Trotsky's Carnot: the Red Army's administrative brain, erased by Stalinism
Trotsky wrote in his memoirs: 'I chose Sklyansky as my deputy. I never had any occasion to regret it afterwards. If anyone could be compared with Lazare Carnot of the French Revolution, it is Sklyansky.'
One of the de facto founders of the Red Army and Trotsky's most trusted deputy. A Kiev University medical graduate and Bolshevik since 1913, at just 26 he became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and Deputy War Commissar, running the Red Army's entire administrative and operational machinery from Moscow while Trotsky roamed the Civil War fronts. Trotsky ranked him with Lazare Carnot, the military organizer of the French Revolution. Dismissed in 1924 during Stalin's rise and demoted to a textile trust, he drowned under suspicious circumstances in Long Lake, New York, the following year. His name was systematically erased from Soviet military history under Stalin.
Career Timeline
- 1913Joins Bolsheviks as a medical student at Kiev University; underground propaganda work
- 1916–1917Drafted; serves as infantryman then army doctor; rises to leadership of 5th Army revolutionary committees
- 1917.10Member of Petrograd MRC; presidium member at the Second Congress of Soviets
- 1917–1918Commissar of General Staff and Supreme Command HQ; demobilization of the old army and salvage of war matériel
- 1918.3–9Member of the Supreme Military Council of the RSFSR
- 1918–1924Deputy Chairman of the Revvoensovet & Deputy War Commissar — runs Red Army administration and operations
- 1924–1925Dismissed from military posts; appointed chairman of Mossukno state textile trust
- 1925Drowns in Long Lake, New York, during a technical mission to Germany, France, and the USA