from Stalin to 9th party congress

Bolshevik leadership Correspondence. 1912-1927
Collection of documents 1996.
Compiled by: A.V.Kvashonkin, L.P.Kosheleva, L.A.Rogovaya, O.V.Khlevnyuk.

Stalin Correspondences

JV Stalin to the Presidium of the IX Party Conference

September 23 [1920]

Comrade Stalin's statement 1 .

Certain passages in yesterday's speeches by comrades Trotsky and Lenin 2 could give comrade comrades the conference a reason to suspect me of misrepresenting the facts. In the interest of truth, I must state the following:

1) Comrade Trotsky's statement that I portrayed the state of our fronts in a rosy light does not correspond to reality. I was, it seems, the only member of the Central Committee who ridiculed the current slogan about the "march on Warsaw" and openly warned comrades in the press against being carried away by successes, against underestimating the Polish forces. It is enough to read my articles in Pravda.

2) Comrade Trotsky's statement that my calculations about the capture of Lvov were not justified contradicts the facts. In mid-August, our troops approached Lvov at a distance of 8 versts and they probably would have taken Lvov, but they did not take it because the high command deliberately refused to take Lvov and at the moment when our troops were 8 versts from Lvov, the command transferred Budyonny from the Lvov region to the Zapfront for the latter's assistance. What does Stalin's calculations have to do with it?

3) Comrade Lenin's statement that I am partial to the Western Front, that the strategy did not fail the Central Committee, does not correspond to reality. No one denied that the Central Committee had a telegram from the command about the capture of Warsaw on August 16th. The point is not that Warsaw was not taken on August 16 - this is a small matter - but the point is that the Western Front was, it turns out, in front of a catastrophe due to the fatigue of the soldiers, due to the lack of rears, and the command did not know this, did not notice . If the command had warned the Central Committee about the actual state of the front, the Central Committee would doubtless have renounced the offensive war temporarily, as it is doing now. The fact that Warsaw was not taken on August 16 is, I repeat, a small matter, but the fact that this was followed by an unprecedented catastrophe, which took 100,000 prisoners and 200 guns from us, is already a big oversight by the command, which cannot be ignored. That is why I demanded in the Central Committee the appointment of a commission3 , which, having found out the causes of the disaster, would insure us against a new defeat. T. Lenin, apparently, spares the command, but I think that it is necessary to spare the cause, and not the command.

23/9

I. Stalin.

RTSKHIDNI. F. 558. On. 1. D. 5570. L. 2. Autograph.

Notes:

1 In a somewhat revised form, this statement of Stalin was delivered by him on the morning of September 23 at the third meeting of the IX Conference of the RCP(b). For the text of Stalin's speech, see: The Ninth Conference of the RCP(b). protocols. M., 1972. S. 82.

2We are talking about the speech of Lenin and Trotsky at the IX All-Russian Conference of the RCP (b) on September 22, 1920. Speaking with the political report of the Central Committee, Lenin, referring to the question of Poland, in particular, said: “Where is now to look for a mistake? Perhaps a political mistake, perhaps a strategic one [...] There may be a mistake in the answer to Curzon's note on April 12, when they were told simply, don't give a damn about the League of Nations, let's go ahead. It goes without saying that we defined with the wrong definition [...] The Central Committee itself is unreasonably worried that we made a mistake and were defeated. But we do not undertake to correct this mistake, to appoint a commission. We need to resolve issues of current policy [...]” (RTSKHIDNI, F. 44. On. 1. D. 2. L. 27-28, 31).

Speaking in the debate on the report of the Central Committee, Stalin reacted painfully to this remark. “We have before us,” he said, “at that time there were several facts. The first is Curzon's note [...] the second [...] is the growing revolutionary movement in England and Germany [...] the third fact is the advance of our troops on the Southwestern and Western fronts. Thus, the prospect opened before us from all sides that if we accepted Curzon's proposal, we would thereby risk giving a respite to Poland and the entire international bourgeoisie [...] Undoubtedly, the first thing the Central Committee had to do was to check the state of our fronts. The Central Committee sent requests, and in mid-August a telegram was received that we were taking Warsaw on August 16. This message, coming from competent and responsible persons, served as that extra weight, which outweighed the opinion of the Central Committee in the direction of continuing the offensive war [...] I must declare that in such a situation our Central Committee would not be a revolutionary Central Committee if it adopted other policy. When it turned out that the Komfront made a mistake in its assessment of the front, that a member of the Front's Revolutionary Military Council made a mistake, that the Central Committee was in some way let down by strategy, it is ridiculous to say that "if only beans grew in your mouth." Beans never grow in the mouth. Any other policy of the Central Committee would be reactionary. Therefore, I think that his logic was absolutely correct [...]” (Ninth Conference of the RCP(b). Protocols. M., 1972. P. 60-61). In his closing remarks, Lenin said that Stalin went over the edge and came to the defense of the military leadership (RTSKHIDNI. F. 44. On. 1. D. 2. L. 131).

In turn, Trotsky, in his final speech on the report on martial law, accused Stalin. “Regarding intelligence,” he began his speech, “it’s absolutely right that our intelligence is not brilliant, especially undercover intelligence. It is based on the enthusiasm and devotion of the most excellent Party workers, who provide excellent political information, but who provide us with extremely insufficient and, in a military sense, illiterate military information. We received much more information about the complete disintegration, about the general panic that nothing would come of the attempt to strengthen the army (See document No. the period when we were approaching Warsaw [...] Now another objection. I ask, did you know that the living forces of the Polish army were not defeated. Comrades, I will allow myself to say that I was more skeptical than many other comrades, because it was on this question that I should have dwelled more than others, that is, whether the military forces of the Polish White Army were defeated or not. On this occasion, I had conversations with Comrade Stalin, and I said that one cannot be complacent with all sorts of reports that the forces of the Polish army were defeated, because the forces of the Polish army were not defeated, since we have too few prisoners compared to our successes and too little we captured of materiel. Tov. Stalin said: “No, you are mistaken. We have fewer prisoners than one would expect in accordance with our successes, but the Polish soldiers are afraid to surrender, they scatter through the forests. Desertion in Poland takes on the character of a huge phenomenon that is disintegrating Poland, and this is the main reason for our victories. What am I supposed to say that Comrade Stalin let me down and the Central Committee. Tov. Stalin was a member of one of the two Revolutionary Military Councils that beat white Poland. Tov. Stalin made a mistake and introduced this mistake to the Central Committee, which also entered as the main fact for determining the policy of the Central Committee. Tov. Stalin at the same time says that the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front has failed the Central Committee. I say that this is the assessment of the Central Committee. Tov. Stalin presented the matter in such a way that we had an ideally correct line, but the command let us down, saying that Warsaw would be occupied on such and such a date. This is not true. The Central Committee would be an extremely frivolous institution if it determined its policy by the fact that those comrades who talked about when Warsaw would be taken let us down, because the data they had were the same as ours ”(Ninth Conference of the RCP (b) Protocols, Moscow, 1972, pp. 76-77).
3 See Document No. 100.