Smilga returned to Petrograd in January 1918, after the Bolsheviks had been routed in the brief civil war that led to the creation of an independent Finland, and served as a member of the praesidium of the Petrograd soviet and an editor of the Bolshevik newspaper
Petrogradskaya Pravda. He consistently backed Lenin's line over whether to sign the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the war with Germany. He was transferred to political work in the Red Army at the start of the
Russian Civil War, and acted as a political commissar on every major front. He was chief political commissar on the southern front, for the campaign against the army of
General Denikin. In January 1921, he was appointed political commissar on the Caucasus front, and head of the Caucasian Labour Army.
Relations with Trotsky During the early part of 1919, Smilga was involved in a conflict over conduct of the civil war, which saw him aligned with
Joseph Stalin against
Leon Trotsky the People's Commissar for War and future leader of the Left Opposition. Smilga,
Mikhail Lashevich and
Sergei Gusev were political commissars on the
Eastern Front, fighting the army of
Admiral Kolchak. The military commander was
Sergei Kamenev, a former Colonel in the
Imperial Army. The Red Army commander in chief
Jukums Vācietis wanted them to halt operations once they had driven Kolchak's army east of the Urals, rather than risk pursuing him into Siberia. Trotsky supported him. Smilga, Lashevich and Kamenev insisted on continuing the offensive, which was a spectacular success. In May, Smilga was appointed head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army. With Stalin's support, he proposed that Kamenev should replace Vācietis as commander in chief, against Trotsky's advice. After Lenin had overruled Trotsky, in July 1919, Smilga, Gusev and Kamenev joined Trotsky on the six-member Revolutionary Council of War. Reportedly, Smilga was summoned by Lenin to be warned that he could not take Trotsky's place as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council.
Relations with Stalin During the war between Russia and Poland, in 1920, Smilga headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the
Western Front, whose military commander was
Mikhail Tukhachevsky. When the Red Army met unexpectedly strong resistance as it reached the outskirts of Warsaw, Tukhachevsky ordered the Southwestern front to turn northwards, but Stalin, who was the front's political commissar, refused, preferring to capture
Lwow. At the Tenth party congress in March 1921, there was a secret session on why Russia lost the war, at which – according to Trotsky:
Post-war career Smilga was dropped from the Central Committee in March 1921. Soon afterwards, he was appointed head of the Main Directorate for Fuel. He was also vice-chairman of the
Vesenkha from 1921 to 1928, and of the
Gosplan from 1924 to 1926. In December 1925, he was elected a full member of the Central Committee, although in August 1925, Stalin complained about Smilga's influence in Gosplan and denounced him as a "fake economic leader." At some point in 1926, or earlier, Smilga joined the
Left Opposition, led by Trotsky. As head of the fuel administration, Smilga was one of the first soviet administrators to try draw up a plan for a section of soviet industry. As a believer in planning, he complained that "some elements of the state apparatus (and the apparatus is also in large measure a heritage of the old order) are against the plan in general." In May 1926 he declared: "We must force the industrialisation of the economy. Trotsky also argued for economic planning and rapid industrialisation. Smilga acted as spokesman for the opposition on economic affairs at the crucial meeting at which Trotsky was expelled from the Central Committee. In June 1927, Smilga was dismissed, and transferred to
Khabarovsk, in Siberia, more than 5,000 miles from Moscow. On the day of his departure from Moscow ... Smilga returned to Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, on 7 November 1927, and organised a demonstration from his family's apartment opposite the Kremlin, hanging out portraits of Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev, and a banner saying "Let's Fulfill
Lenin's Testament" (in which Lenin had called for Stalin to be removed from office). After his apartment had been forcibly entered and wrecked by Stalin's supporters, he attempted to continue protesting in the street, but was attacked, and arrested. He escaped from custody later in the day. On 14 November, Smilga was expelled from the Central Committee. He was expelled from the communist party in December. In June 1928, he was sentenced for four years exile in
Minusinsk, in Siberia. In July 1929, along with
Yevgeni Preobrazhensky,
Karl Radek, he renounced his support for the Left Opposition, citing the reason that
Joseph Stalin's rise would have meant the application of much of the Left's recommended policies, and that the dangers the Soviet state faced, from the outside as well as from within, required their "return to the Party". About 400 other deportees followed their lead. His membership of the communist party was restored in 1930, and he was allowed to return to economic work. Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué suspected he was a member of the
secret opposition bloc Trotsky,
Zinoviev and
Kamenev had created in 1932.
Arrest and execution Smilga was arrested on the night of 1–2 January 1935, in the wake of
Sergei Kirov's assassination, and sentenced to five years imprisonment. It later emerged in Trotsky's letters that Zinoviev and Trotskyists had indeed formed a secret alliance, but there was no evidence of terrorist activity in them. Unlike almost all the other eminent Old Bolsheviks named during the proceedings, he was never subjected to a public trial, suggesting that the
NKVD had not been able to break his spirit sufficiently to be able to rely on him to confess. He was sentenced to death at a closed trial on 10 January 1937 and executed the same day – one of the first prominent Old Bolsheviks to be shot without a public trial. == Personality ==