Stalin: A Biography

In Stalin’s opinion it was imperative ‘to seize the maximum we can’ before any cease-fire might occur. He aimed to take Lwów.²² This was a personal preference: the fall of Lwów would not only benefit the Soviet cause but also bring him kudos as the city’s conqueror. The trouble was that, as Stalin had warned, Wrangel’s forces remained a serious threat. Stalin typically called for a policy of executing White officer POWs to a man.²³ Learning that things were not going well for the Red Army in the Crimea,²⁴ he put this failure down to the cowardice of the Soviet Commander-in-Chief Sergei Kamenev. His mind was focused on glory in Poland as he and his command staff moved westward.²⁵

Stalin and Lenin also undertook preliminary planning for the kind of Europe they expected to organise when socialist seizures of power took place. Their grandiose visions take the breath away. Before the Second Comintern Congress, Lenin urged the need for a general federation including Germany, and he made clear that he wanted the economy of such a federation to be ‘administered from a single organ’. Stalin rejected this as impractical:²⁶

If you think you’d ever get Germany to enter a federation with the same rights as Ukraine, you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which has been constituted as a bourgeois state with all its attributes, would enter the Union with the same rights as Ukraine you are mistaken.

Lenin was angry. The implication of Stalin’s comment was that considerations of national pride would impel Russia and Germany to remain separate states for the foreseeable future. Lenin sent him a ‘threatening letter’ which charged him with chauvinism.²⁷ It was Lenin’s objective to set up a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. His vision of ‘European socialist revolution’ was unchanged since 1917. But Stalin held his ground. The Politburo had to acknowledge the realities of nationhood if the spread of socialism in Europe was to be a success.

These discussions were hypothetical since the Red Army had not yet reached Poland, far less set up a revolutionary government in Warsaw. Stalin himself had caused one of the operational snags. This occurred when he ordered his military and political subordinates to regard Lwów as their priority. He failed to mention that such a command would disrupt the general strategic plan approved by Trotski and Tukhachevski on campaign and by Lenin in Moscow. Stalin was ignoring the precedence given by these others to the capture of Warsaw; instead he diverted the armed forces of the South-Western Front away from a line of convergence with those of the Western Front.

The battle for Warsaw took place across four sectors. Lasting from 12 to 25 August, it settled the outcome of the war.²⁸ Tukhachevski’s original plan had been to attack even sooner, before the Poles had time to regroup for defence of their capital. His losses had been substantial. Supplies and reinforcements were unlikely to be forthcoming. The exhausted Red Army, harassed by the Polish inhabitants, had to win a very quick victory or else lose everything.²⁹ Piłsudski grabbed his chance. In successive sectors he repulsed the Red advance. Sergei Kamenev, the Supreme Commander, had planned to move forward on two fronts: the Western under Tukhachevski and Smilga and the South-Western under Yegorov and Stalin. Kamenev failed to co-ordinate them. The South-Western Front was still charged with protecting the Soviet state against Wrangel from the Crimea: it was therefore aimed in two different directions at once. On 22 July, furthermore, Yegorov had pointed his line of march towards Lublin and Lwów and daily increased the gap between himself and Tukhachevski. This was a recipe for confusion and dispute, and Stalin was never one to hold back from aggravating a difficult situation.

The Red Army had urgent need of a revised strategic plan. Such a plan could be devised only at the highest political level. On 2 August the Politburo resolved to split the South-Western Front into two and give half its forces to the Western Front and the other half to a reformed Southern Front tasked with defending Ukraine against Wrangel.³⁰ Yet no action followed until 14 August, when Sergei Kamenev ordered the transfer of forces from the South-Western Front with immediate effect.³¹