[In the wake of the Russian Civil War, Leon Trotsky emerged as the guiding force behind the establishment of the Society of Friends of the Air Fleet and the creation of the Red Air Fleet. The ideas expressed in this short essay played a central role in shaping the development of Soviet aviation during the 1920s.]

Leon Trotsky, Aviation: Instrument of the Future (Ekaterinburg: ODVF, 1923).

Translation copyright 2006 by Scott W. Palmer

Aviation: Instrument of the Future

I.

             On the eve of the great imperialist war aviation had hardly moved beyond the earliest stages of experiments, flights, and demonstrations. The vigorous development of aviation directly coincided with the war years. By the war's end, aviation had undergone staggering growth. It is fair to say that the last war, on the whole, did not see the use of aviation, but only its foundation. If the events of July 1914 were to be revisited again given the current level of aviation technology, the entire course of military operations would be different. In this sense, aviation is truly the instrument of the future.

            But it is more than this. The economic and cultural roles of the air fleet have hardly yet emerged. While it is true that the first rapid developments make clear that the cultural significance of aviation is immense, its practical employment in these fields is still entirely in the future.

II.

            Airplane types replace one another very rapidly. Flying machines become "morally exhausted," to use Marx's phrase, incomparably faster than naval vessels, steam ships, and even automobiles. This is a result of the fact that aviation technology still has not exited from its era of youthful immaturity. The airplane has not yet attained a balance between its tasks and technical resources, the internal equilibrium which, as is clear from the history of technology, despotically prevails over the imagination of inventors during a machine's mature phase. Alterations and improvements are still hardly secondary details. Aviation will remain immature until the point is reached when new developments or innovations fail to undermine with a single stroke the machine's complacent equilibrium. Aviation is the instrument of the future in the sense that the "ideal" type of the apparatus is still to come.

III.

            For us, for a technologically and economically backward country, this is not a minus, but a plus: if today, utilizing all of the advantages of a centralized, socialist state, we apply ourselves to the task, then we can overcome our backwardness in aviation more quickly than we can in other fields. For automobiles, both cars and trucks, there are "cultural" requirements, that is: paved roads, but we have few and the ones we do have are of poor quality. But our airways are no worse than American ones; they, too, are useful. However, we must not wait around for the final fruits to arrive from outside; instead, we must at this very moment engage in the goal of development: constructing airplanes, perfecting them, adapting them to our climatic and other conditions, independently digesting the technical, military, transport, and other aspects of world aviation, continuously producing human material, raising, training, and perfecting it, in a word: providing for aviation's continual creation in all of its branches.

IV.

            However, before rising into the clouds, aviation must be firmly linked to the earth, that is to the masses. It is essential that the toiler in the city and in the village come closer to the airplane, look it over, understand it, etc. He must see it as the great instrument of the future, his future, otherwise the airplane sooner or later will be wholly directed against him.

             Aviation is a new instrument, and it is precisely its newness, its wondrousness, that is one of the more important aspects of its military use. It is well-known that the English widely employ aviation, even in the absence of land troops, for pacifying colonial uprisings in Asia and Africa. As a weapon of psychological terror the airplane fulfills the role of the lord of the slave-owners, and more than anything else successfully reveals their martial character. This has been true not only in colonies, but in our North as well, which they tried to colonize. The English, not without success, employed aviation for terrorizing and demoralizing inexperienced and hastily assembled infantry units that were unfamiliar with aviation. Descending low and rattling off machine-gun fire, the fliers of Churchill and Chaikovskii not infrequently sowed deadly panic in our ranks.[1] Why? Because Red Army soldiers did not know the airplane, its attributes, its range of operation, its strengths, and its weaknesses.

V.

            Automobiles like "Fords" are the most inoffensive of machines. Still, driving one puffing and growling around the square at a village market may lead to catastrophe as, seeing and hearing the machine-pressed monster, villagers' emaciated horses start leaping about, carts run into one another and are overturned, pots are reduced to shards, and people fall beneath wheels and hooves. However, on the streets of London and even Moscow, city horses pay no attention to approaching automobiles. In order to make certain that during military confrontations enemy aircraft do not induce panic in our troops by appearing to be surrounded by mystical halos, we must, during times of peace, bring together the entire army and aviation; we must make sure aviation is integrated with all parts of the army and forms of weaponry. Accustoming the soldier, all the way down to the level of the infantry regimental cook, with the airplane should become a constituent part of the education and training of the army. This is no less true for the command staff which, from top to bottom, needs to become closer to the airplane in order that during time of war they will know what to expect from it and how to use it. This has not always been observed. Even a fine watch will stop working if one tries to wind it with a nail. While one needs to know how to use a watch, not just keep it in a waistcoat pocket, it also doesn't hurt a bit to know how its internal mechanism works.

VI.

            But the issue is not only the army. Aviation is a form of weaponry possessing an almost universal range of applications. Airplanes can be dispatched hundreds of versty from their bases, strike deep into the enemy's rear, disrupt railroads, hangars, electric stations, undertake raids on cities, and deliver destruction, death, and panic. Where all other types of weapons and technical resources can be used solely or primarily against an enemy army, aviation is no less important for its use against peaceful populations. Apart from its directly destructive operations, aviation also possesses the capability of playing devilish games with the nerves of the civilian rear; intimidating, tiring, and demoralizing the population and weakening its will to resist to an enemy army. The ability of the rear to withstand the destructive influence of enemy aviation will, in the end, depend ultimately on civilians' familiarity with aviation and its properties. We must never allow an opponent to multiply the terrible strength of aviation with the coefficient of mystical horror.

VII.

            The question of flying personnel is especially important. They say that people are born poets. This is likewise true when it comes to fliers. A certain combination of physical and psychological characteristics is necessary to ensure that an aviator can confidently work in the air. However, in the absence of a good system of flight and social training, even the best biological and psychological preconditions will not produce a military aviator. Thus it is important, on the one hand, to foster and expand broad interest among the youth in aviation and, on the other hand, to make possible a careful and scientifically-established selection of individuals. The functions of aviators are so full of responsibility, so difficult and many-faceted, and so much depends on fliers in the conduct of military operations, that the army and the country may properly demand that our fliers be not simply militarily literate, but militarily enlightened people.

VIII.

            We also need to remember that the process of aviation training is fraught with risks of the sort unknown not only to other professions, but to other kinds of weapons. It is essential, therefore, to equip air fleet workers better. If, in all fields of military affairs in which the person interacts with the machine, the person, in the final analysis, is the deciding factor, this is obviously the case with aviation.

            Give attention to the flier; the master of the air guild!

            Military theoreticians have not yet finished debating the place that aviation should occupy in the general mechanics of defense: whether it should only be one of the auxiliary technical resources of the army and the navy, or if it belongs alongside the land army and the naval fleet as their equal.

            This question should not be decided abstractly. Everything depends on the level of development of aviation and on the material place that it occupies in the general scheme of defense. The issue is one of quantity and quality. Aviation is beginning its career as an auxiliary resource of the army and the navy. Developing and becoming accustomed to acting in combination with these resources, it has a tendency to peel away from the lords of land or water and occupy an equally important place in the kingdom of the air. It already has its own independent task: to dominate the aerial elements. In England, aviation has been delegated its own special ministry. And it's no wonder: the airplane threatens to deliver the death blow to British invincibility which has been long guarded by an all-powerful navy. The USSR is a different case. Our vast space, our Soviet ocean of dry land, makes us much less vulnerable to aviation than the island of England, surrounded by its ocean of water. Still, for us the indissoluble connection between aviation and land forces is, and for a long time will be, extraordinarily important. Under this point of view and in this spirit, we will build and foster military aviation.

IX.

            Aviation is increasingly powerful as an instrument of imperialism. We will build socialist aviation. The imperialists have not abandoned the thought of turning us into a colony. We will build aviation that guards our freedom and, perhaps, that will help colonies to attain independence. We will build aviation for agricultural, for cultural, for military goals; aviation of workers and the oppressed. We will urgently and persistently introduce aviation into the customs of the country. We will remember: aviation is not an amusement and not one of many auxiliary technical resources of the army; aviation is the great instrument of the future. It joins the earth and the sea to the heavens, producing a great new arena for human creativity.

            We will carry out the work of aviation construction not only with energy and harmony, but with a plan; we will channel the masses' rising interest in the air fleet and their selfless assistance into a proper organization. The military ministry already is not alone in the task. Working side-by-side with it are the Society of Friends of Aviation and the Voluntary Air Fleet. This tripartite union will grow and strengthen; it will open, we have no doubt, a new second, richer chapter in the development of Soviet aviation.