accepted that some military specialists would betray the Bolsheviks (Trotsky 1979, p. 10). Much of this distrust was driven by class prejudice.
Military specialists were bourgeois, they were seen as outsiders, and some were undoubtedly hostile to the Bolsheviks. On a certain level, these fears of treachery were not entirely misplaced. Even though numerous military specialists such as a young Mikhail Tukhachevskii proved their loyalty throughout the Civil War, many did not. One of the most well-known military specialist betrayals was the mutiny of the Commander of the Eastern Front, M. A. Murav’ev, in July 1918 (Ziemke 2004, pp. 38 – 39).5 Consequently, the newly formed soviet political police, the Cheka, worked hard to defend the army from military specialist betrayals. ‘Special Departments’ (Osobye otdely) were formed specifically to monitor ‘counter-revolution’ in the ranks. The political police were especially concerned that White counter-revolutionaries were infiltrating the Red Army by posing as military specialists. Reporting in 1919, the head of the Cheka, Feliks Dzerzhinskii, noted that Whites had managed to gain command positions in the Red Army (Plekhanov & Plekhanov 2007, p. 133). Indeed, that former Whites were even given the opportunity to serve in the Red Army only heightened these concerns.6
The Red Army was also perceived as a target of foreign agents. Indeed, the loss of secret military documents could be decisive to the outcome of a battle. Yet, the perception of this espionage threat was certainly larger than its reality. It needs to be emphasised that the Cheka actively sought to ‘expose’ foreign agents and beat confessions from the arrested. Not all the foreign espionage plots ‘exposed’ in the Red Army should be considered genuine.7 In addition, as the army played such a key role in the Civil War, the Cheka may have been more attentive in searching for foreign agents in the military. The Red Army also deployed whole units of foreign volunteers, which constituted a potential internal security threat. An example of the Cheka’s concerns about foreigners in the army can be seen in November 1920 when they requested that all non-party Estonians, Latvians, Finns and Poles be removed from their positions if they had access to secret materials (Sanborn 2003, p. 130;
Zdanovich 2008, p. 535).
As such, during the Civil War the new Red Army faced a severe test not only in terms of building its strength from the ground up and defeating the White forces, but also in combating a series of perceived internal and external threats. However, as noted, the reality of these threats is difficult to determine precisely as they were prone to exaggeration. Some military specialists did betray the Bolsheviks and some foreign agents were genuine, but class prejudice, the pressure of ‘capitalist encirclement’ and the violent interrogation methods used by the Cheka certainly exaggerated the scale of these threats. But importantly, it was this inflated picture of threat which was presented to the party leadership. Following the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War the gulf between the perception and reality of threats to the army continued to grow.
The Red Army went through a period of demobilisation after the Civil War, meaning many military specialists were discharged from the ranks. However, large numbers remained in command positions
due to a skills shortage. This continued use of military specialists was complicated by concerns that some were linked to the now exiled White forces, which were still regarded as a credible threat. On being driven from Russia, the Whites had dispersed throughout Europe. In 1924 General Peter Wrangel founded the Russian General Military Union (Russkii obshchii-voinskii soyuz—ROVS) which shortly became the largest centre of the White movement. As the head of ROVS, Wrangel intended to continue his fight from exile, though a change of tactics was necessary.
From the early 1920s the Whites began to place more emphasis on covert operations and increased their attempts to forge contacts within the Red Army. The Whites targeted military specialists for recruitment and the counter-intelligence department of ROVS paid particular attention to the Red Army officer corps (Karpenko & Alexeeva 2000, p. 83). Soviet political police intelligence reports detail the alleged White attempts to subvert the Red Army. For example, in September 1921 a meeting of former officers in Petrograd was reported. According to the report, there was a discussion of the organisation ‘of an “expedition” to Moscow’ aiming to create subversive cells for infiltration into the Red Army, the Cheka and other soviet institutions (Zolotarev et al. 1998, pp. 87 – 89). A GPU order on the struggle with counter-revolution from March 1922 highlighted that Monarchist and Kadet e´migre´s intended to use military specialists for espionage work (Zdanovich 2008,p. 377).8 Furthermore, on 24 March 1923 the GPU reported an increase in the size of Wrangel’s intelligence network, which focused primarily on ‘the collection of information about the Red army’s condition and armament, and also the breaking down of morale (moral’noe razlozhenie) of the latter by way of planting agents in the command positions of units of the Red Army’ (Kol’tyukov et al. 2007, pp. 815 – 17). In addition, former White officers were still permitted to serve in the Red Army and a series of post-Civil War amnesties increased their numbers (Tynchenko 2000, p. 17). Thus the Whites could infiltrate agents into the Red Army under the guise of returning soldiers. A GPU circular from 1923 pointed out that the ‘Return to the homeland, undoubtedly, was used by Wrangel’s counter- intelligence for sending agents, organisers and spies to Russia’ (Kol’tyukov et al. 2007, pp. 803 – 4).
Again, it is difficult to accurately access the actual scale of the White threat from such reports. The Whites certainly attempted to subvert the Red Army, but it seems they had limited success. From his examination of materials in the FSB Archive Aleksandr Zdanovich highlights that there were no mass arrests of military specialists during 1924 – 1930 (Zdanovich 2008, p. 383). The political police received intelligence about the White threat to the Red Army and military specialists were arrested as a consequence, but these were not large-scale operations (Tynchenko 2000, p. 454; Goldin 2010, pp. 192 – 93). As such, even though the political police regarded the Whites as a primary threat in the 1920s, especially to the Red Army, and they invested a great deal of time and resources in combating this threat, in reality there were only low numbers of related arrests. This suggests that the political police continued to inflate the White threat to the army (Goldin 2010, pp. 187, 432).
The perceived White threat to the Red Army was also enhanced by soviet disinformation. Indeed, the
Whites did not want to infiltrate the Red Army only due to its importance as a support of the Bolshevik government, but were actually optimistic that certain individuals from the High Command
could be recruited. A military coup was regarded as not entirely unrealistic. The Whites displayed such optimism partly because the soviet political police spread rumours about a ‘Russian Bonaparte’ in the Red Army elite as part of entrapment operations in the 1920s. These rumours were particularly concentrated around Tukhachevskii (Zdanovich 2008, p. 280). For example, the ‘Trust Operation’ spread false information that prominent officers, including Tukhachevskii, were members of a White counter-revolutionary organisation to entrap genuine counter-revolutionaries. The operation snared high-profile Whites, including General Aleksandr Kutepov, representing one of the political police’s greatest successes of the 1920s.
However, an immediate consequence of such disinformation operations was that the atmosphere became awash with hearsay about betrayal in the Red Army, visible in White publications, intelligence reports and in the diaries of prominent White figures (Minakov 2005, pp. 89 – 93).9 These rumours had great resonance outside the Soviet Union and reinforced White hopes that prominent Red Army military specialists would defect. For example, an OGPU report from March 1924 described how a White officer Samoilov intended to make contact with Tukhachevskii to offer him a role in a military coup (Kol’tyukov et al. 2010, pp. 421 – 22).10 As effective as these rumours were in entrapping counter-revolutionaries, they could also increase the perceived White threat to the Red Army by encouraging Whites to make contact. The very same rumours could also return to the Soviet Union, reinforcing existing class prejudices and undermining party trust in the army elite.
Importantly, the Bolsheviks saw their revolution in the context of past revolutions and particularly the French Revolution. The Bolsheviks had been forced to maintain a large standing army, but were very conscious of the dangers of a ‘Soviet Thermidor’ and military dictatorship. In the 1920s such fears began to emerge at the fringes of the Bolshevik Party. In 1927 the ‘Military Opposition’ (the group most vocally against military specialists at the Eighth Party Congress) argued that employing military specialists was turning the army into an instrument for a ‘Bonapartist coup’. Similarly, the oppositionist Grigorii Zinov’ev argued that some military specialists were ‘dreaming about a role of a Russian Chiang Kai-shek’ (Voroshilov 1937, pp. 149, 152). Thus, even though the political police sustained rumours about a ‘Soviet Thermidor’ for their own benefit, the rumours had an impact within the Soviet Union. For now alarmism about a military coup appeared confined to the fringes of the party, but in the 1930s similar rumours about army betrayal returned to the Soviet Union and played a role in undermining trust in the Red Army elite. It is important to emphasise that the Soviet political police were as responsible as anyone else for spreading rumours about disloyalty in the High Command. They perpetuated rumours which refused to dissipate, and in the end, undermined their own military.
After the Civil War foreign espionage remained a persistent problem for the Red Army and spies were ‘exposed’ at a low, but frequent, level in the 1920s. For example, in June 1924 the counter-intelligence department of the Kiev OGPU arrested a group of men on charges of alleged espionage for Poland. The majority were military specialists who had served in the Red Army, and one was still employed (Viktorov 1990, p. 62).11 When Jozef Pilsudski came to power in Poland in 1926 the OGPU recorded an increase in Polish espionage activity and attempts to recruit from within the Red Army (Zdanovich 2008, pp. 74 – 75). This activity was highlighted by the military procuracy, which noted in a report that during the period between October 1926 to October 1927: ‘ .. . for their aims foreign intelligence agents use social aliens and those with harmful moods towards sov[iet] power, elements/former noblemen (dvoryane) .. . [and] in the main individuals from the officer corps’.12 Yet, it is important to note that the scale of this espionage activity at this time was probably very small. In 1927 the procuracy also detailed that ‘The penetration of foreign intelligence agents into the RKKA (Raboche-krest’yanskaya Krasnaya armiya) is on an insignificant scale .. . ’.13 And again, as noted above, not all espionage cases would be genuine. The political police continued to actively seek out foreign agents and beat confessions from those arrested. Foreign agents were seen as having infiltrated the army, but the problem was not extensive, and the actual level of this threat was probably even lower.
Germany was regarded as an exception because of the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo. The close relations between the Bolshevik and German governments led to a military collaboration which gave officers from the Reichswehr relatively open access to the Red Army. As is well known, an exchange of officers formed a large part of the collaboration and nearly all members of the Red Army elite studied in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.14 During the collaboration some level of intelligence gathering was inevitable on both sides. German representatives in the Soviet Union repeatedly sent information home from the soviet military press, observations from military manoeuvres and conversations with Red Army officers (Kantor 2009, p. 119). However, on 24 December 1928 the head of military intelligence, Yan Berzin, wrote to Voroshilov and downplayed the threat of German espionage. He noted that there was ‘no doubt’ that the Germans ‘have the task of economic, political and military information/espionage. .. . But according to all information this espionage is not directed towards the line of the extraction and collection of secret documents, but is conducted through personal observations, conversations and verbal information (ustnikh informatsii). This espionage is less dangerous .. . ’.15 Importantly, this attitude towards German intelligence would change when Adolf Hitler came to power.
The Red Army faced one final threat during the 1920s from the so-called ‘Trotskyist Opposition’. This differed to the above threats: it was internal and could potentially spread from one army party organisation to another. When Trotsky went into political opposition in 1923 he garnered some support from a number of senior officers, military specialists and from individuals within the army Political Administration (Politicheskoe upravlenie – RKKA, hereafter PUR) (Hincks 1992, p. 143; Zdanovich 2008, pp. 287, 323).16 This support was denounced by the party. For example, in January 1924 the Central Control Commission criticised Trotsky’s ally and head of PUR, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, for trying ‘to raise the military workers against the leading organs of the party and all the party as a whole’ (Karyaeva et al. 1981, p. 184). Antonov-Ovseenko was quickly replaced as head of PUR by Andrei Bubnov. However, generally, PUR consistently made little of Trotsky’s influence in the army.17 For example, a 1927 PUR report downplayed the Trotskyist influence in the ranks, describing its presence as ‘insignificant’ and constituting only 0.25% of the army party organisations. According to PUR, these organisations were secure.18 Of course, PUR was responsible for the political reliability of the army and had an incentive in downplaying the Trotskyist influence. The new head of the army, Kliment Voroshilov, also publicly downplayed their impact.19 For instance, in a speech on 10 January 1927 Voroshilov praised the military for having stood firm in the face of the oppositionist threat, making an analogy to an exam which the party organisations had ‘passed brilliantly’.20 However, Voroshilov too had an interest in promoting the political stability of the army. He was ultimately responsible for stability in the ranks.
The political police held a very different view of the Trotskyist threat. They were far more concerned about agitation in the ranks, despite the relatively small number of Trotskyists. The political police received regular reports of illegal propaganda work within the army and took action. From December 1925 to February 1928, 211 supporters of the ‘Opposition’ were expelled from the party and the army (Zdanovich 2008, pp. 323 – 24). In 1926, Trotsky was joined by Zinov’ev and Lev Kamenev in forming the ‘United Opposition’ and 1927 was the peak year of their activity. In October 1927 all three were expelled from the Central Committee and later expelled from the party.
In 1927 the Trotskyist officers, Primakov and Putna, also lost their commands and were sent overseas on diplomatic assignments.
In November 1927 the opposition planned demonstrations on the anniversary of the Revolution, but the political police had received information that the opposition’s ‘combat organisation’ was planning a coup. Apparently the conspirators had planned to take over the Kremlin and the OGPU headquarters, with similar operations hatching in Leningrad and Kharkov. The coup never materialised and Stalin praised the counteractions taken by the head of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinskii (Reiman 1987, pp. 124–26). In this respect, it appears that Stalin believed the coup attempt was genuine and, importantly, the army was central to the supposed plot. According to Menzhinskii, the coup preparations coincided with vigorous agitation within the army and he was pessimistic about its reliability, writing in a letter: ‘ . . . the army today, unlike before, has already been partly contaminated and that the commanders now are often not reliable in the full sense of the word. Comrade Voroshilov is thoroughly aware of the seriousness of the situation and fully shares my
pessimistic mood’ (Reiman 1987, p. 125). Not only does Menzhinskii’s letter demonstrate the disparity between Voroshilov’s public and private views about army reliability, but Menzhinskii stressed that he had pointed to the negative affect of oppositionist agitation several times, but this had not always met with the ‘desired results’ (Reiman 1987, p. 125).
It is likely that Menzhinskii had not been given permission in the past to crack down on oppositionists in the military. Stalin perhaps had not believed this necessary and his opinion had not changed in November 1927. The evidence about Stalin’s view of this alleged coup attempt is fragmentary. Important documents such as his correspondence with Menzhinskii about the event are inaccessible and probably classified. Such documents would more clearly reveal Stalin’s private opinion. However, it does seem probable that Stalin did not share the concerns of the political police about the supposed coup attempt. Indeed, in a letter to the Central Committee Stalin noted that he could not ‘fully share the very pessimistic viewpoint of the GPU Collegium’ regarding the oppositionist threat to the army (Reiman 1987, p. 125). Indeed, as there was no crackdown on the military, it seems Stalin had not been convinced by Menzhinskii. This was not the only time that the political police had failed to be convincing about the oppositionist threat to the army. In 1927 the OGPU also revealed an alleged underground Trotskyist printing house and arrested those responsible.
During the investigation one Trotskyist gave testimony that he was linked with a group of military men who were planning a coup. However, this time, even Menzhinskii was not convinced and requested a more detailed report (Zdanovich 2008, pp. 320–22). No charge of a military coup was made.
Thus, a suspected ‘oppositionist coup’ had been foiled in November 1927, but Stalin had not ‘fully’ agreed with the OGPU about the oppositionist threat to the army. Stalin appears to have been conscious of the danger and does not seem sceptical about the coup attempt itself, but he favoured restraint. This was not a crisis point. The Trotskyist influence in the ranks was minor and the army was not overwhelmed, thus a serious crackdown was not required. For now the army would remain under police observation and arrests for Trotskyism would continue. For example, Sergei Mrachkovskii was arrested in Moscow in early 1928 under suspicion of illegal Trotskyist activity, but also of being part of a military group in the capital (Zdanovich 2008, p. 324). However, the alleged role of members of the army in the ‘oppositionist coup’ of November 1927 would not be forgotten.
Suspicions and doubts surrounding its political reliability would linger. This perceived Trotskyist threat added a further reason for Stalin to have nagging doubts about army loyalty, building on the already identified external threats from the Whites and foreign agents. Yet, none of these perceived threats had created a crisis in the army, despite the tendency of the political police to inflate the danger. But in 1930 the ‘exposure’ of a large alleged foreign-backed military specialist plot firmly reinforced the perceived vulnerability of the Red Army.
Next; Operation vesna and the growing espionage threat
The arrest of the ‘Trotskyist Military Centre’
The arrest of the ‘Trotskyist Military Centre’
3 During 1918, 75% of Red Army officers were from the former Imperial Army (Reese 1990, p. 40).
4 For Stalin’s view of military specialists, see Benvenuti (1988, p. 46). For the Eighth Party
Congress, see
Vosmoi s’ezd RKP(b), Mart 1919 goda, prokoli (Moscow, 1959).
5 For more on military specialist betrayal in the army, see Voitikov (2010, pp. 4, 346 – 47).
6 Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASPI), fond 17,
opis 109, delo 90, line 1.
7 For espionage cases in the army, see Voitikov (2010, pp. 71 – 77, 164, 176, 313, 362). For
political police suspicions that foreign governments were financing White groups, see Voitikov
(2010, pp. 176, 289, 396;
2005, p. 147).
(8)The Cheka was succeeded by the State Political Directorate in 1922, Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe enie (GPU).
9 For more on Tukhachevskii and the growth of the Napoleon legend, see Minakov (2005, pp. 71 – 98).
10 The GPU became the Joint State Political Directorate, Ob’edinennoe gosudarstvennoe
politicheskoe
(OGPU) in 1923.
11For other espionage cases see Viktorov (1990, p. 66); Tynchenko (2000, p. 100); Zdanovich (2008,
pp. 606 – 13); and Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (hereafter RGVA), f. 4, op. 14, d. 84,
l. 111.
12RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 70, l. 1.
13RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 70, l. 1.
14RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 19, l. 110.
15RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 295, l. 75.
16Trotsky’s military supporters included Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, the head of PUR, N. Muralov,
commander of the Moscow Military District (MVO) and S. Mrachkovskii, the commander of the Volga Military District (PriVO). A number of other officers also joined the opposition, notably Vitaly
Primakov and Vitovt Putna.
17RGVA, f. 33988, op. 3, d. 69, l. 133; RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 51, ll. 21 – 24.
18RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 227, ll. 190– 91. The report does note that a few military districts
are absent from the figures, see RGVA, f. 9, op. 26, d. 446, ll. 12 – 25.
19Voroshilov became Peoples’ Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs in 1925 following the death of Mikhail Frunze.20RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 186, ll. 1 – 18.
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 67, No. 1, January 2015, 102–122
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/15/100102–21 q 2015 University of Glasgow
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