Red Napoleon was a nickname for a number of communist generals. The term was popularized in the 1920s by speculation among White Russian émigrés that one of the Soviet Union's top generals might overthrow the government in a coup. The term gained further currency in Western media as some observers worried that after such a coup, the "Red Napoleon" would lead an invasion of the rest of Europe. In later decades, it continued to be used occasionally to describe particularly capable communist generals, such as Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Võ Nguyên Giáp.
At the time of the Russian Revolution, the history of the French Revolution was widely known across the Western world. Contemporaries therefore often used the events of the French Revolution to help them understand developments in the Russia. Because Napoleon Bonaparte ended the first French Republic by taking power in a coup, historian Douglas Greene argues that "the specter of Bonaparte haunted 1917." [1] Many politicians and generals (such as Alexander Kerensky and Lavr Kornilov) were accused of being "Bonapartist", or of attempting to follow in Napoleon's footsteps. [2] However, no such figure successfully seized or consolidated power. [1] After the Bolsheviks seized power in November, they feared that they would be overthrown by a Russian Bonaparte. In part to minimize this risk, they excluded "kulaks" from the Red Army, who they believed to be the Russian equivalent of the social class that had supported Napoleon. [2] Socialists who opposed the Bolsheviks, in Russia and elsewhere, accused the Bolshevik regime itself of Bonapartism. [2]
In Hungary, where the Hungarian Revolution was underway, the "Red Napoleon" moniker was applied to József Pogány, although with a different meaning than in later usage. Pogány had written a play about Napoleon, and his aggressive and abrasive personal style led his opponents to coin the nickname as an insult. [3] The nickname was picked up by anti-Communist groups in the United States after Pogány emigrated there. [4]
White émigrés brought the historical analogy of the French Revolution with them when they fled to western Europe and the United States. Although most agreed that a "Russian Thermidor" was likely, there was little agreement over whether this would be followed by a Russian Napoleon (or whether that would be desirable). [5] Initial speculation focused on the leader of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky. [6] Like Napoleon, Trotsky was popular, charismatic, and a good military commander, but unlike Napoleon he refused to use his control of the Red Army to stage a coup. Instead, the troika of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev managed to oust him from his party positions and force him into exile. Nonetheless, the rumors that Trotsky wanted to become a Russian Bonaparte helped the troika to discredit him. [7]
After Stalin moved to end the NEP and collectivize agriculture, a Russian Thermidor no longer appeared likely. Many Russian émigrés lost interest in the French Revolution as a historical analogy until the idea was revived in the later half of the thirties. [5] Historian David Lockwood argues that in order to strengthen their military hierarchy, the USSR was forced to periodically raise the status of skilled military leaders, despite the political leadership's wariness of military independence. [8] This led a series of military leaders to feature prominently in the Soviet press, and thence to become objects of speculation abroad over their prospects of becoming a "Red Napoleon". Mikhail Tukhachevsky was considered the prime candidate, but Vasily Blyukher and Semyon Budyonny were subject to similar speculation. [9] [10] [11] The hopes of White émigrés were further encouraged by the Soviet secret police themselves, who spread rumors among the émigrés that leading Soviet generals were planning a coup. This helped the Soviet police to entrap Whites who were interested in joining such plots. [12]
While the possibility of a "Red Napoleon" was a hopeful one to many Russian émigrés, it stoked fears of a Russian conquest of Europe among some Westerners. In 1929, Floyd Gibbons wrote The Red Napoleon , describing a possible future where Stalin dies and is replaced by an bellicose Soviet general. The general then leads the USSR on a conquest of Europe featuring "race-mixing" (adding fears of "yellow peril" to fears of communism). [13]
When the Chinese Civil War sparked interest in the military endurance of the Chinese Communists, Western outlets gave Zhu De the title of "Red Napoleon of China". [14] After Stalin's death, some Western media outlets speculated that Georgy Zhukov might become a Red Napoleon until he was sidelined in the post-Stalin leadership struggles. [15] [16] Võ Nguyên Giáp, a leading general for North Vietnam, was also given the nickname. However, in his case it was without the political implications, and simply reflected respect for his extraordinary military ability. [17]
Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a central figure in the 1905 Revolution, October Revolution, Russian Civil War, and establishment of the Soviet Union. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered one of the two most prominent Soviet figures and was de facto second-in-command during the early years of the Russian Soviet Republic. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, his thought and writings inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution, October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917–1923. It was the second revolutionary change of government in Russia in 1917. It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November 1917 [O.S. 25 October]. It was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin’s desired “heir” would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted ".
The ten years 1917–1927 saw a radical transformation of the Russian Empire into a socialist state, the Soviet Union. Soviet Russia covers 1917–1922 and Soviet Union covers the years 1922 to 1991. After the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), the Bolsheviks took control. They were dedicated to a version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin. It promised the workers would rise, destroy capitalism, and create a socialist society under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The awkward problem, regarding Marxist revolutionary theory, was the small proletariat, in an overwhelmingly peasant society with limited industry and a very small middle class. Following the February Revolution in 1917 that deposed Nicholas II of Russia, a short-lived provisional government gave way to Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (RCP).
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the Moscow trials of 1936–1938.
Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was a Soviet cavalryman, military commander during the Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War and World War II, and politician, who was a close political ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was generally perceived as covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. In 1912, the party formally split, and the predecessor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became a distinct entity. Its history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods:
Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir was a Red Army commander and one of the world's major military reformers between World War I and World War II. He was an early and major military victim of the Great Purge, alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
Vladimir Alexandrovich Antonov-Ovseenko, real surname Ovseenko, party aliases 'Bayonet' (Штык) and 'Nikita' (Никита), literary pseudonym A. Galsky, was a prominent Bolshevik leader, Soviet statesman, military commander, and diplomat.
Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary leader, one of Bolshevik leaders in Ukraine, Soviet politician and military leader and member of the Left Opposition.
Ivar Tenisovich Smilga was a Latvian Bolshevik leader, Soviet politician and economist. He was a member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union.
Georgy (Yury) Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Ukrainian revolutionary and Bolshevik leader, and a key Soviet politician during and after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Pyatakov was considered by contemporaries to be one of the early communist state's best economic administrators, but with poor political judgement.
Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin started his career as a robber, gangster as well as an influential member and eventually the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from April 3, 1922 until the official abolition of the office during the 19th Party Congress in October 1952 and supreme leader of the USSR from January 1924 until his death on March 5, 1953.
Yemelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Communist Party functionary, journalist and historian.
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was Vladimir Lenin's closest associate prior to 1917 and a leading government figure in the early Soviet Union, serving as chairman of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1919 to 1926.
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of the "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Kronstadt rebellion was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors, naval infantry, and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian port city of Kronstadt. Located on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland, Kronstadt defended the former capital city, Petrograd, as the base of the Baltic Fleet. For sixteen days in March 1921, rebels in Kronstadt's naval fortress rose in opposition to the Soviet government they had helped to consolidate. Led by Stepan Petrichenko, it was the last major revolt against Bolshevik rule on Russian territory during the Russian Civil War.
The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? is a book published in 1936 by the exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky. This work analyzed and criticized the course of historical development in the Soviet Union following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and is regarded as Trotsky's primary work dealing with the nature of Stalinism. The book was written by Trotsky during his exile in Norway and was originally translated into Spanish by Victor Serge. The most widely available English translation is by Max Eastman.
In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed and in other works.