If Trotsky can not understand the little ridiculous points of diplomatic etiquette, the cunning and sensitiveness which mark a good diplomat, he thoroughly comprehends how to take advantage of every modern appliance and every modern method of running the War Office. No War Office under any Tsar could boast such order as Trotsky’s. Everything goes like clock-work, you are aware of energy and efficiency; it has the hum of a high-power engine.
The young aides in Trotsky’s office are as smart as in the French War Office. He has a way of attracting venturesome youth from everywhere. His pet school, which is the Military Academy in Moscow, where the General Staff men are trained, is full of these soldiers-of-fortune. I was invited to an entertainment there one evening by a young Lieutenant-Colonel. This man was the son of a rich Swedish banker and he was but twenty-six years old. He introduced me to a number of other foreigners, young men like himself, who had risen to high ranks through many desperate campaigns. “We have every nation represented here but America,” said a Bulgarian. I do not know whether these men were Communists or how loyal they felt to that cause, but they were willing to follow Trotsky to their graves.
A visit to this academy gives one quite a clear idea of how the former classes in Russian society are amalgamating under the new order. It is full of the sons of the bourgeoisie. And the professors are almost without exception the old professors who taught in these schools under the Tsar. Men like Brusilov, who is a Russian patriot and would defend his government under any régime against outsiders, have enormous prestige. As the White Generals went down to defeat one after the other, the young men even of conservative parents came to believe that if they could not swallow the Communist formulas whole, they could, at least, remain loyal Russians. And once in the military schools, they fell under the influence of revolutionary soldiers. Being young and full of Slavic idealism, they often capitulated and in such cases were rapidly promoted. In the Kronstadt day the young men of this type were more concerned than any of the others, perhaps because if the Red Army were to be defeated, they would be the first to be killed by the opposition. When General Brusilov’s only son was captured in Siberia by the White Forces, he was executed simply because he was the son of Brusilov.
Trotsky believes in peace. He has told me this almost every time I talked with him, but he is, nevertheless, an apostle of force. “The happiest moment of my life,” he said, “was when I thought I could turn the Red Army into a Labor Army to reconstruct Russia.” Trotsky would probably have been very successful with his Labor Army, provided he could have kept it really an army, with army rules and discipline. An army is Trotsky’s perfect medium for work. He likes a Labor Army better than a fighting army because it makes him happier to build than to destroy. But all his organizing genius goes for nothing if he cannot have order and discipline.
About three years ago Lenin appointed Trotsky Minister of Railways in addition to his post as War Minister. Trotsky took a trip over the country and found transportation generally smashed and the railway employees as lacking in morale as he had once found the Russian soldiers. He immediately began to re-build transportation with every atom of his strength. If a train was not on time, there had to be a reason given, which had ceased to be done in those days. In fact, no one was ever deeply concerned about exact arrivals and departures of trains under any régime. The Trans-Siberian Railway was the only efficient road which ever operated in Russia. But Trotsky began to make such an everlasting row about these matters that the railway men were aghast. There had always been graft and laziness and indifference, they had no doubt that there always would be, even under government control. Trotsky hauled them up, threatened them with imprisonment and even with death. The result was that the unions were so roused that they threatened a general strike. The situation grew worse and worse. Finally Lenin, to avert a national crisis, dismissed Trotsky and wrote an open letter to the unions about it and Trotsky showed his real fineness of character by accepting his defeat in silence. And yet if he had been in charge of the roads they would certainly not be in the condition that they now are and many thousands of lives in the famine area would have been saved.
Trotsky cannot bear Russian slothfulness and he is constantly irritated by Russian indifference to sanitation. He insists on the utmost fastidiousness and neatness for all who work with him. An amusing scandal took place in Moscow at the time of one of the International Conventions. Trotsky had instructed a Red Army physician to inspect the hotel in which the foreign delegates were to stay and report if it was in order. The physician merely went down to the building and finding a fine grand piano there, whiled his time away playing and let the inspection go. In due course of time the delegates arrived and the first night they were all routed out of bed by insects. This came to the ears of Trotsky and he was so furiously angry that he had the doctor arrested and announced that he would have him shot. The delegates flew around in a fine state of excitement with a petition which they all signed begging Trotsky to spare the physician’s life. As a matter of fact Trotsky would not have shot him, but his threats are reminiscent of the day of Tsar Peter who found it necessary to shoot a number of nobles before the others would shorten their long coats as he had ordered by royal decree.
Trotsky is a student of the French Revolution. He lived a long time in France and he loves France, in spite of its hostility to Soviet Russia. Some of his closest friends are Frenchmen who knew him in Paris and who followed him to Russia and work with him there. He never forgets his friends and has a real capacity for permanent friendships. Russians are, as a rule, very changeable in their personal relationships but one can depend on Trotsky.
As an orator he reminds one much more of the French revolutionary orators. Russians speak more slowly and more logically and with less fire. Trotsky stirs his audiences by his own force and by striking phrases. There were times when these splendid literary phrases infuriated Lenin; from the public platform he once called Trotsky a “phrase-maker.” But this was way back in the Smolny days when Trotsky was more untamed than he is now, and before Lenin realized that Trotsky would be his most able assistant.
While Trotsky was in America he was the editor of a Russian newspaper and apparently caught the American feeling for on-the-minute news. He is the easiest official to interview in Moscow and entirely the most satisfactory, because he is free from the general reticence and distrust of the press which most of the Commissars have. I once wrote him a note saying that I was writing a story about the Red Army and would like some material. The very same day he sent me down a great sack of copy. There were many Red Army magazines and newspapers that I had never heard of. There were handbooks and statistics and maps and, besides all that, there was a permission to go to any of the fronts and to attend any of the lectures at the various schools.
One of the most important departments of the Red Army is that known as the Political-Cultural. A report is made daily by this Department concerning the morale of the soldiers and the relation between the army and the civilian population. This Department conducts the classes in reading and writing and elementary technical training and vocational training; the work is carried on even in fighting days and right up to the front.