My Generation

By Simone Malacrida

The stories of three generations, told following distinct themes, unfold against the backdrop of the events that characterized the twentieth century, focusing in particular on what happened in Russia, Germany, and the United States.
Three complementary visions alternate to provide the reader with a clear picture of the motivations and reflections that accompanied the personal decisions of the protagonists and the public choices of entire generations.
Mikhail, Hans and Frank pour all their expectations into the meanderings of History, experiencing firsthand the tragedies and greatness of their era, while giving a final reinterpretation of the events that occurred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simone Malacrida
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215714973

Simone Malacrida

Simone Malacrida (1977) Ha lavorato nel settore della ricerca (ottica e nanotecnologie) e, in seguito, in quello industriale-impiantistico, in particolare nel Power, nell'Oil&Gas e nelle infrastrutture. E' interessato a problematiche finanziarie ed energetiche. Ha pubblicato un primo ciclo di 21 libri principali (10 divulgativi e didattici e 11 romanzi) + 91 manuali didattici derivati. Un secondo ciclo, sempre di 21 libri, è in corso di elaborazione e sviluppo.

Book preview

My Generation

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

The stories of three generations, told following distinct themes, unfold against the backdrop of the events that characterized the twentieth century, focusing in particular on what happened in Russia, Germany, and the United States.

Three complementary visions alternate to provide the reader with a clear picture of the motivations and reflections that accompanied the personal decisions of the protagonists and the public choices of entire generations.

Mikhail, Hans and Frank pour all their expectations into the meanderings of History, experiencing firsthand the tragedies and greatness of their era, while giving a final reinterpretation of the events that occurred.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

––––––––

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. These events and characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

Finally, the opinions expressed by the individual characters are not attributable to the author in any way, whose intent is only to characterize, in their fullness, the generations presented.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

––––––––

WAR

I

II

III

HOME

IV

V

VI

YOUTH

VII

VIII

IX

LOVE

X

XI

XII

IDEALS

XIII

XIV

XV

ERRORS

XVI

XVII

XVIII

FUTURE

XIX

XX

XXI

I don't live for myself, but for the generation to come.

(Vincent Van Gogh)

WAR

I

I am part of that group of people, few to tell the truth for those of my age, who did not participate in the two main wars of the twentieth century.

I was too old to take part in the Second World War, at the time of its beginning I was in fact fifty-four years old.

That war was fought by my son and his generation, while I belonged to the civilian population that suffered the Nazi invasion and gave impetus to the Resistance in the face of the aggressor, carried out in symbolic cities such as Stalingrad and Leningrad.

I saw that massive catastrophe not on the battlefield but in the daily consequences of food rationing, resource scarcity, and the systematic destruction of cities and infrastructure.

I experienced extreme suffering for those who had to fight, knowing full well the risks involved in war and the power of the new weapons used, from carpet bombing to heavy artillery up to tanks.

My son's stories made me understand how the war had changed peremptorily. Since then it would have been more and more of a technological and specialist affair and no longer of traditional armies. The amount of people would count less and less and much more the equipment and preparation.

However, it would have remained a dirty business, which would have generated even more death and destruction.

I therefore have no direct testimony of that war, if not the stories of the civilian population regarding its consequences.

For the opposite reason, i.e. because of my young age, I did not take part in the war between the Tsarist Empire and Japan.

Conversely almost all of my peers participated in the first great massacre of the twentieth century, the Great War.

In particular, almost all of them were involved on the Russo-Western Front to counter the advance of the Central Powers.

I managed not to participate actively in that war due to a decision made seven years earlier by the tsarist government. In 1907 I was expelled from Russian territory, officially for subversive activities, and went into exile in Zurich.

That unjust decision, which caused me great suffering due to the forced detachment from my land and my loved ones, saved me from the horror of the trenches and massacres.

I lived those three years of world butchery in a neutral country like Switzerland, learning from newspapers and news reports about the amazing and terrible evolutions that technology had brought to the various armies.

I don't see those gloomy days spent in the trenches or those endless winters spent fighting the enemy on a front that stretched for thousands of kilometers.

I have only the dismay of a young revolutionary who saw in that war the latest madness of imperialism, ordering unheard-of massacres in the name of obsolete values such as nationalism.

In this way I did not share those experiences so common to many young people of the time.

Conversely, I can say that I have actively participated in two revolutions.

The first of these is the one that took place in Russia in 1905 and failed miserably. At the time I didn't have any specific military training and I didn't know how to handle any weapon.

I took part in the insurrections in Petersburg more out of shared ideals than out of experience in military tactics.

Our actions were limited to creating a state of tension which resulted in peaceful protests, the demand for certain political and legislative rights and actions of sabotage against some symbols of tsarist power.

The revolutionary action between October and November 1917 was quite different, following the return from exile and after the occasion for the definitive affirmation of the Bolsheviks was clear to all.

There it was a real military action aimed at the conquest of the nerve centers of Petrograd, while other comrades thought of implementing similar gestures in Moscow.

In those situations, the notions learned in the seven years spent in Zurich came in handy, in which I dedicated myself to learning the main military strategies.

First I studied the war tactics of antiquity including the evolution of fighting in Greece, from the Spartan hoplites to the Theban and Macedonian phalanx, the techniques of the Roman legions and the countless battles fought by the Chinese Empire and then by Genghis Khan.

I tried to understand how the introduction of gunpowder had changed those practices and how the battles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had taken place, ending up with the great turning point given by the Napoleonic campaigns and the theory of war made by Von Clausewitz.

On that historical framework, I grafted some factors of the nineteenth century including the motivational drives of an army of volunteers of quasi-professionals.

I was impressed by the events of Garibaldi and his Cacciatori delle Alpi and I understood how the shared ideal was the real weapon of difference in guerrilla actions and advanced tactics.

Finally, the First World War had demonstrated how the advent of new weapons, the machine gun, gas and remote bombs, completely changed the previous view, triggering major changes that we had just begun to learn.

The October Revolution was my great test and there I learned in a summary way to use a gun. I trained in the back of one of the headquarters where we met in Petrograd. Some comrades volunteered to teach shooting and target shooting.

Kamenev, whom I already knew in 1905, was in charge of the military and reported directly to the President of the Soviets, plenipotentiary Trotsky. Under Kamenev I was placed in the Red Guard, both for my economic-agricultural studies and for my social background and for the study of revolutionary tactics.

My brother Igor was a key garrison in the Petrograd Workers Soviet and was pleased with my appointment:

Dear Mikhail, look at yourself. You in the Red Guard! In the future, we will not be able to trust the tsarist army and its disastrous ways of operating.

Indeed, the Red Guard was the first nucleus from which sprang the great military reform imposed by Lenin and Trotsky, resulting in the establishment of the Red Army.

They gave me the responsibility of coordinating the assault on some army barracks that had remained loyal to the provisional government.

Each of the members of that handful of men was better prepared than I in the use of weapons, but I possessed the gift of oratory.

Dear comrades, before going to arms, I take it upon myself to go and propose an agreement to the first military barracks.

So I did and managed to convince most of the soldiers to give up. After all, they were proletarians like us and many shared our ideas.

We managed to capture the strategic points of the city almost without bloodshed.

Great job Malev, now we can launch the attack on the Winter Palace.

Two days of battle sealed the victory of the Revolution in Petrograd. In Moscow, however, the situation was much more difficult and it took a week to control the city.

This is just the beginning.

It was said between us.

In fact, Russia is too large to be able to think of controlling it simply by having Petrograd and Moscow in hand.

The immediate threat was given by Kerensky who allied himself with the Cossacks and marched on Petrograd.

The Red Guard organized itself with artillery and we were in the front line at Pulkovo to thwart that counter-revolutionary attempt.

The Civil War had begun which pitted the Revolution against the Counter-revolution for three years.

This is the war I fought, my war on my native soil.

I immediately understood how our morale was skyrocketing and how the motivational charge was far greater among our ranks.

Lenin's first decrees mirrored his proposals made in the April Theses.

The decree on peace laid the foundation for the exit from the great massacre of the First World War, the decree on land was the first step in establishing Peasants' Soviets and making all people equal, the decree on power to the Soviets decreed the beginning of the transition to a classless society.

Those three decrees guaranteed, within the ranks of the Red Guard, a spirit that not even three hundred military victories could have generated.

In order to better counteract counter-revolutionary attempts, at the beginning of January 1918 the Red Guard transformed into the Red Army, our glorious army, the one for which I served as a lieutenant.

The Revolution was immediately threatened from many sides and we always had to manage many fronts at the same time.

Lenin was somewhat surprised by the strength of the Counter-revolution, only Trotsky's exemplary management at the head of the Red Army was the reason for our victory. He was able to displace his troops so as to defeat his enemies one at a time, rendering them powerless, and then divert them to other fronts.

From this point of view he adopted a completely different tactic compared to what is reported in the military manuals. Instead of concentrating all forces on a single goal, the division into many micro-conflicts allowed us to stall for time and defeat opponents one by one.

The first battles were aimed at guaranteeing a safe territory for the Revolution at least by creating a corridor between Petrograd and Moscow.

My presence was considered essential as I knew that part of Russia (having been born and raised there) and because my peasant extraction would have allowed, together with my oratory and convincing skills, a welding between the interests of the Revolution and those of the agricultural populations.

Lenin knew very well how, without the simultaneous contribution of the workers and peasants, considered as the two complementary faces of the proletariat, the Revolution would have failed. On this point of view, the Leninist vision turned out to be better than the Trotskyist one which rejected the contribution of the peasants, as they were considered reactionary.

The skirmishes were minor, but they enabled us to control a large area and extend our influence.

The promulgation of war communism gave the Red Army a great advantage, namely that of not having to worry about foodstuffs and supplies, seized by force and taken from the peasants themselves.

If the Civil War had lasted that long, we would have risked fomenting a counter-revolution even among farmers and this is what really happened after a year.

On the other hand, at the beginning of 1918, the greatest concern for the Revolution turned out to be that which resided in the south, in the Cossack area, right next to the Don.

There Generals Kornilov and Denikin, commanding units of the army loyal to the tsarist regime and many Cossack battalions, joined the cause of the Provisional Government's Socialist Revolutionaries.

Kornilov's advance towards Yekaterinodar was only temporarily halted by the Red Army, and his death did not help our cause. Lenin underestimated the forces at play and was energized by our first victories, but he was wrong.

The death of two commanders like Kaledin and Kornilov and the capture of Rostov by the Red Army were ephemeral victories.

Denikin's entry as supreme commander of the Counter-revolution in the southern zone was a major blow. Endowed with great charisma, he managed to bring together a large part of the revolutionary socialists, Mensheviks and that portion of peasants unhappy with the forced requisitions of food and opposed to the transfer of power by the Soviets.

The so- called Volunteer Army was formed which was the greatest danger to the Revolution and one of the main powers of the White Army.

I realized early on that our enemies made the same kind of mistake that we made in 1905. They split into many uncoordinated groups and were unable to unite to overwhelm us.

This was the reason why it took three years to put down all the revolts, a much longer period than we initially thought, but it was also the cause of the victory of the Revolution.

The other dangers came from the Siberian regions. There a Czech-Slovak legion of about thirty thousand men, loyal to Tsar Nicholas II, took possession of Western Siberia, the Ural area up to the Volga, preventing the connection between Siberia and the two main cities of Russia.

Not even the annihilation of the entire Romanov family was enough to make them desist, putting an end to one of the longest-lived monarchical dynasties in history.

Furthermore Kolcak had proclaimed a nationalist republic in the Omsk area and other small areas were in the hands of local governments.

My involvement in those military actions mostly concerned the preparation of the troops in anticipation of the confrontation with the enemy and the pacification of the controlled areas, mainly by convincing the peasants of the goodness of the Soviet project.

Trotsky's winning idea was to use people not as simple executors of a military hierarchy but for the individual peculiarities of each one.

Who better than me could have spoken to the peasants? Convince them of the need for an agrarian reform that would pass power to the Soviets and see common cooperatives as the real goal for better food production?

The goal of the Red Army was clear: to prevent more troops from joining the White Army and the peasants from becoming hostile to the regime and in favor of the Counter-revolution.

The Kolcak affair came to our aid as we were able to demonstrate how those attempts to oppose our government were clumsy excuses for the affirmation of a reactionary, despotic and personal power, which had nothing to do with the good of the people and the equality of the proletariat.

In the summer of 1918 the situation seemed to stabilize with these three large areas in the hands of the various commanders of the White Army. We had to avoid a battle of attrition at all costs and, in our plans, those months were to serve to devise new military and political strategies.

We also had to avoid the risk of encirclement by not allowing those three areas to come into contact with each other.

Then came that terrible day, that August 30, 1918.

The double attack in Petrograd, on the local head of the Cheka, the secret police, and in Moscow, where they even tried to hit Lenin, made us understand how the Counter-revolution was much more powerful than we thought.

The White Army, the royalists, the reactionaries, the revolutionary socialists of the former provisional government, were all united against us, against the Revolution and against the proletariat.

It was necessary to act quickly and resolutely.

It was months of infighting within the cities that affected the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, definitively eliminating dissent within the Soviets.

Since then only the Bolsheviks remained to garrison the Soviets and the civil war sharpened in actions and results.

Much more power was given to the secret police and the Red Army was consolidated. Trotsky was the main architect of our victory, but also of the establishment of the so-called red terror.

Where my oratorical ability and that of my other companions could not convince the peasants, the Red Terror took care of annihilating those villages that had actively participated in the destruction of the Whites, perpetrated to the detriment of the proletariat.

Not that things got any better in the fall.

The end of the First World War was great news for everyone. Luckily, that massacre of proletarians had come to an end.

But the Western powers, in particular France and England who had signed the Triple Entente agreement with tsarist Russia, saw themselves threatened by the extension of the danger of an international socialist revolution and intervened directly in our civil war.

Economic and military aid, as well as fresh and well-prepared troops, were brought to the White Army throughout the winter of 1919, and Poland, under the pretext of undefined borders to the east, moved against us.

Meanwhile, in the cities, due to poverty, hunger and winter, the first uprisings against the Soviets and the Party began. We found ourselves forced to fire on the very proletarians who had actively participated in the Revolution a year earlier.

It was the worst moment of those years. That interminable winter brought with it an unparalleled fury, an internal attrition of the best forces of our generation.

At great cost we managed to keep order in the cities and to hold on to the positions we had previously conquered, but the spring of 1919, with the resumption of military action in a grand style, took us by surprise.

Denikin advanced from the south and we failed to put up any resistance, leaving free space for the Whites. Meanwhile Kolcak, who had become absolute dictator in Siberia, moved from the east and Judenic, commander in chief of the forces in the north, attempted a convergence towards the Volga and Moscow.

The Whites' plan was clear. By opening more fronts, they hoped to weaken and wear us down.

In those days there were violent debates within the Party about the best management of the Red Army.

In the end Trotsky's line prevailed and this was decisive for the outcome of the Civil War. Instead of opposing the advance of the White Army, the order was given to fall back on Moscow.

In this way we would not have lost either men or means unnecessarily and we would have left the conquest of many territories to the Whites, but of no real importance.

With their meager numbers they could not think of attacking us in our strongholds. Indeed, it was already difficult for them to control that territory.

In fact, their advance stopped, perhaps satisfied with the result obtained or deluded by a possible disintegration of our government.

By now the revolts in the cities had been put down and the disgruntled units removed from military management. Furthermore, the elimination of the Socialist Revolutionaries six months earlier had eliminated any possible internal enemy in the territory managed by our government.

Once again, Trotsky seized a winning opportunity and promulgated a reform of the Red Army. Many arms professionals were recalled to service, some of whom had lent their skills under both the Provisional Government and the Tsar.

So each of us, coming from the Red Guard, was joined by a long-time officer. We were left with the task of motivating the troops and gathering valuable intelligence among the population, while the actual military action was handed over to the latter.

The changes led to a great improvement in the efficiency of our army.

It was decided to experiment with Kolcak's troops, considered the best prepared.

In June we won a series of battles which made us recover all the territory left only a few months earlier.

The new military tactic was adopted against Denikin and Judenic with similar results. Judenic's Army was virtually annihilated, while by October the attempted attack by the Whites was repulsed on all fronts.

Now we could count on an undeniable advantage: that of having fresh and motivated troops against worn-out and ever less numerous armies.

The impending winter and what had happened in the west did not allow us to complete the task. Trotsky's great military tactics were seen precisely at that juncture. If we had pursued the pursuit of the Whites along the three lines of their attacks, we would have discovered the main cities and we would have been scattered without being able to defend ourselves against other enemies.

While the delay in defeating them could free up entire battalions to turn our attention elsewhere, leaving the solution of those minor dangers momentarily postponed.

The major concern now was the Polish invasion. The Western powers considered that maneuver much more interesting and much more effective than what was put in place by the Whites, therefore they supported it decisively.

After the end of the First World War and the independence of Poland, Pilsudski undertook a war of expansion which led him to conquer Lviv as early as November 1918, to then penetrate directly into our territory, conquering Minsk in the summer of 1919.

It was obvious that behind Poland was the shadow of England, our main ideological adversary during those first years of the Revolution.

Before proceeding directly against that army, there were long winter months of discussions and attempts to consolidate power.

The Russian winter has always been a fundamental test for the stability of a political and administrative system. The population, if exhausted and led to hunger or misery, is willing to do anything.

That winter was markedly quieter than the previous one. The foci of the Armata Bianca were less powerful, the peasants had become accustomed to the expropriations of their crops and dissent had been eliminated.

Furthermore, the sanitary conditions had improved. Fortunately, typhoid did not kill as many as the previous year and the Spanish flu seemed to have disappeared, while in the winter of 1918-1919 it claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, including Sverdlov, a prominent Party leader, trusted arm of Lenin and companion of many discussions in Petrograd.

During that winter I managed to obtain an important result within the Party.

A motion was approved which, once the Civil War was over, envisaged the revision of the provisions of war communism, especially as regards land reform and the treatment of the countryside and peasants.

I slowly convinced all the main members, with the exception of Trotsky, precisely by betting on the fact that by doing so, opportunities for revolts would be removed.

I was given the task, together with other specially elected comrades in a special Commission, of drawing up reports on the state of the countryside and the main political inclinations of the peasants.

However, this was only to take place following the repulse of the Polish invasion.

In the spring we prepared for the confrontation with the Poles. A good portion of the peasants supported our work so that we could leave few reserves to secure the rearguard, unleashing the majority of forces against the invading army.

The command was entrusted to the three main generals who had distinguished themselves in previous campaigns of the Civil War: Kamenev, Yegorov and Tukhachevsky. As in the times of the Revolution, I followed Kamenev's contingent.

When the first real battle took place, Kiev was already in Polish hands, but we were waiting for the surprise move by Trotsky himself.

Leaving the Don area where it was a garrison to counter Denikin's Cossacks and Whites, the army led by Budennyj surrounded the Poles with a huge pincer maneuver and retook the Ukrainian capital after only a month.

At that point the hand of the Party intervened directly, causing a peremptory order to be issued.

The road to the world revolution passes over the corpse of Poland.

It would have been only the beginning of the permanent revolution, the main pivot of the thought of Trotskyist internationalism.

In less than a month we achieved extraordinary victories, recapturing Minsk and arriving directly on Polish territory.

It took only another month to route Pilsduksi's army. At the beginning of August we were at the gates of Warsaw.

At that point, I was called back from the front. My job was exhausted and I was mainly serving in Russian territory, to gauge the mood of the peasants before the final offensive against the Whites.

I managed to understand how the so-called Green Army, made up of those wealthy peasants who had seen themselves expropriated of land and goods, could soon shatter.

From my experience of rural life, I understood how the majority of the effectives had been dragged into the Counter-revolution convinced by a group of a few well-to-do bourgeois from the countryside.

I made contact with the lowest part of that Army, where the proletarians clearly dominated.

I explained to them the reforms that the government would have launched at the end of the Civil War, probably as early as the beginning of 1921, therefore within a few months.

The end of war communism with its expropriations was an attractive prospect for them.

Within a month, we understood that Kolcak and Judenic's forces would soon collapse as the majority of the Green Army would join us, leaving few effectives who would decide to side with the Whites.

The situation to the south, in Cossack territory, was more complicated. Therefore we communicated that the first military objectives should have been those of Siberia and those of the north, to then aim for the south once these outbreaks were defeated.

I returned to Moscow full of fervor and good news.

At headquarters, I found a strange situation. Joy at the dispatches we sent was combined with disappointment at the news on the Polish front.

Pilsduksi had organized a counter-offensive with French and British forces that had come to its aid and had quickly broken the siege of Warsaw, driving the Red Army back from Polish territory.

We had succeeded in thwarting the invasion, in saving the Revolution and the Party, but not in exporting our Revolution internationally.

The order was given to begin peace negotiations for the definition of the borders between Russia and Poland and to sign an armistice.

We would later have thought of revolutionary internationalism, now the priority became pacifying our territory to give life to new economic and agricultural policies and consolidate consensus towards the Party.

Following our information, the Red Army, once again deployed in Russia in a very short time, quickly overwhelmed the whites of Kolcak and those of Judenic.

We then headed south, where Denikin's units surrendered earlier than expected.

A last attempt at Counter-revolution was made in the Crimea by Vrangel who rallied the last white battalions around him.

We besieged the area and within a month the few troops left under his command had to flee abroad.

Before the onset of winter of 1920-1921, the Civil War had ended in clear victory for the Red Army and the Party.

We had thwarted every counter-revolutionary attempt and interference by the imperialist powers in our affairs, but we had not succeeded in exporting the Revolution, at least not for now.

Some republics of the former Tsarist Empire had been united with Russia, such as Siberia, Crimea, Ukraine and White Russia.

Trotsky's goal was clear and convinced Lenin as well. Expand the Revolution in the Caucasus and the Baltic republics and then establish a federal state based on socialism and Soviet power.

The political decisions for the organization of power would be up to Lenin and the Central Committee of the Party, the military decisions for the conquest of these new territories would be up to Trotsky and the Red Army.

After the end of the Civil War, I participated less constantly in military activities, occasionally acting as a Party envoy in war zones, always with the task of carrying out propaganda and persuasion activities in the countryside.

From 1921 it was much easier to carry out this task due to the economic and agricultural reforms introduced with the NEP, based on my suggestions a few years earlier.

Thus we easily managed to take possession of the whole Caucasus, from Georgia to Armenia, and to prevent any attempt at peasant counter-revolution.

Conversely, that tactic did not prevail in the Baltic Republics, which maintained their independence.

However, victory in the Civil War marked the birth of the Soviet Union.

This was the war I fought and, although it wasn't comparable to the massacre of the World Wars, that was enough for me to understand how the death and destruction caused by this human choice