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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
The 1924 Removal: The Troika's First Stage
On 11 March 1924 Sklyansky was removed from all his military posts and replaced by Mikhail Frunze, who had commanded troops in Ukraine. Following Lenin's death, the triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev laid out a staged plan to prise Trotsky out of the Red Army. The second stage of that plan was precisely the removal of Trotsky's deputy and the installation of Frunze in his place. Boris Bazhanov, then Stalin's personal secretary, explained the dismissal as a product of the power struggle inside the Politburo. The stated grounds were administrative failure: a commission under S. I. Gusev reviewed the Red Army and reported that it was not combat-capable, and Sklyansky and the central group of the Revolutionary Military Council he headed were accused of failing to cope with their duties. Trotsky himself read the move as a product of the power struggle. Sklyansky had spent almost his whole career in military administration and had no base of support outside it; his removal was in substance a political elimination. At the February 1924 plenum of the Central Committee, Frunze testified that he would not reproach Sklyansky for failing to take measures, since "he did everything in his power to defend the interests of the army", but added that Sklyansky lacked sufficient party authority for those efforts to produce results. Trotsky's own verdict was that Frunze, though a serious figure, was as a military administrator "incomparably weaker than Sklyansky". The dismissed deputy was demoted the following month to chairman of the Mossukno state textile trust.