Attitude Toward Military Specialists ("Voyenspetsy")
Отношение к военным специалистам («военспецам»)
Date: 1919
Source: ru:PSS/v39
Translated by: AI (Claude)

The enormous conspiracy that broke out at Krasnaya Gorka and aimed at the surrender of Petrograd has raised with particular urgency once again the question of military specialists and the struggle against counterrevolution in the rear. There is no doubt that the worsening of the food and military situation inevitably has caused and will continue to cause in the near future an intensification of attempts by counterrevolutionaries (the "Union of Regeneration" participated in the Petersburg conspiracy, as well as Cadets, Mensheviks, and Right SRs; separately but still participating were Left SRs). It is just as certain that military specialists will produce in the near future an increased percentage of traitors, like kulaks, bourgeois intellectuals, Mensheviks, and SRs.

But it would be an irreparable mistake and unforgivable weakness of character to raise because of this the question of changing the foundations of our military policy. Hundreds and hundreds of military specialists betray us and will betray us, we will catch them and shoot them, but thousands and tens of thousands of military specialists work for us systematically and for long periods, without whom the Red Army could not have been created, which grew out of the accursed partisanship and managed to win brilliant victories in the east. Experienced people at the head of our military department rightly point out that where party policy regarding military specialists and the eradication of partisanship has been most strictly implemented, where discipline is firmest, where political work in the troops and the work of commissars is most carefully carried out – there, on the whole, there are fewest would-be traitors among military specialists, there is least possibility for such would-be traitors to carry out their intention, there is no slackness in the army, there its structure and spirit are better, there are more victories. Partisanship, its traces, its remnants, its survivals have caused our army and the Ukrainian army immeasurably more disasters, disintegration, defeats, catastrophes, loss of people and loss of military property than all the treasons of military specialists.

Our party program, both on the general question of bourgeois specialists and on the particular question of one of their varieties, military specialists, has defined with complete precision the policy of the Communist Party. Our party struggles and will "ruthlessly struggle against the pseudo-radical but in reality ignorant conceit that the working people are in a position to overcome capitalism and the bourgeois order without learning from bourgeois specialists, without using them, without going through a long school of working side by side with them."

Of course, alongside this the party gives "not the slightest political concession to this given bourgeois stratum," the party suppresses and will "ruthlessly suppress every counterrevolutionary attempt on its part." Naturally, when such an "attempt" occurs or appears with a greater or lesser degree of probability, "ruthless suppression" of it requires different qualities than the slowness, caution of the mood of a learner, which a "long school" requires and which it cultivates in people. The contradiction between the mood of people engaged in "a long school of work side by side" with military specialists and the mood of people carried away by the immediate task of "ruthlessly suppressing the counterrevolutionary attempt" of military specialists can easily lead and does lead to friction and conflicts. The same applies to necessary personal transfers, sometimes movements of a large number of military specialists, which are caused by this or that case of counterrevolutionary "attempts," and all the more so by large conspiracies.

We resolve and will resolve these frictions and conflicts by party means, demanding the same from all party organizations and insisting that not the slightest damage to practical work, not the slightest delay in taking necessary measures, not a shadow of vacillation in implementing the established foundations of our military policy be permitted.

If some party organs take the wrong tone toward military specialists (as recently happened in Petrograd) or if in individual cases "criticism" of military specialists degenerates into direct hindrance to systematic and persistent work on their use, the party corrects immediately and will correct these mistakes.

The main and basic means of their correction is strengthening political work in the army and among the mobilized, tightening up the work of commissars in the army, improving their composition, raising their level, their actual implementation of what the party program demands and what is too often performed far from sufficiently, namely: "concentration of all-round control over the command staff (of the army) in the hands of the working class." Criticism of military specialists from the outside, attempts to correct matters "by raid" – this is too easy a thing and therefore hopeless and harmful. All who are conscious of their political responsibility, who are pained by the shortcomings of our army, let them go into the ranks and files, as Red Army soldiers or commanders, political workers or commissars, let each work – any party member will find a place according to his abilities – inside the military organization for its improvement.

Soviet power long ago directed the greatest attention to ensuring that workers, and then peasants, and especially Communists, could seriously study military affairs. This is being done in a number of establishments, institutions, courses, but this is still being done far, far from sufficiently. Personal initiative, personal energy must still do much here. Communists in particular must diligently study machine-gun, artillery, armored affairs, etc., for here our backwardness is more noticeable, here the superiority of the enemy with a large number of officers is more significant, here an unreliable military specialist can cause major harm, here the role of the Communist is extremely great.