The lessons of October 1917
* The lessons of October 1917
The Russian revolution has defined and shaped the 20th century. Saving it from forgetfulness and historical manipulation is essential if we are to preserve the revolutionary option for our own futures. The pre-packaged ideology of the system we live under is using this 80th anniversary to spread its own version of October 1917. We asked Daniel Bensaïd to rebut the three central myths of this historical revisionism.
Rather than a revolution,
October 1917 was a plot, a coup d'état imposed by the Bolsheviks. Their authoritarian conception of social organisation benefited the new elite, not the people
The revolution was not the result of a conspiracy, but an explosion of the accumulated contradictions of the autocratic and conservative tsarist regime, towards the end of the first World War. Russia was a blocked society, a perfect example of
"combined and uneven development." The country was simultaneously the centre of an empire, and dependent on the imperialist powers and their capital. Russia's industry was among the most concentrated and advanced in the world, but the countryside still had feudal traits. Serfdom had been abolished less than 50 years earlier. Russia was a great power, but dependent on the West for technology and
Attempts at reform were quickly blocked by the conservative oligarchy, the obstinate Tsar, and the hesitation of a bourgeoisie terrified by the newly born working class.
Russia's democratic revolution could only be carried out by the "third estate"
Unlike pre-revolutionary France, the most dynamic element in this revolutionary force was the small modern proletariat.
This is why "Holy Mother Russia"
was recognised as the "weak link"
imperialist chain. The first World War was to light the powder-keg.
The revolutionary process between
February and October 1917 clearly shows that this was no minority conspiracy of protessional agitators, but the accelerated assimilation of political experience on a mass scale. The metamorphosis of consciousness. The balance of forces shifted astoundingly quickly. 24 International Viewpoint #294
In his magisterial work, The History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky analysed this radicalisation in minute detail. The Bolsheviks only formed 13% of delegates to the June 1917 Congress of
But after the events of July and Korniloy's attempted coup, support for Lenin's party grew rapidly. By October, they boasted 45-60% of delegates to the
The insurrection was the result of a year-long struggle, in which the spirit of the plebeian masses was always to the left of the political parties. Including the Bolsheviks, who were divided over whether it was the right moment for an insurrection.
This ripeness explains why the October insurrection was so much less violent than similar events in more recent years. Most of the victims identified by bourgeois historians were actually killed during the civil war, which broke out in 1918. With Britain and France supporting the reactionary forces with troops and
Revolutions reflect the desire for transformation from below, meeting the deepest aspirations of the people, not the execution of some elite plot. October 1917 was such a revolution. The laws approved in the first year of the new regime testify to the radical transformation of social, property and power relations. As John
Reed showed, in Ten days which shook change came quicker than expected and, sometimes, quicker than would have been desirable.
Daily life was transformed, as in any authentic revolution. In Odessa, the students imposed a new history syllabus on their teachers. In Petrograd, workers obliged their employers to learn "the worker-based system of rights". In some schools, the youngest pupils demanded boxing lessons, so as to be able to protect themselves against older children, and have a greater influence.
Few people at the time mourned the disappearance of the last Tsar and his despotic regime.
This initial revolutionary élan lasted throughout the 1920s, despite the shortages and cultural backwardness. It can be seen in the pioneering attempts to transform the Russian way of life: educational and pedagogical reforms; new legislation on the family; utopian urban planning; innovative graphic design and cinema.
The presence of this élan explains the ambiguous and contradictory nature of the painful transformation during the interwar years, where revolutionary hope mixed and clashed with bureaucratic repression. No country in the world has experienced such a transformation. Under the bureaucratic whip, the urban population swelled from 18% of the population in 1926 to 33% in 1939. Thirty million peasants moved to the cities. During the first five year plan, the urban population grew by 44%, as much as between 1897 and 1926. The salaried workforce grew from 10 to 22 million. This massive "ruralisation" of the towns required a massive literacy and basic education programme, but also the militarised imposition of labour discipline.
This huge transformation was accompanied by the rebirth of nationalism, a new careerism, and the growing phenomenon of bureaucratic conformism. In this upside-down period, writes Moshe Lewin, Russia was virtually a "classless society," in that all the classes were still unformed, and fused together. (Moshe Lewin, La formation de l'Union soviétique, The totalitarian development and results of the Russian revolution were "programmed" in the original idea or "passion" of revolution
Some people explain the Stalinist degeneration as the result of the evil basis of human nature. Our uncontrollable lust for power can take various forms, even disguising itself as the quest for the happiness of the people 'despite themselves'
Stalinism does reflect a more general tendency to bureaucratisation, observable in all modern societies. This tendency is nourished by the social division of labour into manual and intellectual, and by the
"professional dangers of power" which this generates.
But we also need to examine the concrete situation, to identify the roots and supports of the "Stalinist phenomenon."
The speed and depth of the bureaucratisation in the new soviet system was the product of terrible destruction, shortage.
cultural backwardness, and the absence of democratic traditions
From the beginning, the revolution had both a wide and a narrow social base.
Wide because based on a worker-peasant alliance, which constituted the overwhelming majority of society. And narrow because the small working class was quickly decimated by the first world war, and the civil war. Soldiers, who played a key role in 1917 through their radical soviets, were mainly conscripted peasants, aroused by the call for peace and demobilisation
Very soon it was the summit which imposed its will on the base of the movement, rather than the other way round This led to a substitutionist dynamic: the Party substitutes itself for the people; the bureaucracy substitutes itself for the party; the man 'in the right place at the right
The lessons of October 1917*
ООНЕНОСЕЦ ПОТЕМКИ:
time' substitutes himself for the collective
This substitutionism is made easier by
the creation of a new bureaucracy, combining the servants of the previous order, and the quickly trained representatives of the new regime.
In the Party itself, the few thousand Bolshevik veterans of the October revolution were overwhelmed by the inflow of hundreds of thousands of new members, including, of course, careerists and recycled elements of the old regime.
Lenin's own Last Testament shows his anguished recognition of this sorry state of affairs. The revolution concerned the masses and the myriad nations of the Russian empire, but all Lenin can do to influence the future is to weigh the positive and negative qualities of a handful of leaders. Everything seems to depend on
Although social factors and historical circumstance played an important role in the growing power of the Stalinist bureaucracy, this does not mean that ideas and theories had no importance. The confusion, since the taking of power, between the state, the Party and the class, in the name of the perishing away of the state, and the disappearance of the contradictions within the population, favoured the statisation of society, rather than the socialisation of state functions.
It takes time to learn democracy. Time and energy. And the rhythms are not the same as those of economic reform. The 'easy way' is to subordinate the organs of popular power to an enlightened tutor, the
Party. And to replace the principle of ИМЕСНИЙ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННЫЙ ФИЛЬМ election, control and recall of officials by their appointment by the Party. This began as early as 1918. This logic culminated with the suppression of political pluralism and political liberties, and the domination
The slide was not just the result of manipulation from above. It was sometimes the result of a demand from below, a desire for order and tranquility after the sufferings of war, civil war, shortages and exhaustion. Democratic controversies, political agitation, and constant appeals for responsibility irritated, without seeming to solve the problems.
According to Marc Ferro, there were two authoritarian elements at beginning of the revolution, "a democratic -authoritarian one at the base, and a centralist-authoritarian one at the top. By 1939, there was only one left."
For Ferro, it was virtually settled by the beginning of 1919, with the decline or control over the district and factory committees. The Philosopher Philippe LacoueLabarthe calls Bolshevism "counter-
ИСТОР revolutionary, from 1920-21 onwards". In other words. before the Kronstadt incident. (see Revue Lignes #31, May 1997).
This is a central question. Obviously, our response is not to mechanicallv oppose the glorious twenties to the dark thirties, so as to oppose "Leninism under to Leninism under Stalin, as if nothing had started to go bad in the USSR before the Georgian consolidated his
Of course bureaucratisation began almost immediately after the revolution. Of course the Cheka secret police existed under Lenin, with its own "policeman" dynamic. Of course there were political prisoners. The Solovski prison islands were functioning from the end of the civil war. And, of course, there was no real plurality of political parties. Free speech was limited. And after the 1921 10th Party
8. «Д. СТЕНЫ congress, democratic rights even within the party were restricted.
All this is true. But it does not "prove" that Leninism led to the Stalinist terror.
The bureaucratic counterrevolution in Russia was not a simple event, to which we can fix a date. It was the result of a series of choices, confrontations and events. Our subsequent precise analysis of these years is not motivated by a desire to fix "the dav it happened", but by our concern with identifving the political tasks, and strategic options that would have led to a different future.
There is not just a contrast between Russia's domestic and foreign policies in the early 20s and the terrible 30s, but an irreducible discontinuity.
We do not deny that authoritarian tendencies had begun to grow well before Stalin came to power. Obsessed with the
25
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
2 BP 85, Paris cedex 11, 75522 France O +33 1/43792961
Fax: +33 1/43792961 E-mail: 100666.1443@compuserve.com
• Australia S33 • Britain £25 • Canada $80 • Denmark 380 DKK • Ireland £25 •
• South Africa R100 • Sweden 400 SEK • New Zealand $35 • USA $70 •
* The lessons of October 1917 very real "main enemy", imperialist aggression and capitalist restoration, the Bolshevik leaders ignored and underestimated the "secondary enemy" of bureaucracy. In the end, it was this enemy which undermined and eventually consumed them.
Such a scenario was difficult to imagine at the time. There were no historical precedents. It was some time before we could understand and interpret what was going wrong, and draw the consequences. So although Lenin understood the significance of the Kronstadt crisis, and launched a profound reorientation, it was only much later, in The Revolution Betrayed that Trotsky established the principle of political pluralism, based on the heterogeneity of the proletariat, including after the seizure
Most of the great studies of the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik party reveal most clearly that, within the narrow dialectic of rupture and continuity, the 1930s were a central moment. Much rupture, and little continuity. Tens of millions of famine deaths, deportations, and victims of trials and purges. The fact that this violence was necessary to bring the system to the player party, which educates and explains, and keeps the march and rhythm of history within the boundaries it has established. As if struggles and revolutions did not have their own logic.
Once you seek to 'self-limit' struggles wherever they emerge, it is but a short step to aligning yourself with the established order. No longer "self-limiting" the objectives of the Party, but limiting the aspirations of the masses. Looking back, the real "master players" of "self-limitation" were Ebert and Noske, the social democrats who ordered the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and workers' soviets in Bavaria.
This kind of argument imagines history to be a regulated, ordered succession of predictable events. It reeks of the historical determinism of which Marxists have often been accused, where the base determines the superstructure. It ignores the difference between history and destiny. Real history is full of events which suggest a range of possible futures, Some clearer and more probable than others.
Those who made the Russian revolution did not see it as a solitary adventure, but as the first part of a European and world revolution. The German revolution and the Spanish civil war were not predestined. Neither was their failure. Nor were the fascist victories in Italy and Germany. Nor was the Chinese revolution.
Saying that the Russian revolution was premature is like passing judgement from à historical tribunal. It is more useful to try to understand the internal logic of the conflict, and the opposing political forces. Defeats are not proof of error or tault, any more than victories are proof of just cause. There is no Last Judgement.
At each key moment of those turbulent years (NEP, forced collectivisation, the Spanish civil war, the Nazi victory in Germany) there were possible alternatives. Understanding this is what makes the past understandable, and what enables us to draw lessons for the future. For futher reading try Alfred Rosmer, Lenin's Moscow, Pluto Press. London, 1971, 253 pp., Marcel Liebman's Leninism under Lenin, Jonathon Cape Ltd., 1975, pb. Merlin Press, London, 1980, 477 pp.. Pierre Broué's ['Histoire du parti bolchevik, Moshe Lewin's, Lenin's Last Struggle, Monthly Review Press, and the works of E.H. Carr, Tony Cliff, and David Rousset.
"victors' congress"
strong the revolutionary heritage must
Analysis with Attitude have been, and how difficult it was to
This was a counter-revolution. The repressive measures involved were more
There is only one magazine in the English language where massive, more visible, and more painful than the worrying authoritarian measures imposed at the height of the civil war. This
• the leaders of France's trade union left debate how best to articulate the counter-revolution was felt in all spheres new mood of resistance to public sector cuts and unemployment.
of life. In economic policy it meant forced collectivisation and the massive extension
• Tahiti's NGO activists explain why they feel Greenpeace marginalised of the Gulag prison-camp economy. In them during the campaign against French nuclear tests.
foreign policy it meant hindering the revolutionary dynamic in China, Germany and
• Indian activists argue that we shouldn't ban imports on countries with
Spain. It had a terrible impact on cultural deficient environmental and labour legislation.
policy, and on daily life (what Trotsky described as the 'household Thermidor").
The revolution was condemned to de-
International Viewpoint is the world's largest international Marxist news and generate, because it was "premature."
The Bolsheviks refused to accept that the "objective conditions" for going beyond capitalism were not present
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a
Founded by Ernest Mandel, analysis magazine.
Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates which are shaping the left of
TTEWPOINT tomorrow. Direct from the front line in growing number of Marxists (mainly in the Anglo-Saxon countries) have been attracted to the idea that the Russian revo-
This magazine is a window to radical alternatives worldwide.
lution was doomed from the start, because it came too soon.
For a free trial subscription (three issues), call us now, or mention this
This was, of course, claimed at the time, by the Mensheviks and by Kautsky.
Blood, tears and ruins could have been
Britain: Outlook International, PO Box 1009 London N4 2UU © (081) 800 7460 avoided, he wrote in 1921, "if the Bolshe-
Canada: Socialist Challenge, PO Box 4955, Main P.O, Vancouver V6B 4A6 viks had possessed the Menshevik sense of limiting themselves to what was possible.
USA: International Viewpoint, PO Box 1824, New York, NY 10009
Self-limitation is what distinguishes the master player."
(Von der Demokratie zur
Staat-sklaverei, 1923, Berlin, Freiheit).
This says a lot about Kautsky. He polemicises against the notion of an avant- garde party, but imagines some master-
26 International Viewpoint #294 the fight against neo-liberalism.
advert to our local sales agent!