Trotsky on Employment of Former Generals
Leon Trotsky, Employment of Former Generals. April 21, 1918
Excerpt from a speech, in How the Revolution Armed (1923).
Original Source: L. Trotsky, Kak vooruzhalas' revoliutsiia (Moscow: Izd. VVRS, 1923-1925), Vol. 1, pp. 63-64.
... In order to train the Red Army we are employing... some of the better qualified and more honest of the old generals. I hear these questions: "What? ... Is this not a dangerous step?" There is danger in everything. We must have teachers who know something about the science of war. We talk to these generals with complete frankness. We tell them: "There is a new master in the land -- the working class. He needs instructors to teach the toilers... how to fight the bourgeoisie." ... If these generals serve us honestly, we shall give them our full support; if they attempt counter-revolution, we shall find a way of dealing with them. They know that we have eyes everywhere...
Source: James Bunyan, ed., Intervention, Civil War, and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), pp. 405-406.