Military Opposition

The Military Opposition was an opposition current inside the Bolshevik Party over how the Red Army should be built, formed in 1918–1919 and reaching its peak at the Eighth Party Congress (18 to 23 March 1919). Most of its participants were former Left Communists who had opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and one motive for joining was dissatisfaction with the way Trotsky ran the military commissariat.

Composition and demands

The Military Opposition was an opposition current rather than a cohesive single faction. The Russian Wikipedia article lists Abram Kamensky, Vladimir Smirnov, Georgy Safarov, Georgy Pyatakov, Andrei Bubnov, Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, Vladimir Sorin, Kliment Voroshilov, Filipp Goloshchyokin, Aleksandr Myasnikov, Nikolai Tolmachyov, Rozaliya Samoilova (Zemlyachka) and Sergei Minin among its participants, and states that they argued among themselves on many questions and that some accepted its theses only partially, continuing to support Lenin on other issues.

At the core of its demands was criticism of the authority enjoyed by military specialists drawn from former Tsarist officers, and a call to strengthen the powers of the political commissars. At the congress Vladimir Smirnov argued that military specialists should not be appointed to command posts but used only as advisers, and sharply criticised the Red Army internal-service regulation on rank-and-file soldiers greeting superiors as a 'survival of the autocratic-serf order'.

The Eighth Congress

A special military section was created at the congress and held three sessions; after heated debate it endorsed the theses of the Military Opposition by 37 votes to 20. At the closed session of 21 March 1919 Lenin himself delivered the main hours-long report against the Military Opposition, with Stalin and Okulov developing his theses afterwards. In the vote Lenin's resolution received 174 votes and the resolution of the Military Opposition 95, with 3 abstentions and 1 non-voter. Lenin considered the result dangerous and, fearing a split in the party over the military question, proposed a conciliation commission to draft a joint resolution, promising to incorporate all the useful critical proposals coming from members of the Military Opposition. On 23 March Yaroslavsky reported for the conciliation commission and its resolution was adopted unanimously, with 1 abstention.

For this reason the minutes of the military section of the Eighth Congress have never been published to this day.

Dissolution

Trotsky wrote that he offered the most irreconcilable of his critics the chance to organise some regiments on their own principles. Only one district group on the Volga took up the challenge and organised a regiment no different from the rest. As the Red Army won on all fronts, the opposition gradually melted away.

The dispute over military questions continued afterwards, flaring up again at the Ninth Party Congress (1920) and the Tenth Party Congress (1921).