Russische Revolution Archives -

Was tun? Wie Lenin eine revolutionäre Partei aufbaute

RKI — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:54 +0000

Im Jahr 1901 veröffentlichte Lenin sein lang erwartetes Buch Was tun? Dieses Meisterwerk der marxistischen Literatur ist ein unvergleichliches Handbuch für alle, die eine bolschewistische Partei aufbauen und ernsthaft für den Sturz des Kapitalismus kämpfen wollen. In diesem Artikel erklären wir, warum dieses Buch bis heute so bedeutend ist und warum jeder Kommunist sich den Inhalt aneignen sollte.

Nachdem die Delegierten des ersten Kongresses der Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei Russlands (SDAPR) im Jahr 1898 verhaftet wurden, geriet die marxistische Bewegung in Russland in Unordnung. Dilettantische Methoden, Des-Organisation und mangelnde politische Klarheit herrschten in den kleinen isolierten marxistischen Zirkeln im ganzen Land.

Nach seiner Rückkehr aus dem sibirischen Exil reiste Lenin nach Westeuropa. Dort schloss er sich mit Martow und Potresow den Veteranen der marxistischen Bewegung, Plechanow, Sassulitsch und Axelrod an. Gemeinsam gründeten sie die Zeitung Iskra, um diese Probleme zu lösen. Mit dieser Zeitung arbeiteten sie daran, die verstreuten Elemente zu verbinden und der Partei eine klare politische Linie, Richtung und Organisation zu geben.

Doch ihre Bemühungen stießen auf Widerstand. In der Partei gab es eine Strömung, die die schwierige Lage der Marxisten nicht nur hinnahm, sondern sie sogar zur Stärke erklärte. Sie verherrlichte die amateurhaften und unklaren Methoden und idealisierte die rein spontane Natur der Arbeiterbewegung, anstatt sie auf das Niveau einer bewussten, organisierten Bewegung unter kommunistischer Führung zu heben. Diese Strömung wurde als «Ökonomismus» bekannt.

Es war notwendig, einen entschiedenen politischen Kampf gegen diese Strömung zu führen, um die Jugendkrise zu überwinden und ins Erwachsenenalter einzutreten. Und gerade in scharfen Auseinandersetzungen zeigte Lenin stets seine größte Stärke.

Das kurze Buch Was tun? war das Ergebnis dieser Polemik. Dieses Meisterwerk der marxistischen Literatur steckt voller Lehren für den heutigen Aufbau einer revolutionären Partei. Es bleibt eine unverzichtbare Lektüre für jeden ernsthaften Kommunisten.

Wie Lenins Lebensgefährtin und Genossin Nadeschda Krupskaja es ausdrückte, ist dies ein Buch, das von jedem studiert werden sollte, der ein Leninist in der Praxis und nicht nur in Worten sein will.

Ökonomismus

Seit Mitte der 1890er Jahre kam es in Russland zu einem gewaltigen Anstieg der Arbeiterunruhen. In allen großen Fabriken brachen Streiks aus. Die Marxisten stürzten sich in die Agitation rund um wirtschaftliche Fragen. Oft genügte schon ein Flugblatt der, SDAPR das Missstände in einer Fabrik aufdeckte, um die Arbeiter zum Streik zu bewegen.

Dies war eine spontane, elementare Bewegung. Sie stellte die ersten Vorboten eines erwachenden Bewusstseins der Arbeiterklasse dar. Lenin und die Anhänger der Iskra verstanden, dass die Rolle der Partei der Avantgarde der Arbeiterklasse darin bestand, das Bewusstseinsniveau der Arbeiterklasse anzuheben: diese ersten Ansätze von Klassenbewusstsein in ein klares, revolutionäres Verständnis zu verwandeln.

Als die Arbeiter begannen, sich gegen ihre eigenen Chefs zu wenden, war es nötig, ihren Blick zu heben: zu erklären, dass ihr Feind nicht nur ein einzelner Chef war, sondern die Bosse als Klasse, die Grundbesitzer und die gesamte zaristische Autokratie.

Wenn die Arbeiterklasse zu einer kämpferischen Kraft werden sollte, die die Autokratie herausfordern kann, musste die wirtschaftliche Agitation durch eine umfassende politische Agitation und Propaganda ergänzt werden – mit anderen Worten, dieses spontane, halbbewusste Erwachen musste auf die Ebene einer organisierten, bewussten, revolutionären Bewegung gehoben werden.

Die Ökonomisten hingegen verherrlichten die spontane Bewegung der Arbeiterklasse. Die Redakteure von Rabocheye Dyelo warfen Lenin und den Anhängern der Iskra vor, zu viel Wert auf Politik und Theorie zu legen, die nur für Intellektuelle und fortgeschrittene Arbeiter geeignet seien, und zu wenig auf die «praktische», alltägliche Arbeit und einfache wirtschaftliche Agitation, die sich an den «Durchschnittsarbeiter» richtet.

Politisches Bewusstsein ergebe sich automatisch aus dem wirtschaftlichen Kampf – «Politik ergibt sich aus der Wirtschaft». Das Eingreifen einer Avantgarde, um dieses Bewusstsein zu heben, sei daher unnötig. Es genüge, wenn die Marxisten die Streikbewegung energisch ermutigen, und den Rest würden die Arbeiter selbst erledigen.

Aber Lenin erklärte, dass die Arbeiter viel besser wissen als die Marxisten, dass sie wirtschaftlich ausgebeutet werden! Wenn die Marxisten ihre Agitation darauf beschränken, den Arbeitern zu sagen, was sie bereits wissen, besteht die Gefahr, dass sie die Arbeiter langweilen. Bis heute gibt es viele sogenannte «marxistische» Sekten, die wie die Ökonomisten glauben, dass die Arbeiter nur an «praktischen» Fragen interessiert sind, die das tägliche Brot betreffen. Ihre grauen Zeitungen lesen sich weniger wie Organe des revolutionären Kampfes und eher wie eine Nachtlektüre, die gegen Schlaflosigkeit helfen soll.

Der wahre Lenin ist für diese modernen Sekten ein Rätsel, obwohl sie in jedem zweiten Satz auf Lenin schwören. Sie versuchen, eine Abkürzung zu den «rückständigen» Arbeitern zu finden, indem sie ihr Material verwässern, und dabei behandeln sie die Arbeiter wie Kinder:

«Ihr Herren Sachwalter der ‘Durchschnittsarbeiter’ beleidigt ja eigentlich die Arbeiter durch euren Wunsch, euch unbedingt zu bücken, bevor ihr von Arbeiterpolitik oder von Arbeiterorganisation zu reden anfangt. Redet doch von ernsten Dingen in aufrechter Haltung und überlasst die Pädagogik den Pädagogen, nicht den Politikern und Organisatoren!»

Lenin warf ihnen vor, dass sie die Rolle der Parteimitglieder auf die Rolle von Gewerkschaftssekretären reduzierten, indem Sie sich auf ökonomische Fragen beschränkten.

Was im Gegensatz dazu eigentlich nötig benötigt war, war eine Partei auf Grundlage professioneller Revolutionäre, die in marxistischer Theorie gestählt sind und als «Volkstribun» handeln können. Das heißt, die gesamte innere Logik des Kapitalismus offenlegen und die Arbeiter darin ausbilden und die lebendige Berichte und Analysen einbringen, die den Arbeitern helfen, den Klassenkampf von allen Seiten zu erkennen.

Er erklärte, dass es viele verschiedene Formen von Agitation und Propaganda gebe, welche die Massen erreichen und bilden können, nicht nur ökonomische Fragen:

«Die Landeshauptleute und die Prügelstrafen für Bauern, die Bestechlichkeit der Beamten und die Behandlung des ‘gemeinen Volks’ in den Städten durch die Polizei, der Kampf gegen die Hungernden und das Kesseltreiben gegen das Streben des Volkes nach Licht und Wissen, die Zwangseintreibung der Abgaben und die Verfolgungen der Sektierer, das Drillen der Soldaten und die Kasernenhofmethoden bei der Behandlung der Studenten und liberalen Intellektuellen – stellen denn alle diese und tausend andere ähnliche Erscheinungen der Unterdrückung, die nicht unmittelbar mit dem ‘ökonomischen’ Kampf verknüpft sind, im allgemeinen weniger ‘weit anwendbare’ Mittel und Anlässe der politischen Agitation, der Einbeziehung der Massen in den politischen Kampf dar?»

Erst wenn die Arbeiter erkennen, dass sie nicht nur im Konflikt mit ihrem eigenen Boss, sondern mit der ganzen Kapitalistenklasse, dem Staatsapparat, den Medien und dem Schulsystem sind, wenn die Arbeiter den wirklichen Inhalt der Phrasen der Politiker verstehen, die Stärken und Schwächen der anderen Klassen erkennen, können sie sich bereitmachen für den finalen Kampf für den Sozialismus. Die Rolle der Kommunisten ist es, die Arbeiterklasse zu organisieren und ihr ein umfassendes politisches Verständnis zu geben, angefangen bei der fortgeschrittensten Schicht.

Aber anstatt danach zu streben, die Arbeiter zu führen und ihr politisches Verständnis zu heben, ließen sich die Ökonomisten hinab auf das Level, das ihrer Meinung nach dem Bewusstsein der Arbeiter entsprach.

Sie spotteten über die Partei-«Theoretiker», die sie des Elitismus beschuldigten, weil diese es wagten, über Dinge zu sprechen, die angeblich über das Interesse und Verständnis des «durchschnittlichen Arbeiters» hinausgehen. Kurz gesagt: Sie verherrlichten die Rückständigkeit und Ignoranz in der Arbeiterklasse und bedienten mit demagogischen Phrasen über „die Massen» oder «die Arbeiter für die Arbeiter» die übelsten Vorurteile gegen die «Führer» und Theoretiker.

Anstatt der Bewegung zu helfen, über dessen Anfangsphase hinauszuwachsen, hilft dieser «Workerismus», wie es Marxisten nennen, die Massenbewegung künstlich in ihren Kinderschuhen festzuhalten. Indem sie den politischen Kampf aufgaben, überließen sie den Einfluss in der Arbeiterklasse der liberalen Bourgeoisie.

In Was tun? Wendete sich Lenin entschieden gegen diese Verachtung der Theorie – begründet mit der Notwendigkeit, sich auf «kleine», «praktische» Taten zu konzentrieren, die damals wie heute zur politischen Unterwerfung gegenüber der liberalen Bourgeoisie führt:

«Man kann danach beurteilen, welchen Mangel an Takt das ‘Rabotscheje Delo’ zeigt, wenn es mit triumphierender Miene Marx’ Ausspruch ins Treffen führt: ‘Jeder Schritt wirklicher Bewegung ist wichtiger als ein Dutzend Programme.’ Diese Worte in einer Zeit der theoretischen Zerfahrenheit wiederholen ist dasselbe, als wolle man beim Anblick eines Leichenbegängnisses ausrufen: ‘Mögen euch immer so glückliche Tage beschieden sein’.

Ohne revolutionäre Theorie kann es auch keine revolutionäre Bewegung geben. Dieser Gedanke kann nicht genügend betont werden in einer Zeit, in der die zur Mode gewordene Predigt des Opportunismus sich mit der Begeisterung für die engsten Formen der praktischen Tätigkeit paart.

Jetzt möchten wir nur darauf hinweisen, dass die Rolle des Vorkämpfers nur eine Partei erfüllen kann, die von einer fortgeschrittenen Theorie geleitet wird.»

Heute wird dieselbe Herangehensweise des «Workerismus» und der Verspottung der Theorie genutzt, um den hässlichsten Opportunismus zu rechtfertigen. In 2018 hat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in einem Vanity Fair-Artikel ein krudes Beispiel dieser Herangehensweise gezeigt:

«Ich denke, es ist echt bougie, mit einer definierten politischen Ideologie aufzuwachsen. Du brauchst dafür Eltern, die auf dem College waren und ein politisches Lexikon besitzen. Meine Mutter hat nicht einmal ein Englisch-Lexikon! Wenn Leute sagen, ich sei nicht sozialistisch genug, dann empfinde ich das als sehr klassizistisch. Ich bin dann so: ‘Was – lese ich dir nicht genug Bücher, Junge?’.» (Unsere Übersetzung)

Sie stellt ihre Herkunft aus der Arbeiterklasse zur Schau, um sich über die kommunistischen «Bücherwürmer» lustig zu machen, die Ideen und Theorie ernst nehmen. Doch was hat sie getan? Sie hat ihren Einfluss genutzt, um die Arbeiter direkt in die Arme der herrschenden Klasse zu treiben! Im Jahr 2019 haben sie, Sanders und der gesamte «Squad» Biden und die Demokraten auf schändliche Weise unterstützt. Es folgte noch viel Schlimmeres, darunter die Unterstützung Bidens beim Verbot des Eisenbahnerstreiks und bei der Militärhilfe für Israel seit dem 7. Oktober.

AOC ist natürlich eine durchschaubare Karrieristin. Es ist eine Verleumdung der Arbeiterklasse zu sagen, dass diese sich nicht für die Theorie interessiere oder sie nicht verstehen könne. Wenn die Theorie einfach und auf lebendige Weise erklärt wird, wenn Marxisten gute Agitation und Propaganda zu den verschiedensten Themen betreiben, dann werden die Arbeiter – angefangen bei der fortgeschrittensten Schicht – sie verstehen können. Die Kraft der marxistischen Theorie besteht darin, dass sie wahr ist. Und das Leben lehrt die Arbeiter täglich dieselben Wahrheiten.

Die Aufgabe der Marxisten ist es genau, den Arbeitern zu helfen, alle korrekten revolutionären Schlussfolgerungen aus ihrer Erfahrung zu ziehen. Wir können nicht davon ausgehen, dass automatisch und spontan die korrekten politischen Schlussfolgerungen aus den ökonomischen Kämpfen der Arbeiter gezogen werden.

Lenin wies auf das Beispiel Großbritanniens hin, wo die Verfechter des Fabianismus (der schrittweisen Reformen im Schneckentempo) die Führung der Labour-Partei beherrschten, um zu zeigen, wie die Arbeiterbewegung für Zugeständnisse auf wirtschaftlicher Ebene auch unter den politischen Einfluss der kleinbürgerlichen Liberalen geraten kann, die nicht weiter schauen als kleinliche Reformen auf parlamentarischer Ebene. Um dies zu verhindern, müssen die Kommunisten einen entschlossenen Kampf um politischen Einfluss führen.

Eine kurze Randbemerkung: Wir sollten festhalten, dass Lenin im Kampf gegen diese Verschandelung des Marxismus den Bogen manchmal etwas in die andere Richtung überspannt hat. Das führte zu einer Formulierung in Was tun?, die Lenin von Kautsky übernommen hat und seither nie mehr wiederholte, dass die Arbeiterklasse «ausschließlich aus eigener Kraft nur ein trade-unionistisches [gewerkschaftliches] Bewusstsein hervorzubringen vermag».

Das ist offensichtlich ein Fehler, der aus einer Übertreibung fließt. Wie Lenin im Buch selbst erklärt, ist das eine stark vereinfachte Faustregel. Trotzdem wiederholen viele sogenannte Leninisten diese Worte. In Wahrheit ist die Geschichte voll mit Beispielen von Arbeitern, die weitreichende politische Schlussfolgerungen gezogen haben, ohne dass diese Ideen von außen von Marxisten hineingetragen wurden. Es reicht, etwa die fortgeschrittenen politischen Schlussfolgerungen des «physical force» Chartismus in Großbritannien in den 1830er Jahren zu erwähnen.

Was Lenin jedoch richtigerweise betonte, war die essentielle Rolle der revolutionären Partei im politischen Kampf, deren erste Kader aus allen Klassen stammen können – zu der in Russland nicht nur viele Studenten, sondern sogar Kinder von Kapitalisten und Aristokraten gehörten – und deren Aufbau bis zu einem gewissen Grad unabhängig vom Wachstum der Arbeiterbewegung ist.

Eine Partei aus professionellen Revolutionären

Die Ökonomisten zeigten alle realen Probleme auf, mit denen die marxistische Bewegung zu kämpfen hatte – insbesondere die amateurhaften Methoden, die zu Polizeidurchsuchungen führten, welche die Arbeit unterbrachen – aber zogen alle falschen Schlussfolgerungen.

Sie machten vor allem die Tatsache dafür verantwortlich, dass Studenten über lange die Führung der marxistischen Zirkel dominiert hatten. Sie plädierten stattdessen dafür, die Arbeit unter Studenten zugunsten einer «breiten» Partei der Arbeiter zu vernachlässigen. Für eine Partei der «Massen», nicht der «Führer».

Aber Lenin erklärte, dass das Gegenteil einer losen, amateurhaften, schlecht geführten Organisation eine zentralisierte, disziplinierte, gut geführte Organisation von geschulten professionellen Revolutionären ist. Damit meinte Lenin nicht nur Fulltimer. In der ersten Ausgabe der Iskra erklärte er: Ein professioneller Revolutionär ist jemand, der sein gesamtes Leben, nicht nur die freien Abende der Revolution widmet. Ob ein professioneller Revolutionär vorher ein Student, ein Intellektueller oder ein Arbeiter war, ist egal.

Um diesen Punkt zu erklären, hat Lenin einen direkten Vergleich zwischen dem Klassenkrieg und dem traditionellen Krieg gezogen. Oftmals hat in der Geschichte hat eine kleine, aber disziplinierte Armee mit guten Offizieren größere Armeen besiegt, die aus mutigen Soldaten bestanden, aber von schlechten Offizieren geführt waren. Dasselbe gilt für den Klassenkrieg. Eine revolutionäre Partei – soll sie denn effektiv sein – muss um politisch und technisch geschulte und gestählte Kader aufgebaut werden.

Der einzige Weg für eine solche Partei, sowohl politische Klarheit als auch Einheit in der Aktion zu erreichen, ist mithilfe des demokratischen Zentralismus. Das bedeutet breiteste demokratische Diskussionen in der gesamten Partei, bevor eine Entscheidung gefällt wird, um die maximale Klarheit zu erreichen und das Verständnis auf ein höheres Level zu heben. Aber nachdem die Entscheidung gefällt ist, ist die disziplinierte Einheit in der Aktion unverzichtbar.

Dieses Modell wurde nicht von Lenin erfunden. Er hat es aus der marxistischen Bewegung vor ihm, und insbesondere von der Deutschen Sozialdemokratischen Partei übernommen, die sich zu der Zeit noch als marxistische Organisation bezeichnete und international als Vorbild gehandelt wurde.

Heute gibt es viele auf der sogenannten Linken, die den demokratischen Zentralismus verhöhnen, da sie die Lügen der bürgerlichen Historiker glauben, die Lenin’s Namen anschwärzen wollen, indem sie ihn mit dem Stalinismus verbinden und fälschlicherweise den demokratischen Zentralismus mit dem monströsen bürokratischen Zentralismus von Stalins Diktatur gleichsetzen.

Diese Linken glauben diesen Mythos und haben das Gefühl, mit ihren «breiten», losen Netzwerken etwas gefunden zu haben, das viel «demokratischer» ist als Lenins zentralisierte Partei. Ausnahmslos führen ihre «Innovationen» aber zum Aufstieg von bürokratischen Cliquen, ungewählten Führungen ohne Rechenschaftspflicht und schließlich ins Desaster. Das ist genau, was Lenin verhindern wollte.

Ein Beispiel: Kurz nachdem Corbyn 2015 zum Parteipräsidenten der Labour Party in Großbritannien gewählt wurde, als Hunderttausende von normalen Arbeitern und Jugendlichen in die Partei strömten, gab es einen Versuch, dem Corbynism einen organisierten Ausdruck zu geben: Momentum. Hunderte Gruppen entstanden überall im Lande, Zehntausende wurden von diesem Banner angezogen.

Dessen Führer, etwa Jon Lansmann, erklärten, sie bauten eine «breite Basisbewegung» auf. Das klingt alles sehr schön und sehr «demokratisch». Was bedeutete es in der Praxis? Anstatt demokratischer Konferenzen mit Delegierten, die politische Ideen diskutieren, das Verständnis heben und ein Aktionsprogramm entwickeln, das die innere Revolution in der Labour Partei zum Abschluss bringt, kreierten sie eine demokratische Fassade mit gelegentlichen Online-Abstimmungen.

Ihr Vorbild war die Podemos, die viele scheinbar sehr demokratische Online-Debatten und -Konsultationen abhielt. Dabei konnten aber nur diejenigen an den Diskussionen teilnehmen, die alle Zeit der Welt hatten. Mangels angemessenen internen Kanälen wurde die Mehrheit von dem gesamten Prozess entfremdet und auf eine passive Position reduziert.

Die Führer von Momentum und Podemos hatten in Wahrheit Angst, die Kontrolle über die Organisation zu verlieren, wenn sie den Basismitgliedern die Initiative übergeben. Stattdessen wurden die Mitglieder behandelt wie hirnlose Fußsoldaten für eine Wahlmaschine, die wie ein Wasserhahn ein- und ausgeschaltet werden kann.

Die Momentum-Führer hatten nie den Anspruch, Marxisten zu sein. Aber die Situation ist bei vielen Sekten nicht besser, die sich «marxistisch» oder sogar «leninistisch» nennen.

Nachdem die Socialist Party in Großbritannien die bestehenden Arbeitermassenorganisationen als verrottet und bürokratisch abgelehnt hat, hat sie wiederholt versucht, einfach neue, «breite» «Arbeitermassenparteien» auszurufen. In der Praxis verwässern sie einfach ihr revolutionäres Profil, wie es die Ökonomisten taten, nehmen eine reformistische Färbung an, sprechen ausschließlich über «Brot und Butter»-Fragen und verschwenden eine Menge Zeit damit, ihre leblose «breite Front» künstlich am Leben zu erhalten.

Solche Versuche sind ausnahmslos immer gescheitert.

Für uns, als ernsthafte revolutionäre Kommunisten, ist der Aufbau einer disziplinierten Organisation aus professionellen Revolutionären, die gefestigt sind in der marxistischen Theorie, nicht nur ein schönes Hirngespinst. Es ist die absolut unabdingbare Voraussetzung für den Aufbau einer kämpferischen revolutionären Partei, die um die politische Führung der Arbeiterklasse konkurrieren kann. Die Oktoberrevolution hat die Richtigkeit der Leninschen Konzeption ein für alle Mal bewiesen. Was tun? bleibt deshalb ein Handbuch für uns, auf dem Weg, eine revolutionäre kommunistische Internationale zu gründen.

Eine gesamtrussische marxistische Zeitung

Wenn einmal klar ist, dass wir eine Partei von professionellen Revolutionären brauchen, stellt sich die Frage nach einem Plan. Wie gehen wir diese Aufgabe an? Lenin’s Antwort war klar: Die revolutionäre Bewegung braucht eine gesamtrussische marxistische Zeitung.

Die Ökonomisten waren perplex. Für sie kam die Frage nach einem Plan erst gar nicht auf, und der Plan von Lenin erschien ihnen doch sehr «buchmäßig». Nein, sagten sie, wir müssen einfach etwas tun: mehr «praktische» Arbeit leisten, «die Bewegung aufbauen», Streikgelder sammeln, usw. usf.

Aber die Revolutionäre in Russland waren sehr aktiv! Das Problem war, dass diese Aktivität schlecht koordiniert war. Gruppen in einem Teil des Landes konnten nicht aus den Erfahrungen aus anderen Regionen lernen. Die Nachricht eines Streiks im Ural, eines Massakers auf dem Lande etc. wurde im restlichen Land nicht gehört. Qualitativ hochwertiges theoretisches Material erreichte die lokalen Gruppen nur selten und die Verbindung zur nationalen Führung war in den besten Fällen lückenhaft. Es gab massive Doppelarbeit, da überall lokale Zeitungen entstanden, die dann nach einer Verhaftungswelle durch die Okhrana (zaristische Geheimpolizei) wieder eingestellt wurden.

Darüber hinaus würde sogar die technische Vorbereitung der Zeitung die Organisation stählen und disziplinieren. Lenin erklärte die Rolle der Zeitung mit einer Analogie: eine Richtschnur, die von Maurern verwendet wird.

«Die Gründung einer gesamtrussischen Zeitung muss die wichtigste Richtschnur sein, an Hand derer wir die Organisation (d.h. die revolutionäre Organisation, die stets bereit ist, jeden Protest und jedes Aufflackern zu unterstützen) unbeirrt tiefer entwickeln und erweitern können. Sagt doch bitte: Wenn Maurer an verschiedenen Stellen die Steine für einen ungeheuer großen, noch nie dagewesenen Bau legen – ist es dann eine ‘papierne’ Arbeit, wenn sie eine Schnur ziehen, die die richtige Stelle für das Legen der Steine anzeigt, die auf das Endziel der gemeinsamen Arbeit hinweist, die die Möglichkeit gibt, nicht nur jeden Stein, sondern auch jedes Stück Stein zu verwerten, das, sich dem vorhergehenden und dem folgenden einfügend, die letzte Lücke in der vollendeten und allumfassenden Linie schließt? […] Hätten wir einen Trupp erfahrener Maurer, die so gut aufeinander eingearbeitet sind, dass sie auch ohne Schnur die Steine gerade dort hinlegen könnten, wo es notwendig ist (das ist, abstrakt gesprochen, durchaus nicht unmöglich), dann könnten wir vielleicht auch nach einem anderen Kettenglied greifen. Aber das ist ja eben das Malheur, dass wir noch keine erfahrenen und gut aufeinander eingearbeiteten Maurer haben, dass die Steine oft ganz nutzlos gelegt werden, dass sie nicht nach einer gemeinsamen Schnur gelegt werden, sondern so verstreut, dass der Feind sie einfach fortbläst, als wären es nicht Steine, sondern Sandkörner.»

So wie eine Richtschnur bei der gemeinsamen Arbeit hilft, so soll die Zeitung die gemeinsame Arbeit der Partei anleiten. Sie soll regelmäßigen Kontakt und Korrespondenz zwischen den Regionen und dem Center fördern. Dafür braucht es ein Netzwerk zur Verteilung der Zeitung, zum Sammeln des Geldes, um die revolutionäre Organisation zu finanzieren, und die Entwicklung eines zuverlässigen Netzwerks von Kontakten in den Fabriken.

Dieselben Kontakte, welche die Iskra und andere Zeitungen, die die bolschewistische Partei später in den russischen Massen etabliert hatten, würden wie ein Nervensystem funktionieren, wenn der Tag für den Aufstand kommt.

In der Tradition dieser bewährten Methoden haben unsere Genossinnen und Genossen im Vorfeld der Gründung der Revolutionären Kommunistischen Internationale in den letzten Monaten in einer Reihe von Ländern die kommunistische Presse ins Leben gerufen oder wiederbelebt, unter anderem in Großbritannien, Kanada, Deutschland, El Salvador, Portugal, Schweden, der Schweiz und Ungarn, wobei in einer ganzen Reihe weiterer Länder neue Zeitungen in Vorbereitung sind.

Heute gibt es viele sogenannte Linke (viele davon, die sich als Anhänger von Lenin verstehen!), die sich auch heute noch über die wahren Leninisten lustig machen, weil diese darauf bestehen, eine Zeitung zu veröffentlichen. Sie verweisen auf neue Formen der elektronischen und sozialen Medien. Mit einem Blog kann jeder, der in seinem Keller sitzt, sagen, was er will.

Aber der Aufbau einer Zeitung benötigt eine rundum professionelle Organisation. Sie erfordert eine klare redaktionelle Linie und ein starkes Netzwerk von geschulten, ausgebildeten Korrespondenten. Die nörgelnden Kritiker der revolutionären Presse verstehen nicht, dass das, was wir eigentlich aufbauen, überhaupt keine Zeitung ist: Wir bauen den Keim einer revolutionären Organisation auf.

Eine internationale Spaltung

Obwohl Lenin ein marxistischer Anführer in Russland war, war sein Ausblick niemals nur national. Er verstand sofort die wahre Bedeutung des Ökonomismus als russische Form des globalen opportunistischen Trends, der in der Arbeiterbewegung aufgekommen war.

Überall entwickelte sich eine klare Trennung innerhalb der sozialistischen Internationale zwischen dem revolutionären und dem opportunistischen Flügel.

In Deutschland war die Arbeiterbewegung – in Worten – immer noch dem Marxismus ergeben, aber eine verräterische Bürokratie von bequemen Karrieristen war dabei, sich zu festigen, vor allem in den oberen Schichten der Partei und der Gewerkschaften. Eine lange Boom-Periode bis 1914, in der die herrschende Klasse wichtige Zugeständnisse machte, ohne dass ernsthafte Klassenkämpfe geführt wurden, hatte in einer Schicht die Illusion genährt, dass alles immer besser werden würde.

Eduard Bernstein war der erste, der eine theoretische Rechtfertigung für diesen Opportunismus gab, indem er den Marxismus zu revidieren versuchte. Der Kapitalismus sei dabei, seine inneren Widersprüche zu lösen, behauptete er. Die friedliche Entwicklung würde für immer anhalten. Seiner Meinung nach können schrittweise kleine Reformen die Notwendigkeit für eine Revolution ersetzen – die SPD müsse nur ihre Parlamentsfraktion vergrößern, um sich für kleine Reformen einzusetzen und kleine ökonomische Konzessionen zu verlangen. Schon lange zuvor (1889) hatte Rosa Luxemburg in ihrem brillanten Pamphlet Reform oder Revolution eine Antwort darauf formuliert.

Alle Voraussagen von Bernstein über den Kapitalismus ohne Widersprüche wurden mit dem Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges 1914 zerschmettert.

Im Gegensatz zu Deutschland mussten die russischen Kommunisten im Untergrund arbeiten. Es gab nur wenige legale Möglichkeiten für die Partei. Alles, was sie ihren Mitgliedern anbieten konnten, war ein Leben in Gefahr und Aufopferung. Nur diejenigen, die von den edelsten Absichten geleitet wurden, wurden in die Bewegung gezogen. Egoistische Karrieristen konnten dort nichts finden. Trotzdem drückte sich dieselbe opportunistische Tendenz aus, nur in einer subtileren Form. Doch gerade die Gefahren und Schwierigkeiten der revolutionären Arbeit in Russland und die Tatsache, dass eine ganze Generation ins Exil gezwungen wurde, um dort die Lehren aus der internationalen Bewegung zu ziehen, schärfte den Verstand Tausender junger Revolutionäre.

Die Spaltung der Arbeiterbewegung zwischen Opportunismus und Revolution ist nicht zufällig. Es ist ein Zeichen der Zeit. Während der Kapitalismus von einer Krise in die nächste taumelt, schwindet der Spielraum für ernsthafte, dauerhafte Reformen immer mehr. Die Zeiten, in denen man ernsthafte Reformen durchsetzen konnte, während man Lippenbekenntnisse zur zukünftigen sozialistischen Revolution abgab, die wie eine ferne Zukunftsperspektive erschien, liegen hinter uns. Die Frage des revolutionären Sturzes des Kapitalismus durch die Arbeiterklasse steht im Raum. Heutzutage endet der Reformismus schnell in Verrat und völliger Kapitulation vor der herrschenden Klasse. Die Leichen von Syriza und der Corbyn- und Sanders-Bewegung sind eine deutliche Erinnerung an diese Tatsache.

Der Kampf darum, alle revolutionären Kommunisten in einer Partei zu vereinen, die den Kampf aufnimmt, um den Einfluss des reformistischen Opportunismus über breite Schichten der Arbeiterklasse zu brechen, ist der entscheidende Kampf unserer Zeit. Bevor Kommunisten die Macht erobern können, müssen sie die Arbeiterklasse erobern.

In diesem Sinne hat Was tun? Heute nicht an Bedeutung verloren. Reformisten, Sektierer und Anarchisten wiederholen weltweit die Argumente der Ökonomisten.

Sie bevormunden die Arbeiterklasse. Sie sagen uns, dass «das Bewusstsein der Arbeiterklasse zu tief ist», um revolutionäre Ideen zu verstehen. Stattdessen müssen wir uns auf kleine Schritte begrenzen, sagen sie. Wir begrenzen unseren Fokus auf Dinge wie simple Gewerkschaftsarbeit, «mutual aid» und «Brotfragen»; wir sollen uns «wählbar» machen für die breiten Massen, anstatt den Blick der Massen für die großen historischen Aufgaben zu heben, die sie selbst noch nicht begreifen.

Sie behandeln Arbeiter wie Kinder und verwechseln ihre eigene Rückständigkeit, ihr eigenes tiefes Level mit demjenigen der Arbeiter. Sie lehnen die Idee einer Partei der Avantgarde der Arbeiterklasse auf Grundlage von professionellen Revolutionären ab, weil es «elitär» sei. Stattdessen sehen die Reformisten die Partei nur als Wahlmaschine, um sie ins Parlament zu hieven. Währenddessen verherrlichen Anarchisten die spontane Bewegung der Arbeiterklasse, was sie praktischerweise von der Pflicht, etwas zu tun, befreit, außer vielleicht ab und zu den Arbeitern einen Anstoß zu geben durch «direkte Aktion». Lenin hat im Stil einer scharfen Polemik in Was tun? längst all das beantwortet. Die Kommunisten sollten dieses Buch wieder und wieder lesen, um sich auf die kommende Zeit vorzubereiten.

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The ‘Two Tactics’ of the 1905 Revolution: a line is drawn between Bolshevism and Menshevism

In Defence of Marxism — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 10:00:07 +0000

When divisions among Russian Marxists between ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘Mensheviks’ first emerged at the second congress of the RSDLP in 1903, they remained confined to secondary differences over organisational questions. Only with the 1905 Revolution did real political differences emerge, as Lenin explained in his brilliant pamphlet of that year, Two Tactics of the Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. More than anything else, war and revolution bring out political differences with crystal clarity.

The significance of the 1905 Revolution cannot be understated in the development of Bolshevism and of Lenin’s thinking. Lenin stated more than once that the October Revolution of 1917 would have never succeeded without this earlier experience.

1905 was a year of extreme crisis and turbulence. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 rapidly exposed the inner rottenness of Tsarism that suffered humiliating defeats. This only added to the already existing hatred for the regime.

On 16 January 1905, a strike broke out at the Putilov workers and began to spread rapidly throughout the country. By 20 January, a general strike was under way involving 456 enterprises with up to 150,000 workers.

The young working class went into an all-out struggle with tsarism that sidelined the liberal opposition in the process. “People were awakened to political consciousness for the first time”, explained Lenin.

No one had foreseen that Russia would be shaken by such explosions. The Bolshevik organisation inside Russia was initially wrong-footed. The Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP) split at the Second Congress of 1903, but many comrades of the party were still as yet confused as to the real nature of this split.

After the first shocks of the revolution, preparations for the Third Congress were made, which was organised in London in April 1905. This was exclusively a Bolshevik congress as the Mensheviks stayed away.

In Two Tactics, Lenin covers the importance of the Third Congress. He explains how a revolutionary party must make its position very clear on the following questions: 1) the significance of a provisional revolutionary government; 2) its attitude towards a provisional revolutionary government; 3) the precise conditions of Social-Democratic participation in this government; 4) the conditions under which pressure is to be brought to bear on this government from below, i.e., in the event of there being no Social-Democrats within it.

Going over these questions, Lenin was able to bring out the fundamental political differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, which centred around the main point: which class would lead this bourgeois revolution? The Mensheviks increasingly demonstrated their illusions in the Russian liberal bourgeoisie. They laid heavy stress on their leading role. They counter-posed two ‘tactics’: either the Marxists wait for the Tsar to call a Duma (i.e. semi-parliament) and then try to ‘influence’ it; or the Marxists should lead the struggle for an armed insurrection of the working class.

The latter, they claimed, was impossible. They raised excuses about how the working class “is not yet sufficiently class conscious”, and that an insurrection would “isolate” the workers from the bourgeoisie. According to the Mensheviks only the bourgeoisie can lead the bourgeois revolution to a decisive victory over tsarism. Their choice of ‘tactics’ therefore involved complete subordination of the working class to the liberal bourgeoisie.

But the liberal bourgeoisie, through its mouthpiece Osvobozhdeniye [‘Liberation’], was not arguing for a republic and the overthrow of Tsarism, but only a constitutional monarchy. I.e. it was preparing to compromise with Tsarism, as it was more afraid of the revolutionary movement of the workers that had been unleashed than it was interested in gaining power for itself. In Two Tactics, Lenin explains why this is a fundamental mistake;

“[We Marxists] must be perfectly clear in our minds as to what real social forces are opposed to “tsarism” and are capable of gaining a “decisive victory” over it. Such a force cannot be the big bourgeoisie, the landlords, the factory owners, “society” which follows the lead of the Osvobozhdentsi. We see that these do not even want a decisive victory. We know that owing to their class position they are incapable of waging a decisive struggle against tsarism; they are too heavily fettered by private property, capital and land to enter into a decisive struggle. They need tsarism with its bureaucratic, police and military forces for use against the proletariat and the peasantry too much to be able to strive for its destruction.”

He concludes:

“No, the only force capable of gaining “a decisive victory over tsarism,” is the people, i.e., the proletariat and the peasantry, […] No one else is capable of gaining a decisive victory over tsarism.”

Lenin argued strongly for this, and put forward the slogan of “the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” – i.e. a revolutionary, democratic regime of the plebeian and working masses.

This was in stark contrast to the position of the Mensheviks who stopped at merely adopting the most widespread slogans, such as the call for a popular constituent assembly, which even the monarchist bourgeoisie supported. This flowed from their false perspectives.

Lenin warned about this, saying “There is nothing more dangerous in a revolutionary period than belittling the importance of tactical slogans that are sound in principle.”

The Mensheviks imposed their abstract schema onto reality. They started from the indisputable fact that in Russia, the main tasks of the revolution were bourgeois: i.e. the overthrow of autocracy and the creation of a democratic regime. But they drew from this the radically false conclusion that the revolution must be led by the bourgeoisie, despite the fact that the latter had shown their fear and hatred of the revolution.

The Mensheviks were utterly incapable of understanding the real class dynamics. Lenin explained that beyond a mere change from autocracy to a republic, the bourgeois revolution above all signifies an agrarian revolution, in which the land must be seized from the landlords and redistributed to the peasantry.

Seen from this angle, Lenin explained, we can see how the Russian bourgeoisie could never support such a revolution. They had too many interests connecting them to landed property: the capitalists were also big landowners, and were connected to the landlords via the mortgages that the latter had with the banks. To push forward a thorough agrarian revolution, the party had to lead the proletariat into a revolutionary alliance with the rural peasantry. But the Mensheviks had no desire to lead the proletariat at all. They merely dragged at the tail of events.

Lenin expressed his frustration in the text:

“…we are offered a general description of a process, which does not say a word about the concrete aims of our activity.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, said Marx, the point, however, is to change it. Similarly, the new-Iskraists [i.e. the Mensheviks] can give a tolerable description and explanation of the process of struggle which is taking place before their eyes, but they are altogether incapable of giving a correct slogan for this struggle.”

Through Lenin’s deep understanding of the material conception in history he remained firm on the principles of Marxism, and the need for the proletariat to have its own independent party and programme.

It’s important to note that at this time Trotsky was developing his own analysis of events in parallel to Lenin, which had important points of contact with the ideas of the latter. Trotsky fully worked out what became the theory of permanent revolution in his work “Results and Prospects”, which was published in 1906.

Trotsky agreed with Lenin that the bourgeoisie was destined by its position to play a counter-revolutionary role, and he likewise emphasised that only the proletariat and peasantry could play a revolutionary role. But he went further, explaining that of the two classes, only the proletariat could play the leading role. Therefore, whereas Lenin raised the somewhat algebraic slogan of “the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”, which left open the question of the role that these two classes would play, Trotsky posed the possibility that the revolution in Russia could establish a socialist regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This perspective was proven correct by the events of 1917.

The aim of this worker’s government would be to carry out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution, such as land reform, resolution of the national question and establishing a republic. However, once accomplished, the worker’s government would not stop there, but would be forced to immediately proceed towards socialist tasks – nationalising the property of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, instituting workers’ control, national planning, etc.

From here, Trotsky explained that the socialist revolution would spread and be completed on the world stage. Although in Two Tactics, Lenin did not yet pose the possibility of the Russian Revolution growing over from a bourgeois into a socialist revolution, he too posed the possibility that the Russian Revolution might “carry the revolutionary conflagration into Europe”. In short, both Lenin and Trotsky based everything on an internationalist perspective, in contrast to the anti-Marxist theory of ‘socialism in one country’ espoused by the Stalinists who falsely claim to stand in the tradition of Lenin.

By 1917, Lenin converged on the same perspective as Trotsky. From this time on, he dropped the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”, first raised in Two Tactics, on account of the changing situation, and adopted “the dictatorship of the proletariat” instead.

Only later, after Lenin’s death, did Stalin revive Lenin’s old slogan of a “democratic dictatorship”. But he did so only to counter-pose it to the idea of a socialistdictatorship, as a step backwards towards justifying the counter-revolutionary foreign policy of Stalinism. This was a policy of precisely subordinating the workers’ movement in oppressed colonial nations to the leadership of the national bourgeoisie as we saw in 1925-27 in China, and on a host of later occasions. In other words, the same slogan, raised at a time when it had become antiquated, was used precisely in the opposite spirit in which it was intended in Lenin’s Two Tactics.

This pamphlet was a watershed moment in the development of Bolshevism. It was in this period when the political differences between Bolshevism and Menshevism, between revolution and reformist opportunism, were solidified. Through this text, we gain a real insight into Lenin’s method of thinking. Whereas the Menshevik faction merely contented itself with analysing the situation and allowing events to take their ‘natural’ course (that is to say, they surrendered leadership of the revolution to the liberals), Lenin’s brilliance lay in charting a line of revolutionary action at a historical juncture that was without precedent.

This is what set the Bolsheviks on the right path which ultimately led to the victory of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.

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The Truth about Stalin – a Reply to the Morning Star

Alan Woods — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:08 +0000

On Monday 17 October, the Morning Star published a review of the new edition of Trotsky’s biography of Stalin written by Andrew Murray. While admitting that “this book has literary and historical merit,” Murray states that “it has much less as an actual biography of Stalin”. How does he justify these claims?

He writes: “Obviously, it misses the last 13 years of Stalin’s life, including the second world war, altogether and the coverage of the 1930s when Trotsky was already in exile is very sketchy — there is little about industrialisation or collectivisation in the USSR, about Stalin’s diplomacy and more.”

We should respectfully point out to him that Trotsky could hardly deal with the last 13 years of Stalin’s life because his own life was cut short by the assassination ordered by Stalin in 1940. The book does in fact deal with industrialisation and collectivisation, which Trotsky advocated in the 1920s when Stalin, together with Bukharin, was in favour of appeasing the rich peasants (Kulaks). He also deals with Stalin’s “diplomacy”. But let us take these things one at a time.

Industrialisation and collectivisation

After Lenin’s death the policies of Stalin and Bukharin caused a very dangerous situation in the countryside, where the kulaks were becoming a powerful force hostile to the Soviet power. The Left Opposition continually warned of the kulak danger and demanded a policy based on industrialisation, five year plans and collectivisation. This was rejected by Stalin.

In February 1928 Stalin wrote: „The NEP is the foundation of our economic policy and will so remain for a long time to come.“ In April of the same year, Stalin and the Plenum of the Central Committee had passed a resolution to the effect that „only liars and counterrevolutionaries could spread rumours about the abolition of the NEP.“

Then within a few months the whole policy was thrown into reverse. The kulaks had organised a grain strike as the first step in the capitalist counterrevolution against Soviet power. By the end of 1927 the drop of grain supplies to the towns had assumed alarming proportions. In a 180-degree somersault, Stalin announced the „liquidation of the kulaks as a class.“

In 1930 Trotsky warned that the collectivisation of the peasantry should proceed gradually and on a voluntary basis, so as not to open up a conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry. He advocated that no more than 20-25 percent of peasant farms should be collectivised „lest the framework of reality should be overstepped.“ This was in line with Lenin’s attitude to collectivisation.

Stalin appropriated the policy of collectivisation from the programme of the Left Opposition, but carried it out in a bureaucratic, adventurist and hooligan manner. They collectivised everything – down to the felt boots that were dragged off the feet of the kulak’s children. In the process, no distinction was made between the rich and middle peasants. The result was a bloody civil war in which the Red Army had to be sent into the countryside.

As a result of this lunacy, a terrible famine swept across the land in 1932-33. Millions of people starved to death. Later Stalin had to retreat, but the damage was done. Stalin’s adventurist policy of forced collectivisation of agriculture provoked a catastrophe from which Soviet agriculture never fully recovered.

In the field of industry something similar occurred. Stalin carried out a similar zig-zag. When Trotsky, following in Lenin’s footsteps, advocated a policy of industrialisation based on Five Year Plans and electrification he was accused of being a „super industrialiser“. Stalin ridiculed Trotsky’s proposal for the building of a hydro-electrical project on the Dnieper (Dnieperstroy) as the equivalent of offering a peasant a gramophone instead of a cow.

Stalin then also opportunistically “borrowed” the policy of industrialisation and five year plans from the Left Opposition, which he had previously opposed. But he copied them in a distorted, one-sided and bureaucratic manner. In 1929 he suddenly proclaimed a „five year plan in four years.“ This led to serious dislocation in industry, which was only rectified with difficulty, after great losses.

The launching of the Five Year Plans was undoubtedly a giant step forward for the USSR. Despite the chaos, mismanagement and bungling of the bureaucracy, it enabled the Soviet Union to achieve results that have never been equalled by any capitalist economy. But in the absence of workers’ democracy and internationalism, the result was not a genuine socialist policy but a bureaucratic caricature.

A number of former Oppositionists – prominent Old Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Zinoviev – capitulated to Stalin. That did not save them. Stalin forced them to make humiliating confessions and then had them murdered. He later murdered every one of the principal leaders of Lenin’s Party. The consolidation of Stalinism demanded the complete liquidation of the Old Bolsheviks because Stalinism and Bolshevism are two mutually antagonistic and incompatible tendencies.

The Kirov assassination

The 17th Party Congress of the Communist Party in 1934, known as the “Congress of Victors”, was supposed to celebrate the decisive victory of the Stalin faction and the fulfilment of the first Five Year Plan. But it did not turn out as Stalin had planned. The chaos caused by Stalin’s adventurism, especially in the field of agriculture provoked mass discontent and serious divisions in the leading faction.

The opposition to Stalin crystallised around Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad Party leader. At the Congress Kirov was greeted by the kind of applause that equalled that which was reserved for Stalin. His speech was critical of the General Line and he was elected to the all-powerful Secretariat of the Central Committee. Stalin found himself in a minority in the Politburo. This was an intolerable situation for Stalin inevitably saw Kirov as a dangerous rival. He therefore hatched a plot to eliminate him.

This brings us to Andrew Murray’s second criticism. He writes:

“He [Alan Woods] still believes the cold war myth that Stalin ordered the murder of Kirov, a tale now comprehensively debunked by Western academics.” Contrary to Murray’s confident claims, there can be no doubt whatsoever that Stalin was behind the assassination of Kirov. The so-called “new evidence” does not, and cannot, prove categorically that Nikolaev acted alone and therefore does not claim to have “comprehensively debunked” anything.

The “latest revelations” tell us nothing significant we did not already know. Previously secret documents, classified for decades by the secret police that were supposed to shed light on the Kirov murder, were published in Russia in 2009. They “painted a picture of a disillusioned Communist Party functionary acting alone, out of bitterness and revenge”:

“Nikolayev had tried hard to rise to the top of the Leningrad Party hierarchy but instead was told to go and work at a factory in a lower position. He decided to take revenge on Kirov after he was thrown out of the party for ‘breaching party discipline,’ denied treatment in a sanatorium despite having heart problems, and could no longer get food rations available to party apparatchiks.

„You can eat yourself now – no money, no food,“ the father of two wrote in his diary. „For themselves, they (party leaders) hold garages with automobiles, for us they have sodden bread.“ All this is true, and was known a long time ago. But it is not all the truth. And it does not answer any of the questions that arise from the known facts of the case.

Let us remind ourselves of those facts

Various accounts of Leonid Nikolayev’s life coincide in painting a picture of man with a murderous grudge. Having failed to achieve a suitable post in the Party, he found himself expelled, unemployed and in financial difficulties. In fact, he was already well-known to the Leningrad NKVD, which had arrested him for various petty offences.

Alexander Orlov, who defected during the Purges was a general in the NKVD (Stalin’s Secret Police), states that Nikolayev had told a “friend” of his desire to kill the head of the party control commission that had expelled him. This was then reported to the NKVD. Orlov, who was in a position to know the facts, stated that Stalin had ordered Yagoda, the head of the secret police, to arrange the assassination of Kirov. Orlov explains thatYagoda ordered the NKVD agent Vanya Zaporozhets to undertake the job. Zaporozhets returned to Leningrad to search for a likely assassin and found the name of Leonid Nikolayev in the files of the NKVD.

According to Orlov, Nikolayev’s mysterious “friend” was in fact a provocateur of the NKVD, who had supplied him with the revolver and money. Nikolayev’s mysterious “friend” was later shot. In fact, every single person that was a witness in this case was either shot or died in mysterious circumstances.

On 1 December 1934, Nikolaev entered the Smolny Institute where Kirov worked carrying a briefcase containing a revolver. The Smolny Institute was not just any building. It served as the chief offices of the Leningrad Party apparatus and as the seat of the local government. As such, it was well guarded. Yet on the day of the assassination the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov’s offices was left unmanned. The NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at the Smolny Institute, and then left.

Although Nikolayev was already known to the Leningrad NKVD, he was allowed to pass by the main security desk. Later a suspicious guard asked to examine his briefcase and found the revolver. Nikolayev was then arrested. So a man, who was already on the NKVD files as a suspicious character, was found in the headquarters of the Party with a loaded pistol. It is difficult to imagine a more serious breach of the law. At the very least he should have been taken away and interrogated. But that did not happen.

A few hours later the security police not only set Nikolayev free, but even thoughtfully gave him back his loaded pistol. After that nobody challenged him and he made his way to the third floor, where he calmly waited in a hallway until Kirov appeared. But the “mystery” does not end there. At the moment when the fatal shots were fired, Borisov, who was supposed to be guarding Kirov, was nowhere to be seen.

According to one version he was some 20 to 40 paces behind his boss, but other sources say he had left Kirov “to prepare his luncheon”. Whatever version is accepted, the fact is that Kirov, the most important Party leader after Stalin, was unprotected when he passed his assassin in the corridor. Nikolayev drew his revolver and shot Kirov in the back of the neck.

Unanswered questions

The questions that must be answered are as follows: Why was a man known to the NKVD as suspicious allowed to enter the Smolny with a revolver in his bag? Why, after being arrested and found to be in possession of a gun, was he released and the weapon returned to him? Why was Nikolayev not prosecuted for these flagrant violations of the law? How was it that not only was he released without formal charges but he had his revolver returned to him? Why was Kirov’s bodyguard absent during the assassination? In other words: who gave him (the assassin) his chance, and why?

Having successfully eliminated his most dangerous rival, Stalin then made sure that no witnesses survived. Stalin immediately demanded swift punishment of the “traitors” and those found negligent in Kirov’s death. Nikolayev was tried alone and in secret. After a summary trial on 29 December a military court found Nikolayev and 13 others guilty of taking part in a terrorist organization called „the Leningrad Centre.“ They were sentenced to death by shooting and the sentence was carried out that very night.

All these circumstances are extremely suspicious. Why was Nikolayev tried in secret? And why was he killed immediately? Why was he not interrogated further, in order to reveal the precise circumstances of the assassination, exposing the plot and revealing his contacts and collaborators? The answer is quite clear. Nikolayev had to be tried in secret because of what he might say in a public trial. He had to be eliminated because he knew too much. When asked why he committed the murder, he is supposed to have answered, „Ask them.“ These words can only refer to members of the Leningrad NKVD.

Nikolayev’s wife, Milda Draule was executed three months later. His mother, brother, sisters, cousin and some other people close to him were arrested and later liquidated or sent to labour camps. Borisov, the man in charge of Kirov’s security, died the day after the assassination, allegedly by falling from a moving truck. This is said to have occurred while he was riding with a group of NKVD agents. How were they not able to prevent him from falling from a moving vehicle? Later Borisov’s wife was committed to an insane asylum.

Other witnesses who may have presented embarrassing evidence died in mysterious “car accidents”. Former NKVD agents later admitted that these “accidents” had been staged murders. On whose authority were these murders committed?

The only possible answer to these questions is that the security services not only allowed the assassination to take place but actively collaborated in it. But that does not exhaust the question. The local units of the NKVD could never have acted in this way without permission and instructions from the highest level, which is to say from Yagoda himself. But Yagoda had no interest in murdering Kirov. On the contrary, such an act would have placed him in the gravest danger.

A half intelligent five year old could see that all this could only have been done with Stalin’s approval. Stalin was the only one with both the motive and the means of killing his rival. There can be no doubt that Stalin ordered his henchmen Yagoda to carry it out, just as Orlov said. No amount of twisting and turning can alter these well-known facts.

In his famous speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU Khrushchev gave the facts of the case that provided incontrovertible evidence that the assassination of Kirov took place with the full knowledge and connivance of Stalin’s secret police. He said:

“There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, [Leonid] Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was to protect the person of Kirov.

“A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behaviour but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on December 2, 1934, he was killed in a car ‘accident’ in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover up the traces of the organizers of Kirov’s killing.

“[Movement in the hall.]”

There is not the slightest doubt that this assassination was planned by Stalin. He feared Kirov as a rival. At a time when Stalin was losing support, Kirov’s name was circulating in Party circles as a possible replacement. He had to be eliminated and he was eliminated. What is astonishing is that six decades later, there are still people who are trying to “cover up the traces of the organizers of Kirov’s killing”. Sixty years after Khrushchev’s speech comrade Murray still maintains that Stalin had nothing to do with it. To which we reply: “There are none so blind as they who will not see.”

Stalin’s Purges

Stalin took his revenge on the delegates who had humiliated him at the „Congress of Victors“. Almost every member of the Congress was murdered in the Purges of the thirties. The Kirov assassination was only the first chapter of a murderous plan organised by Stalin to eliminate all his actual or potential enemies. No “new and startling recent revelations” can change that.

The killing of Kirov provided Stalin with the excuse to launch the notorious Purges in order to eliminate all actual or potential enemies and that was the intention from the start. On the question of the Purges comrade Murray shuffles uncomfortably, humming and hawing on a subject he finds embarrassing for understandable reasons.

He cannot deny the fact that Stalin murdered millions of Soviet citizens since this fact nowadays is known to everyone. Instead, he tries to confuse the issue when he writes: “Nor does Trotsky’s view that the terror of 1937-38 was above all directed at ‘old Bolsheviks’ any longer attract the near-consensus it once did. The killing of former oppositionists is now known to have been a small part of a very much larger and more horrifying operation.”

But who were the Purge Trials directed against? Everybody knows the answer: the main accusation was against the Trotskyists. Trotsky himself was said to have been an agent of Hitler planning to restore capitalism in the USSR. In all the Trials he was, effectively, the principal defendant. And who were the men in the dock in these murderous farces? They were precisely the Old Bolsheviks, Lenin’s principal comrades in arms: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Radek, Piatakov, Sokolnikov, Bukharin, Rykov, Rakovsky, Krestinsky and others. These were all Old Bolsheviks who had served the cause of the working class and socialism all their lives.

And who was the man in charge of prosecuting them on Stalin’s behalf? Andrei Yanuarevich Vyshinsky, the former Menshevik and bitter enemy of Bolshevism and the October Revolution. This is the man who insulted these revolutionary martyrs as „Dogs of the Fascist bourgeoisie“, „mad dogs of Trotskyism“, „dregs of society“, „decayed people“, „terrorist thugs and degenerates“, and „accursed vermin,“ the man who screamed:

“Shoot these rabid dogs. Death to this gang who hide their ferocious teeth, their eagle claws, from the people! Down with that vulture Trotsky, from whose mouth a bloody venom drips, putrefying the great ideals of Marxism!(…) Down with these abject animals! Let’s put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses! Let’s exterminate the mad dogs of capitalism, who want to tear to pieces the flower of our new Soviet nation! Let’s push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!”

The same vile things were slavishly repeated by the Stalinists internationally. Dare we remind comrade Murray that The Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain and forerunner of the Morning Star, carried on its front page the words “Shoot the Reptiles!”?

The extent of the Purges

We might agree with Andrew Murray when he says that the Purges went far further than the murder of the Old Bolsheviks, that they were “part of a very much larger and more horrifying operation.” But, Murray fails to tell us anything of that operation, except that it was “horrifying”.

The extent of Stalin’s purges was certainly far greater than what most people realise. Not only Trotskyists were killed but also many Stalinists who fell into the disfavour of the „Beloved Leader and Teacher“. Abel Yenukidze, for example, was shot for trying to save the lives of Old Bolsheviks. And not content with killing his enemies, Stalin took his revenge on their families and friends.

Hundreds of thousands were sent to the camps not just as „enemies of the people“, but also as chesirs or „family members of a traitor to the motherland“. Among these victims were the wife and sisters of Tukhachevsky, the wife of Bukharin, Trotsky’s first wife, and his eldest son, Sergei, who was not involved in active politics, was arrested but courageously refused to denounce his father and was shot.

A wave of terror was unleashed by Stalin against the people of the USSR. Tens of millions of people were arrested, condemned and sent into the Gulag. Even the security services were purged. In 1937-38 23,000 NKVD officers were arrested. Many informed on others in order to survive.

The criminal methods of the GPU were exposed in a surprising way during the Moscow Trials themselves. When Yagoda was himself put on trial, Vyshinsky declared (on March 11, 1938): „Yagoda stood at the peak of the technology of killing people in the most devious ways. He represented the last word in the ’science‘ of bestiality.“ (Sudebny otchet po delu antisovetskogo trotskiiskogo tsentra – The Official Report of the Trial in Russian, Moscow 1937, p. 332.). Amidst all the miserable morass of lies and distortions that make up these documents, this is probably the only truthful statement.

Comrade Murray would like to draw a discrete veil over these things. He wishes to forgive and forget – above all forget. That is why he is so critical of Trotsky’s biography of Stalin – a truthful account of the crimes of Stalin and the Stalinists that they would naturally like to brush under the carpet. But historical truth is not so easily disposed of.

Murray informs us that Stalin’s Purges were “horrifying”, but then he immediately attempts to minimise them. Just look at what he says about the Purge of the Red Army: “…his [Woods’] assertions about the number of Red Army officers suppressed in the purges are wide of the mark by significant magnitudes.” [My emphasis, AW] It would perhaps have been more useful if Andrew had stated the precise number of Red Army officers purged by Stalin instead of making vague allegations about allegedly exaggerated magnitudes. This method is intended not to clarify but to muddy the waters and sow doubts. He quibbles about “magnitudes” but furnishes not one single figure himself. Let us help him attain some clarity on this question.

Stalin’s Purge destroyed the entire leading cadre of the Red Army and badly damaged the defence capabilities of the USSR. The military Purge that continued throughout 1938 led to the elimination of 90 percent of all generals, 80 percent of all colonels, and 30,000 lower ranking officers. Talented officers and heroes of the Civil War like Tukhachevsky, Yakir and others were shot in secret because they refused to confess to the monstrous crimes attributed to them.

According to Japanese intelligence the total number of victims was 35,000 in all, or about half of the total officer corps. They included 3 out of 5 marshals; 13 out of 15 Army commanders; 57 out of 85 corps commanders; 110 out of 195 division commanders; 220 out of 406 brigade commanders; all eleven Vice Commissars of War; 75 out of 80 members of the Supreme Military Council, including all the military district commanders. The air force, navy and all but one of the fleet commanders were eventually eliminated.

All this was a sufficiently “significant magnitude” to have persuaded Hitler to attack the USSR in 1941. At the Nuremberg trial, Marshal Keitel testified that many German generals had warned Hitler not to attack Russia, arguing that the Red Army was a formidable opponent. Rejecting these Hitler gave Keitel his main reason: „The first-class high-ranking officers were wiped out by Stalin in 1937, and the new generation cannot yet provide the brains they need.“ On the 9th January 1941, Hitler told a meeting of generals planning the attack on Russia: „They do not have good generals.“ (Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 214)

Stalin and the Second World War

Andrew complains that the book does not deal with Stalin’s role in the Second World War. Again, this was hardly possible for Trotsky to do since he was murdered one year before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. But he certainly dealt with Stalin’s disastrous diplomacy, which placed the Soviet Union in very great danger and was directly responsible for the military catastrophe suffered by the USSR in 1941.

Unlike Lenin, who stood for a consistent internationalist policy, Stalin’s foreign policy was dictated by narrow nationalist considerations. It consisted in a series of manoeuvres with the imperialists that sacrificed the interests of the revolution in the West in the supposed interests of the Soviet Union. In reality, these manoeuvres did not remove the war danger but enormously increased it.

Stalin believed that his manoeuvres would safeguard the Soviet Union from attack. His actions, as always, were based on narrow-minded calculations and completely ignored the working class of other countries, except as pawns in the diplomatic game. With the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 Stalin went to the most incredible extremes to conciliate the Nazis.

In his diary the German diplomat, Hencke describes the banquet which celebrated the signing of the Pact: „Toasts: In the course of the conversation, Herr Stalin spontaneously proposed to the Führer, as follows: ‚I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health’.” Here we have a prime example of Stalin’s diplomacy.

By collaborating with Hitler, Stalin increased the danger a thousand fold. His actions effectively disarmed the Soviet Union, encouraged Hitler and disoriented the world working class in a moment of extreme danger. In the end it had the opposite result to that intended.

Four million German troops were amassed on the border ready to invade. There were also 3,500 tanks, around 4,000 planes, and 50,000 guns and mortars. Attempts were made to keep this mobilisation secret, but given its size, numerous reports from border units, the Soviet intelligence service, even officials of the British and US governments, were passed on to the Soviet government. Stalin refused to act on these reports, instead wrote on them „For the archives“, and „To be filed“. This was all confirmed by General Zhukov in his Reminiscences and Reflections.

This completely disarmed the Soviet Union in the face of Nazi aggression. When the Soviet military command asked for permission to put the Soviet troops on the alert, Stalin refused. „German planes increasingly broke into Soviet airspace,“ reports Air Marshal A. Novikov, „but we weren’t allowed to stop them.“ (Quoted in Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 332.) Stalin refused to believe that Hitler would invade. So when in June 1941 Hitler’s armies launched a devastating attack on the USSR he refused to act.

Even when Hitler actually launched his offensive, Stalin ordered the Red Army not to resist. The mighty Soviet armed forces were paralysed for the first critical 48 hours. Due to this confusion and paralysis at the top, huge swathes of territory were lost in the first few weeks. In the first 24 hours, over 2,000 Soviet planes were destroyed on the ground. The German army advanced deep into Soviet territory, reaching the approaches to Moscow.

Despite the fact that the combined firepower of the Red Army was greater than that of the Germans, the Purges had effectively crippled it by destroying the officer corps. The result was a military catastrophe. Between two and three million Soviet soldiers were encircled and captured by the Germans.

After the war, strenuous attempts were made by the Kremlin to spread the myth of Stalin as a „Great War Leader“. This does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. In those critical days Stalin was nowhere to be seen. He remained in his dacha in a state of collapse. Khrushchev recalled: „It would be incorrect to forget that, after the first severe disaster and defeat at the front, Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: ‚All that which Lenin created we have lost for ever‘.”

Even when he began to play an active role, Stalin’s actions were negative and disruptive. He constantly interfered with the military command, issuing orders that seriously increased the number of Soviet casualties. The notorious Order 270 stated that no Soviet soldier could surrender and all who did so were to be regarded as traitors. Large numbers of Soviet soldiers who had been surrounded and captured in 1941 as a direct result of Stalin’s bungling, found themselves under suspicion and sent to Siberia after the War.

In the end the USSR won the war against Hitler single-handedly. The British and Americans were mere onlookers in a titanic battle between the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany with the combined productive forces of Europe behind it. By 1942 the economy was recovering fast. By 1943 the Soviets were out-producing and outgunning the enemy.

The fact that the USSR defeated Hitler was not thanks to Stalin but in spite of him. The glorious victory of the Red army is a testament to the colossal superiority of a nationalised planned economy which enabled the USSR to survive the first disasters and reorganize the productive forces beyond the Urals. This is the secret of their success. It gives the lie to the oft-repeated allegation that a nationalised planned economy is not capable of producing goods of a high quality.

Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

Murray accuses Trotsky of “showering abuse” on Stalin, and making “wild political judgements”, for example: “Stalin is a Georgian nationalist on one page and a Great-Russian nationalist a few pages later”. He evidently finds a contradiction in this, whereas in reality there is none.

Stalin was a Georgian but he came to embrace all the most negative features of Great Russian nationalism. Such a phenomenon is not unknown in history. Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican and in his youth flirted with Corsican nationalists. But he later became the most passionate advocate of French centralism. We see exactly the same process in the case of Stalin.

It was not Trotsky but Lenin who first denounced Stalin as a representative of the bureaucracy and Great Russian chauvinism, something that Lenin had fought against it all his life. During Lenin’s last illness he launched a sharp struggle against Stalin over his handling of the Georgian question. It was on this issue that he broke off all personal and comradely relations with Stalin and demanded his removal as General Secretary.

Stalin’s bureaucratic policy on the national question did immense damage to the relation between the peoples of the different republics of the Soviet Union, undermining solidarity and exacerbated national contradictions, thus preparing the way for the final breakup of the USSR.

Despite the crimes of Stalin and the bureaucracy, the superiority of a nationalised plan of production is shown by the rapid transformation of what was a backward semi-feudal country like Pakistan today to a mighty industrial power with an educated population and more scientists than the USA, Germany and Japan put together.

Before the War, in the first Five Year Plans, the USSR achieved an annual rate of growth never before seen in any capitalist country: approximately 20 percent. This remarkable result was achieved with full employment, no inflation and a balanced budget. It is sufficient to compare these results with the miserable three percent or so that is nowadays considered to be a great success in the West to see the advantage of a nationalised planned economy.

An annual growth rate of ten percent – which was the norm in the USSR until the mid-sixties – was unprecedented. If this rate of growth had been maintained, the USSR could have overtaken the West not just in relative but even in absolute terms. By the 1970s the USSR was already a modern and advanced economy where the working class was the overwhelming majority. All the objective conditions existed at least for beginning to move in the direction of socialism. But instead, the USSR moved backwards – towards capitalism. How can one explain such a monstrosity?

The main reason the growth rate was not maintained was the colossal waste caused by the mismanagement, bungling and corruption of the bureaucracy itself. This was an enormous drain, which by the mid-60s was wasting between one third and one half of the wealth produced by the Soviet working class every year. Without the democratic control and management of the working class, the bureaucracy was undermining the planned economy, clogging up all the pores and suffocating all the creative powers of the Soviet people, both the workers and intellectuals.

In 1936 Leon Trotsky predicted that “the fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.” (The Revolution Betrayed, p. 251)

That prediction was entirely vindicated. In the end the Stalinist bureaucrats went over to capitalism with the same careless ease of a man passing from a smoking to a non-smoking compartment of a train. The so-called „Communist“ Party of the Soviet Union collapsed overnight like a house of cards, and its top members fell over themselves in their eagerness to embrace the “market” and transform themselves into private businessmen and women. It is impossible to understand this phenomenon if one accepts Andrew Murray’s view that what existed in the USSR was genuine socialism.

Marxists defend what was progressive in the USSR – that is, the nationalised planned economy. But it is necessary to separate what was progressive from what was reactionary. The bureaucratic totalitarian regime established by Stalin had nothing in common with the October revolution or socialism. It was their complete antithesis and negation. That was what finally undermined the USSR and dragged Russia into the abyss of capitalism.

Comrade Murray ends his article with an appeal for a “new vocabulary”, presumably avoiding words like Stalinism and Trotskyism. But Marxism is a science and as in every science it has a very precise vocabulary, denoting definite ideas. We do not need to change our vocabulary because we do not need to change the fundamental ideas of Marxism, which have retained all their relevance and vitality since The Communist Manifesto first appeared.

In any event we can make a small concession to our friend’s lexicographical sensitivities. Why not return to Lenin? You will find that the ideas of Trotsky are in all fundamentals the same as those of Lenin, whose ideas are those of Marx and Engels. It is those ideas that we stand for and we have not the slightest intention of changing them – even to please the Morning Star.

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“The greatest event in human history”: Lenin and the Russian Revolution

Alan Woods und Rob Sewel — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:08 +0000

One-hundred-and-seven years ago, on 7 November 1917, the Russian working class conquered power.

This was the greatest event in human history. For the first time ever, workers and peasants overthrew the dictatorship of the rich, took control of society themselves, through their ‘soviets’, i.e. workers’ councils – and held it. They could not have done so, however, without the leadership of the Bolshevik Party; the party of Lenin and Trotsky.

To commemorate the anniversary of this momentous, world-historic event, and to arm communists today with the ideas that enabled the conquest of power, we are republishing an extract from Alan Woods and Rob Sewell’s biography of the great revolutionary, In Defence of Lenin.

This extract, taken from the second volume of the book, covers Lenin’s struggle within the party to prepare it for the insurrection, and the revolutionary overturn itself.

The November insurrection, however, was only the climax of Lenin and the Russian communists’ long struggle to build a revolutionary, working-class party, and to win the leadership of the revolutionary movement.

To read about this struggle, and to learn how the Bolsheviks acted in power, at the head of the world’s first workers‘ state, get your copy of In Defence of Lenin from Wellred Books, the publishing house of the Revolutionary Communist International.

By the end of September, the situation had undergone a complete transformation as the pendulum swung sharply to the left. The reformist leaders of the Mensheviks and SRs had – unsurprisingly – dismissed as ‘fanciful’ the Bolsheviks’ offer of a peaceful transfer of power within the Soviets. There was no longer going to be any progress on that front. In the meantime, Kerensky and his ‘socialist’ government were becoming more unpopular by the day. The initiative was now firmly in the hands of the Bolshevik leadership. The fate of the insurrection hung in the balance.

Lenin made his way to Petrograd on 22 October. This was to be only a little over two weeks before the Bolshevik insurrection would take place, but few, apart from Lenin, realised the urgency of the situation.

The objective conditions had fully developed for a decisive showdown. Lenin now had to convince the Bolshevik leadership to draw the necessary conclusions and act accordingly. But even at this late stage, this proved to be no easy task.

On 23 October, Lenin was to attend the crucial meeting of the Central Committee where the insurrection was on the agenda. Ironically, the venue of this historic meeting was in the house of Sukhanov, the Left Menshevik, which had been made available by his wife, a Bolshevik sympathiser.

Lenin had not attended a single Central Committee meeting since first going into hiding in early July. That now seemed an eternity away. He had moved from Finland to live secretly in a suburb of Petrograd, in order to be closer to the centre of operations. He clearly saw that time was pressing and the insurrection could not be delayed any longer. Lenin’s campaign of relentless pressure found its expression in a stream of letters to the leadership demanding an insurrection.

There are moments in which a few days, or even hours, can mean the difference between victory and defeat. This is just as true in a revolution as in normal warfare. The masses could not be kept permanently in a state of expectation. Further prevarication could lead to a fatal loss of impetus. The precise calculation of the right moment to launch a decisive offensive is the essence of what Trotsky called the art of insurrection. And Lenin, like Trotsky, was a master of that art.

Following a tense discussion, the Central Committee meeting adopted Lenin’s proposal to prepare for an immediate armed insurrection by a majority of ten votes – Lenin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Stalin, Uritsky, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Kollontai, Grigory Sokolnikov, Andrei Bubnov and Lomov (Georgy Oppokov). But two prominent members of the Central Committee voted against – Kamenev and Zinoviev. And quite a few others, though they voted for the resolution, did so with reservations.

“We are practically approaching the armed insurrection. But when will it be possible? Perhaps a year from now – one can’t really tell”, pondered Mikhail Kalinin. Vladimir Milyutin, a member of the Central Committee, also added his voice to the doubters: “We are not ready to strike the first blow. We are in no position to overthrow the government or stop its supporters in the days to come.”^[1]

Sukhanov was later briefed about the meeting. Referring to Lenin as the ‘Thunderer’, he commented about what had happened in the following terms:

„In the Central Committee of the Party this decision was accepted by all but two votes. The dissenters were the same as in June – Kamenev and Zinoviev… This of course could not confound the Thunderer. He had never been confounded even when he remained practically alone in his own party; now he had the majority with him. And, besides the majority, Trotsky was with Lenin. I don’t know to what degree Lenin himself valued this fact, but for the course of events it had incalculable significance. I have no doubt of that…“^[2]

There were, nevertheless, still some loose ends and the exact date of the seizure of power was still left hanging in the air. The Second National Congress of Soviets was scheduled for 2 November (20 October, Old Style), where the Bolsheviks were guaranteed a majority. It was therefore assumed that an insurrection should begin sooner, certainly not later than around 28 October. But that schedule only gave them five days to finalise everything, which was deemed insufficient. It was therefore agreed that another Central Committee meeting would take place on 29 October to finalise matters.

Opposition of Kamenev and Zinoviev

Following the Central Committee of 23 October, Zinoviev and Kamenev sent a personal statement of their opposition to an insurrection to Central Committee members, while sending a circular, entitled ‘On the Current Situation’, to a number of Bolshevik organisations. This read:

„We are deeply convinced that to proclaim an armed insurrection now is to put at stake not only the fate of our Party but also the fate of the Russian and the international revolution.

„There is no doubt that historical circumstances do exist when an oppressed class has to recognise that it is better to go on to defeat than surrender without a fight. Is the Russian working class in just such a position today? No, a thousand times no!! […]

„The influence of Bolshevism is growing. Whole sections of the working population are still only beginning to be swept up in it. With the right tactics, we can get a third of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, or even more.“^[3]

It was abundantly clear that Zinoviev and Kamenev simply envisaged the role of the Bolshevik Party as an opposition group in the Constituent Assembly. This statement, coming from leading members, led to some confusion within the ranks of the Party. To counter this, Lenin immediately wrote two letters directly to the membership over the following few days. In them, he attacked Zinoviev and Kamenev, but without naming them:

„Only a most insignificant minority of the gathering, namely, all in all two comrades, took a negative stand. The arguments which those comrades advanced are so weak, they are a manifestation of such an astounding confusion, timidity, and collapse of all the fundamental ideas of Bolshevism and proletarian revolutionary internationalism that it is not easy to discover an explanation for such shameful vacillations. The fact, however, remains, and since the revolutionary party has no right to tolerate vacillations on such a serious question, and since this pair of comrades, who have scattered their principles to the winds, might cause some confusion, it is necessary to analyse their arguments, to expose their vacillations, and to show how shameful they are.“^[4]

Lenin then answered the objections that somehow the uprising was hopeless, and that the Bolsheviks should therefore wait for the summoning of the Constituent Assembly, so as to form a strong opposition, and so on. This ‘peaceful’ parliamentary perspective was wholly at odds with Lenin’s perspective of taking power and therefore he felt the need to pose things very sharply: either they – the Bolsheviks – would immediately seize power or a military dictatorship, not a Constituent Assembly, would be established:

„Let us forget all that was being and has been demonstrated by the Bolsheviks a hundred times, all that the six months’ history of our revolution has proved, namely, that there is no way out, that there is no objective way out and can be none except a dictatorship of the Kornilovites or a dictatorship of the proletariat.“^[5]

He then continued to ridicule the route of the Constituent Assembly:

„Let us forget this, let us renounce all this and wait! Wait for what? Wait for a miracle, for the tempestuous and catastrophic course of events from 20 April to 29 August to be succeeded (due to the prolongation of the war and the spread of famine) by a peaceful, quiet, smooth, legal convocation of the Constituent Assembly and by a fulfilment of its most lawful decisions. Here you have the ‘Marxist’ tactics! Wait, ye hungry! Kerensky has promised to convene the Constituent Assembly.“^[6]

In regard to the accusation of Blanquism made against the proposed insurrection, Lenin replied:

„Marxism is an extremely profound and many-sided doctrine. It is, therefore, no wonder that scraps of quotations from Marx – especially when the quotations are made inappropriately – can always be found among the ‘arguments’ of those who break with Marxism. Military conspiracy is Blanquism, if it is organised not by a party of a definite class, if its organisers have not analysed the political moment in general and the international situation in particular, if the party has not on its side the sympathy of the majority of the people, as proved by objective facts, if the development of revolutionary events has not brought about a practical refutation of the conciliatory illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, if the majority of the Soviet- type organs of revolutionary struggle that have been recognised as authoritative or have shown themselves to be such in practice have not been won over, if there has not matured a sentiment in the army (if in war-time) against the government that protracts the unjust war against the will of the whole people, if the slogans of the uprising (like ‘All power to the Soviets’, ‘Land to the peasants’, or ‘Immediate offer of a democratic peace to all the belligerent nations, with an immediate abrogation of all secret treaties and secret diplomacy’, etc.) have not become widely known and popular, if the advanced workers are not sure of the desperate situation of the masses and of the support of the countryside, a support proved by a serious peasant movement or by an uprising against the owners and the government that defends the owners, if the country’s economic situation inspires earnest hopes for a favourable solution of the crisis by peaceable and parliamentary means.“^[7]

Lenin ends his letter: “This is probably enough.”^[8] He had made everything clear.

With the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee under the control of the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky at its head, the pieces were being put into place for a successful insurrection. This was the situation facing the extended Central Committee meeting, held on 29 October, and attended by representatives from the Petrograd committee, the military organisation, and the factory committees.

At this meeting, Lenin once again forcefully argued for an insurrection without any delay. “The masses had put their trust in the Bolsheviks and demanded deeds from them, not words”, he argued.^[9] If we take power now, he said, “the Bolsheviks would have all proletarian Europe on their side”, once again linking the Russian revolution to the European revolution.^[10]

But Zinoviev and Kamenev pressed their opposition, demanding that the decision be postponed until after the Soviet Congress so as to ‘confer’ with delegates from the provinces. In any case, they believed the plans for the insurrection were not sufficiently serious, as little had been prepared. Kamenev stated:

„A week has passed since the resolution was adopted and this is also the reason this resolution shows how not to organise an insurrection: during that week, nothing was done; it only spoiled what should have been done. The week’s results demonstrate that there are no factors to favour a rising now.“^[11]

Tempers became quite heated within the meeting. However, in the end, it was agreed by twenty-two votes in favour and two against – again the votes of Zinoviev and Kamenev – to endorse the resolution of the 23 October and proceed with the planned insurrection. But time was clearly running out.

Fortunately, unbeknown to them, the Mensheviks and SRs came to the rescue. For their own reasons, they decided to postpone the Soviet Congress until 7 November (25 October, Old Style). This extra week proved indispensable.

In the biography of Stalin prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow in 1940, a spurious claim is made: “On 16 (29) October, the Central Committee elected a Party Centre, headed by Comrade Stalin, to direct the uprising.”^[12] While it is true that the Central Committee did elect a ‘Centre’ to assist the insurrection, this body never actually met! It was simply overtaken by events and relegated to the waste paper basket.

Control of the October insurrection was in the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee, under Trotsky’s direction.

‘Strike-breaking’

At the end of the Central Committee of October 29, Kamenev, having opposed the insurrection, announced his resignation from the Central Committee. Two days later, on 31 October, Kamenev and Zinoviev attacked the whole idea of an insurrection publicly in an article in Maxim Gorky’s paper, Novaya Zhizn.

When their fellow comrades heard this news, they were stunned. Not only was this a complete breach of discipline and trust, but it was a clear warning to the enemies of the Party of their plans for an insurrection. This was the worst kind of betrayal – a stab in the back on the eve of battle.

Once Lenin heard the news, he was beside himself with rage at this outrageous behaviour. He immediately wrote a letter to the membership denouncing it:

„This is a thousand times more despicable and a million times more harmful than all the statements Plekhanov, for example, made in the non-Party press in 1906-07, and which the Party so sharply condemned! At that time it was only a question of elections, whereas now it is a question of an insurrection for the conquest of power!“^[13]

He then wrote in another letter to the Central Committee: “No self-respecting party can tolerate strike-breaking and blacklegs in its midst.”^[14] He then called for the expulsion of Zinoviev and Kamenev from the Party. The next day he wrote a further letter, elaborating on the first.

Up until this point, Kamenev and Zinoviev were the ‘old Bolsheviks’, Lenin’s closest Party comrades, who had been with him for many years. Zinoviev was personally with Lenin throughout the war years. And yet, when faced with the decisive question of power, they politically collapsed.

In an attempt to limit the public damage, Trotsky tried to disguise the insurrection by refuting the allegations. However, in doing so, he also added that any attempt by the counter-revolution to disrupt the Soviet Congress would be met with the severest measures. In the end, Kamenev had no alternative but to go along with Trotsky’s public explanation.

However, to add to the confusion, the Pravda editors, after publishing a brief statement by Zinoviev, added an extraordinary statement from themselves, downplaying the betrayal. It even criticised Lenin for his tone! “The matter may be considered closed. The sharp tone of comrade Lenin’s article does not change the fact, fundamentally, we remain of one mind.”^[15] It turned out that it was Stalin, as one of the editors, who was responsible for this statement.

At the Central Committee meeting of 3 November, Lenin was not present. His letter, however, condemning Zinoviev and Kamenev, was read out. But those present took a very lenient view. Stalin immediately declared that as far as Lenin’s proposal was concerned, “expulsion from the Party was no remedy, what is needed is to preserve Party unity…” Therefore, Kamenev and Zinoviev should not be expelled, but should remain as members of the Central Committee.^[16]

After some discussion, Kamenev’s resignation from the Central Committee was accepted and Zinoviev and Kamenev were simply instructed to make no further announcements. Following the objections from Stalin, Miliutin, Uritsky and Sverdlov, Lenin’s proposal to expel Zinoviev and Kamenev was also turned down. This was an exceptionally mild rebuke under the circumstances!

Trotsky, however, not only denounced their strike-breaking behaviour in the meeting, but he also attacked Stalin’s mealy-mouthed statement in Pravda. In response, Stalin offered his resignation, but this was brushed aside as the Pravda statement was deemed not to be from him personally, but from the whole editorial board and the meeting merely passed on to the next business.

When he heard all of this, Lenin, it should be noted, did not agree with these decisions, but accepted them so as to concentrate everything on the success of the impending insurrection.

The October insurrection

Despite the damage, it was agreed that the insurrection would still take place before the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Nevertheless, Lenin was still opposed to linking the date of the insurrection to the Soviet Congress, fearing it would be postponed and the opportunity missed. Lenin’s fears were not without foundation as the Menshevik leaders, who controlled the Soviet Executive Committee, were definitely seeking to delay matters. Morgan Price writes:

„I found members of the Executive very depressed. Reports from the provinces showed that the Bolshevik agitation for an immediate summoning of a Second Congress had met with great response… They had done, said the Menshevik Central Executive, everything to prevent the summoning of this Second Soviet Congress because they considered it useless.“^[17]

In reality, they knew they were in a minority and were destined to lose their positions once the Congress took place.

Trotsky, however, was in favour of this date. Due to his pivotal position, he was more in tune with the situation than most. Given the pressure from below, he firmly believed the Congress would proceed as planned on 7 November, which would give the insurrection greater legitimacy in the eyes of the masses, a ‘legality’, than if the Party carried it out alone. In the end, Trotsky was proved to be correct as he energetically directed the military operations of the insurrection.

Up to the very last minute, Lenin was understandably on tenterhooks. He, more than anyone else, realised the importance of the moment. His whole life’s work was concentrated in these days and hours. He understood that any delay by the Party could end in ruin and that everything was now in the balance. “Now or never!” he repeated.

Even the day before the insurrection, Lenin was still pleading for the Central Committee to act! “The government is tottering”, he wrote. “It must be given the death-blow at all costs. To delay action is fatal.”^[18] In fact, it was the Provisional Government that moved first by ordering two Bolshevik offices to be closed down. This played into the hands of the insurrectionists, who used this to go onto the offensive.

Lenin, feeling increasingly anxious, defied the orders of the Central Committee and made his way over to Smolny, the headquarters of the Soviet. However, by this time, Trotsky had things firmly in hand and the insurrection was well under way.

During the night of 6-7 November (24-25 October, Old Style), the Military Revolutionary Committee deposed the Kerensky Government and carried through a smooth and peaceful transition of power – just in time for the opening of the Soviet Congress. All the key points of Petrograd were occupied and members of the Provisional Government had been arrested or had fled the scene. “The city was absolutely calm”, writes Sukhanov. “Both the centre and the suburbs were sunk in a deep sleep, not suspecting what was going on in the quiet of the cold autumn night.”^[19]

Once the Winter Palace had fallen, the old regime was finally at an end. “The operations, gradually developing, went so smoothly that no great forces were required”, explains Sukhanov.^[20] The insurrection was so peaceful, even compared to the February Revolution, that there were only five casualties, all from the ranks of the revolutionaries. This was the most bloodless revolution in history.

“The Provisional Government is deposed”, read the statement issued by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies at ten o’clock in the morning of 7 November:

„The State Power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Military Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison. […]

„Long live the revolution of the workers, soldiers, and peasants!“^[21]

According to one witness:

„All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.“^[22]

The writer was none other than Joseph Stalin. However, in a speech delivered to the Plenum of the Communist Fraction of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions six years later, Stalin paints a totally different picture:

„Comrade Trotsky, who was a relative newcomer in our Party in the period of October, did not, and could not have played any special role either in the Party or in the October uprising.“^[23]

Stalin’s depiction of events had changed by 1924, as this was the year that an all-out struggle took place against Trotsky, to denigrate his achievements and prevent him from assuming the leadership after Lenin’s death.

The Congress opens

From the early morning of 7 November, the Smolny Institute began to fill with delegates. As the opening of the Congress was continually delayed, caucus and faction meetings repeatedly took place throughout the day. By three o’clock in the afternoon, the Great Hall was full of representatives from all parts of the country waiting in anticipation for the grand opening. But there was a further delay, as the Winter Palace had not yet been taken. Then, at twenty to eleven at night, as the Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace, the Congress finally opened.

From the very outset, a packed Smolny resounded with rallying speeches and enthusiastic appeals. It became clear that the Bolsheviks and their allies were in a large majority. According to estimates, the Bolsheviks held 390 seats out of a total of 650. The SRs held between 160 to 190 seats, but they had already split into left and right factions. The Mensheviks, which in June had 200 delegates, were now reduced to less than half, with only sixty to seventy. It was certain that an overwhelming majority of delegates favoured the insurrection and the seizure of power by the Soviets.

But the old members of the Congress Executive Committee still reflected the previous balance of forces. This meant that the first part of the proceedings was presided over by the outgoing Committee, dominated by the Mensheviks and SRs, with Fyodor Dan in the chair. “We have met under the most peculiar circumstances”, he said in his opening remarks. “On the eve of the elections for the National Assembly the Government has been arrested by one of the parties in this Congress. As a spokesman of the old Executive I declare this action to be unwarranted.”^[24] But his opinions fell on deaf ears.

The delegates moved to elect a new chairman, with the Bolshevik, Sverdlov, taking charge of proceedings. Suddenly, an SR member jumped up to protest that three comrades of his party were at that very instant under siege in the Winter Palace. “We demand their immediate release!” he proclaimed.

This was answered by Trotsky, who immediately went to the rostrum. He replied that the outburst was completely hypocritical, as it was the SRs who shared responsibility for the arrest of a number of Bolsheviks, as well as permitting the spying activities on the Bolshevik Party by the old secret police! With Trotsky’s reply, the whole hall erupted in general tumult.

The Mensheviks and right-wing SRs were feeling the ground shifting under their feet. They therefore moved that negotiations be immediately opened by the Soviet with the Provisional Government to establish a new Coalition government. But they also made it clear that the Bolsheviks, who they accused of being responsible for the ‘adventure’, would never be allowed to share power.

As expected, this proposal fell flat, since the Mensheviks and SRs were in a small minority at the Congress. Despite appeals from Martov, the Mensheviks and the Bund delegates, realising their impotence, walked out, taking around 20 per cent of the hall with them. As they left, they were met with cat-calls and jeers from all sides. Everyone felt that with this action, the Rubicon had been crossed.

At that moment, the platform read out that the Provisional Government had been arrested, which provoked stormy jubilation. Then, with a sea of hands, the delegates ratified the transfer of state power to the Soviet, followed by ecstatic cheers of celebration. Amid the noise and commotion, Martov tried to speak as if nothing had happened. His proposal for a coalition of all socialist parties, including those opposed to the seizure of power, was again met with derision. Then Trotsky once again took the floor.

„The masses of the people have followed our banner, and our insurrection was victorious. And now we are told: Renounce your victory, make concessions, compromise. With whom? I ask with whom ought we to compromise? With those wretched groups who have left us…? But we have seen through them completely. No one in Russia is with them any longer. Should those millions of workers and peasants represented in this Congress make a compromise, as between equals, with the men who are ready, not for the first time, to leave us at the mercy of the bourgeoisie? No, here no compromise is possible. To those who have left, and to those who suggest it to us, we must say: You are miserable bankrupts, your role is over; go where you ought to be – into the dustbin of history.“^[25]

Martov, angered by this intervention, shouted from the platform: “Then, we’ll leave as well.”^[26] And so his supporters walked out.

“Lenin was not present at it”, explained Trotsky, relating to the first session of the Congress.

„He remained in his room at Smolny, which, according to my recollection, had no, or almost no furniture. Later someone spread rugs on the floor and laid two cushions on them. Vladimir Ilyich and I lay down to rest. But in a few minutes I was called: “Dan is speaking; you must answer.” When I came back after my reply I again lay down near Vladimir Ilyich, who naturally could not sleep. It would not have been possible. Every five or ten minutes someone came running in from the session hall to inform us what was going on there…

„It must have been the next morning, for a sleepless night separated it from the preceding day. Vladimir Ilyich looked tired. He smiled and said, “The transition from the state of illegality, being driven in every direction, to power – is too rough.” “It makes one dizzy”, he at once added in German, and made the sign of the Cross before his face. After this one more or less personal remark that I heard him make about the acquisition of power he went about the tasks of the day.“^[27]

Lenin speaks

John Reed, the American journalist and Communist, was present at the Congress. He recalled the events in his celebrated classic, Ten Days That Shook the World, to which Lenin wrote a preface “recommending it to the workers of the world…” Reed described the scene at the second session of the Congress where Lenin was about to speak:

„It was 8.40 when a thunderous wave of cheers announced the entrance of the praesidium, with Lenin – great Lenin – among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down on his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide generous mouth, and heavy chin; clean-shaven now but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressed, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader – a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies – but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combined with shrewdness, the greatest intellectual audacity.“

After some interventions, Lenin rose to speak. John Reed continues:

„Now Lenin, gripping the edge of the reading stand, letting his little winking eyes travel over the crowd as he stood there waiting, apparently oblivious to the long- rolling ovation, which lasted several minutes. When it finished, he said simply, ‚We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order!‘ Again that overwhelming human roar.

„‚The first thing is the adoption of practical measures to realise peace… We shall offer peace to the peoples of all belligerent countries upon the basis of Soviet terms – no annexations, no indemnities, and the right of self-determination of peoples. At the same time, according to our promise, we shall publish and repudiate the secret treaties… The question of War and Peace is so clear that I think that I may, without preamble, read the project of a Proclamation to the Peoples of All the Belligerent Countries…'“

“No gestures. And before him, a thousand simple faces looking up in intent adoration”, explained Reed. Lenin proceeded to read the proclamation, and ended with the words:

„The revolution has opened the era of Social Revolution… The labour movement, in the name of peace and Socialism, shall win, and fulfil its destiny…“

Reed commented:

„There was something quiet and powerful in all this, which stirred the souls of men. It was understandable why people believed when Lenin spoke…“^[28]

This was the first time that Lenin had appeared or spoken in public for quite some time, having spent almost four months in hiding. What a transformation in the situation! From underground fugitive to becoming leader of the Russian Revolution.

The insurrection had been successful. In the words of Rosa Luxemburg later: “They dared!”^[29] They dared and by their actions transformed the words of socialism into deeds. These events would ‘shake the world’ and make Lenin and the Bolsheviks a household name internationally.

The Soviet Congress continued with its revolutionary business. The results in the elections for a new Central Executive Committee or Presidium were announced: sixty-seven Bolsheviks were elected, together with twenty- nine Left SRs, with twenty other seats divided among smaller tendencies, including Maxim Gorky’s group.

Council of People’s Commissars

The newly elected Soviet Executive Committee then appointed a new government – to be called the Council of People’s Commissars – to run the country in the name of the Soviet Republic. The following day it was announced, amid loud and prolonged cheers, that Lenin was chosen, without portfolio, as Chairman of the new government. The list of members of the new government was then read out by Kamenev, who had been newly elected as chairman of the Executive Committee, with bursts of applause after each name. The Left SRs were offered posts in the new government, but for the moment they refused to accept them. The bourgeois concept of ‘Minister’ was rejected in favour of a new, more revolutionary-sounding title of ‘Commissar’.

Trotsky recalled a conversation with Lenin about the new revolutionary terminology to be adopted to describe members of the new government:

„‚What shall we call it?‘ asked Lenin, thinking aloud. ‚Only let us not use the word Minister: it is a dull, hackneyed title.‘

„‚Perhaps ‘Commissars’‘, I suggested, ‚only there are too many Commissars just now. Perhaps Supreme Commissars? … No, ‘Supreme’ sounds wrong too. What about ‘People’s Commissars’?‘

„‚People’s Commissars? Well, this sounds alright. And the government as a whole?‘

„‚Council of People’s Commissars‘, picked up Lenin. ‚That’s splendid; it smells of revolution.'“^[30]

Apart from Lenin as Chairman of the Council, other appointments included:

People’s Commissar of the Interior: AI Rykov

Agriculture: VP Milyutin Labour: AG Shlyapnikov

Army and Navy Affairs: A committee consisting of: VA

Ovseyenko (Antonov), NV Krylenko and PY Dybenko

Commerce and Industry: VP Nogin

Education: AV Lunacharsky Finance: II Skvortsov (Stepanov)

Foreign Affairs: LD Bronstein (Trotsky) Justice: GI Oppokov (Lomov) Food: IA Teodorovich

Posts and Telegraph: NP Avilov (Glebov) Chairman for Nationalities’ Affairs: JV Dzhugashvili (Stalin)

The office of People’s Commissar of Railways was left temporarily vacant, mainly as a result of the strained relations with the leadership of the Menshevik-controlled All-Russian Railway Workers’ Union.

The Congress continued with a number of other sessions, accompanied by numerous intervals and breaks. It was, without doubt, a real proletarian revolutionary assembly, the likes of which nobody had ever witnessed before. Power was finally in the hands of the Soviets, in their hands, the hands of the representatives of the proletariat and poor peasants.

Every decision of the Congress was met with enormous enthusiasm, hurrahs, thunderous clapping and caps and hats thrown into the air. The delegates also sang the funeral march in memory of the martyrs of the war, as well as the Internationale. Everyone could sense that the working class was finally in power! This was the most democratic revolution in history.

Morgan Philips Price, Manchester Guardian journalist, was so astonished that he couldn’t believe his eyes. He had never experienced anything like it:

„Soon I was beginning to feel that the whole thing might be a mad adventure. How could committees of workmen and soldiers, even if they had the passive consent of war-weary and land-hungry peasants, succeed against the whole of the technical apparatus of the still-functioning bureaucracy and the agents of the Western Powers? Splendid as was this rebellion of the slaves, as showing that there was still hope and courage in the masses, it was surely doomed in the face of these tremendous odds. Russia could hardly escape the fate of Carthage.“^[31]

But deep down, there was a feeling of hope for the future, born out of the horrors of war. “It seemed as if there was, for the first time for many months, a political force in the country that knew what it wanted”, wrote Price: “This was clearly reflected in the common talk in the streets.”^[32] “Everything happened so simply and so naturally”, wrote Victor Serge: “It was all quite unlike any of the revolutionary scenes we knew from history.”^[33]

History was being made – and the masses felt and participated in it. For the delegates in Smolny, celebrating their victory, their hearts were uplifted, their eyes fixed on the future, while their ears were still ringing with Lenin’s immortal words: “We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.” With these simple words, Lenin announced the greatest event in history and the beginning of a revolutionary new era internationally.

References

[1] Quoted in Liebman, The Russian revolution, pp. 242-3

[2] Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917, p. 557, emphasis in original

[3] ‘Statement by Kamenev and Zinoviev’, 11 (24) October 1917, The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: CC Minutes, p. 90, emphasis in original

[4] Lenin, ‘Letter to Comrades’, 17 (30) October 1917, LCW, Vol. 26, pp. 195-6

[5] Ibid., p. 203, emphasis in original

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., pp. 212-3, emphasis in original

[8] Ibid., p. 213

[9] Lenin, ‘Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B)’, 10 (23) October 1917, ibid., pp. 191-2

[10] Ibid., p. 192

[11] The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: CC Minutes, p. 103

[12] Joseph Stalin, p. 38

[13] Lenin, ‘Letter to Bolshevik Party Members’, 18 (31) October 1917, LCW, Vol. 26, p. 217, emphasis in original

[14] Lenin, ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B)’, 19 October (1 November) 1917, ibid., p. 223

[15] The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: CC Minutes, p. 120

[16] Ibid., p. 112

[17] Price, Dispatches From the Revolution, p. 90

[18] Lenin, ‘Letter to Central Committee Members’, 24 October (6 November) 1917, LCW, Vol. 26, p. 235

[19] Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917, p. 620

[20] Ibid.

[21] See Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World

[22] Stalin, Pravda, No. 241, 6 November 1918, The October Revolution, p. 30

[23] Stalin, Pravda, No. 269, 26 November 1924, The October Revolution, p. 72

[24] Price, Dispatches From the Revolution: Russia 1916-18, p. 91

[25] Quoted in Liebman, The Russian Revolution, p. 274

[26] Quoted ibid.

[27] Trotsky, Lenin, pp. 126-7

[28] Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, pp. 128-9, 132

[29] See Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p. 395

[30] Trotsky, On Lenin, p. 114

[31] Price, Dispatches From the Revolution, p. 94

[32] Ibid.

[33] Quoted in Liebman, The Russian Revolution, p. 285

The post “The greatest event in human history”: Lenin and the Russian Revolution appeared first on .

Was die Russische Revolution erreicht hat und warum sie degeneriert ist

Alan Woods — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:00:55 +0000

Dieses Jahr ist der 100. Jahrestag der Oktoberrevolution. Die Apologeten des Kapitalismus und ihre treuen Nachahmer in der Arbeiterbewegung versuchen, sich mit dem Gedanken zu beruhigen, dass der Zusammenbruch der UdSSR den Untergang des Sozialismus bedeutete. Doch was in Russland scheiterte, war nicht der Sozialismus, sondern eine Karikatur des Sozialismus. Im Gegensatz zu den oft wiederholten Verleumdungen war das stalinistische Regime die Antithese zu dem demokratischen Regime, das die Bolschewiki 1917 errichteten.

«Was man auch vom Bolschewismus denken mag, unbestreitbar ist, dass die russische Revolution eine der größten Taten in der Geschichte der Menschheit ist und der Aufstieg der Bolschewiki ein Ereignis von weltweiter Bedeutung.» (John Reed, Zehn Tage, die die Welt erschütterten, Vorwort des Autors, marxists.org)

Der Zusammenbruch der UdSSR wurde von den Verteidigern des Kapitalismus als das Äquivalent des endgültigen Sieges der «freien Marktwirtschaft» über den «Kommunismus» dargestellt. Vor einem Vierteljahrhundert löste er bei der Bourgeoisie und ihren Apologeten eine Welle der Euphorie aus. Sie sprachen vom Ende des Sozialismus, vom Ende des Kommunismus und sogar vom Ende der Geschichte, und seither erleben wir eine beispiellose ideologische Offensive gegen die Ideen des Marxismus auf globaler Ebene. Diese irrationale Überschwänglichkeit kannte keine Grenzen.

Der damalige amerikanische Präsident George Bush verkündete triumphierend die Schaffung einer «Neuen Weltordnung» unter der Vorherrschaft des US-Imperialismus. «Die Sowjetunion gibt es nicht mehr», schrieb Martin McCauley. «Das grosse Experiment ist gescheitert … Der Marxismus in der Praxis ist überall gescheitert. Es gibt kein marxistisches Wirtschaftsmodell, das mit dem Kapitalismus konkurrieren kann.» (M. McCauley, The Soviet Union 1917-1991, S. XV und 378, unsere Übersetzung) «We Won!», rief der Leitartikel des Wall Street Journal (24.5.89) aus. Dies war der Zeitpunkt, an dem Francis Fukuyama seine berühmt-berüchtigte Vorhersage machte: Die Zeit der Nachgeschichte sei angebrochen; die liberale Demokratie habe gesiegt, und die Menschheit habe ihre höchste Weisheit erreicht; die Geschichte sei zu einem Ende gekommen.

Fünfundzwanzig Jahre später ist von diesen törichten Illusionen nicht ein Stein auf dem anderen geblieben. Der Kapitalismus ist in die schwerste Krise seit der Grossen Depression geraten. Millionen von Menschen sehen einer Zukunft mit Arbeitslosigkeit, Armut, Kürzungen und Sparmassnahmen entgegen. Kriege und Konflikte verwüsten den gesamten Planeten, dessen Zukunft durch die Verwüstungen der unkontrollierten Marktwirtschaft gefährdet ist. Jetzt, im kalten Licht des Tages, klingen diese triumphalen Verkündungen ironisch. Die globale Krise des Kapitalismus und ihre Auswirkungen haben diese zuversichtlichen Prognosen widerlegt. All die grosszügigen Versprechungen der westlichen Staats- und Regierungschefs, die auf den Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion folgten, sind wie ein Wassertropfen auf einem heissen Ofen verdunstet.

Amerikas Traum von der Weltherrschaft liegt unter den rauchenden Ruinen von Aleppo begraben. Alle triumphalen Verlautbarungen der bürgerlichen Strategen haben sich als falsch erwiesen. Die Geschichte ist mit aller Macht zurückgekehrt. Dieselben westlichen Beobachter, die jeden Fehler der sowjetischen Wirtschaft übertrieben haben, bemühen sich nun verzweifelt, das offensichtliche Versagen der Marktwirtschaft zu erklären. Jetzt gibt es nur noch wirtschaftlichen Zusammenbruch, politische Instabilität, Unsicherheit, Kriege und Konflikte. Die frühere Euphorie ist dem schwärzesten Pessimismus gewichen.

Gerade deshalb wird der hundertste Jahrestag der Russischen Revolution unweigerlich Anlass für eine Verschärfung der bösartigen antikommunistischen Kampagne sein. Der Grund dafür ist nicht schwer zu verstehen. Die weltweite Krise des Kapitalismus führt zu einer allgemeinen Infragestellung der «Marktwirtschaft». Das Interesse an marxistischen Ideen lebt wieder auf, was die Bourgeoisie beunruhigt. Die neue Verleumdungskampagne ist nicht Ausdruck von Vertrauen, sondern von Angst.

Die Angst vor der Revolution

Nichts daran ist neu. Die Geschichte zeigt, dass die herrschende Klasse nicht damit zufrieden sein kann, eine Revolution zu besiegen. Sie muss ausserdem mit Lügen überschüttet werden, die Namen ihrer Führer müssen in den Dreck gezogen werden und sie muss vollständig in einem Nebel der Feindseligkeit und des Misstrauens erstickt werden, so dass nicht einmal mehr die Erinnerung daran die folgenden Generationen noch inspirieren kann. Im 19. Jahrhundert schrieb der Historiker Thomas Carlyle in seinem Buch über Oliver Cromwell, er habe seinen Protagonisten unter einem Haufen toter Hunde ausgraben müssen, bevor er mit seiner Arbeit beginnen konnte.

Nachdem die Monarchie 1660 restauriert wurde, mussten alle Erinnerungen an Cromwell und die bürgerliche Revolution in England aus dem kollektiven Gedächtnis ausgelöscht werden. Die restaurierte Monarchie Karls II. datierte den Beginn ihrer Herrschaft auf den 30. Januar 1649, den Tag, an dem Karl I. hingerichtet worden war. Alle Hinweise auf die Republik und ihre revolutionären Errungenschaften sollten verschwinden. Der Parvenü Karl II. war von Trotz, Hass und Rachsucht derart mitgerissen, dass er befahl, Oliver Cromwells Leiche möge ausgegraben und in Tyburn öffentlich gehenkt werden.

Dieselbe Feindseligkeit und derselbe aus Furcht geborene Trotz stehen hinter den heutigen Versuchen, die Errungenschaften und die Bedeutung der Russischen Revolution zu bestreiten und das Andenken an ihre Führer anzuschwärzen. Die systematische Geschichtsfälschung, die von der Bourgeoisie heute betrieben wird, ist zwar etwas subtiler als die postmortalen Lynchmorde der englischen Monarchisten, kann sich ihnen gegenüber aber keiner moralischen Überlegenheit rühmen. Sie wird auch nicht erfolgreicher sein. Die Wahrheit, nicht die Lüge, ist die Lokomotive der Geschichte, und die Wahrheit wird nicht für alle Zeit verborgen bleiben.

Beinahe drei Generationen lang richteten die Verteidiger des Kapitalismus ihre Wut auf die Sowjetunion. Es wurden weder Kosten noch Mühen gescheut, um das Bild der Oktoberrevolution und der verstaatlichten Planwirtschaft, die aus ihr hervorging, zu beschmutzen. Die Verbrechen des Stalinismus waren für diese Kampagne ausserordentlich nützlich. Ihre Methode war es, den Sozialismus und Kommunismus mit jenem bürokratisch-totalitären Apparat zu identifizieren, der aus der Isolation der Revolution in einem rückständigen Land hervorging.

Der Hass auf die Sowjetunion all jener, deren Karrieren, Gehälter und Profite aus Mieteinnahmen, Zins und Profit, also aus der bestehenden Gesellschaftsordnung gespeist werden, ist nicht schwer zu verstehen. Ihnen geht es nicht um die Ablehnung des totalitären Regimes Stalins. Dieselben «Freunde der Demokratie» hatten und haben keinerlei Skrupel, diktatorische Regimes zu preisen, sofern diese ihren Interessen entsprechen. Die «demokratische» herrschende Klasse Grossbritanniens war etwa ganz zufrieden mit Hitlers Aufstieg zur Macht, solange er die deutsche Arbeiterklasse unterdrückte und sich auf den Osten Europas konzentrierte.

Winston Churchill und andere Repräsentanten der britischen herrschenden Klasse äusserten bis 1939 ihre glühende Bewunderung für Mussolini und Franco. Von 1945 an unterstützten die westlichen «Demokratien» und in erster Linie die USA jede barbarische Diktatur von Somoza bis Pinochet, von der argentinischen Junta bis zum indonesischen Schlächter Suharto, der den Gipfel der Macht über die Leichen von einer Million Menschen erklomm, welche mit der aktiven Unterstützung der CIA ermordet wurden. Die Führer der westlichen Demokratien werfen sich vor dem bluttriefenden saudischen Regime in den Staub, das seine eigene Bevölkerung foltern, ermorden, verprügeln und sogar kreuzigen lässt. Die Liste dieser Barbareien hat kein Ende.

Aus dem Blickwinkel des Imperialismus sind solche Regimes völlig annehmbar, solange sie sich auf das Privateigentum an Land, Banken und grossen Monopolen stützen. Ihre unversöhnliche Feindschaft gegen die Sowjetunion stützte sich nicht auf irgendeine Freiheitsliebe, sondern auf nacktes Klasseninteresse. Sie hassten die UdSSR nicht für das, was an ihr schlecht, sondern gerade für das, was an ihr positiv und fortschrittlich war. Sie hatten keine Einwände dagegen, dass Stalin ein Diktator war (sondern waren im Gegenteil über die Gelegenheit erfreut, die ihnen die Verbrechen des Stalinismus zur Verunglimpfung des Sozialismus im Westen boten), sondern nur dagegen, dass diese Diktatur sich immer noch auf die staatlichen Eigentumsformen stützte, den einzigen verbliebenen Errungenschaften des Oktobers.

Die systematische Geschichtsrevision durch die Bürgerlichen und ihre akademischen Hofdichter unterscheidet sich zu einem erstaunlich geringen Grad von den alten Methoden der stalinistischen Bürokratie, welche die Geschichte auf den Kopf stellte, indem sie führende Persönlichkeiten zu Unpersonen machte, sie wie im Fall von Leo Trotzki verteufelte und ganz allgemein schwarz für weiss erklärte. Heutige Schriften der Feinde des Sozialismus unterscheiden sich davon ausschliesslich insofern, als sie Lenin mit demselben blinden Hass und derselben Verachtung strafen, welche die Stalinisten nur Trotzki zukommen liessen.

In Russland selbst findet man einige der übelsten Fälle dieser Sorte. Das überrascht aus zweierlei Gründen nicht. Erstens wurden diese postsowjetischen Akademiker in den Fälschertraditionen des Stalinismus ausgebildet, für den die Wahrheit nur ein Werkzeug im Dienste der herrschenden Elite war. Die Professoren, Ökonomen und Historiker waren daran gewöhnt, ihre Schriften der momentanen «Linie» anzupassen. Dieselben Intellektuellen, die einstmals Lobreden auf Trotzki hielten, den Gründer der Roten Armee und Führer der Oktoberrevolution, zögerten einige Jahre später nicht, ihn als Agenten Hitlers zu denunzieren. Dieselben Schriftsteller, die Josef Stalin lobpriesen, machten eine Kehrtwende, sobald Nikita Chruschtschow den «Personenkult» entdeckt hatte. Gewohnheiten sind mächtig, das gilt auch für die Methoden der intellektuellen Prostitution. Nur die Auftraggeber sind heute andere.

Es gibt auch einen zweiten Grund. Die meisten, die sich in Russland an der Plünderung («Privatisierung») des Staatseigentums bereichert haben, besassen vor nicht langer Zeit einen Mitgliedsausweis der kommunistischen Partei und rühmten den «Sozialismus». Diese Kreaturen hatten mit Sozialismus, Kommunismus oder der Arbeiterklasse in Wahrheit nichts zu tun. Sie gehörten zu einer parasitären, herrschenden Schicht, welche für die Etablierung ihrer Macht über die Leiche der Oktoberrevolution ging und auf dem Rücken der sowjetischen Arbeiterklasse ein Luxusleben führte.

Mit demselben Zynismus, der sie schon immer auszeichnete, sind diese Schmarotzer nun ins Lager des Kapitalismus übergegangen, doch diese wundersame Verwandlung muss irgendwie gerechtfertigt werden. Die «neuen Russen» fühlen sich gedrängt, ihren «Abfall vom Glauben» zu rechtfertigen, indem sie das verfluchen, woran sie noch gestern zu glauben vorgaben. So versuchen sie, den Massen Sand in die Augen zu streuen und ihr eigenes Gewissen zu beruhigen – immer vorausgesetzt, dass sie so etwas überhaupt besitzen.

Lenin und Trotzki

Nicht nur die Bourgeoisie und ihre Ideologen (dazu gehören auch die rechten Sozialdemokraten und einige sogenannte linke Sozialisten) haben ein grundsätzliches Interesse daran, den Bolschewismus mit dem Stalinismus gleichzusetzen. Auch die Stalinisten selbst haben diese groteske Verzerrung über Jahrzehnte aufrechterhalten und als erste die Lüge erzählt, der «Trotzkismus» sei eine vom Leninismus getrennte, ihm feindlich gesinnte politische Strömung. Monty Johnstone ging es darum, diese Lüge zu bekräftigen, wenn auch in einer ausgefeilteren Weise als zuvor.

In diesem Buch zeigen Ted und ich, wie die Stalinisten die Differenzen zwischen Lenin und Trotzki vor 1917 künstlich aufblähten. Wir erklären, wie Lenin und Trotzki auf verschiedenen Wegen schliesslich zu denselben Schlüssen gelangten. Schon vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg unterschied sich Lenins Position zum Wesen der Russischen Revolution kaum von jener Trotzkis.

Wir haben es Lenin und Trotzki gestattet, für sich selbst zu sprechen, indem wir ausführlich aus ihren Werken zitieren. Das macht das Lesen nicht unbedingt einfacher, hat aber den unzweifelhaften Vorteil, dass das unvoreingenommene lesende Publikum selbst in die Lage versetzt wird, ihre Ideen und das Verhältnis zwischen ihnen zu beurteilen. Der Lackmustest für jede Theorie ist die Praxis. Es ist eine Tatsache, dass Lenin 1917 eine Position ergriff, die mit Trotzkis Theorie der permanenten Revolution praktisch identisch war. Es ist auch kein Zufall, dass Lenins Kritiker ihn 1917 des «Trotzkismus» beschuldigten.

Es entspricht der Methode des historischen Materialismus, hinter den handelnden Individuen auf der Bühne der Geschichte nach tieferen Ursachen für grosse historische Ereignisse zu suchen. Dadurch wird aber die Rolle des Individuums in der Geschichte nicht verneint oder geschmälert. Unter gegebenen Umständen kann es ganz auf einen einzelnen Mann oder eine einzelne Frau ankommen. Die Arbeiterklasse braucht eine Partei, um die Gesellschaft zu verändern. Wenn es keine revolutionäre Partei gibt, die der revolutionären Energie der Klasse eine bewusste Führung geben kann, wird sie verfliegen wie Dampf, dessen Energie von keiner Dampfmaschine genutzt wird.

Trotzkis Rolle während und nach der Oktoberrevolution war enorm. Wir können mit Sicherheit sagen, dass es ohne Lenin und Trotzki 1917 keine Oktoberrevolution gegeben hätte. Leo Trotzki wurde allgemein als zweiter Mann in der Parteiführung anerkannt. Tatsächlich bezeichneten die Massen ebenso wie die Feinde der Revolution die Bolschewiki üblicherweise als «Partei von Lenin und Trotzki».

Einzelne Persönlichkeiten können eine solche Rolle aber nur dann einnehmen, wenn alle anderen Bedingungen gegeben sind. Die Verkettung der Ereignisse gestattete es Lenin und Trotzki, 1917 eine entscheidende Rolle zu spielen. Aber dieselben beiden Menschen hatten während der vorangegangenen zwanzig Jahre nicht dieselbe Rolle spielen können. Ebenso waren Lenin und Trotzki, trotz ihrer kolossalen persönlichen Fähigkeiten machtlos gegenüber der bürokratischen Degeneration der Revolution in ihrem Rückfluten. Gegen die materiellen Kräfte, die die Degeneration bedingten, waren auch die herausragendsten Führer machtlos.

Der proletarische Internationalismus

Der wirkliche Grund für die bürokratische Degeneration der russischen Revolution war nicht irgendeine «Erbsünde» des Bolschewismus, sondern die Isolation der Revolution in Verhältnissen materieller und kultureller Rückständigkeit. Dies wiederum war das Ergebnis des Verrats der Führungen der europäischen Sozialdemokratie.

Für Lenin und Trotzki war die Russische Revolution nie ein in sich abgeschlossener Vorgang, sondern der Ausgangspunkt der europäischen und der Weltrevolution. Sie hatte einen enormen Einfluss auf die europäische Arbeiterklasse und führte unmittelbar zur Novemberrevolution in Deutschland 1918. Darauf folgte eine Reihe revolutionärer Erhebungen in diesem Land, die erst 1923 abebbten. 1919 gab es eine Revolution in Ungarn. Im selben Jahr wurde in Bayern eine kurzlebige Räterepublik ausgerufen. Auch in Österreich, Grossbritannien, Frankreich, Italien, Bulgarien, Estland und anderen Ländern gab es revolutionäre Aufstände.

Die revolutionäre Bewegung der europäischen Arbeiterklasse war stark genug, sich der militärischen Intervention gegen Sowjetrussland in den Weg zu stellen, aber wurde von ihrer reformistischen Führung paralysiert. Das Scheitern der europäischen Revolution bedeutete, dass die russische Revolution unter Bedingungen der grausamsten Rückständigkeit isoliert wurde. 21 ausländische Interventionsarmeen zerstörten Industrie und Landwirtschaft. In einem einzigen Jahr, 1920, verhungerten über sechs Millionen Menschen in Sowjetrussland.

Marx erklärte vor langer Zeit, dass in einer Gesellschaft, wo die Not verallgemeinert wird, «die ganze alte Scheisse» wiederbelebt würde. Diese Bedingungen führten zum Aufstieg der Bürokratie – einer bleiernen Schicht von Beamten und Karrieristen, welche die Arbeiterklasse zur Seite stiess und privilegierte Posten in Staat und Industrie ergriff. Lenin hatte wiederholt vor den Gefahren der Bürokratie nicht nur im Staat, sondern auch in der Partei gewarnt.

Die Revolution überlebte zwar, durchlief aber eine grausame bürokratische Deformation. Die staatliche Planwirtschaft gestattete der UdSSR gigantische Fortschritte und verwandelte ein vormals rückständiges Land in einen fortgeschrittenen Industriestaat mit kultivierter Bevölkerung. So gelang es der UdSSR, Hitlers Armeen im Zweiten Weltkrieg praktisch auf sich allein gestellt zu besiegen.

Trotzki gegen Stalin

Lenin und Trotzki waren für die bürokratische Deformation nicht nur nicht verantwortlich, sondern arbeiteten im Kampf gegen Stalin, der sich an die Spitze der privilegierten Bürokraten gestellt hatte, eng zusammen. Von seinem Sterbebett aus beharrte Lenin in Briefen und seinem Testament darauf, dass Stalin von seinem Posten als Generalsekretär entfernt würde, weil er «eine unermessliche Macht in seinen Händen konzentriert» hatte. Lenin war «nicht überzeugt, dass er es immer verstehen wird, von dieser Macht vorsichtig genug Gebrauch zu machen.» (Lenin, Brief an den Parteitag Dezember 1922 – Januar 1923, marxists.org)

In seinem letzten verzweifelten Kampf gegen Stalin und die Bürokratie konnte sich Lenin nur auf einen einzigen Mitstreiter stützen – Trotzki. Doch er starb, bevor er sein Ziel erreichen konnte. Auf einem Treffen der Vereinigten Opposition 1926 sagte Lenins Witwe Krupskaja: «Wenn Wladimir Iljitsch [Lenin] heute am Leben wäre, sässe er schon im Gefängnis.»

Nachdem Lenin 1924 gestorben war, versuchte Trotzki dessen Kampf gegen Stalin und die Bürokratie fortzusetzen. Doch der Kampf war zum Scheitern verurteilt. Nach Jahren des Krieges, der Revolution und des Bürgerkriegs waren die russischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter erschöpft. Auf der anderen Seite waren Millionen Bürokraten selbstbewusster denn je. Sie spürten, dass sie die Macht fest in den Händen hielten. Nur der Sieg der Revolution in Deutschland oder China hätte die Lage ändern können. Doch die verfehlte Politik Stalins und seiner Unterstützer führte zu einer Niederlage nach der anderen.

Trotzdem konnte die UdSSR dank ihrer staatlichen Planwirtschaft gewaltige Schritte nach vorne machen. Doch das bedeuteten nicht, dass der «Sozialismus errichtet» worden war, wie die Stalinisten prahlerisch verkündeten. Im Gegenteil: Unter der Herrschaft einer privilegierten Bürokratenschicht entfernte sich die Sowjetunion vom Sozialismus. Am Ende untergrub die Bürokratie die Planwirtschaft und bereitete der kapitalistischen Restauration den Weg.

Trotzki hatte schon 1936 in Die verratene Revolution davor gewarnt, dass die Bürokratie sich mit ihren rechtlichen und widerrechtlichen Privilegien nicht zufriedengeben, sondern danach streben würde, sich durch eine kapitalistischen Konterrevolution zu Eigentümern der Produktionsmittel zu machen. Es sollte zwar einige Jahrzehnte dauern, aber genau das ist passiert. Vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg warnte Trotzki:

«Dass die Vergesellschaftung der von den Kapitalisten geschaffenen Produktionsmittel einen enormen ökonomischen Vorteil bietet, kann man heute nicht allein in der Theorie, sondern auch durch die Erfahrungen in der UdSSR, trotz ihrer Begrenztheit, als erwiesen ansehen. Es ist wahr, dass sich die kapitalistischen Reaktionäre nicht ohne Geschicklichkeit des stalinistischen Regimes gleich einer Vogelscheuche gegen die Idee des Sozialismus bedienen. Tatsächlich hat Marx jedoch niemals gesagt, dass sich der Sozialismus in einem Lande verwirklichen lasse und noch viel weniger In einem rückständigen Land. Die Entbehrungen, denen die Massen in der UdSSR ausgesetzt sind, die Allgewalt der privilegierten Kaste, die sich über die Nation und ihre Not erhoben hat, die unverschämte Willkür der Bürokraten ist nicht die Konsequenz des Sozialismus, sondern die der Isoliertheit und der historischen Rückständigkeit der UdSSR, die von der kapitalistischen Einkreisung in die Zange genommen ist. Das Erstaunlichste ist, dass es der planifizierten Wirtschaft auch unter aussergewöhnlich ungünstigen Bedingungen gelungen ist, ihre unbestreitbare Überlegenheit zu beweisen.» (Trotzki, Marxismus in unserer Zeit, marxists.org)

Stalins Terror

Anstatt Trotzkis Argumente politisch zu beantworten, beantwortete sie die stalinistische Bürokratie mit der eisernen Faust der Repression. Die Linke Opposition in Russland wurde gewaltsam unterdrückt und ihre Mitglieder arbeitslos gemacht, belästigt und später dann verhaftet und eingesperrt.

Nachdem Trotzki 1927 von Stalin und seinem bürokratischen Apparat aus der Kommunistischen Partei der Sowjetunion (KPdSU) ausgeschlossen wurde, wurde er 1929 ins türkische Exil geschickt. Diese bürokratischen Methoden sollten den Führer der Bolschewiki-Leninisten, der Linken Opposition, zum Schweigen bringen.

Doch Trotzki liess sich nicht beirren. Von der Insel Prinkipo in Istanbul aus organisierte er den Gegenangriff der Kräfte des Bolschewismus-Leninismus. Er gründete die Internationale Linke Opposition, die all jene um sich scharte, die den Ideen Lenins, der bolschewistischen Partei und des Oktobers treu geblieben waren. Obwohl man sie aus den Reihen der kommunistischen Parteien und der Kommunistischen Internationale ausgeschlossen hatte, betrachteten sich Trotzki sowie seine Anhängerinnen und Anhänger weiter als Teil der kommunistischen Bewegung, die für eine Reform der kommunistischen Parteien, der Kommunistischen Internationale und der UdSSR kämpften.

Vom Exil aus musste Trotzki zusehen, wie all seine Freunde, Genossinnen und Genossen und seine Mitarbeiter systematisch ermordet wurden. In seinen barbarischen Schauprozessen wurden die Führer von Lenins Partei von Stalin unter falschen Vorwürfen gefoltert und hingerichtet. Trotzki bezeichnete die Säuberungen als einseitigen Bürgerkrieg von Stalin und der Bürokratie gegen die bolschewistische Partei.

Trotzki kämpfte darum, die Ideen, das Programm und die Traditionen für spätere Generationen von Kommunistinnen und Kommunisten in der UdSSR und international zu erhalten. Unter den Bedingungen der schwersten Verfolgung war er der einzige, der das tat. In der Geschichte werden wir schwer ein weiteres Beispiel dafür finden, wie alle Ressourcen eines riesigen Staatsapparats darauf ausgerichtet wurden, einen einzigen Mann zu zerstören. Es war nicht leicht für Trotzki, ein Land zu finden, das ihn aufnehmen wollte. Die Türen all der sogenannten westlichen Demokratien blieben ihm fest verschlossen. Er war gezwungen, von der Türkei aus nach Frankreich und dann nach Norwegen zu gehen, bis er sich schliesslich in Mexiko niederlassen konnte.

Da er Trotzkis im Ausland nicht habhaft werden konnte, rächte sich Stalin an dessen Familie. In einem persönlichen Racheakt entzog er Trotzki und all seinen Familienmitgliedern 1932 die sowjetische Staatsangehörigkeit. Trotzkis Tochter Sinaida, die mit ihrem kleinen Sohn Sjewa nach Prinkipo gekommen war, konnte nun nicht mehr in die Sowjetunion zurückkehren und war so von ihrem Ehemann und ihrer Tochter getrennt. Im folgenden Jahr beging sie in Berlin Selbstmord.

Das war nur der Beginn einer systematischen Kampagne, in der Trotzkis Kinder und Familie sowie seine Mitreiterinnen und Mitstreiter allesamt umgebracht wurden. Der Tyrann im Kreml befahl den Mord an Leo Sedow, Trotzkis Sohn, in Paris. Er liess ebenso Trotzkis zweiten Sohn Sergei verhaften, der sich nicht politisch betätigte und sich noch in der Sowjetunion aufhielt. Er wurde erschossen. Und schliesslich wurde Stalins grösster Wunsch erfüllt, als Trotzki im August 1940 in Mexiko ermordet wurde.

Wer behauptet, Bolschewismus und Stalinismus seien «keine Antipoden sondern Zwillinge», muss erklären, wie es dazu kam, dass Stalin Lenins Partei auslöschen und ihre ehemalige Führung komplett liquidieren musste, um seine Macht zu festigen. Inmitten von Verrat, Niederlagen und Enttäuschungen verteidigte Trotzki die echten Traditionen des Leninismus, des Oktobers und der bolschewistischen Partei. Er erreichte damit sein wichtigstes Ziel.

Das war keine geringe Leistung. Wer erinnert sich heute an die Schriften von Sinowjew und Kamenew? In den Schriften Leo Trotzkis haben wir hingegen ein unschätzbares Erbe, das besonders auch nach dem Zusammenbruch der UdSSR, einer unumgänglichen Konsequenz der Verbrechen des Stalinismus, nach wie vor bedeutsam und lebendig bleibt. Diese Schriften beinhalten den authentischen Bolschewismus und die wirklichen Lehren der Oktoberrevolution – die einzige Hoffnung für die Zukunft der Menschheit.

Was die Revolution erreichte

Die Ordnung, die die Oktoberrevolution errichtet hatte, war weder totalitär noch bürokratisch, sondern die demokratischste Ordnung, die die Welt je gesehen hat. Die Oktoberrevolution machte Schluss mit dem Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln. Erstmals wurde die Vitalität der Planwirtschaft nicht nur in der Theorie, sondern in der Praxis demonstriert. Auf einem Sechstel der Erdoberfläche wurde in einem gigantischen, einmaligen Experiment bewiesen, dass eine Gesellschaft ohne Kapitalisten, Grossgrundbesitzer und Geldverleiher möglich ist.

Heutzutage ist es in Mode, die Erfolge kleinzureden oder gar völlig zu bestreiten. Die flüchtigste Blick auf die Fakten zeigt uns jedoch ein völlig anderes Ergebnis. Trotz der Probleme, Mängel und Verbrechen (mit denen uns die Geschichte des Kapitalismus ebenso im Übermass ausstattet), brachte die Planwirtschaft in der Sowjetunion in einer im historischen Massstab bemerkenswert kurzen Frist höchst erstaunliche Fortschritte hervor. Daher kommt die Angst und der Hass vonseiten der herrschenden Klassen im Westen. Daher kommen die unverschämten Lügen, derer sie sich, natürlich immer von einer Position der «akademischen Objektivität» aus, noch immer bedienen.

Die Bürgerlichen sehen sich gezwungen, die Ideale der Oktoberrevolution ein für alle Mal zu begraben. So wurde der Zusammenbruch der UdSSR zum Signal für eine Propagandalawine gegen die Errungenschaften der Planwirtschaften in Russland und Osteuropa. Diese ideologische Offensive der Strategen des Kapitals gegen den «Kommunismus» war ein genau kalkulierter Versuch, die historischen Errungenschaften der Revolution zu verleugnen. Für diese Damen und Herren war die russische Revolution seit jeher eine Verirrung der Geschichte. Aus ihrer Sicht hat der Kapitalismus immer existiert und wird das auch für immer tun. Deswegen darf es keine Erfolge der Planwirtschaft gegeben haben. Die sowjetische Statistiken werden einfach zu aufgeblasenen Lügen erklärt.

All die enormen Fortschritte auf dem Gebiet der Bildung, Gesundheit, sozialen Fürsorge etc. wurden von einem Strom aus Lügen und Verzerrungen verschüttet, dessen Ziel es ist, die Errungenschaften verschwinden zu lassen. Die Mängel des Lebens in der Sowjetunion, von denen es viele gab, werden systematisch überbetont, um zu «beweisen», dass es zum Kapitalismus keine Alternative gibt. Statt Fortschritt, sagen sie nun, habe es Rückschritt gegeben.

«Es wird gesagt, dass die UdSSR in den Achtzigern den Vereinigten Staaten ebenso weit nachstünde, wie das Russische Kaiserreich 1913», schreibt der Wirtschaftshistoriker Alec Nove, der daraus schliesst, dass «statistische Manipulationen eine Rolle dabei spielten, das Sowjet-Regime zu delegitimieren» (Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, Penguin Books 1992, S.438, unsere Übersetzung).

Es ist notwendig, sich dieser beispiellose Lügenkampagne entgegenzustellen. Wir wollen die Leserschaft nicht mit Statistiken überbeanspruchen, halten es aber für notwendig, jeden Zweifel an den erstaunlichen Erfolgen der Planwirtschaft zu beseitigen. Trotz der unfassbaren Verbrechen der Bürokratie sind die einmaligen Fortschritte der Sowjetunion nicht nur eine historische Errungenschaft, sondern vor allem ein Ausblick auf die enormen Möglichkeiten einer Planwirtschaft, insbesondere wenn sie demokratisch geleitet würde. Diese Möglichkeiten stehen in völligem Gegensatz zur heutigen weltweiten Krise des Kapitalismus.

Beispiellose Fortschritte

Die Oktoberrevolution 1917 führte zum historisch grössten Wachstum der Produktivkräfte in einem Land. Vor der Revolution verfügte das zaristische Russland über eine äusserst rückständige, halbfeudale Wirtschaft, der grösste Teil der Bevölkerung konnte nicht lesen und schreiben. Von 150 Millionen Einwohnern waren nur vier Millionen in der Industrie beschäftigt. Damit war Russland noch viel rückständiger als das heutige Pakistan.

Unter den Bedingungen einer schrecklichen wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und kulturellen Schwäche begann das Regime der Arbeiterdemokratie, das Lenin und Trotzki errichtet hatten, Russland gestützt auf eine Planwirtschaft aus der Rückständigkeit herauszuziehen. Die Ergebnisse sind wirtschaftsgeschichtlich einmalig. Innerhalb von zwei Jahrzehnten schuf sich Russland eine gewaltige industrielle Basis und schaffte den Analphabetismus ab. Auf den Gebieten der Gesundheit, Kultur und Bildung machte es bemerkenswerte Fortschritte. Zur selben Zeit befand sich die westliche Welt im Würgegriff der Massenarbeitslosigkeit und des wirtschaftlichen Zusammenbruchs der Grossen Depression.

Die Lebensfähigkeit der neuen Produktionsweise wurde 1941-1945 auf eine schwere Probe gestellt. Die Sowjetunion wurde von Nazideutschland angegriffen, dem alle Ressourcen Europas zur Verfügung standen. Trotz des Verlusts von 27 Millionen Menschenleben schaffte es die UdSSR, Hitler zu besiegen und ging ab 1945 daran, ihre zerstörte Wirtschaft in einer bemerkenswert kurzen Zeitspanne wieder aufzubauen, womit sie zur zweiten Supermacht der Welt wurde.

Dass ein Land so erstaunliche Fortschritte macht, muss uns zum Nachdenken anregen. Man kann von den Idealen der Revolution der Bolschewiki halten, was man will, aber eine solche Transformation in einer so kurzen Zeit verlangt die Aufmerksamkeit aller denkenden Menschen.

Innerhalb von 50 Jahren verneunfachte die Sowjetunion ihr Bruttoinlandsprodukt. Trotz der schrecklichen Zerstörung im Zweiten Weltkrieg verfünffachte sie ihr BIP zwischen 1945 und 1979. 1950 entsprach ihr BIP 33% des US-amerikanischen. 1979 hatte sie bereits 58% des BIP der USA erreicht. In den späten 1970er Jahren war die UdSSR eine Industriemacht, die in absoluten Zahlen den Rest der Welt in einigen Schlüsselindustrien bereits überflügelt hatte. Die Sowjetunion war nicht nur der zweitgrösste Produzent industrieller Güter nach den USA, sondern der weltweit führende Produzent von Öl, Stahl, Zement, Asbest, Traktoren und einer Reihe von Maschinen.

Diese Zahlen zeigen aber nicht das ganze Ausmass des Erreichten. All das wurde praktisch ohne Arbeitslosigkeit oder Inflation erreicht. Es gab in der Sowjetunion keine Arbeitslosigkeit wie im Westen. Tatsächlich war es eine Straftat, arbeitslos zu sein. (Dieses Gesetz wurde ironischerweise bis heute nicht abgeschafft, obwohl es nichts mehr bedeutet.) Es gab natürlich Fälle, in denen Einzelpersonen entlassen wurden, weil sie in Konflikt mit der Bürokratie gerieten, aber solche Phänomene ergaben sich nicht aus dem Wesen der Planwirtschaft und hätten nicht existieren müssen. Sie hatten weder mit der zyklischen Arbeitslosigkeit des Kapitalismus, noch mit der organischen Massenarbeitslosigkeit etwas zu tun, die derzeit knapp 50 Millionen Menschen in den OECD-Ländern zu einem Leben erzwungener Untätigkeit verdammt.

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gab es überdies so gut wie keine Inflation mehr. Das drückte sich besonders in den Preisen für Güter des täglichen Bedarfs aus. Bis zur Perestroika wurden die Preise für Fleisch und Milchprodukte zum letzten Mal im Jahr 1962 erhöht. Die Preise für Brot, Zucker und die meisten Nahrungsmittel wurden zuletzt 1955 erhöht. Die Mieten waren äusserst niedrig, vor allem wenn man sie mit dem Westen vergleicht, wo die Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter zumeist ein Drittel oder mehr ihres Einkommens dafür ausgeben müssen. Erst in der Periode der Perestroika, die einen Umschwung zur Marktwirtschaft bedeutete, traten Arbeitslosigkeit und Inflation wieder auf.

Die UdSSR hatte jedes Jahr ein Nulldefizit und sogar einen leichten Haushaltsüberschuss auszuweisen, was keinem westlichen Land bis heute gelungen ist. Genauso wenig haben sie es geschafft, dauerhafte Vollbeschäftigung wie in der Sowjetunion zu erreichen. Die westlichen Kritiker halten sich zu diesen Umständen sehr bedeckt, weil hier die Potentiale selbst einer nicht-kapitalistischen Übergangsökonomie deutlich werden – von den Möglichkeiten eines Sozialismus ganz zu schweigen.

Die Oktoberrevolution und die Frauen

Der grosse französische utopische Sozialist Fourier betrachtete die Stellung der Frauen als den deutlichsten Massstab für den Fortschritt einer sozialen Ordnung. Die Rückkehr Russlands zum Kapitalismus bedeutet in dieser Hinsicht eine Katastrophe. Alles, was sich die Frauen in der Russischen Revolution erkämpft hatten, die übrigens von streikenden Textilarbeiterinnen am internationalen Frauentag begonnen wurde, wird systematisch eliminiert. Das reaktionäre Gesicht des Kapitalismus zeigt sich deutlich an der heutigen Stellung der Frauen in Russland.

Obwohl die politische Konterrevolution des Stalinismus einen teilweisen Rückschritt bedeutete, ist unbestreitbar, dass die Frauen in der Sowjetunion enorme Fortschritte im Kampf gegen ihre Unterdrückung gemacht haben.

«Die Oktoberrevolution tat der Frau gegenüber ehrlich ihre Pflicht», schrieb Trotzki. «Die junge Macht gab ihr nicht nur dieselben politischen und gesetzlichen Rechte wie dem Mann, sondern, was noch wichtiger ist, tat alles was sie konnte und jedenfalls unvergleichlich mehr als irgendein anderer Staat, um ihr wirklich zu allen Zweigen der Wirtschafts- und Kulturarbeit Zutritt zu verschaffen.» (Trotzki, Verratene Revolution, marxists.org)

Unter der Zarenherrschaft wurden Frauen als blosse Anhängsel des Haushalts verstanden. Männern war es ausdrücklich gestattet, Gewalt gegen sie anzuwenden. In einigen ländlichen Gegenden wurden Frauen gezwungen, sich zu verschleiern und ihnen wurde nicht gestattet, lesen und schreiben zu lernen. Von 1917 bis 1927 wurde die rechtliche Ungleichbehandlung der Frauen Schritt für Schritt aufgehoben, und in ihrem Programm von 1919 erklärte die Kommunistische Partei stolz: «Die Partei gibt sich nicht mit der formalen Gleichstellung der Frauen zufrieden, sondern strebt danach, sie von der materiellen Last unzeitgemässer Hausarbeit zu befreien, indem sie diese durch Gemeinschaftswohnungen, öffentliche Kantinen, zentrale Wäschereien, öffentliche Kinderbetreuung usw. ersetzt.»

Frauen waren nicht länger gezwungen, bei ihren Ehemännern zu leben oder sie zu begleiten, wenn sie berufsbedingt umziehen mussten. Sie erhielten das Recht, einem Haushalt vorzustehen und wurden gleich bezahlt. Es wurden Regelungen zu Karenz und Mutterschutz eingeführt, ebenso Kindergeld und Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen. 1920 wurde die Abtreibung legalisiert, die Zivilehe wurde eingeführt und die Scheidung zu einer unkomplizierten Formalität gemacht. Das Konzept von der Nichtanerkennung unehelicher Kindern wurde ebenso aufgehoben. Lenin schrieb dazu:

«Von den niederträchtigen Gesetzen über die Rechtsungleichheit der Frau, über die Beschränkungen der Ehescheidung, die schändlichen Formalitäten, an die sie geknüpft war, über die Nichtanerkennung der unehelichen Kinder, über die Nachforschung nach ihren Vätern usw. – Gesetzen, von denen es in allen zivilisierten Ländern zur Schande der Bourgeoisie und des Kapitalismus so zahlreiche Überreste gibt, haben wir im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes keinen Stein auf dem anderen gelassen.» (Lenin, Die grosse Initiative, Werke Band 29, S. 418 f.)

Kostenloses Essen in den Schulen, kostenlose Milch für Kinder, eine besondere Unterstützung für bedürftige Kinder, Beratungsstellen für Schwangere, Frauenhäuser, Betreuungseinrichtungen – so wurden die materiellen Bedingungen geschaffen, um Frauen systematisch in alle Bereiche des gesellschaftlichen, wirtschaftliche und politischen Lebens miteinzubeziehen. Der Stalinismus führte in diesem Bereich zwar zahlreiche Konterreformen durch, doch nach Stalins Tod machte der Nachkriegsaufschwung es möglich, die allgemeine Situation der Frauen ständig zu verbessern: Das bedeutete ein Renteneintrittsalter von 55 Jahren, gleiche Bezahlung für gleiche Arbeit, Arbeitserleichterungen für Schwangere und eine voll bezahlte Karenz von 56 Tagen vor und 56 Tagen nach der Geburt eines Kindes. Der Anteil der Frauen an den Hochschulen stieg von 28% im Jahr 1927, über 43% im Jahr 1960 auf 49% im Jahr 1970. Zu dieser Zeit erreichten nur Finnland, Frankreich und die Vereinigten Staaten einen Wert von über 40%.

Die Anzahl der Betreuungsplätze für Vorschulkinder stieg von 500.000 im Jahr 1960 auf über fünf Millionen im Jahr 1970. Die Fortschritte der Planwirtschaft bedeuteten, dass sich die Lebenserwartung der Frauen von 30 auf 74 Jahre mehr als verdoppelte und die Kindersterblichkeit um 90% gesenkt wurde. Im Jahr 1975 waren 73 % des Lehrpersonals Frauen. Im Jahr 1959 arbeiteten ein Drittel der Frauen in Berufen in denen 70 % der Arbeitskräfte weiblich waren, bis zum Jahr 1970 steigerte sich dieser Wert auf 55 %. 1970 waren 98 % der Krankenpflegerinnen Frauen, 95 % der Bibliotheksagestellten und 75 % der Ärzteschaft. Im Jahr 1959 gab es 600 Frauen mit Doktortitel, 1984 waren es 5.600.

Die Restauration des Kapitalismus hat diese Errungenschaften rasch wieder verschwinden lassen und Frauen zurück eine Position der Haussklaverei gebracht, die unter dem heuchlerischen Begriff der «Familie» firmiert. Der Grossteil der Krisenlasten wird so auf den Rücken der Frauen abgewälzt.

Warum brach die Sowjetunion zusammen?

Trotz ihrer beispiellosen Erfolge brach die Sowjetunion zusammen. Man muss sich der Frage stellen, warum das geschehen ist. Die Erklärungen der bürgerlichen «Experten» sind so vorhersehbar wie inhaltsleer: Der Sozialismus (oder Kommunismus) ist gescheitert. Ende der Geschichte. Die Führungen der Arbeiterbewegung wissen auch nicht mehr dazu zu sagen; die rechten Reformisten plappern wie immer die Ansichten der herrschenden Klasse nach und bei den Linksreformisten herrscht betretenes Schweigen. Die Führer der kommunistischen Parteien im Westen, die gestern noch alle Verbrechen des Stalinismus kritiklos unterstützten, versuchen sich jetzt von einem diskreditierten Regime zu distanzieren, haben aber keine Antworten auf die Fragen der ArbeiterInnen und Jugendlichen, die nach ernsthaften Erklärungen verlangen.

Die Errungenschaften der sowjetischen Industrie und Wissenschaft sind schon erwähnt worden. Doch die Sowjetunion hatte noch eine andere Seite. Der demokratische Arbeiterstaat, den Lenin und Trotzki errichteten, wurde von Stalins ungeheuerlich deformiertem, bürokratischem Staat ersetzt. Dieser schreckliche Rückschritt bedeutete die Zerstörung der politischen Macht der Arbeiterklasse, doch die grundlegenden sozioökonomischen Errungenschaften des Oktobers verblieben, nämlich die neuen Eigentumsverhältnisse, deren deutlichster Ausdruck die Planwirtschaft war.

In den 1920ern schrieb Trotzki eine Broschüre unter dem Titel: Hin zum Kapitalismus oder Sozialismus? Das war immer die entscheidende Frage für die Sowjetunion. Die offizielle Propaganda behauptete zunächst, die Sowjetunion bewege sich unaufhaltsam auf die Errichtung des Sozialismus zu, ab 1960 behauptete Chruschtschow, der Sozialismus sei bereits verwirklicht und die UdSSR werde innerhalb von zwanzig Jahren eine völlig kommunistische Gesellschaft errichten. Die Wahrheit war allerdings, dass die Sowjetunion sich in eine völlig andere Richtung bewegte.

Eine Entwicklung in Richtung Sozialismus würde eine schrittweise Verringerung der Ungleichheit bedeuten. In der Sowjetunion wuchs die Ungleichheit dagegen ständig an. Zwischen den Massen und den Millionen privilegierter Beamter und ihren Familien mit ihren hübschen Kleidern, grossen Autos, bequemen Wohnungen und Landhäusern tat sich ein weiter Abgrund auf. Der Gegensatz war umso bedeutender, weil er in so schreiendem Widerspruch zur offiziellen Propaganda über den Sozialismus und Kommunismus stand.

Aus der Perspektive der Massen lässt sich wirtschaftlicher Erfolg nicht auf die Menge des produzierten Stahls, Zements oder elektrischen Stroms reduzieren. Der Lebensstandard hängt vor allem von der Produktion hochqualitativer, billiger und leicht verfügbarer Waren des täglichen Bedarfs ab: Kleidung, Schuhe, Essen, Waschmaschinen, Fernseher usw. In diesem Bereich hinkte die Sowjetunion dem Westen weit hinterher. Das alleine wäre vielleicht noch tolerierbar gewesen, doch entscheiden war, dass einige Leute in den Genuss dieser Dinge kamen, während sie den meisten verwehrt blieben.

Der Stalinismus konnte sich trotz seiner schreienden Widersprüche deshalb so lang halten, weil die Planwirtschaft jahrzehntelang immense Erfolge erzielte. Doch die Herrschaft der Bürokratie führte zu Korruption, Misswirtschaft und Verschwendung, bis sie schliesslich die Errungenschaften der Planwirtschaft selbst zu untergraben begann. Je weiter sich die UdSSR entwickelte, desto schädlicher wurden die Auswirkungen der bürokratischen Herrschaft.

Die Bürokratie stellte immer schon eine gewaltige Bremse auf der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte dar. Doch während der Aufbau einer Schwerindustrie noch relativ leicht zu bewerkstelligen war, lässt sich eine moderne Wirtschaft mit ihren komplexen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Schwer- und Leichtindustrie, Wissenschaft und Technik nicht einfach durch bürokratische Befehle aufbauen, ohne dass es zu schwerwiegenden Disproportionen kommt. Die Sowjetwirtschaft wurde zudem durch die hohen Rüstungsausgaben und die Kosten der eisernen Kontrolle Osteuropas belastet.

Trotz der immensen Ressourcen, die sie zur Verfügung hatte, trotz der mächtigen industriellen Basis und einer Armee von gut ausgebildeten Ingenieuren und Wissenschaftlern war die Bürokratie unfähig, die gleichen Resultate zu erreichen wie der Westen. Bei den zentralen Indikatoren der Arbeitsproduktivität und des Lebensstandards hinkte die Sowjetunion dem Westen hinterher. Der Hauptgrund dafür waren die Millionen korrupten und gierigen Beamten, die die Sowjetunion ohne jede Kontrolle durch die Arbeiterklasse führten.

Solange die Produktivkräfte sich in der UdSSR weiterentwickelten, war die prokapitalistische Tendenz unbedeutend. Doch die Sackgasse, die der Stalinismus darstellte, führte zu einer völligen Veränderung der Situation. Mitte der 1960er Jahre stiess das System der bürokratisch gesteuerten Planwirtschaft an seine Grenzen. Sobald sich herausstellte, dass die Sowjetunion ausserstande war, bessere Ergebnisse zu erzielen als der Kapitalismus, war ihr Schicksal besiegelt.

Schon 1972 entwickelte Ted Grant die brilliante Perspektive, dass der Zusammenbruch des Stalinismus unausweichlich war. Aus marxistischer Sicht war das die einzig mögliche Perspektive. Der Marxismus zeigt auf, dass die Lebensfähigkeit eines gegebenen sozioökonomischen Systems letztendlich von seiner Fähigkeit abhängt, die Produktivkräfte zu entwickeln. Zwischen 1965 und 1970 betrug die durchschnittliche Wachstumsrate 5,4%. Zwischen 1971 und 1978 betrug sie nur mehr 3,7%.

Gleichzeitig betrug sie in den entwickelten kapitalistischen Ländern der OECD 3,5%. Die Wachstumsrate der Sowjetunion war also nicht mehr bedeutend höher als die Wachstumsrate, die sich im Kapitalismus erreichen liess. Das war ein Desaster. Daraus resultierend fiel der Anteil der UdSSR an der weltweiten Produktion von 12,5% im Jahr 1960 auf 12,3% im Jahr 1979. In der selben Zeitspanne erhöhte Japan seinen Anteil von 4,7% auf 9,2%. Chruschtschows Gerede darüber, die USA einzuholen und zu überholen, löste sich in Luft auf. In weiterer Folge fiel die Wachstumsrate bis zum Ende der Breschnew-Periode (der «Periode der Stagnation», wie sie Gorbatschow nannte) auf null.

Zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte die Bürokratie aufgehört, auch nur die relativ gesehen fortschrittliche Rolle zu spielen, die sie bislang gespielt hatte, und so geriet das Sowjetregime in eine Krise. Ted Grant war der einzige Marxist, der daraus die nötigen Schlussfolgerungen zog. Er erklärte, dass das Regime erledigt war, sobald es nicht mehr in der Lage war, bessere Resultate als der Kapitalismus zu erzielen. Im Gegensatz dazu nahm jede andere Strömung, von den Bürgerlichen bis zu den Stalinisten an, dass die scheinbar monolithischen Regimes in Russland, China und Osteuropa sich fast unbegrenzt an der Macht halten könnten.

Wie wir gesehen haben, hat die politische Konterrevolution der stalinistischen Bürokratie das Regime der Rätedemokratie in Russland völlig zerstört, dabei aber die neuen Eigentumsverhältnisse, die von der Oktoberrevolution geschaffen worden waren, unangetastet gelassen. Die herrschende Bürokratie stützte sich auf die Planwirtschaft und spielte eine relativ fortschrittliche Rolle, indem sie die Produktivkräfte entwickelte, wenn auch zum dreifach höheren Kostenpreis als im Kapitalismus, aufgrund eines erschütternden Ausmasses von Verschwendung, Korruption und Misswirtschaft, wie Trotzki selbst vor dem Krieg feststellte, als die Wirtschaft noch um 20% jährlich wuchs.

Trotz seiner Erfolge konnte der Stalinismus die Probleme der Gesellschaft nicht lösen. Er stellte eine historische Anomalie von gigantischen Ausmassen dar und war das Produkt einer besonderen geschichtlichen Verkettung von Ereignissen. Die Sowjetunion beruhte unter Stalin auf einem grundsätzlichen Widerspruch. Die Planwirtschaft stand im Widerspruch zum bürokratischen Staat. Schon in der ersten Fünfjahresplanperiode machte sich die Bürokratie enormer Verschwendung schuldig. Dieser Widerspruch verschwand mit der Entwicklung der Wirtschaft nicht, sondern spielte eine immer schädlichere Rolle, bis das System schliesslich unter ihm zusammenbrach.

Die Geschichte ist heutzutage Allgemeinwissen, aber es ist ziemlich leicht, im Nachhinein Bescheid zu wissen. Es ist weniger leicht, historische Prozesse vorherzusehen, wie es Ted Grant in seinen Schriften über Russland gelungen ist, in denen der Verfall des Stalinismus mit beeindruckender Genauigkeit vorgezeichnet wurde. Hier allein findet sich eine umfassende Analyse der Gründe für die Krise des bürokratischen Regimes, die von allen anderen Kommentatoren bis heute nicht verstanden werden.

Trotzkis Analyse

Der Ausgangspunkt für das vorliegende Werk war die brillante Analyse, die Leo Trotzki 1936 in seinem Meisterwerk Die verratene Revolution entwickelt hat. Auch heute noch behält sie ihre Klarheit und Bedeutung. Niemand, der verstehen will, was in Russland passiert ist, kommt an dieser grossartigen marxistischen Analyse vorbei. Aus verständlichen Gründen gibt Trotzki jedoch keine endgültige Antwort auf die Frage des Klassencharakters der UdSSR, sondern lässt die Frage offen, in welche Richtung dieser sich letztendlich bewegen wird.

Der grosse russische Marxist verstand, dass das Schicksal der Sowjetunion von der Auseinandersetzung zwischen lebendigen Kräften abhing, die untrennbar mit globalen Entwicklungen verbunden waren: Solche Entwicklungen liessen sich nicht präzise vorhersagen. Tatsächlich hatte der sehr spezielle Verlauf des Zweiten Weltkriegs eine entscheidende Auswirkung auf das Schicksal der Sowjetunion, das niemand hatte vorhersehen können. Trotzki schrieb:

«In welcher Richtung sich während der kommenden drei, fünf, zehn Jahre die Dynamik der ökonomischen Widersprüche und der sozialen Antagonismen in der Sowjetgesellschaft entwickeln wird, auf diese Frage gibt es noch keine endgültige und unwiderrufliche Antwort. Der Ausgang hängt vom Kampf der lebendigen sozialen Kräfte ab, und zwar nicht nur im nationalen, sondern auch im internationalen Massstab. Auf jeder neuen Etappe bedarf es daher einer konkreten Analyse der realen Verhältnisse und Tendenzen in ihrem Zusammenhang und beständigem Aufeinanderwirken.» (Trotzki, Verratene Revolution, marxists.org)

Trotzki achtete darauf, die Zukunft des Sowjetstaats mit einem Fragezeichen zu versehen. Seine Vorhersage, dass die stalinistische Bürokratie sich zur Erhaltung ihrer Privilegien «unvermeidlich nach Stützen in den [kapitalistischen] Besitzverhältnissen umsehen» muss, erwies sich als absolut richtig. Das abstossende Spektakel, in dem altgediente Kader der kommunistischen Partei ihre Parteibücher zerrissen und sich mit der gleichen Leichtigkeit, mit der man aus einem Zugabteil ins nächste wechselt, offen in «Unternehmer» verwandelten, macht deutlich, wie weit sich das stalinistische Regime vom Sozialismus entfernt hatte.

Trotzki erwartete nicht, dass das stalinistische Regime sich so lang halten würde. In seinem letzten Werk, Stalin, spielt er zwar mit dem Gedanken, dass das Regime sich in seiner damaligen Form noch Jahrzehnte lang halten könnte, doch das Buch war zum Zeitpunkt seiner Ermordung unfertig und es war ihm nicht möglich, die Idee weiterzuentwickeln. Die Sowjetunion ging aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg erheblich gestärkt hervor. Das stalinistische Regime, das Trotzki für eine vorübergehende historische Anomalie gehalten hatte, überlebte noch einige Jahrzehnte. Das hatte weitreichende Auswirkungen auf alle anderen Faktoren, insbesondere auf das Bewusstsein der Massen und der Bürokratie selbst.

Trotzki hatte gehofft, dass das stalinistische Regime durch eine politische Revolution der Arbeiterklasse gestürzt werden würde. Sollte das nicht geschehen, so zog er in Erwägung, würde die bürokratische Konterrevolution letztendlich im Sturz der neuen Eigentumsverhältnisse münden, die die Oktoberrevolution hervorgebracht hatte:

«Die Konterevolution setzt ein, wenn der Faden der fortschrittlichen sozialen Errungenschaften damit beginnt, sich wieder von seiner Spule abzuwickeln. Diese Abwicklung scheint ohne ein Ende in Sicht zu sein. Doch ein Teil der Errungenschaften bleibt immer erhalten. Deshalb bleibt der proletarische Klassencharakter der UdSSR trotz der monströsen bürokratischen Degenerationen weiter erhalten. Bedenken wir aber, dass der Prozess der Abwicklung noch nicht abgeschlossen ist und dass das Schicksal Europas und der Welt in den kommenden Jahrzehnten noch nicht entschieden ist. Der russische Thermidor hätte zweifellos eine neue Epoche bürgerlicher Herrschaft eröffnet, hätte diese sich nicht auf der ganzen Welt als verbraucht erwiesen. Jedenfalls hat der Kampf gegen die Gleichheit und die Entstehung der sehr tiefen gesellschaftlichen Gegensätze es nicht geschafft, das sozialistische Bewusstsein der Massen und die Verstaatlichung der Produktionsmittel und des Landes, die grundlegenden sozialistischen Errungenschaften der Revolution zu zerstören. Obwohl sie diese Errungenschaften untergräbt, hat die Bürokratie noch nicht versucht, zur Wiederherstellung des Privateigentums an den Produktionsmitteln zu schreiten.» (Trotzsky, Stalin, Wellred Books 2016, S. 690, unsere Übersetzung)

Die Perspektive der kapitalistischen Restauration in Russland und ihrer Auswirkungen wurde von Trotzki mit bemerkenswerter Klarheit schon 1936 erklärt:

«Ein Zusammenbruch des Sowjetregimes würde unweigerlich einen Zusammenbruch der Planwirtschaft und damit die Abschaffung des staatlichen Eigentums nach sich ziehen. Die Zwangsbindung der Trusts untereinander und zwischen den Fabriken eines Trusts würde sich lockern. Die erfolgreichsten Unternehmungen würden sich beeilen, selbständige Wege zu gehen. Sie könnten sich in Aktiengesellschaften umwandeln oder eine andere transitorische Eigentumsform finden, etwa mit Gewinnbeteiligung der Arbeiter, Gleichzeitig und noch leichter würden die Kolchosen zerfallen. Der Sturz der heutigen bürokratischen Diktatur, wenn keine neue sozialistische Macht sie ersetzt, wäre also gleichbedeutend mit einer Rückkehr zu kapitalistischen Verhältnissen bei katastrophalem Rückgang von Wirtschaft und Kultur.» (Trotzki, Verratene Revolution, marxists.org)

Staatskapitalismus?

Die Brillanz, mit der Trotzki die entscheidenden Elemente der Entwicklung der Sowjetunion erkannt hat, ist herausragend. In völligem Gegensatz dazu steht die theoretisch wie praktisch bankrotte Auffassung vom «Staatskapitalismus», die seit Jahrzehnten in abgewandelten Formen in den Köpfen unterschiedlicher ultralinken Sekten herumschwirrt. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg entwickelte Ted Grant Trotzkis Analyse des proletarischen Bonapartismus weiter – vor allem in dem Text The Marxist theory of the state, in der die Vorstellung vom «Staatskapitalismus» in Russland umfassend widerlegt wird.

Dieser «Theorie» zufolge war das Regime in der UdSSR schon längst kapitalistisch. Warum sollten Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter also die alten Formen des «kapitalistischen» Staatseigentums gegen die aufstrebende Bourgeoisie verteidigen, wenn es hier keinen Unterschied gibt? Diese Argumentation würde die Arbeiterklasse angesichts der kapitalistischen Konterrevolution natürlich völlig entwaffnen und ist ein deutliches Beispiel dafür, wie theoretische Fehler zwangsläufig zu praktischen Katastrophen führen.

Die Krise des Stalinismus hatte mit der Krise des Kapitalismus nichts gemein. Letztere ergibt sich aus der Anarchie des Markts und dem Privateigentum und ist wesentlich eine Überproduktionskrise. In der UdSSR gab es keinerlei Anzeichen für Überproduktion, weil es sich um eine Planwirtschaft handelte.

Dem allen muss man die Beschränkungen des Nationalstaats hinzufügen, der seine Nützlichkeit schon längst überlebt hat und zu einem grossen Hemmnis für die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte geworden ist. Das erklärt, warum jedes Land, auch die grösste Supermacht, sich der Konkurrenz des Weltmarkts stellen muss. Marx hat das vorausgesehen, und das erklärt, warum der Gedanke an «Sozialismus in einem Land» eine reaktionäre Utopie ist.

Karikatur des Sozialismus

Was in Russland und Osteuropa scheiterte, war nicht der Kommunismus oder Sozialismus in dem Sinne, wie Marx oder Lenin ihn verstanden, sondern eine bürokratische und totalitäre Karikatur. Lenin erklärte, dass die Bewegung hin zum Sozialismus die demokratische Kontrolle der Industrie, der Gesellschaft und des Staates durch das Proletariat erfordert. Echter Sozialismus ist unvereinbar mit der Herrschaft einer privilegierten bürokratischen Elite, was unweigerlich mit kolossaler Korruption, Vetternwirtschaft, Verschwendung, Misswirtschaft und Chaos einhergehen wird.

Die verstaatlichten Planwirtschaften in der UdSSR und in Osteuropa erzielten erstaunliche Ergebnisse in den Bereichen Industrie, Wissenschaft, Gesundheit und Bildung. Doch wie Trotzki bereits 1936 voraussagte, untergrub das bürokratische Regime letztlich die Planwirtschaft und bereitete den Weg für ihren Zusammenbruch und die Rückkehr des Kapitalismus.

Wie lautet die Bilanz der Oktoberrevolution und des grossen planwirtschaftlichen Experiments, das ihr folgte? Welche Auswirkungen haben sie auf die Zukunft der Menschheit? Und welche Schlussfolgerungen sollten daraus gezogen werden? Die erste Feststellung sollte eigentlich selbstverständlich sein. Unabhängig davon, ob man für oder gegen die Oktoberrevolution ist, kann es keinen Zweifel daran geben, dass dieses eine Ereignis den Lauf der Weltgeschichte auf eine noch nie dagewesene Weise verändert hat. Das gesamte zwanzigste Jahrhundert wurde von seinen Folgen beherrscht. Diese Tatsache wird selbst von den konservativsten Kommentatoren und den Gegnern der Oktoberrevolution anerkannt.

Der Autor dieser Zeilen ist natürlich ein entschiedener Verfechter der Oktoberrevolution. Ich betrachte sie als das grösste einzelne Ereignis der Menschheitsgeschichte. Warum sage ich das? Weil hier zum ersten Mal, wenn man von dem glorreichen, aber kurzlebigen Ereignis der Pariser Kommune absieht, Millionen von einfachen Männern und Frauen ihre Ausbeuter stürzten, ihr Schicksal in die eigenen Hände nahmen und zumindest mit der Aufgabe begannen, die Gesellschaft zu verändern.

Dass diese Aufgabe unter bestimmten Bedingungen in Bahnen gelenkt wurde, die von den Führern der Revolution nicht vorhergesehen wurden, entkräftet weder die Ideen der Oktoberrevolution, noch schmälert es die Bedeutung der kolossalen Errungenschaften, die die UdSSR in den folgenden 70 Jahren erzielte.

Die Feinde des Sozialismus werden verächtlich erwidern, dass das Experiment gescheitert ist. Wir antworten mit den Worten des grossen Philosophen Spinoza, dass unsere Aufgabe weder darin besteht, zu weinen noch zu lachen, sondern zu verstehen. Doch in allen Schriften der bürgerlichen Feinde des Sozialismus sucht man vergeblich nach einer ernsthaften Erklärung für das, was in der Sowjetunion geschehen ist. Ihre so genannten Analysen entbehren jeder wissenschaftlichen Grundlage, weil sie von blindem Hass motiviert sind, der bestimmte Klasseninteressen widerspiegelt.

Es war nicht die degenerierte russische Bourgeoisie, die im Oktober 1917 auf den Müllhaufen der Geschichte geworfen wurde, sondern die verstaatlichte Planwirtschaft, die Russland in die Moderne führte; die Fabriken, Strassen und Schulen baute, Männer und Frauen ausbildete, brillante Wissenschaftler hervorbrachte, die Armee aufbaute, die Hitler besiegte, und den ersten Menschen ins All schickte.

Trotz der Verbrechen der Bürokratie wurde die Sowjetunion rasch von einer rückständigen, halbfeudalen Wirtschaft in eine fortschrittliche, moderne Industrienation verwandelt. Am Ende war die Bürokratie jedoch nicht zufrieden mit dem kolossalen Reichtum und den Privilegien, die sie durch die Ausplünderung des Sowjetstaates erlangt hatte. Wie Trotzki vorausgesagt hatte, wechselte sie in das Lager der kapitalistischen Restauration und verwandelte sich von einer parasitären Kaste in eine herrschende Klasse.

Die Restauration des Kapitalismus bedeutete für die Menschen in Russland und in den ehemaligen Republiken der UdSSR einen grossen Rückschritt. Die Gesellschaft wurde zurückgeworfen und musste den ganzen Segen der kapitalistischen Zivilisation kennen lernen: Religion, Prostitution, Drogen und all die anderen «Segnungen» des Kapitalismus. Vorerst ist es dem Putin-Regime gelungen, sich zu konsolidieren. Doch der Anschein von Stärke ist illusorisch. Der russische Kapitalismus ist, wie die Hütte im russischen Märchen, auf Hühnerbeinen gebaut.

Die Achillesferse des russischen Kapitalismus ist, dass er nun durch eine Nabelschnur mit dem Schicksal des Weltkapitalismus verbunden ist. Er ist allen Stürmen und Belastungen eines Systems ausgesetzt, das sich in einer tödlichen Krise befindet. Dies wird tiefgreifende Auswirkungen auf Russland haben, sowohl in wirtschaftlicher als auch in politischer Hinsicht. Früher oder später werden sich die russischen Arbeiter von den Auswirkungen der Niederlage erholen und zur Tat schreiten. Wenn das geschieht, werden sie schnell die Traditionen der Oktoberrevolution und die Ideen des genuinen Bolschewismus wiederentdecken. Das ist der einzige Weg nach vorn für die Arbeiter Russlands und der ganzen Welt.

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Workers‘ democracy in the Russian Revolution

Daniel Morley — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:00:32 +0000

The Russian Revolution is the greatest event in human history, because for the first time the working class not only led a revolution, but took power directly into their own hands and proceeded to transform society. The act is slandered as undemocratic, when in reality it involved the most far-reaching and revolutionary democracy the world has ever seen. In this article, Daniel Morley explains how this worked in practice.

“Comrades, working people! Remember that now you yourselves are at the helm of state. No one will help you if you yourselves do not unite and take into your hands all affairs of the state. Your Soviets are from now on the organs of state authority, legislative bodies with full powers.

“Rally around your Soviets. Strengthen them. Get on with the job yourselves; begin right at the bottom, do not wait for anyone.”

These powerful words of Lenin, addressed to the Russian masses 10 days after taking power, faithfully reflect his real attitude to workers’ democracy. One day previously, Lenin had made the same point in more detail.

“The creative, living, activity of the masses, is the principal factor of the new society. The workers must begin to organize workers’ control of their factories, revitalize the farms with industrial products and exchange them for wheat. Every object, every pound of bread should be counted, for socialism is above all else census-keeping. Socialism is not created by orders from on high. It is a stranger to mindless, official bureaucratism. Living, breathing socialism is the creation of the popular masses themselves.”

With these revolutionary proclamations, Lenin announced the greatest event in history and the beginning of a radically new era. Let no one lie that the October Revolution was undemocratic. The Russian Revolution, as these statements show, ushered in the most thoroughly democratic form of state ever realised.

Under capitalism, we hear a lot about democracy of a different type. Our politicians, media, prominent intellectuals, the establishment in general, never tire of proudly extolling the virtues of ‘democracy’, at least in the abstract.

Where they are vague and abstract, let us be concrete. The democracy they praise is actually only one form of democracy, that is bourgeois democracy. This, as Lenin said, is like democracy in Ancient Greece – democracy for the slave owners. It masks the dictatorship of capital.

Workers’ democracy is very different, indeed it is directly opposite from bourgeois democracy. Bourgeois democracy is formal and contrived. Insofar as it even exists – and don’t forget it was fought for against the ruling class over many centuries – its associated rights and freedoms say very little about what you really have the freedom to do. We all have the formal freedom to vote – but this is in the context of an economic system that we have no control over. A clear recent example is the referendum on EU-imposed austerity in Greece, in which 61 percent voted against the austerity. This was duly ignored because it did not conform to the imperatives of the all-important European banks, and even harsher austerity was meted out as a punishment.

That voting in this system usually achieves little, and that the real decisions are controlled, day by day, by big banks and other leading bourgeois figures behind the scenes – is a widely held opinion, and rightly so. Parliament is largely a talking shop. Over the last period, the struggles within the British Labour Party have been very instructive of the extent to which the ruling class manipulates and hems in the democratic process behind the scenes. Yes, workers can join and participate in the Labour Party, which is a real freedom. But should they vote in a leader from the left, this will face relentless opposition from organisations such as Progress – a right-wing faction of Labour funded by billionaires. At every step, the bourgeoisie has its money and agents pulling strings, whilst the workers struggle on meagre incomes and lack the time to devote to politics. Democracy in the end is a material, and above all, a class question.

The first example of a workers’ state

Workers’ democracy is an altogether different form of rule – it is the rule of the majority. It is not a contrived and fixed set of rules drawn up to mask what is really happening, nor does it serve to hinder as much as to empower. Workers’ democracy places real power in the hands of the proletariat. It is a real, practical and initially spontaneous development.

It is not some ideal plan invented by Marxists. Instead, we have derived it from real events. The first example, from which Marx and Lenin derived much inspiration, was the Paris Commune of 1871.

“[The Paris Commune] was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

“Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage.

“In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents…. Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes” (Marx, The Civil War in France, The Third Address).

From this inspirational and heroic initial experience, Marx and then Lenin derived general principles of the form of a democratic workers’ state, which we will discuss later. The main point for us here is that workers’ democracy is a product of the practical experience of the working class, and reflects the real needs of the workers’ revolutionary struggle of self-emancipation.

It was also from this experience that Marx came up with the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. By this he meant not a dictatorship over the proletariat, but exactly what we saw in the Paris Commune – the working class democratically organising itself as the ruling class and running society on its terms. In Marx’s day, the term ‘dictatorship’ lacked the bad connotations it has today, and was actually a reference to a tradition of Ancient Rome.

One of the abstractions of bourgeois democracy is that we are all equal atoms, assumed to command equal resources and time, and therefore each vote represents exactly the same as the next. But behind this fiction lies the reality of incredible material inequalities, and, crucially, conflicting class interests. But in bourgeois democracy, these fundamental truths are ignored, and behind the scenes, the vast wealth of the capitalists pulls the strings.

From the standpoint of these liberal abstractions, workers’ democracy appears less democratic, for it necessarily excludes the capitalists. But this flows from the conditions from which it springs. As a practical and real democracy, this is necessary. Bourgeois democracy gives everyone the vote (at least, after various struggles won universal suffrage) as a means to hide where power really lies, and to condemn the democratic system to the status of a useless talking shop.

When workers form a trade union, do they invite the boss into its meetings? Would it be more democratic if they did so? Or would it hinder their ability to discuss freely and put into practice their decisions?

Workers’ democracy, across society, must mean the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as in the workplace it must mean the exclusion of the boss. It is honest about it. Bourgeois democracy is really the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, only it is not honest.

The Soviet system

The Soviet state was built through just such a spontaneous, living and practical example of workers’ democracy – the Soviets. They were the greatest-ever creations of workers’ democracy. Many of their principles and rules were inspired by those of the Paris Commune, the first real instance of workers’ power.

„The new constitution did not so much create new forms of government as register & regularise those which were in course of being established by uncoordinated initiative in the aftermath of the revolutionary upheaval” (EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1932, vol I, p 134).

The word Soviet means council, or alternatively advice or assembly. Soviets were initially created in the 1905 Revolution, and then recreated in 1917, as defensive organisations of the working class. Informal and flexible, their form depended on the needs and stage of development of the class struggle. Generally, workers and members of the local community would elect delegates from their own workplace or community to attend the local Soviet, which would debate matters pertaining to the revolution and then put decisions into practice. The experience of building Soviets facilitated the most enormous advancing of political consciousness amongst workers.

Due to their spontaneous and informal character, and owing to their origins in the revolution, they quite naturally took on the character of being a class-based democracy, or organs of the oppressed classes to fight for their emancipation. It never occurred to anyone to formally exclude the rich, for they never turned up.

Although upon their first appearance in 1905, many Bolsheviks did not grasp the significance of Soviets, Lenin did. For him, these were not mere ad hoc committees of defence, but organs of workers’ power in potential; the embryo of a new, workers’ state, similar to the Paris Commune. The possession of this idea was a decisive difference between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1917 – the latter often leading the Soviets without understanding them – and it inspired the all-important slogan that defined the October Revolution: ‘All Power to the Soviets!”

Following the seizure of power on 7 November (modern calendar) 1917, the Soviets finally became the organs of the new workers’ state, as Lenin had envisaged 12 years before.

On 16 January 1918, the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People was passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets and was published the next day in Izvestia. It formally declared that, throughout Russia, the Soviets were sovereign. Unsurprisingly this resolution, when presented to the rival Constituent Assembly the next day, was rejected.

But we should not forget that, included within this victory of workers’ democracy in a socialist revolution, was the realisation of a whole swathe of bourgeois democratic freedoms to a hitherto unheard of degree. There was a huge extension of rights & freedoms. Freedom of speech and of assembly were guaranteed, and indeed workers were positively encouraged to assemble! Freedom of religion (whilst stripping the official church of its official status and vast land holdings), freedom of sexuality, equal freedom for women and men to divorce and equality in all other aspects of marriage, the right to abortion – all these and more were granted by the October Revolution and the Soviet government.

On 3 July 1918, the draft of the new Soviet Constitution was finished, and would be presented to the Fifth Congress of Soviets later on for approval. It declared:

“[T]he federal character of the republic; the separation of church from state and school from church; freedom of speech, opinion and assembly for the workers, assured by placing at their disposal the technical means of producing papers, pamphlets and books as well as premises for meetings; the obligation for all citizens to work on the principle ‘he that does not work, neither shall he eat’ [this was directed against bourgeois individuals who lived off the labour of others, not the disabled or jobless proletarians]; the obligation for all workers of military service in defence of the republic; the right of citizenship for all workers living on Russian territory and of asylum for foreigners persecuted on the ground of political or religious offences; and the abolition of all discrimination on grounds of race or nationality.” (EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1932, vol I, p 135, our emphasis).

It is a common feature of bourgeois society that it cannot even realise its ‘own’ freedoms. In Britain, with the ‘mother of Parliaments’, we have another (unelected) parliament with the right to block legislation passed in the elected chamber. It is composed of appointees, aristocratic peers and the anachronistic church hierarchy. Britain’s head of state is the queen, to whom the military swear allegiance. It is the task of the socialist revolution to fully realise all democratic freedoms, as well as going on to put the organised workers in charge and to end capitalism.

The Soviet constitution declared that the supreme power in society was:

“[The] All-Russian Congress of Soviets, composed of representatives of city soviets on the basis of one deputy to every 25,000 inhabitants and of provincial Soviets on the basis of one deputy to every 125,000 inhabitants. The All-Russian Congress elected the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of not more than 200 members which exercised all powers of the congress when the congress was not in session” (Ibid, p136).

Similar provisions were made for how regional Congresses of Soviets, responsible for smaller regions, would be composed of the smaller, local Soviets, which according to the constitution, “down to [the] smallest, is fully autonomous in local questions, but conforms its activity to the general decrees & resolutions of the central power & to larger Soviet organisations”.

In 1918, the All-Russian Congress, which was composed not of professional politicians elected only once every five years, but of working-class delegates from all over society, met four times, usually for about a week. It debated with intensity the fundamental questions of the revolution and how to build a new society. Specifically, it “authorises, amends and supplements the constitution, directs general policy, declares peace and war, fixes the plan for the nation’s economic life, votes the budget, regulates financial and similar arrangements, legislates and amnesties” (Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution, 1992 p273).

The Soviet constitution required at least two such congresses every year, which would mean the executive committee would be held accountable and re-elected by the delegates at least twice yearly. The executive committee, or one-third of local Soviets, had the right to call emergency Congresses. This body was not an invention of the Bolsheviks. In fact, the first Congress was held in the middle of 1917, before the October Revolution made it sovereign. It was a living product of the revolution created by the workers’ themselves, and therefore had democratic legitimacy in their eyes.

The principles of the Paris Commune

The most general principles of this democracy were formulated by Lenin in State and Revolution, and inspired by the experience of the Paris Commune (as well as of the Russian Soviets in 1905 and early 1917). They were:

1) Free and democratic elections and the right of recall for all officials.

2) No official to receive a wage higher than a skilled worker.

3) No standing army but the armed people.

4) Gradually, all the tasks of running the state to be carried out in turn by the workers: when everybody is a „bureaucrat“ in turn, nobody is a bureaucrat.

These are the general principles and watchwords of proletarian power, the best rules by which the working class retains democratic control of their state. At the Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1918, Lenin also argued for the following ten principles of the new power,

Unity of all the poor and exploited masses.
Unity of the conscious, active minority for the re-education of the whole labouring population.
Abolition of parliamentarianism, which separates legislative from executive authority.
A unity between the masses and the State which will be closer than in the older democratic forms.
Arming of the workers and peasants.
More democracy and less formalism, greater facilities for election and recall of delegates.
Close links between the political authority and production.
The possibility of eliminating bureaucracy.
The transition from the formal democracy of rich and poor to the real democracy of the toilers.
Participation of all members of the Soviets in the management and administration of the State.

One feature of the Paris Commune that Marx noted positively was the fusing of the executive, legislative and judicial functions. Bourgeois democracy insists upon their separation, ostensibly as protection against ‘tyranny’. But tyranny in the eyes of the bourgeois liberals means primarily state tyranny against private property, and property for them is the key to freedom. The separation of powers really serves to preserve the capitalist status quo, to grant capital the freedom to dominate behind the scenes whilst the state restricts its own power. The socialist transformation of society is an enormous practical task requiring ‘all hands on deck’, ‘all forces to the point of attack’. The working class, with its finger on the pulse of production, must exercise collective power over the economy and society in order to reorganise it to meet the needs of the masses and end the anarchy of the market.

The franchise

In making the Soviets sovereign, the constitution made the franchise within this system exclusive to those who work, as well as soldiers and the disabled; those who employed others to work for them were excluded from participating. Naturally, there were no gender restrictions to the franchise. Soviets could recall their delegates, if unhappy with them, at any time. As Lenin said, “All bureaucratic formalities and limitations disappear from the elections, and the masses themselves determine the ordering and timing of the elections with free right of recall of those elected.”

Soviets were the real organs of power that the workers had themselves created, elected directly from the factories and truly reflecting their wishes and power. They could not involve the capitalists, who had never even tried to participate in Soviets. For the Soviet system to be what it needed to be – the most democratic system ever created – it had to base itself exclusively on the living struggle of the masses against their exploiters.

Lenin wrote that the Soviets were originally politically open and inclusive entities, noting in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918):

„[T]he disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie is not a necessary and indispensable feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And in Russia, the Bolsheviks, who long before October put forward the slogan of proletarian dictatorship, did not say anything in advance about disenfranchising the exploiters. This aspect of the dictatorship did not make its appearance “according to the plan“ of any particular party; it emerged of itself in the course of the struggle…even when the Mensheviks (who compromised with the bourgeoisie) still ruled the Soviets, the bourgeoisie cut themselves off from the Soviets of their own accord, boycotted them, put themselves up in opposition to them and intrigued against them. The Soviets arose without any constitution and existed without one for more than a year (from the spring of 1917 to the summer of 1918). The fury of the bourgeoisie against this independent and omnipotent (because it was all-embracing) organisation of the oppressed; the fight, the unscrupulous, self—seeking and sordid fight, the bourgeoisie waged against the Soviets; and, lastly, the overt participation of the bourgeoisie (from the Cadets to the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, from Milyukov to Kerensky) in the Kornilov mutiny — all this paved the wayfor the formal exclusion of the bourgeoisie from the Soviets.“

In the same work, Lenin argued that, far more important for the realisation of democracy in practice, is not the granting of formal freedoms (such as that of speech), but the practical measures necessary to realise this, which again must take on a class character, i.e. it was necessary to nationalise, and grant workers’ control over newspapers, airwaves, meeting halls etc., in order to guarantee the workers access to them. They filled these legalistic provisions with material content.

As Lenin explained,

“The old bourgeois apparatus—the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)—all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation. Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy, because the printing-plants and stocks of paper are taken away from the bourgeoisie. The same thing applies to the best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manorhouses. Soviet power took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from the exploiters at one stroke, and in this way made the right of assembly—without which democracy is a fraud—a million times more democratic for the people. Indirect elections to non-local Soviets make it easier to hold congresses of Soviets, they make the entire apparatus less costly, more flexible, more accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one’s local deputy or to delegate him to a general congress of Soviets.

“Is there a single country in the world, even among the most democratic bourgeois countries, in which the average rank-and-file worker, the average rank-and-file farm labourer, or village semi-proletarian generally (i.e., the representative of the oppressed, of the overwhelming majority of the population), enjoys anything approaching such liberty of holding meetings in the best buildings, such liberty of using the largest printing-plants and biggest stocks of paper to express his ideas and to defend his interests, such liberty of promoting men and women of his own class to administer and to “knock into shape” the state, as in Soviet Russia?

“In Russia, however, the bureaucratic machine has been completely smashed, razed to the ground; the old judges have all been sent packing, the bourgeois parliament has been dispersed—and far more accessible representation has been given to the workers and peasants; their Soviets have replaced the bureaucrats, or their Soviets have been put in control of the bureaucrats, and their Soviets have been authorised to elect the judges.”

The Constituent Assembly

In 1917, the first workers’ government formed out of this process was actually a coalition between the Bolsheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries (SRs). At this time, all these parties – both left and right SRs, all the Mensheviks etc. – were participating in Soviet elections, being elected to the Congress of Soviets, and freely publishing their papers.

However, in the course of the struggle of the Civil War, beginning in mid-1918, it is true that many of these freedoms were restricted. That this was necessary shows there can be no real ’supra‘ class democracy. These other parties took up arms against the regime, they conspired with imperialist governments in the Civil War that would lead to so many deaths and so much hardship. To treat them in the manner of a gentlemanly debating club would be impossible.

After having rejected the Bolshevik Chernov’s resolution that the Constituent Assembly accept the power of the Soviets as sovereign in its first ever session on 18 January 1918, the assembly, essentially a bourgeois parliament, simply ceased to exist when its guards declared they were too tired to keep it open. In other words, real, material power lay with the Soviets. They commanded the ‘armed bodies of men’, not through compulsion but through class loyalty, since these armed bodies of men were Red Guards from the working class. Any would-be state that can find no one to enforce its will is doomed from the start.

The following day a decree dissolving the assembly succinctly explained that “the toiling masses have become convinced by their own experience that bourgeois parliamentarism is outdated; that it is completely incompatible with the construction of socialism; for only class institutions, not national institutions, can break the resistance of the propertied classes and lay the foundations for the socialist society.” (Quoted in Serge, op cit, p135).

Civil war conditions: the closure of parties on the other side of the barricades

In 1918 the country became embroiled in all-out civil war. The political conditions, as one would expect in a revolution, were increasingly fraught and violent, since taking power meant the destruction of the privileges of the old ruling class.

The typical line of attack on the Bolsheviks and the revolution is to point to the closure of other parties and the ‘free press’. No explanation or context is ever given, and such is the reverence for the ‘free press’ in liberal circles, that the mere mention of this fact is enough to condemn the entire revolution. But what was the real context?

In May 1918, the Bolshevik Volodarsky explained that “freedom to criticise the action of the Soviet government and to agitate in favour of another government are granted by us to all our opponents. We will guarantee freedom of the press for you if you understand it in this sense. But you must give up false newsmongering… lies and slander.” One must understand that in these conditions of civil war, with the entire imperialist world ranged against Russia, conscious lies were relentlessly printed in the still free bourgeois press, which directly and deliberately assisted the counter-revolution.

As if to prove Volodarsky right in his warnings, he was assassinated one month later by an SR. Then, one month later again in August, Uritsky, a leading Bolshevik and head of the Cheka (revolutionary secret police), was assassinated by a military cadet. On the very same day, Fanny Kaplan, another SR, shot Lenin three times as he left a workers’ meeting unguarded. He survived, but the injuries he sustained caused the strokes that would kill him in 1924. These three acts caused the Bolsheviks to bring back the death penalty, which they had abolished after taking power, and to organise the Red Terror to combat the White Terror, which was being spread in the Civil War.

The Fourth Congress of Soviets in March 1918 ratified the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that brought peace. This was intolerable to the Left SR coalition partners of the Bolsheviks, for they wanted to resume the war with Germany on a revolutionary basis. As a result, at this congress they walked out of the workers’ government, leading to a Bolshevik-only government. Their passion for war with Germany was so great that, four months later, the Left SRs would assassinate the German ambassador Mirbach, in an attempt to force the Germans to restart its offensive. They had used their official membership of the revolutionary secret police, the Cheka, to gain access to his embassy.

“This coup was followed by an attempt to seize power in Moscow and by insurrections in various provincial centres… Savinkov, the well-known SR terrorist, afterwards claimed to have been the organiser of these revolts, and to have been financed by funds supplied by the French military attaché in Moscow. Faced with treason on this large scale at a moment when allied forces were landing in Murmansk and Vladivostok, when the Czech legions had begun open hostilities against the Bolsheviks, and when the threat of war was looming on all sides… the [Fifth Congress of Soviets] passed a cautiously worded resolution to the effect that ‘insofar as certain sections of the Left SR Party associate themselves with the attempt to involve Russia in war through the murder of Mirbach and the rising against the Soviet power, these organisations can have no place in the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies’”. (Carr, op cit pp. 173-4).

In May 1918, the Right SRs openly advocated the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime and a return to parliamentary democracy (as if that were possible in these conditions), with the aid of British and French imperialism (which they said was necessary because they also wanted to resume the war with Germany). This SR call-to-arms led to their exclusion from the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, with the recommendation that local soviets also exclude them as part of the civil war struggle. The same applied to the Mensheviks, who adopted a similar position. In the civil war, both the SRs and the Mensheviks took up arms alongside imperialist armies and reactionary White generals from the Tsarist regime, thus contributing to far more death and economic destruction than any Bolshevik repression in this period.

But we mustn’t exaggerate the repression the Bolsheviks were forced to use. Despite the decree banning those parties and newspapers that openly preached disobedience and violence against the workers’ government, most parties and newspapers, from the Kadets (the bourgeois liberals) to the Mensheviks and anarchists, continued to operate.

“When the 6th All Russian Congress of Soviets, the first almost exclusively Bolshevik congress, met on the eve of the first anniversary of the revolution… it at once approved what was described as an ‘amnesty’, ordering the release of all those ‘detained by the organs for combating counter-revolution’ unless a definite charge of counter-revolutionary activities were brought against them.” (Ibid, p.178)

This congress also gave the right of appeal against state officials to all citizens, and granted more powers to local Soviets against the national soviet executive. The congress also sought reconciliation with Mensheviks, who at around the same time had held a conference in which they decided to accept the October Revolution and “cease working with hostile classes”. From this point onwards, i.e. the end of 1918, the Mensheviks and SRs were allowed to operate, to be elected into Soviets, publish their papers etc. Over the next two years (i.e. during the civil war), these two parties operated publicly and got elected onto Soviets. However, from time to time, they would swing back into support for counter-revolution, causing their offices to be raided, editions of their newspaper to be seized etc.

We must not forget that during all of this, an incredibly brutal civil war was being fought, and Soviet Russia was blockaded and being starved by the western imperialists. These were extremely difficult conditions in which to practice a flourishing democracy (which is what liberals seem to expect of the revolution from day one), to say the least. Nevertheless, despite the occasional banning or repression of other parties, workers were free to run their factories, elect delegates to Soviets, and were given access to the means of communication and assembly on a scale hitherto impossible due to private ownership.

Workers’ control

The Bolsheviks are known for their practice of ‘democratic centralism’. A lot of controversy is made out of this, chiefly by anarchists. They present it as uniquely centralist or authoritarian. Actually, democratic centralism is only the general principles of workers’ democracy. The decision by workers to strike is taken after a free debate and vote. That is the first part to democracy. However, once the decision has been taken to strike, it must then be strongly centralised, in other words, there is no ‘opt-out’ for those who voted against. If instead, all the workers could do as they please, what’s the point of striking, or forming unions at all? Authority must be imposed on any would-be scabs, otherwise the strike will fail. That’s centralism: the necessary second part to democracy.

What this means in a revolutionary socialist government is that workers are given full freedom to participate in discussion, elections to soviets, and controlling their workplaces. But this process must be crowned with an overall political direction and national economic plan, to which all the workplaces under workers’ control must be subordinate.

There are many naive ideas about workers’ control, reflecting the influence of anarchism or syndicalism on the left. Workers’ control is assumed to mean each workplace having full freedom, or autonomy, to do as they please. Anarchists stress the need for a federated system, not a centralised one. For them, imposing an authority onto this or that factory or industry is a violation of workers’ democracy. In the early days of the revolution, there were debates over how centralised or federal the state should be. A group known as ‘Left Communists’, featuring prominent Bolsheviks on the Central Committee (including Bukharin), advocated much more autonomy for local workers’ control, and no use of experts from the old system at all, however this debate was cut short by the emergency of the civil war.

Immediately upon taking power, Lenin issued the following decree urging the workers’ to take control of their factories:

“Workers’ control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials shall be introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises employing not less than five workers and office employees (together), or with an annual turnover of not less than 10,000 rubles.
Workers’ control shall be exercised by all the workers and office employees of an enterprise, either directly, if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through their elected representatives, who shall be elected immediately at general meetings, at which minutes of the elections shall be taken and the names of those elected communicated to the government and to the local Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
Unless permission is given by the elected representatives of the workers and office employees, the suspension of work of an enterprise or an industrial establishment of state importance (see Clause 7), or any change in its operation is strictly prohibited.
The elected representatives shall be given access to all books and documents and to all warehouses and stocks of materials, instruments and products, without exception.
The decisions of the elected representatives of the workers and office employees are binding upon the owners of enterprises and may be annulled only by trade unions and their congresses.
In all enterprises of state importance all owners and all representatives of the workers and office employees elected for the purpose of exercising workers’ control shall be answerable to the state for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property. Persons guilty of dereliction of duty, concealment of stocks, accounts, etc., shall be punished by the confiscation of the whole of their property and by imprisonment for a term of up to five years.
By enterprises of state importance are meant all enterprises working for defense, or in any way connected with the manufacture of articles necessary for the existence of the masses of the population.
More detailed rules on workers’ control shall be drawn up by the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and by conferences of factory committees, and also by committees of office employees at general meetings of their representatives.”

At this time it was also agreed that the Commissars (the equivalent of ministers) would be paid 500 Roubles – roughly the same as a skilled worker. Lenin’s four principles of workers’ democracy quoted above were being put into practice! Workers’ tribunals were set up to take the justice system out of the hands of the old privileged state bureaucracy.

Of course, these decrees, by themselves, were just words on paper – although workers really did take over their workplaces and the policy succeeded in smashing the bourgeois state, and bourgeois management, as Marx explained would be necessary. But real management, effective control and planning, are in practice only realisable within the constraints of technique, education, time and material and cultural conditions.

In Russia, the plan was for ownership to be initially left in the hands of the bourgeois, with workers’ control meaning control over hiring and firing, wages etc. Trotsky explained this:

“[By control] I mean that we will see to it that the factory is run not from the point of view of profit, but from the point of view of the social welfare democratically conceived. For example, we will not allow the capitalist to shut up his factory in order to starve his workmen into submissiveness or because it is not yielding him a profit. If it is turning out economically a needed product, it must be kept running. If the capitalist abandons it, he will lose it altogether, for a board of directors chosen by the workers will be put in charge…

„Again, ‚control‘ implies that the books and correspondence of the concern will be open to the public, so that henceforth there will be no industrial secrets. If this concern hits upon a better process or device, it will be communicated to all the other concerns in the same branch of industry, so that the public will promptly realise the utmost possible benefit from the find. At present, it is hidden away from other concerns at the dictate of the profit motive, and for years the article may be kept needlessly scarce and dear to the consuming public…

„‘Control’ also means that primary requisites limited in quantity, such as coal, oil, iron, steel etc., will be allotted to the different plants calling for them with an eye to their social utility…

„[This will be done not] according to the bidding of capitalists against one another, but on the basis of full and carefully gathered statistics.“

As you can see, this power of the workers granted by October was very transitional. The idea to leave the bourgeois in place as owners reflected an understanding among the Bolsheviks that the workers lacked the time and expertise to suddenly control the economy. But giving workers control in the ways listed above was clearly contradictory with leaving the bourgeoisie and their managers in charge, since they want only to make private profits and will not tolerate the incursions of the workers and the greater needs of society. Thus was created a situation of dual power in the workplace.

In practice, the civil war obliged the Bolsheviks to go on the offensive and expropriate the property of the bourgeoisie so that the latter could not sabotage the new regime by halting production.

Problems of workers’ control

The granting of workers’ control won over many anarchists at this time, and it is true that the situation it created did indeed border on total anarchy! As we said, workers’ control in practice depends on the real economic, technical, educational conditions; and time and cultural level. In Russia, these were all very limited. In reality, this anarchist’s dream of workers’ control in early 1918 was very chaotic and the economy was disintegrating.

A workers’ leader at time explained the problem: “workers’ control had turned into an anarchistic attempt to achieve socialism in one enterprise, but actually leads to clashes among the workers themselves, and to the refusal of fuel, metal, etc., to one another” (quoted in Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, p. 164).

Some workers were, in these dire economic conditions, stealing. Some factories were asset stripped by the workers. Workers in strategically important industries, or ones supplying goods in short supply and high demand, sometimes conspired with the old owners to hold up production in order to extract a higher price. In some cases, as in a button factory in Moscow, the workers expelled the former management, only to realise they lacked the technical know-how to manage it and so begged them to return!

This is not an argument against workers’ control. These errors were partially a result of the early inexperience and euphoria of the workers in their newly won power, but mainly of the acute shortages and economic chaos that Russia suffered after three years of exhausting war. No one was sure if the raw materials even existed to produce, or if the transport existed to take the products of their factory, and everyone faced serious hunger and poverty; so naturally many resorted to extremely short-sighted acts of desperation, such as asset stripping.

There were also political obstacles to all-out workers’ control. Although the Bolshevik insurrection was actively backed by a majority of the working class, naturally a small number resisted the change. The workers’ of the telegraph exchange, for example, refused to process the communications of the new government, as they were a relatively privileged section of the workforce who never identified as working class. As John Reed describes in his classic Ten Days that Shook the World, the new workers’ government attempted to convince them back to work,

“The Commissar of the Military Revolutionary Committee, little Vishniak, tried to persuade the girls to remain. He was effusively polite. ‘You have been badly treated,’ he said. ‘The telephone system is controlled by the Municipal Duma. You are paid sixty rubles a month, and have to work ten hours and more… From now on all that will be changed. The Government intends to put the telephones under control of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. Your wages will be immediately raised to one hundred and fifty rubles, and your working-hours reduced. As members of the working-class you should be happy’–„

But he was then cut off and they refused to work. Similarly, the trade union leadership of the railway workers, known as Vikzhel, was under Menshevik control, was conservative, and constantly threatened the survival of the government by halting the trains. It was a minority of the working class holding the revolution to ransom.

A workers’ government would in these circumstances hope to convince this backward minority of the class to work in harmony with the class as a whole. But there is no guarantee of this, and the more difficult the objective circumstances, the more inclined are sections of the working class to put their own sectional interests first etc.

Victor Serge quotes a Bolshevik graphically describing the extraordinary difficulties for workers‘ control in 1918:

“In these conditions it was indescribably difficult to get the various departments of the city administration running again. A strike of all the staff without exception, doctors, teachers and engineers; the boycotting of their jobs; the sabotage practised by the new officials, along with the need to pay the manual workers their normal wages (the civilian and military administrations in Moscow employed over two hundred thousand of these workers); the need to feed tens of thousands of refugees and maintain the services for water, sewage, tramways, abattoirs, gas, and electricity, at all costs: such was the problem which our workers and militants, very inexperienced in these matters, had to face immediately, with nothing to meet the situation except their own wits.” (Serge, op cit, p. 90)

What is a workers’ government to do in such desperate conditions? There were indeed many disagreements within the government and the Bolshevik party, often involving the Left Communist faction mentioned above. Lenin responded to left criticisms of the government’s reliance on central authority at a meeting of the Soviet executive in March 1918:

„When I hear hundreds of thousands of complaints, when there is hunger in the country, when you see and know that these complaints are right, that we have bread but cannot transport it [because the conservative railway union Vikzhel refused to do so, in fact it had just threatened to cut Petrograd off from all supplies], when we meet mockery and protests from Left Communists against such measures as our railway decree…“ (Lenin broke off with a gesture of contempt). (EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1932, vol II, p. 395)

There was no alternative but to implement the provision for workers’ control to be overruled from above. Anarchists complain about this „one man management“ (as opposed to collective management) but what was alternative in the circumstances?

Socialism means planning

Moreover, even under the most ideal conditions workers‘ democracy, and socialism in general, cannot be a case of ‚do whatever you want‘. Workers’ control without subordination to an overall plan is really just a system of cooperative capitalism, with each workplace taking decisions – democratically, yes – on the basis of market anarchy and the hunt for profit, not social need. Socialism means the overall harmonisation of all society’s efforts to meet need. It is only the achievement of this that can bring real freedom to the lives of the masses, by freeing them from poverty, long working hours, competition for scarce resources etc.

Trotsky explained the realities of this:

“No, workers won’t have complete control over their workplace. They will be subject to policies laid down by the local council of workmen’s deputies… [and] their range of discretion will be limited in turn by regulations made for each class of industry by the boards or bureaux of the central government.

“Kropotkin’s communalism would work in a simple society based on agriculture and household industries, but it isn’t at all suited to the state of things in modern industrial society. The coal from the Donets basin goes all over Russia and is indispensable in all sorts of industries. Now, don’t you see if the organised people of that district could do as they pleased with the coal mines, they could hold up all the rest of Russia if they chose? Entire independence of each locality respecting its industries would result in endless friction and difficulties in a society that has reached the stage of local specialisation of industry. It might even bring on civil war. Kropotkin has in mind the Russia of 60 years ago, the Russia of his youth.“ (Trotsky, In Defence of the Russian Revolution, Workers’ Control and Nationalisation)

By workers’ control we mean control in a local workplace over hiring and firing, election of a manager, and indeed the right to elect delegates to the local Soviet and other bodies that draw up economic plans. But the overall plan, once drawn up, must take precedence. A given workplace cannot opt-out, although it is free to criticise the plan and participate in drawing it up.

Originally in Russia, Vesenkha was formed as a supreme economic soviet beside the political one, with the plan to meet once a month. Its remit was to “regulate and organise all production and distribution, and administer all enterprises of the republics”. It consisted of 10 members from the executive of the political Soviet, 20 from regional industry and 30 from the trade unions. It executed the plan chiefly through channelling credits to the nationalised industries.

Under Vesenkha each industry was managed by a ‚Glavki‘ responsible for implementing the general plan and organising the nationalised industry. Glavki departments were made up of 10 percent former employers, 9 percent technicians, 38 percent officials from the government and 43 percent workers or their representatives.

Problems of workers’ Control

But in the conditions of the civil war, these bodies typically failed to meet on a monthly basis. Vesenkha and the Glavki tended too much towards centralism, with fewer and fewer comrades effectively directing the decisions, largely because of the pressing needs of the civil war. Split-second decisions had to be taken. Everything inherited was an economic and organisational mess, which when combined with the civil war meant that everything was fluid and uncertain, and therefore the plan drawn up in larger meetings continually had to be changed by smaller groups. There were conflicts over the pressure to raise productivity – for instance, some unproductive factories needed to be closed down, producing strikes and a conflict between the government and some workers’ representatives – another example of the difficulty of practicing workers’ control in bad conditions. This tendency of a conflict between the centre, representing the overall plan, and the local workers, led inevitably to over-centralisation.

The same pressures were brought to bear on the Congress of Soviets, the sovereign body. In the Civil War, instead of meeting the requisite at least twice a year, it managed to meet only once a year. It was simply not possible to frequently elect and then transport hundreds of worker delegates from across a country that was being ravaged in a brutal civil war, and indeed many of the likely delegates were actually fighting. Here we can see that the objective pressures of a revolution in an isolated and backward country served to constantly undermine, and indeed eventually destroy, the workers’ democracy that is essential to building socialism. The Soviets withered away. Instead of workers’ collectively running their own system, more and more it ended up being the professional bureaucrats in charge:

“It is indisputable that the Soviet bureaucrat of these early years was as a rule a former member of the bourgeois intelligentsia or official class, and brought with him many of the traditions of the old Russian bureaucracy. But the same groups provided the modicum of knowledge and technical skill without which the regime could not have survived.” (EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1932, vol I, p. 187)

For Marxists, workers’ control is not an abstract question. It does not come down to formal rules – a mere right to this or that. The working class needs real, material power to change society and end the anarchy, poverty and alienation of life under capitalism. For that we need a highly educated workforce with the time to participate in workers’ democracy. We need an advanced and integrated industry that is well coordinated and highly productive, to meet all of society’s needs, everywhere, year after year. We need to raise productivity so that the working week can be reduced, allowing time for the regular participation of workers in running society. The simple granting of workers‘ control in the workplace is a long way from realising these things, and is only part of the equation. In Russia, the material conditions were simply too poor to ever get there without help from revolutions in the advanced countries. This help never came.

Lenin continually tried to stimulate initiative from below. When the Civil War was won, the Communist Party, at its 10th Congress, tried to open up after those severe years, encouraging widespread debate over its decisions, and control of the central bodies by the rank-and-file. But this unfortunately coincided with a massive economic and agricultural crisis and famine (which led to the New Economic Policy), an emergency that cut short all efforts towards democratisation.

“If Lenin was driven by practical necessities to recognise a constantly growing concentration of authority, there is no evidence that he wavered in his belief in the antidote of ‚direct democracy:‘ But he began to understand that progress would be slower than he had at first hoped and the bogy of bureaucracy more difficult to conjure… In April 1921 Sovnarkom issued a decree whose declared motive was ‘to maintain the link between Soviet institutions and the broad masses of workers, to enliven the Soviet apparatus and gradually to liberate it from bureaucratic elements.’ The decree sought, among other things, to bring working women and peasant women into the sections of the executive committees of the congresses of soviets“ (EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1932, vol I, p. 230).

In the end, the objective conditions of the Russian Revolution – the isolation, poverty, illiteracy and long working hours – made the vast clearing out of privileged bureaucrats from the state by an immense proletarian movement impossible. But the efforts of the masses and the Communist Party to this end were very real, were not in vain, and went far far further than in any other instance in history. Workers’ power in the Russian Revolution is an enormous inspiration and invaluable lesson to revolutionaries and workers all over the world, and will be a huge help to future workers’ governments as they strive to realise workers’ control of production. Only that in the advanced conditions of modern industry, our efforts will be wholly successful. Workers’ democracy will be realised once again, and will attain a scope and depth unimaginable to us living in the sham democracy of capitalism.

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Lenin’s struggle against bureaucracy

Alan Woods und Ted Grant — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:00:28 +0000

[The Marxist method] explains bureaucracy as a social phenomenon, which arises for definite reasons. Lenin, approaching the question as a Marxist, explained the rise of bureaucracy as a parasitic, capitalist growth on the organism of the workers’ state, which arose out of the isolation of the revolution in a backward, illiterate peasant country.

In one of his last articles, ‘Better Fewer, But Better’, Lenin wrote:

“Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, not yet reached the stage of a culture that has receded into the past.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 487)

The October revolution had overthrown the old order, ruthlessly suppressed and purged the Tsarist state; but in conditions of chronic economic and cultural backwardness, the elements of the old order were everywhere creeping back into positions of privilege and power in the measure that the revolutionary wave ebbed back with the defeats of the international revolution.

Engels explained that in every society where art, science and government are the exclusive of a privileged minority, then that minority will always use and abuse its positions in its own interests. And this state of affairs is inevitable, so long as the vast majority of the people are forced to toil for long hours in industry and agriculture for the bare necessities of life.

After the revolution, with the ruined condition of industry, the working day was not reduced, but lengthened. Workers toiled ten, twelve hours and more a day on subsistence rations; many worked weekends without pay voluntarily.

But, as Trotsky explained, the masses can only sacrifice their “today” for their “tomorrow” up to a very definite limit. Inevitably, the strain of war, of revolution, of four years of bloody Civil War, of a famine in which five million perished, all served to undermine the working class in terms of both numbers and morale.

The NEP stabilised the economy, but created new dangers by encouraging the growth of small capitalism, especially in the countryside where the rich ‘kulaks’ gained ground at the expense of the poor peasants.

Industry revived, but, being tied to the demand of the peasantry, especially the rich peasants, the revival was confined almost entirely to light industry (consumer goods). Heavy industry, the key to socialist construction, stagnated. By 1922, there were two million unemployed in the towns.

At the Ninth Congress of Soviets in December 1921, Lenin remarked:

“Excuse me, but what do you describe as the proletariat? That class of labourers which is employed by large-scale industry. But where is this large-scale industry? What sort of proletariat is this? Where is your industry? Why is it idle?” (Works, vol. 33, p. 174)

In a speech at the Eleventh Party Congress in March, 1922, Lenin pointed out that the class nature of many who worked in the factories at this time was non-proletarian; that many were dodgers from military service, peasants and declassed elements:

“During the war people who were by no means proletarians went into the factories; they went into the factories to dodge war. And are the social and economic conditions in our country today such as to induce real proletarians to go into the factories? No. It would be true according to Marx; but Marx did not write about Russia; he wrote about capitalism as a whole, beginning with the fifteenth century. It held true over a period of six hundred years, but it is not true for present-day Russia. Very often those who go into the factories are not proletarians; they are casual elements of every description.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 299)

The disintegration of the working class, the loss of many of the most advanced elements in the Civil War, the influx of backward elements from the countryside, and the demoralisation and exhaustion of the masses was one side of the picture.

On the other side, the forces of reaction, those petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements who had been temporarily demoralised and driven underground by the success of the revolution in Russia and internationally, everywhere began to recover their nerve, thrust themselves to the fore, taking advantage of the situation to insinuate themselves into every nook and cranny of the ruling bodies of industry, of the state and even of the Party.

Immediately after the seizure of power, the only political party which was suppressed by the Bolsheviks was the fascist Black Hundreds. Even the bourgeois Cadet Party was not immediately illegalised. The government itself was a coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries.

But, under the pressure of the Civil War, a sharp polarisation of class forces took place in which the Mensheviks, SRs and ‘Left SRs’ came out on the side of the counter-revolution. Contrary to their own intention, the Bolsheviks were forced to introduce a monopoly of political power. This monopoly, which was regarded as an extraordinary and temporary state of affairs, created enormous dangers in the situation where the proletarian vanguard was coming under increasing pressure from alien classes.

In February 1917, the Bolshevik Party had no more than 23,000 members in the whole of Russia. At the height of the Civil War, when party membership involved personal risk, the ranks were thrown open to the workers, who pushed the membership to 200,000. But as the war grew to a close, the party membership actually trebled, reflecting an influx of careerists and elements from hostile classes and parties.

Lenin at this time repeatedly emphasised the danger of the Party succumbing to the pressures and moods of the petty-bourgeois masses; that the main enemy of the revolution was:

“everyday economics in a small-peasant country with a ruined large industry. He is the petty-bourgeois element which surrounds us like the air, and penetrates deep into the ranks of the proletariat. And the proletariat is de-classed, i.e. dislodged from its class groove. The factories and mills are idle – the proletariat is weak, scattered, enfeebled. On the other hand the petty-bourgeois element within the country is backed by the whole international bourgeoisie, which retains its power throughout the world.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 23)

The “purge” initiated by Lenin in 1921 had nothing in common with the monstrous frame-up trials of Stalin; there was no police, no trials, no prison-camps; merely the ruthless weeding out of petty-bourgeois and Menshevik elements from the ranks of the Party, in order to preserve the ideas and traditions of October from the poisonous effects of petty-bourgeois reaction. By early 1922, some 200,000 members (one-third of the membership) had been expelled.

Lenin’s correspondence and writings of this period, when illness was increasingly preventing him from intervening in the struggle, clearly indicate his alarm at the encroachment of the Soviet bureaucracy, the insolent parvenus in every corner of the state apparatus. Thus, in a letter to Sheinman in February, 1922:

“At present the State Bank is a bureaucratic power game. There is the truth for you, if you want to hear not the sweet communist-official lies (with which everyone feeds you as a high mandarin), but the truth. And if you do not want to look at this truth with open eyes, through all the communist lying, you are a man who has perished in the prime of life in a swamp of official lying. Now that is an unpleasant truth, but it is the truth.” (Works, vol. 36, p. 567)

Contrast this fearless honesty of Lenin with all the saccharine falsehoods with which all the Communist Party leaders and “theoreticians” fed the international communist movement about the Soviet Union for generations, and judge for yourself the depths of degradation in which the self-styled “Friends of the Soviet Union” have plunged the ideas and traditions of Lenin! Again, in a letter dated April 12, 1922:

“The more such work is done, the deeper we go into living practice, distracting the attention of both ourselves and our readers from the stinking bureaucratic and stinking intellectual Moscow (and, in general, Soviet bourgeois) atmospheres, the greater will be our success in improving both our press and all our constructive work.” (Works, vol. 36, p. 579)

At the Eleventh Congress, Lenin placed before the Party a searing indictment of bureaucratisation of the state apparatus:

“If we take Moscow,” he said, “with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take the huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being directed.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 288, our emphasis)

To carry out the work of weeding bureaucrats and careerists out of the state and party apparatus, Lenin initiated the setting up of RABKRIN (the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate) with Stalin in charge.

Lenin saw the need for a strong organiser to see that this work was carried out thoroughly; Stalin’s record as a party organiser appeared to qualify him for the post. Within a few years, Stalin occupied a number of organisational posts in the Party: head of RABKRIN, member of the Central Committee and Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat. But his narrow, organisational outlook and personal ambition led Stalin to occupy the post, in a short space of time, as the chief spokesman of bureaucracy in the party leadership, not as its opponent.

As early as 1920, Trotsky criticised the working of RABKRIN, which from a tool in the struggle against bureaucracy was becoming itself a hotbed of bureaucracy. Initially, Lenin defended RABKRIN against Trotsky. His illness prevented him from realising what was going on behind his back in the state and party.

Stalin used his position, which enabled him to select personnel to leading posts in the state and party to quietly gather round himself a bloc of allies and yes-men, political nonentities who were grateful to him for their advancement. In his hands, RABKRIN became an instrument for building up his own position and eliminating his political rivals.

Lenin only became aware of the terrible situation when he discovered the truth about Stalin’s handling of relations with Georgia. Without the knowledge of Lenin or the Politburo, Stalin, together with his henchmen Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze, had carried out a coup d’état in Georgia.

The finest cadres of Georgian Bolshevism were purged, and the party leaders denied access to Lenin, who was fed a string of lies by Stalin. When he finally found out what was happening, Lenin was furious. From his sick-bed late in 1922, he dictated a series of notes to his stenographer on “the notorious questions of autonomisation, which, it appears, is officially called the question of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”.

Lenin’s notes are a crushing indictment of the bureaucratic and chauvinist arrogance of Stalin and his clique. But Lenin does not treat this incident as an accidental phenomenon – a “regrettable mistake”, like the invasion of Czechoslovakia, or a “tragedy”, like the crushing of the Hungarian worker’s commune, but the expression of the rotten, reactionary nationalism of the Soviet bureaucracy. It is worth quoting Lenin’s words on the state apparatus at length.

“It is said that a united state apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from? Did it not come from the same Russian apparatus, which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took over from Tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?

“There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed until we could say, that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now, we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the state apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and Tsarist hotchpotch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the past five years without the help of other countries and because we have been “busy” most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.

“It is quite natural that in such circumstances the ‘freedom to secede from the union’ by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riff-raff like a fly in milk.” (Works, vol. 36, p. 605, our emphasis)

After the Georgian affair, Lenin threw the whole weight of his authority behind the struggle to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the party which he occupied in 1922, after the death of Sverdlov.

However, Lenin’s main fear now more than ever was that an open split in the leadership, under prevailing conditions, might lead to the break-up of the party along class lines. He therefore attempted to keep the struggle confined to the leadership, and the notes and other material were not made public.

Lenin wrote secretly to the Georgian Bolshevik-Leninists (sending copies to Trotsky and Kamenev) taking up their cause against Stalin “with all my heart”. As he was unable to pursue the affair in person, he wrote to Trotsky requesting him to undertake the defence of the Georgians in the Central Committee.

Needless to say, the documentary evidence of Lenin’s last fight against Stalin and the bureaucracy has been suppressed for decades. Lenin’s last writings were hidden from the Communist Party rank-and-file in Russia and internationally.

Lenin’s last letter to the Party Congress, despite the protests of his widow, was not read out at the Congress and remained under lock and key until 1956 when Khruschev and Co. published it, along with a few other items (including the letters on Georgia) as part of their campaign to throw the blame for all that had happened in the past thirty years on to Stalin’s shoulders.

[…]

Lenin warns of the danger of a split in the Party, because “our party rests upon two classes, and for that reason its instability is possible…” Lenin did not see the disagreement between Trotsky and Stalin as accidental, or flowing from “personalities” (although he gives a series of penetrating sketches of the personal characteristics of the leading members of the Party).

Lenin’s last letter must be seen in the context of his other writings of the previous few months, his attacks on bureaucracy and the bloc which he formed with Trotsky against Stalin.

Lenin worded his letter very cautiously (he had originally intended to be present at the Congress for which according to his stenographer Fotieva, he had “prepared a bombshell for Stalin”).

For each of the leading members, he gives both the positive and negative features of their character: in Trotsky’s case, he refers to his “exceptional abilities” (“the most able man on the Central Committee at the present time”) but criticises him for his “far-reaching self-confidence” and “a tendency to be too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs” – faults which, however serious they may be in themselves, have nothing whatsoever to do with the Permanent Revolution, “Socialism in one Country”, or any of the other canards invented by the Stalinists.

In relation to Stalin, Lenin writes that “Comrade Stalin having become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.”

That is already a political question, and linked up with Lenin’s struggle against the bureaucracy in the Party. In ‘Better Fewer, But Better’, written shortly before, Lenin commented: “Let it be said in parentheses that we have bureaucrats in our Party offices as well as in Soviet offices.” In the same work, he launched a sharp attack on RABKRIN, which was clearly meant for Stalin:

“Let us say frankly that the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection does not at present enjoy the slightest authority. Everybody knows that no other institutions are worse organised than those of our Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection and that under present conditions nothing can be expected from this Peoples’ Commissariat.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 490)

In a postscript to his letter [written on 4 January 1923], Lenin advocated the removal of Stalin from the post of General Secretary, ostensibly on grounds of “rudeness” – but advocating his replacement with a man “who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority – namely, more loyal, more polite and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc.” The diplomatic mode of expression does not conceal the indirect accusation, very clear in the light of the Georgian events, of Stalin’s rudeness, capriciousness and disloyalty.

In presenting Lenin’s Testament as a document merely concerned with the “personalities” of the leaders, the Communist Party “theoreticians” fall into a completely vulgar misrepresentation of Lenin. Even if the Testament leaves room for ambiguity (it does not, except for slovenly minds) the whole bodyof Lenin’s last writings provide a clear programmatic statement of his position, which cannot be distorted.

Repeatedly, Lenin characterised the bureaucracy as a parasitic, bourgeois growthon the workers’ state, and an expression of the petty-bourgeois outlook – which penetrated the State and even the Party.

The petty-bourgeois reaction against October was all the more difficult to combat because of the exhausted state of the proletariat, sections of which were also becoming demoralised. Nonetheless, Lenin and Trotsky saw the working class as the only basis for a struggle against bureaucracy, and the maintenance of a healthy workers’ democracy as the only check on it. Thus, in one article Purging the PartyLenin wrote:

“Naturally, we shall not submit to everything the masses say because the masses, too, sometimes – particularly in time of exceptional weariness and exhaustion resulting from excessive hardship and suffering – yield to sentiments that are in no way advanced. But in appraising persons, in the negative attitude to those who have “attached” themselves to us for selfish motives, to those who have become “puffed-up commissars” and “bureaucrats”, the suggestions of the non-Party proletarian masses and, in many cases, of the non-Party peasant masses, are extremely valuable.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 39)

The rise of bureaucracy was understood by Lenin as the product of economic and cultural backwardness which was the result of the isolation of the revolution. The means of combating this were linked, on the one hand, with the struggle for economic progress and the gradual elimination of illiteracy, which was linked inseparably with the struggle to involve the working masses in the running of industry and the state.

Lenin and Trotsky always relied upon the masses in the fight against the “puffed-up commissars”. Only by the conscious self-activity of the working people themselves could the transition to socialism be assured.

On the other hand, Lenin repeatedly explained that the terrible strains imposed upon the working class by the isolation of the revolution in a backward country put immense difficulties in the way of the creation of a really cultured, and harmonious, classless society. Time and again Lenin stressed the problems that arose from the isolation of the revolution.

[…]

Lenin resolutely explained that the difficulties of the revolution: the problems of backwardness, of illiteracy, of bureaucracy could only finally be overcome by the victory of the socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. This perspective, which was hammered home by Lenin hundreds of times from 1904-5 onwards, was accepted as a truism by the entire Bolshevik Party up to 1924. In the last months of his life, Lenin never lost sight of this fact. Among his last writings are a series of notes which made his position abundantly clear:

“We have created a Soviet type of state,” he wrote, “and by that we have ushered in a new era in world history, the era of the political rule of the proletariat, which is to supersede the era of bourgeois rule. Nobody can deprive us of this, either, although the Soviet type of state will have the finishing touches put to it only with the aid of the practical experience of the working class of several countries.

“But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile power of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism – that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 206, our emphasis)

In these lines of Lenin there is not an ounce of “pessimism” or of “underestimation” of the creative capacities of the Soviet working class. In all the writings of Lenin, and especially of this period, there is at once a burning faith in the ability of the working people to change society and a fearless honesty in dealing with difficulties.

The difference in the attitudes of Stalinism and Leninism towards the working class lies precisely in this: that the former seeks to deceive the masses with “official” lies and smug illusions about the building of “Socialism in One Country” in order to lull them into passive acceptance of the leadership of the bureaucracy, while the latter strives to develop the consciousness of the working class, never patronising it with lies and fairy-stories, but always revealing unpalatable truths, in the full confidence that the working class will understand and accept the need for the greatest sacrifices, provided the reasons for them are explained honestly and truthfully.

The arguments of Lenin were designed, not to stupefy the Soviet workers with “socialist opium”, but to steel them for the struggles ahead – for the struggle against backwardness and bureaucracy in Russia and for the struggle against capitalism and for the socialist revolution on a world scale.

It was the sympathy of the working people of the world, Lenin explained, that prevented the imperialists from strangling the Russian Revolution in 1917-20. But the only real safeguard for the future of the Soviet Republic was the extension of the Revolution to the capitalist countries of the West.

At the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party – the last which Lenin attended – he emphasised repeatedly the dangers to the State and Party arising out of the pressures of backwardness and bureaucracy. Commenting on the direction of the State, Lenin warned:

“Well, we have lived through a year, the state is in our hands, but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in the past year? No. But we refuse to admit that it did not operate in the way we wanted. How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 179, our emphasis)

At the same Congress Lenin explained, in a very clear and unambiguous language, the possibility of the degeneration of the revolution as a result of the pressure of alien classes.

Already the most farsighted sections of the émigré bourgeoisie, the Smena Vekhgroup of Ustryalov, were openly placing their hopes upon the bureaucratic-bourgeois tendencies manifesting themselves in Soviet society, as a step in the direction of capitalist restoration. The same group was later to applaud and encourage the Stalinists in their struggle against “Trotskyism”.

The Smena Vekh group, which Lenin gave credit for its class insight, correctly understood the struggle of Stalin against Trotsky, not in terms of “personalities” but as a class question, as a step away from the revolutionary traditions of October.

“The machine no longer obeyed the driver” – the State was no longer under the control of the Communists, of the workers, but was increasingly raising itself above society. Referring to the views of Smena Vekh, Lenin said:

“We must say frankly that the things Ustryalov speaks about are possible, history knows all sorts of metamorphoses. Relying on firmness of convictions, loyalty, and other splendid moral qualities is anything but a serious attitude in politics. A few people may be endowed with splendid moral qualities, but historical issues are decided by vast masses, which, if the few do not suit them, may at times treat them none too politely.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 287)

In these words of Lenin we find the defeat of the Left Opposition explained in advance with a million times more clarity than in all the pretentious theorising of the “intellectuals” about the relative psychological, moral and personal attributes of Trotsky and Stalin. The State power was slipping out of the hands of the Communists, not because of their personal failings or psychological peculiarities, but because of the enormous pressures of backwardness, of bureaucracy, of alien class forces, which weighed down upon the tiny handful of advanced, socialist workers and crushed them.

Lenin likened the relationship of the Soviet workers and their advanced guard to the bureaucracy and the petty-bourgeois and capitalist elements to that of a conquering and conquered nation.

History has shown repeatedly that for one nation to defeat another by force of arms is not of itself, a sufficient guarantee of victory. In the event of the cultural level of the victors being lower than that of the vanquished, the latter will impose its culture upon the conquerors. Given the low level of culture of the weak Soviet working class, surrounded by a sea of small property owners, the pressures were enormous. They reflected themselves not only in the State, but inevitably in the Party itself, which became the centre of the struggle of conflicting class interests.

Only in the light of all this can we understand Lenin’s position in the struggle against bureaucracy, his attitude to Stalin, and the contents of his Suppressed Testament. That document expresses his conviction that the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin is “not a detail, or is a detail which can acquire a decisive significance”, in the light of the fact that “Our party is based upon two classes.”

In a letter written shortly before the Eleventh Party Congress, Lenin explained the significance of conflicts and splits in the leadership in these words:

“If we do not close our eyes to reality we must admit that at the present time the proletarian policy of the Party is not determined by the character of its membership, but by the enormous undivided prestige enjoyed by the small group which might be called the Old Guard of the Party. A slight conflict within this group will be enough, if not to destroy this prestige, at all events to weaken the group to such a degree as to rob it of its power to determine policy.” (Works, vol. 33, p. 257)

What determined Lenin’s bitter struggle against Stalin was not his personal foibles(“rudeness”) but the role he played in introducing the methods and ideology of alien social classes and strata into the very Party leadership which should have been a bulwark against those things.

In the last months of his life, weakened by illness, Lenin turned more and more frequently to Trotsky, for support in his struggle against the bureaucracy and its creature, Stalin. On the question of the monopoly of foreign trade, on the question of Georgia, and finally, in the struggle to oust Stalin from the leadership, Lenin formed a bloc with Trotsky, the only man in the leadership he could trust.

Throughout this entire last period of his life, in numerous articles, speeches, and above all letters, Lenin repeatedly expressed his solidarity with Trotsky. On all the important issues we have mentioned, it was Trotsky whom he singled out to defend his point of view in the leading bodies of the party.

Lenin’s appraisal of Trotsky in the Suppressed Testament can only be understood in the light of these facts. Needless to say, all the evidence for the existence of this bloc between Lenin and Trotsky against the Stalin clique was kept under lock and key, for many years. But truth will out. The letters to Trotsky published in Volume 54, of the latest Russian edition of Lenin’s Collected Works, although even now not complete, are irrefutable proof of the bloc that existed between Lenin and Trotsky.

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Where to Begin? How the foundations of Bolshevism were laid

In Defence of Marxism — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:00:10 +0000

This week we are looking at a short, but pivotal text by Lenin, which laid out many of the tactics and methods that would play a key role in the building of the forces of communism in Russia. Written in 1901, Where to Begin? is a concise but masterful explanation of the need for tactical flexibility and the importance of the revolutionary press. It contains lessons that are enormously relevant to the fight for a revolutionary party today.

The first years of the 20th century were a tumultuous time, both for Russia in general and for the forces of Marxism in particular. In February and March 1901, major cities across the Russian Empire were rocked by a series of mass protests organised by university students, which attracted the support and involvement of a large layer of workers. Despite its origins as a student protest against attacks on academic freedoms, the movement quickly took up broader political demands and became a rallying point for the advanced layers of the oppressed masses.

While the movement was eventually crushed by the tsarist police, it was a clear sign of the seething anger under the surface of Russian society. The trajectory of this developing mood was clear, and would later express itself in the Russian revolution of 1905, when the working class burst onto the scene. The task of the communists was clear: these layers needed to be organised and given political leadership.

In 1901, faced with these mounting class tensions, however, the Marxists in Russia consisted of isolated revolutionary circles, which were springing up particularly among the students. After growing to a certain size, these groups would typically attempt to establish local newspapers and connect with workers. But arrests would soon follow, and the process would then have to begin from scratch.

Lenin, having escaped to Switzerland from exile in Siberia only a few months earlier, was in contact with disparate groups of revolutionaries across the country lacking any cohesion or central direction. With the publication of Where to begin?, Lenin began the tireless work of uniting the Russian communists behind a joint programme, an All-Russian newspaper and a concrete strategy.

The article took the form of a rebuttal of the ideas of Rabocheye Dyelo, a journal published by a group of Russian Marxists at the time. Rabocheye Dyelo had proposed a variety of drastic changes in strategy for revolutionaries at various points in time, ranging from a complete rejection of workers’ political struggle to the immediate demand for “ceaseless” protests and a “direct attack” on the Tsarist state.

But Lenin pointed out that talk of ‘tactics’ in the abstract means nothing if there is no cohesive party to carry them out. Confronted with the atomisation of the party’s members, the first task of the communists was to provide an organisational framework that could allow the party to act as one.

As Lenin explains:

“The immediate task of our Party is not to summon all available forces for the attack right now, but to call for the formation of a revolutionary organisation capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in name alone.”

What the party needed was a rallying point, around which comrades could organise both their internal party activity and their outward agitation and propaganda. With characteristic insight, Lenin put forward the call for an All-Russian communist newspaper as the tool for this job. Iskra (The Spark), with its editorial board in exile, beyond the reach of the tsarist secret police, provided this central organ that worked to unify Russian communists.

This national newspaper was to become a central pillar of all the activities of party members across the country. It would provide clear ideas, analysis, reports and perspectives for revolutionaries throughout Russia.

Lenin explains that, rather than replacing the comrades’ agitation around local issues, the national newspaper provides the revolutionary organisation with a general “scaffolding” or centrepiece around which the specific tasks of a local group can be framed.

By uniting the entire organisation around a single newspaper, the comrades would be strengthened both practically and politically, laying the basis for the building of a party fit for the immense tasks of the period.

In such a short article, Lenin was unable to fully outline the way forward for the party. Rather, he considered Where to Begin? to be the “skeleton plan” for a pamphlet which would be published one year later as What is to be Done? This fuller elaboration of Lenin’s proposal for the party would become a foundational text in the history of Bolshevism and will be the subject of next week’s article in this series.

Where to Begin?

by V.I. Lenin

In recent years the question of “what is to be done” has confronted Russian Social-Democrats with particular insistence. It is not a question of what path we must choose (as was the case in the late eighties and early nineties), but of what practical steps we must take upon the known path and how they shall be taken. It is a question of a system and plan of practical work. And it must be admitted that we have not yet solved this question of the character and the methods of struggle, fundamental for a party of practical activity, that it still gives rise to serious differences of opinion which reveal a deplorable ideological instability and vacillation. On the one hand, the “Economist” trend, far from being dead, is endeavouring to clip and narrow the work of political organisation and agitation. On the other, unprincipled eclecticism is again rearing its head, aping every new “trend”, and is incapable of distinguishing immediate demands from the main tasks and permanent needs of the movement as a whole. This trend, as we know, has ensconced itself in Rabocheye Dyelo.^[1] This journal’s latest statement of “programme”, a bombastic article under the bombastic title “A Historic Turn” (“Listok” Rabochevo Dyela, No. 6^[2]), bears out with special emphasis the characterisation we have given. Only yesterday there was a flirtation with “Economism”, a fury over the resolute condemnation of Rabochaya Mysl,^[3] and Plekhanov’s presentation of the question of the struggle against autocracy was being toned down. But today Liebknecht’s words are being quoted: “If the circumstances change within twenty-four hours, then tactics must be changed within twenty-four hours.” There is talk of a “strong fighting organisation for direct attack, for storming, the autocracy; of “broad revolutionary political agitation among the masses” (how energetic we are now – both revolutionary and political!); of “ceaseless calls for street protests”; of “street demonstrations of a pronounced [sic!] political character”; and so on, and so forth.

We might perhaps declare ourselves happy at Rabocheye Dyelo’s quick grasp of the programme we put forward in the first issue of Iskra,^[4] calling for the formation of a strong well-organised party, whose aim is not only to win isolated concessions but to storm the fortress of the autocracy itself; but the lack of any set point of view in these individuals can only dampen our happiness.

Rabocheye Dyelo, of course, mentions Liebknecht’s name in vain. The tactics of agitation in relation to some special question, or the tactics with regard to some detail of party organisation may be changed in twenty-four hours; but only people devoid of all principle are capable of changing, in twenty-four hours, or, for that matter, in twenty-four months, their view on the necessity – in general, constantly, and absolutely – of an organisation of struggle and of political agitation among the masses. It is ridiculous to plead different circumstances and a change of periods: the building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any “drab, peaceful” circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a “declining revolutionary spirit”; moreover, it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts; the party must be in a state of readiness to launch activity at a moment’s notice. “Change the tactics within twenty-four hours”! But in order to change tactics it is first necessary to have tactics; without a strong organisation skilled in waging political struggle under all circumstances and at all times, there can be no question of that systematic plan of action, illumined by firm principles and steadfastly carried out, which alone is worthy of the name of tactics. Let us, indeed, consider the matter; we are now being told that the “historic moment” has presented our Party with a “completely new” question – the question of terror. Yesterday the “completely new” question was political organisation and agitation; today it is terror. Is it not strange to hear people who have so grossly forgotten their principles holding forth on a radical change in tactics?

Fortunately, Rabocheye Dyelo is in error. The question of terror is not a new question at all; it will suffice to recall briefly the established views of Russian Social-Democracy on the subject.

In principle we have never rejected, and cannot reject, terror. Terror is one of the forms of military action that may be perfectly suitable and even essential at a definite juncture in the battle, given a definite state of the troops and the existence of definite conditions. But the important point is that terror, at the present time, is by no means suggested as an operation for the army in the field, an operation closely connected with and integrated into the entire system of struggle, but as an independent form of occasional attack unrelated to any army. Without a central body and with the weakness of local revolutionary organisations, this, in fact, is all that terror can be. We, therefore, declare emphatically that under the present conditions such a means of struggle is inopportune and unsuitable; that it diverts the most active fighters from their real task, the task which is most important from the standpoint of the interests of the movement as a whole; and that it disorganises the forces, not of the government, but of the revolution. We need but recall the recent events. With our own eyes we saw that the mass of workers and “common people” of the towns pressed forward in struggle, while the revolutionaries lacked a staff of leaders and organisers. Under such conditions, is there not the danger that, as the most energetic revolutionaries go over to terror, the fighting contingents, in whom alone it is possible to place serious reliance, will be weakened? Is there not the danger of rupturing the contact between the revolutionary organisations and the disunited masses of the discontented, the protesting, and the disposed to struggle, who are weak precisely because they are disunited? Yet it is this contact that is the sole guarantee of our success. Far be it from us to deny the significance of heroic individual blows, but it is our duty to sound a vigorous warning against becoming infatuated with terror, against taking it to be the chief and basic means of struggle, as so many people strongly incline to do at present. Terror can never be a regular military operation; at best it can only serve as one of the methods employed in a decisive assault. But can we issue the call for such a decisive assault at the present moment? Rabocheye Dyelo apparently thinks we can. At any rate, it exclaims: “Form assault columns!” But this, again, is more zeal than reason. The main body of our military forces consists of volunteers and insurgents. We possess only a few small units of regular troops, and these are not even mobilised; they are not connected with one another, nor have they been trained to form columns of any sort, let alone assault columns. In view of all this, it must be clear to anyone who is capable of appreciating the general conditions of our struggle and who is mindful of them at every “turn” in the historical course of events that at the present moment our slogan cannot be “To the assault”, but has to be, “Lay siege to the enemy fortress”. In other words, the immediate task of our Party is not to summon all available forces for the attack right now, but to call for the formation of a revolutionary organisation capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in name alone, that is, an organisation ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak and use it to build up and consolidate the fighting forces suitable for the decisive struggle.

The lesson of the February and March events^[5] has been so impressive that no disagreement in principle with this conclusion is now likely to be encountered. What we need at the present moment, however, is not a solution of the problem in principle but a practical solution. We should not only be clear on the nature of the organisation that is needed and its precise purpose, but we must elaborate a definite plan for an organisation, so that its formation may be undertaken from all aspects. In view of the pressing importance of the question, we, on our part, take the liberty of submitting to the comrades a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print.^[6]

In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment, when interest in politics and in questions of socialism has been aroused among the broadest strata of the population. Never has the need been felt so acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed agitation in the form of individual action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by means of generalised and systematic agitation that can only be conducted with the aid of the periodical press. It may be said without exaggeration that the frequency and regularity with which a newspaper is printed (and distributed) can serve as a precise criterion of how well this cardinal and most essential sector of our militant activities is built up. Furthermore, our newspaper must be All-Russian. If we fail, and as long as we fail, to combine our efforts to influence the people and the government by means of the printed word, it will be utopian to think of combining other means, more complex, more difficult, but also more decisive, for exerting influence. Our movement suffers in the first place, ideologically, as well as in practical and organisational respects, from its state of fragmentation, from the almost complete immersion of the overwhelming majority of Social-Democrats in local work, which narrows their outlook, the scope of their activities, and their skill in the maintenance of secrecy and their preparedness. It is precisely in this state of fragmentation that one must look for the deepest roots of the instability and the waverings noted above. The first step towards eliminating this short-coming, towards transforming divers local movements into a single, All-Russian movement, must be the founding of an All-Russian newspaper. Lastly, what we need is definitely a political newspaper. Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today. Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly fulfill our task – that of concentrating all the elements of political discontent and protest, of vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. We have taken the first step, we have aroused in the working class a passion for “economic”, factory exposures; we must now take the next step, that of arousing in every section of the population that is at all politically conscious a passion for political exposure. We must not be discouraged by the fact that the voice of political exposure is today so feeble, timid, and infrequent. This is not because of a wholesale submission to police despotism, but because those who are able and ready to make exposures have no tribune from which to speak, no eager and encouraging audience, they do not see anywhere among the people that force to which it would be worth while directing their complaint against the “omnipotent” Russian Government. But today all this is rapidly changing. There is such a force – it is the revolutionary proletariat, which has demonstrated its readiness, not only to listen to and support the summons to political struggle, but boldly to engage in battle. We are now in a position to provide a tribune for the nationwide exposure of the tsarist government, and it is our duty to do this. That tribune must be a Social-Democratic newspaper. The Russian working class, as distinct from the other classes and strata of Russian society, displays a constant interest in political knowledge and manifests a constant and extensive demand (not only in periods of intensive unrest) for illegal literature. When such a mass demand is evident, when the training of experienced revolutionary leaders has already begun, and when the concentration of the working class makes it virtual master in the working-class districts of the big cities and in the factory settlements and communities, it is quite feasible for the proletariat to found a political newspaper. Through the proletariat the newspaper will reach the urban petty bourgeoisie, the rural handicraftsmen, and the peasants, thereby becoming a real people’s political newspaper.

The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour. With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence these events. The mere technical task of regularly supplying the newspaper with copy and of promoting regular distribution will necessitate a network of local agents of the united party, who will maintain constant contact with one another, know the general state of affairs, get accustomed to performing regularly their detailed functions in the All-Russian work, and test their strength in the organisation of various revolutionary actions. This network of agents^[7] will form the skeleton of precisely the kind of organisation we need – one that is sufficiently large to embrace the whole country; sufficiently broad and many-sided to effect a strict and detailed division of labour; sufficiently well tempered to be able to conduct steadily its own work under any circumstances, at all “sudden turns”, and in face of all contingencies; sufficiently flexible to be able, on the one hand, to avoid an open battle against an overwhelming enemy, when the enemy has concentrated all his forces at one spot, and yet, on the other, to take advantage of his unwieldiness and to attack him when and where he least expects it. Today we are faced with the relatively easy task of supporting student demonstrations in the streets of big cities; tomorrow we may, perhaps, have the more difficult task of supporting, for example, the unemployed movement in some particular area, and the day after to be at our posts in order to play a revolutionary part in a peasant uprising. Today we must take advantage of the tense political situation arising out of the government’s campaign against the Zemstvo; tomorrow we may have to support popular indignation against some tsarist bashi-bazouk on the rampage and help, by means of boycott, indictment, demonstrations, etc., to make things so hot for him as to force him into open retreat. Such a degree of combat readiness can be developed only through the constant activity of regular troops. If we join forces to produce a common newspaper, this work will train and bring into the foreground, not only the most skillful propagandists, but the most capable organisers, the most talented political party leaders capable, at the right moment, of releasing the slogan for the decisive struggle and of taking the lead in that struggle.

In conclusion, a few words to avoid possible misunderstanding. We have spoken continuously of systematic, planned preparation, yet it is by no means our intention to imply that the autocracy can be overthrown only by a regular siege or by organised assault. Such a view would be absurd and doctrinaire. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and historically much more probable, that the autocracy will collapse under the impact of one of the spontaneous outbursts or unforeseen political complications which constantly threaten it from all sides. But no political party that wishes to avoid adventurous gambles can base its activities on the anticipation of such outbursts and complications. We must go our own way, and we must steadfastly carry on our regular work, and the less our reliance on the unexpected, the less the chance of our being caught unawares by any “historic turns”.

Notes

[1] Rabocheye Dyelo (The Workers’ Cause) – a journal with “Economist” views, organ of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad. It appeared irregularly and was published in Geneva from April 1899 to February 1902 under the editorship of B. N. Krichevsky, A. S. Martynov, and V. P. Ivanshin. Altogether 12 numbers appeared in nine issues.

Lenin criticised the views of the Rabocheye Dyelo group in his What Is To Be Done?

[2] “Listok” Rabochevo Dyela (Rabocheye Dyelo Supplement) – of which eight numbers were issued in Geneva, at irregular intervals, between June 1900 and July 1901.

[3] Rabochaya Mysl (Workers’ Thought) – an “Economist” newspaper, organ of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad, published from October 1897 to December 1902. Altogether 16 issues appeared: numbers 3 to 11 and number 16 were published in Berlin, the remaining numbers in St. Petersburg. It was edited by K. M. Takhtarev and others.

Lenin characterised the paper’s views as a Russian variety of international opportunism arid criticised them in a number of his articles published in Iskra and in other works including What Is To Be Done?

[4] The reference is to the article “The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement”, which was published as the leading article in Iskra, No. 1, December 1900.

Iskra (The Spark) – the first All-Russian illegal Marxist news paper, founded by Lenin in 1900. The foundation of a militant organ of revolutionary Marxism was the main task confronting Russian Social-Democrats at the time.

Since the publication of a revolutionary newspaper in Russia was impossible, owing to police persecution, Lenin, while still in exile in Siberia, worked out all the details of a plan to publish the paper abroad. When his term of exile ended in January 1900, be immediately began to put his plan into effect. In February, he conducted negotiations with Vera Zasulich, who had come illegally to St. Petersburg from abroad, on the participation of the Emancipation of Labour group in the publication of an All-Russian Marxist newspaper. The so-called Pskov Conference was held in April, with V. I. Lenin, L. Martov (Y. O. Tsederbaum), A. N. Potresov, S. I. Radchenko, and the “legal Marxists” (P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky) participating. The conference heard and discussed Lenin’s draft editorial declaration on the programme and the aims of the All-Russian newspaper (Iskra) and the scientific and political magazine (Zarya). Lenin visited a number of Russian cities – St. Petersburg, Riga, Pskov, Nizhni Novgorod, Ufa, and Samara – establishing contact with Social- Democratic groups and individual Social-Democrats and obtaining their support for Iskra. In August, when Lenin arrived in Switzerland, he and Potresov held a conference with the Emancipation of Labour group on the programme and the aims of the newspaper and the magazine, on possible contributors, on the composition of Editorial Board, and on the problem of residence. For an account of the founding of Iskra see the article “How the ’Spark’ was Nearly Extinguished”.

The first issue of Lenin’s Iskra was published in Leipzig in December 1900; the ensuing issues were published in Munich; from July 1902 it was published in London; and from the spring of 1903 in Geneva.

The Editorial Board consisted of V. I. Lenin, G. V. Plekhanov, L. Martov, P. B. Axelrod, A. N. Potresov, and V. I. Zasulich. The first secretary of the Editorial Board was I. G. Smidovich-Leman. From the spring of 1901 the post was taken over by N. K. Krupskaya, who was also in charge of all correspondence between Iskra and Russian Social-Democratic organisations. Lenin was actually Editor-in-Chief and the leading figure in Iskra. He published his articles on all important questions of Party organisation and the class struggle of the proletariat in Russia and dealt with the most important events in world affairs.

Iskra became, as Lenin had planned, a rallying centre for the Party forces, a centre for the training of leading Party workers. In a number of Russian cities (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, and others) groups and committees of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (P₁.S.D.L.P.) were organised along Lenin’s Iskra line. Iskra organisations sprang up and worked under the direct leadership of Lenin’s disciples and comrades-in-arms: = N. E. Bauman, I. V. Babusbkin, S. I. Gusev, M. I. Kalinin, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, and others. The newspaper played a decisive role in the struggle for the Marxist Party, in the defeat of the “Economists”, and in the unification of the dispersed Social-Democratic study circles.

On the initiative and with the direct participation of Lenin, the Editorial Board drew up a draft programme of the Party (published in Iskra, No. 21) and prepared the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which was held in July and August 1903. By the time the Congress was convened the majority of the local Social-Democratic organisations in Russia had joined forces with Iskra, approved its programme, organisational plan, and tactical line, and accepted it as their leading organ. By a special resolution, which rioted the exceptional role played by Iskra in the struggle to build the Party, the Congress adopted the news paper as the central organ of the R.S.D.L.P. and approved an editorial board consisting of Lenin, Plekhanov, and Martov. Despite the decision of the Congress, Martov refused to participate, and Nos. 46 to 51 were edited by Lenin and Plekhanov. Later Plekhanov went over to the Menshevik position and demanded that, all the old Menshevik editors, notwithstanding their rejection by the Congress, be placed on the Editorial Board. Lenin could not agree to this, and on October 19 (November 1, new style), 1903, he left the Iskra Editorial Board to strengthen his position in the Central Committee and from there to conduct a struggle against the Menshevik opportunists. Issue No. 52 of Iskra was edited by Plekhanov alone. On November 13 (26), 1903, Plekhanov, on his own initiative and in violation of the will of the Congress, co-opted all the old Menshevik editors on to the Editorial Board. Beginning with issue No. 52, the Mensheviks turned Iskra into their own, opportunist, organ.

[5] This passage refers to the mass revolutionary actions of students and workers – political demonstrations, meetings, strikes – that took place in February and March 1901, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Warsaw, Belostok, Tomsk, Odessa, and other cities in Russia.

The student movement of 1900-01, which began with academic demands, acquired the character of revolutionary action against the reactionary policy of the autocracy; it was supported by the advanced workers and it met with a response among all strata of Russian society. The direct cause of the demonstrations and strikes in February and March 1901, was the drafting of 183 Kiev University students into the army as a punitive act for their participation in a students’ meeting. The government launched a furious attack on participants in the revolutionary actions; the police and the Cossacks dispersed demonstrations and assaulted the participants; hundreds of students were arrested and expelled from colleges and universities. On March 4 (17), 1901, the demonstration in the square in front of the Kazan Cathedral, in St. Petersburg, was dispersed with particular brutality. The February-March events were evidence of the revolutionary upsurge in Russia; the participation of workers in the movement under political slogans was of tremendous importance.

[6] The reference is to Lenin’s work What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.

[7] It will be understood, of course, that these agents could work successfully only in the closest contact with the local committees (groups, study circles) of our Party. In general, the entire plan we project can, of course, be implemented only with the most active support of the committees which have on repeated occasions attempted to unite the Party and which, we are sure, will achieve this unification – if not today, then tomorrow, if not in one way, then in another. – Lenin

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Top 10 lies about the Bolshevik Revolution

Alex Grant — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:00:09 +0000

No other event in human history has been the subject of more distortions, falsehoods and fabrications the Russian Revolution. We publish here Alex Grant’s complete list of the 10 biggest downright lies about the Bolsheviks and October…

Those witnessing the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn by the British press have got a flavour of the bile and spite of the establishment. Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Revolution have also received such special attention in the recent period. But nothing is so deserving of the hatred of the ruling class as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, because only here did the slaves completely overthrow the old order and begin to build a new society without need for lord or master.

The reason for such calumny against the Bolsheviks is plain to see. This event, more than any other, shows that there is another way to run society. That workers and youth, the poor and oppressed, do not have to submit to the diktats of the ‘men in suits’ who profit from their suffering. Countless hours, and billions of dollars, pounds, and euros, have been and are being expended to convince people that nothing good came of the Russian Revolution and there is nothing to be learnt from it for our struggles today. An entire army of so-called ‘experts’ has been mobilized for this special task of maintaining the status-quo.

On the centenary of 1917, when the world finds itself in a similar impasse, this slander is again reaching a new crescendo.

The volume of falsehoods against the revolution has been truly immense ever since the Soviet workers seized power. Trotsky commented on how “the slanders poured down like Niagara”. The Western press was filled with stories of murder and mayhem from day one. For example, it was claimed that the Petrograd “Bolsheviki” were in possession of “an electrically operated guillotine that lopped off five hundred heads per hour”, and that in Soviet Russia all women over the age of 18 were required to register with the “Bureau of Free Love”, where cultured bourgeois women would be parcelled out to various proletarian husbands on a rotational basis. (Reported in The Bolshevik Revolution by Philip S Foner). Other horrors were described, such as wealthy women being forced to do cleaning, and high-rank businessmen compelled to sell newspapers on street corners in order to survive – oh the humanity!

Lenin was fond of the saying that “one fool can ask ten times more questions than ten wise men can answer.” There is no way that all the lies about the revolution can be answered in a single article, but we are aided by a phenomenon that Trotsky detailed in his History of the Russian Revolution, where he explained why all political slander is essentially “poor and monotonous”. In this regard we can identify the top 10 most monotonous lies about the Bolshevik Revolution in order to arm the reader with the truth that can cut through the distortion and malice. This is an unenviable but necessary task, cleaning out the muck and filth of 100 years: but hopefully the reader will find this useful.

1) Lenin was a German agent!

This is the first and the oldest of the lies against the Bolsheviks. It was the main lie propagated during the July days of reaction where the Bolsheviks were illegalized, Lenin was forced into hiding, and Trotsky was imprisoned. The wave of reaction let loose by this lie led to the Bolshevik printing presses being smashed and even some rank-and-file paper sellers and posterers being beaten and murdered. After a few weeks of being fooled the Russian workers and peasants saw through the fabrication and began to massively turn against those perpetuating this lie as a pretext to continue the bloody world war and the rule of the rich and the landowners. Bolshevik support in the country progressively increased from mid-August onwards.

However, the fact that the Russian people saw through this lie 100 years ago has not stopped it from being repeated and re-hashed even up to the present day. On 19 June 2017, practically 100 years to the day after this lie was first concocted, The New York Times published an article repeating it word-for-word. We should commend The Times for their environmentalism, as they are clearly very committed to recycling!

The lie goes something like this. After the February revolution Lenin travelled to Russia via Germany in a “sealed train”. On the way he received funds from the Kaiser and actively worked to sabotage the Allied war effort under the direction of the Germans. But what is the truth?

Yes, Lenin was forced to travel via Germany to Finland in order to reach revolutionary Russia. Lenin was well aware of the political risk he was taking by travelling through Germany, and that is why he insisted on the train being ’sealed‘, with nobody coming on or off for the duration of the trip. But what was his alternative? The Allied powers, French and British imperialism, refused to allow him safe passage over their occupied territory. When Trotsky attempted to reach Russia from New York via steamliner, British secret services had him arrested for a month in Halifax, Canada and only mass protests forced his release. We are sure that the imperialists would have been very happy for Lenin to remain isolated in Switzerland, but that wasn’t really an option.

These slanderers also conveniently forget that Martov, many other Mensheviks, and others in exile, were also forced to take the German route back to Russia. And yet none of these are accused of being German agents as that is not politically convenient.

What of the German gold Lenin was supposed to have received from the Kaiser? To date, despite searching high and low, nobody has been able to find a trace of its existence and all the innuendos have been debunked. If Pravda was receiving foreign sponsorship, it certainly did not look like it. It was smaller and was distributed in far lower numbers at the trenches than the papers of the Liberals and reformists (which genuinely had rich backers).

The New York Times reports that Russian workers were paid ten rubles to hold a Bolshevik placard. However, in 1921 Kadet leader Miliukov reported the going rate was fifteen rubles. Clearly The Times is the place to find a good bargain! And yet no paper trail has been found for these illicit payments that were able to rouse millions on the streets to face down the rifles and whip of police and Cossacks. Nobody has been able to trace the distribution network to get this money to all parts of the Tsarist empire that elected Bolshevik deputies.

The allegation of foreign funding occurs in every mass movement from time immemorial. Such ‘fake news’ was even reported in the protests against Donald Trump’s inauguration who were supposedly paid $3500 a head from a fund set up by Jewish liberal billionaire, George Soros. Trump himself got in on the act and tweeted about “professional protesters”. This tale is reminiscent of Wagner’s opera Das Rhinegold which tells the tale of magical gold that will make the bearer all-powerful. The deposed ruling-class cannot conceive of why the mass population would reject them, and therefore turn to fairytales of otherworldly riches. The reality is much more mundane: Lenin and the Bolsheviks proposed ideas that the population supported. This was the source of their ‘magical’ power.

Of course the German imperialists had their own plans for allowing a train full of radicals and ‘pacifists’ to travel across their territory. They gambled that the dissidents would cause dislocation and weaken the Russian war effort, but they never in their wildest dreams imagined that the Bolsheviks would come to power. Such maneuvers are not unique to German imperialism. However, this particular gamble by the German general staff clearly backfired as events have shown.

On the night of 29 October 1918, a mutiny broke out in the German fleet. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, workers’ councils seized most coastal cities by 7 November. Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to resign on 9 November. By 11 November the German workers, following the lead of their Russian brothers and sisters, defeated German imperialism and brought an end to WWI by revolutionary means. In this sense it can be said that not only was Lenin not a German agent, but he was the instigator of the downfall of the Kaiser.

Conversely, it was the Russian Provisional Government and general staff that were the true German agents. Even the Tsar and Tsarina were plotting for a separate peace with Germany prior to the February Revolution. In August, the Russian generals allowed the fall of Riga to the Germans to provide a pretext for the Kornilov coup and to teach the Riga Soviet a lesson at the end of a Prussian bayonet. Similarly, with power slipping through his fingers, Kerensky planned to move the Petrograd garrison to the front and surrender the capital to allow the Germans to massacre the revolutionary workers.

This was the last act that convinced the mass of the soldiers that the Provisional Government was not worthy of their support. The Petrograd garrison disobeyed the criminal order to abandon Petrograd, and instead changed their allegiance to the Soviet.

Here we can see that in the last analysis, for the bourgeois, class always trumps nation. The Russian ruling class preferred to give away its capital city to a foreign power rather than have it fall into the hands of the Russian workers. Lenin also favoured class over nation. But instead of the unity of the bosses, bankers, landowners, and generals, he called for the revolutionary struggle of all workers against their own ruling-class. It was Lenin’s position that overthrew both the German and Russian militarists, and brought an end to the bloody and fratricidal imperialist war.

2) The October Revolution was a violent coup

There is a myth that there was a peaceful revolution in February that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and instituted a liberal democracy. Unfortunately, the evil megalomaniacs Lenin and Trotsky organized a violent and illegal coup to overthrow democracy and install a totalitarian dictatorship. All the above is an utter fabrication.

Having been forced to approve of the February overthrow of the Tsar, this revolution is declared ‘peaceful’ by the liberals. The reality is that approximately 1500 people died in February 1917. Most of these were unarmed workers shot down by the regime’s gendarmes, but you can be sure that as the general strike and revolt progressed, these workers armed themselves and, together with mutineering soldiers, inflicted casualties on the other side. In the final days of the regime some of its worst torturers were undoubtedly strung up. Our liberal historians assure us this was all done peacefully.

If 1500 died in the ‘peaceful’ February Revolution, then surely far more died in the “violent” October revolution? The reality is that almost nobody died in the seizure of the Winter Palace that swept up the remnants of the Provisional Government.

Many will have seen the classic Sergei Eisenstein movie about the Russian Revolution, October. The scene in the movie depicting the seizure of the Winter Palace is very exciting; with people running around shooting guns, throwing bombs, falling down and so forth. This scene bears no relation to the actual event, which was more of a police operation. Sadly, there were some lighting accidents in the shooting of October and some members of the crew died. There were more people killed in a film depicting the storming of the Winter Palace than in the actual storming of the Winter Palace!

This event brought Russia out of the war and precipitated the end of the First World War, thereby saving thousands, if not millions. The irony is that those who abhor the ‘violence’ of revolution are often those supporting the violence of war as just and necessary. The Russian workers were sick of the hypocrisy of such people, who only support war for the furtherance of war profits, and the workers were willing to make sacrifices to achieve a just peace without annexations. That is the justification for October, February, and revolution in general. When the majority has decided to make a change, and the minority resists by violent means, the majority has every right to defend itself.

Secondly, while February is labelled a glorious revolution with majority support, October is labelled an illegal coup by a small minority. Let us examine this contention. There are two definitions of coup in the political dictionary. One defines a coup as seizure of power by a minority, usually the military, with the consolidation of a regime without the consent of the mass of the population. The other definition is an “illegal” transfer of power violating the constitution of a given state.

Were the Bolsheviks in the minority? This is not seriously asserted by any primary source after September 1917. It is fully recognized that the overwhelming majority of the urban population supported the Bolsheviks in October. In the countryside, those who did not support the Bolsheviks supported the left Social Revolutionaries who were in favour of all power to the Soviets. The All Russia Congress of Soviets, the only genuinely democratically elected body in the country, returned a decisive majority for Soviet power and a coalition Bolshevik-Left SR government that would give land to the peasants, end the war, and grant self-determination to the oppressed nationalities.

The final proof of the majority support for the Soviets was the victory in the Civil War. The Tsarist army was smashed and the young workers’ state had to build an army from nothing. The Whites had the support of most of the old generals and twenty one armies of foreign intervention. Trotsky took on the near impossible task of building the Red Army. However persuasive Trotsky might have been, even he could not conjure up the human beings willing to fight, to supply, and to feed an army if it was politically unpopular.

The peasantry were willing to donate grain to feed the Red Army because that was the army stopping the landowner from returning and seizing their land. The workers volunteered to fight, die, and make munitions for the Red Army in order to stop the return of the bosses and imperialists. War is the continuation of politics by other means, and by this metric the Soviets were able to mobilize the majority to a decisive victory.

Firstly, for liberal historians the term “peaceful” tends to be used very liberally. All except the most rabidly right-wing historians recognize that there was much wrong with the Tsarist regime. This was an autocratic hereditary monarchy, with no democratic elections, no right to free speech, free assembly, or free association, where political dissidents were sent to Siberia, and Jews and oppressed nationalities faced regular murderous pogroms with the support of the regime. It is therefore hard for a liberal historian to argue against the February Revolution, no matter how much he or she may disapprove of the concept of revolution in general.

Perhaps the Bolsheviks did have majority support, but this doesn’t matter because they acted illegally and unconstitutionally? Even by this narrow juridical criteria the argument falls down. As explained above, there was no ‘constitutional’ way to remove the monarchy and install a democratic system. The only option was revolution. But what was the nature of the regime that emerged out of February?

The people doing the fighting and dying to overthrow the Romanovs were predominantly the workers in the major cities who convinced the soldiers to join them or remain neutral. These workers and soldiers organized themselves in soviets. ‘Soviet’ is just the Russian word for council, and each workplace elected a representative to this body according to fixed proportions. Military units, made up mostly of peasants in uniform, also elected delegates. Delegates were open to immediate recall. The Soviets were the democratically elected bodies that had the confidence of the mass of workers and peasants that actually fought to bring down the old regime in February.

Looking aghast at the movement below were the Liberals and Conservatives of the Tsarist Duma. This body was fantastically undemocratic in its formation, and had only consultative powers under the Tsar. Voters participated in ‘curiae’ of different social castes so that there was an inbuilt majority for landowners, capitalists, and nobility. The vote of 1 landowner would be functionally equivalent to the votes of tens or hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants in a country of 160 million. The Duma leaders did everything in their power to save the Tsar from the mass uprising of the people who looked to the Soviets.

In the dying days of the monarchy these unrepresentative individuals, mostly wealthy aristocrats, businessmen, and professors, declared themselves “The Provisional Government” despite having no democratic mandate – or constitutional basis – whatsoever. The masses who actually participated in the revolution were sceptical, but unfortunately the Soviets had elected reformist leaders, who gave their support to the bourgeois Liberals. The only democratic mandate of the Provisional Government was that leant to it by the reformist Menshevik and Social Revolutionary Party leaders of the Soviets. The masses didn’t support the Provisional Government, but at the start of 1917 they had faith in the Soviet leaders. Thus began the period of dual power, with the Provisional Government sharing power with the soviet executive. This was the ‘legal’ set up installed by the February revolution.

On 7-9 November 1917, the All Russia Congress of Soviets met in Saint Petersburg. 649 delegates were elected to the Congress, representing 318 local soviets from all parts of Russia. The Bolsheviks gained 390 delegates, and the left SRs 100, creating a decisive majority for withdrawing the mandate for the Provisional Government and declaring all power to the Soviets, the only democratically representative bodies in all of Russia. Therefore, even under the narrow confines of legality and constitutionality, the October revolution passes the test. By any definition, October was not a coup.

3) Without Lenin, Russia would have become a liberal democracy

If only it wasn’t for Lenin, Russia after February would have progressed into a nice, peaceful, democratic, liberal democracy following the model of France or Britain. Here we have another self-serving counterfactual myth that bears no relation to reality.

The first Provisional Government put the Liberal Kadets into power. If people had wanted liberalism this government would have remained stable. But the liberals could not give the people what they wanted, namely: an end to the war, land to the peasants, freedom for the oppressed nationalities, and food for the cities. All this was summed up in the Bolshevik slogan of “Peace, Land, and Bread”.

Due to its inability to solve the crisis in society this government fell and was replaced with a coalition government between reformist socialists and liberals. In turn, the bourgeois liberals were discredited and were replaced by a government almost entirely made up of reformist socialists from the Soviets, with Kerensky at its head. The reformists did everything in their power not to break with the capitalist order of things, but consequently they could not provide the people with peace, land, or bread.

Despite Kerensky being a member of the Social Revolutionary party, traditionally based on the peasants, they did not enact a single word of the SR’s policy on land reform. They could not even convene a constituent assembly to write a democratic constitution, for fear not being able to control such a body. Step-by-step, mass support was moving to the Bolsheviks who called for a break with capitalism and all power to the Soviets.

The ruling class, the landlords and capitalists, could no longer rely on parliamentary maneuvers to maintain their power. All their parties had been rejected by the people. They instead moved to the methods of a fascist coup led by General Kornilov in August of 1917. Kornilov was not just going to massacre the Soviet workers, he would also have broken up the Provisional Government. Kerensky, rightfully fearing for his own head, released Bolshevik prisoners who in turn defeated Kornilov’s coup by mobilising the Petrograd workers and conducting agitation amongst the troops.

From that point onwards the ‘liberal, reformist’ Provisional Government was suspended in mid-air. The mass of workers and peasants looked to the Soviets to solve their problems. The bosses, landowners, and monarchists looked to Kornilovite reaction to teach the people a bloody lesson for being so impudent. The ‘middle-road’ had been tried and rejected by all sides. The only options were socialism or fascism.

But didn’t the Bolsheviks lose the vote for the constituent assembly? It is true that after almost a year of the liberals and reformists refusing to call the constituent assembly that it was actually the Bolshevik-led Soviets that organized this election. The results were 41 percent for the SRs, 24 percent Bolshevik, under-5 percent Kadet, and 3 percent Menshevik. It is notable to compare the vote of the Bolsheviks with the Kadets, the party siding with Kornilov’s generals and the White reaction. The Bolsheviks also gained decisive majorities in the urban centres and two-thirds of the vote amongst the soldiers of the western front.

Unfortunately, the split between the left-SRs, who supported Soviet power, and the right SRs had not been formalized at the time of the assembly elections. Therefore, the right SRs were significantly overrepresented in the party lists and the peasants were not given a genuine choice. The countryside voted SR while all the active sectors of society had moved far past the stage of arms-length parliamentarianism as seen in the imperialist countries. The Soviet system, where elections are direct, delegates are recallable, and there is no division between legislative and executive (i.e., every delegate has a job to do), is far more democratic than the parliamentary system where unaccountable MPs abandon their constituents for years at a time while raking in huge salaries.

When the constituent assembly met on 18 January 1918 it was a sickly hybrid anomaly. The reformists attempted to organize a demonstration in support but few attended. Delegates brought candles and sandwiches in case the power was cut off. At 4am the head of the guard, an anarchist, said, “The guard is tired. I propose that you close the meeting and let everybody go home”. And that was the end of the assembly that nobody was willing to fight for. It was not democratic enough for the workers, who looked to soviet democracy, and too democratic for the capitalist generals, who were preparing to launch the civil war to re-install some form of autocracy.

4) The Bolsheviks committed atrocities in the civil war

War is hell. Two sides attempt to defeat each other by violent means. Civil war is worse. The victorious side gains all, and the losing side loses all. If one side has a monopoly on violence, even if it only has the support of a minority of the population, it can terrorize the majority into submission. The violence of the minority has to be met with defensive violence of the majority if despotism is to be defeated.

The fact remains that anybody conducting a conscientious study of the Russian Civil War will find that the overwhelming preponderance of atrocities were to be found on the sides of the Whites and the 21 armies of foreign intervention.

In the early days, the revolution was in fact too kind-hearted and naïve. The Bolsheviks repeatedly showed magnanimity and let known active counterrevolutionaries go. This is understandable. The victorious revolution seeks unity and wants to move ahead with changing society in peace. Both Lenin and Trotsky said that many lives could have been saved if the revolution had acted more severely and resolutely from the earliest days, and this is undoubtedly true.

The revolution only began to adopt sterner measures in the face of atrocities committed by the counterrevolutionary Whites. The class struggle had broken the formal limits of democracy. The Whites had long ago given up any democratic or peaceful pretense, were using any methods they could – abuse, terror, massacres, pogroms, an orgy of violence – in order to defeat the Reds.

If they really wanted to defend themselves, the Reds had to drop their utopian ideas about peace and employ similar methods. Trotsky explained:

“It would not be difficult to show, day by day through the history of the civil war, that all the severe measures of the Soviet Government were forced upon it as measures of revolutionary self-defense. We shall not here enter into details. But, to give though it be but a partial criterion for valuing the conditions of the struggle, let us remind the reader that, at the moment when the White Guards, in company with their Anglo-French allies, shoot every Communist without exception who falls into their hands, the Red Army spares all prisoners without exception, including even officers of high rank.”

Trotsky would later go on to explain:

“The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course, is not one of ‘principle.’ It is a question of expediency. In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.”

In one early atrocity committed by the counterrevolution, the Whites filled three freight cars with the bodies of Red Guards, their frozen corpses “placed in obscene positions” and returned them to starving enemies marked “fresh meat: destination Petrograd”.

The Whites were famous for their abuse of Bolsheviks and Red Army prisoners, or anyone suspected of being a Communist or Soviet sympathiser. A favourite punishment for captured revolutionaries was to mutilate them, gouge their eyes out and remove their tongues before burying them alive.

Denikin’s armies were famous for their pogroms and the orgy of looting, raping and pillaging they unleashed in the areas they occupied. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were killed in this way.

The reader is under no obligation to take our word for it. The American Ambassador at the time, hardly a Soviet sympathizer, stated:

“All over (White held) Siberia… there is an orgy of arrest without charges, of execution without even the pretense of trial, and confiscation without color of authority. Fear-panic has seized everyone. Men suspect each other and live in constant terror that some spy or enemy will cry ‘Bolshevik’ and condemn them to instant death”.

One of the Ataman’s allied with Kolchak and supported by Japanese troops was described by a staff physician as a man with a “diseased brain of a pervert and a megalomaniac affected with a thirst for human blood”.

US General Graves described the behaviour of White troops thus:

“Semyonov and Kalmykov’s soldiers, under the protection of Japanese troops, were roaming the countryside like wild animals, killing and robbing the people, and those murders could have been stopped any day Japan wished. If questions were asked about these brutal murders, the reply was that the people murdered were Bolsheviks and this explanation, apparently, satisfied the world. Conditions were represented as being horrible in Eastern Siberia, and that life was the cheapest thing there.”

It has been said that Kalmykov’s reign of terror drove many moderates to support the Bolsheviks.

Semyonov was even constructing primitive death camps. On 19 August 1919, Colonel Stephanov slaughtered 52 carloads of prisoners, and the following day he reported that he had killed 1600 people. These human slaughter yards continued to operate throughout much of the civil war. Graves wrote:

“I doubt if history will show any country in the world during the last 40 years where murder could be committed as safely and with less danger of punishment than in Siberia during the regime of Admiral Kolchak.”

Kolchak’s capital had dozens upon dozens of bodies hanging dead from telegraph poles, and freight-cars full of victims were slaughtered at execution fields all along the railway.

Finally, in writing about his experiences, General Graves had this to say about the White terror:

“There were horrible murders committed, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks as the world believes. I am well on the side of safety when I say that the anti-Bolsheviks killed one hundred people in Eastern Siberia, to every one killed by the Bolsheviks.”

The Soviets had to defend themselves against these atrocities. In the middle of a Civil War, no government would allow armed opponents the freedom to organize, agitate, and publish newspapers in the rear of its armies.

No ruling class in history has ever given up its power and position in society without a fight. In the face of the fierce and depraved resistance of the counter-revolution, revolutions throughout the ages have been forced to adopt stern and repressive measures as a means of self-defence. This occurred in the English Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Russian Civil War as well as in countless other places and times in history.

Mark Twain, in his A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, provided an excellent historical defence of revolutionary terror. Though referring to the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, it fits perfectly with the Russian Revolution, and indeed as a defence of any Revolution:

“There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

5) The Romanovs were killed in cold blood

Have you ever wondered why you know about the ‘murder’ of the Romanovs but you have probably never heard of the British summary execution of the 26 Soviet commissars in Baku at around the same time? Did you know about the 4600+ peaceful protesters gunned down in January 1905 while delivering a petition to the ‘little father’, Nicholas II? Did you know he was a member of the anti-Semitic Union of the Russian People, he funded it, patronized it, and wore its badge proudly?

The Union was responsible for organizing murderous pogroms against the Jewish population with the assistance of the Tsar’s secret police and officers. Here rape, torture, burning, dismemberment, every horror imaginable, was inflicted on men, women, children, even infants. In one incident in Odessa 800 Jews were murdered, 5000 wounded, and 100,000 rendered homeless. The Tsar was not ignorant of these atrocities, in fact he wrote about them to his mother as the actions of “loyal people”! In another letter detailing the brutal repression of Baltic peasants, he said, “terror must be met with terror”. Thousands upon thousands of revolutionaries were executed under his regime or died in squalid prisons or Siberian exile. His final crime was ordering his troops to fire directly into the mass of protesters during the February Revolution. Yes, “Nicholas the bloody” had rightfully earned his moniker.

The attempt to present Nicholas as a quiet and humble man by the establishment represents the extremes of hypocrisy. Do they cry over King Charles I or Louis XVI, who brought the bourgeois to power? Do these people cry over the executions of Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Ceausescu, or other figures not friendly to the Western powers? Hillary Clinton was even recorded laughing over the death of Gaddafi. We don’t cry over these individuals either – but Nicholas was no better than any of them. But do they cry over the thousands of children killed by Bush and Blair’s bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Obama’s drones in Pakistan? No, these victims are nameless and must be forgotten by the rich and powerful.

Some admit that Nicholas was a tyrant, but object to the execution of his family. Of course that was regrettable, but Nicholas did not pause to do the same to countless Jewish families under his own rule. Or to give a modern example, how is this different from a guided missile strike that kills two insurgents and 30 family members? Trotsky preferred a public trial that would detail the crimes of the Romanov Dynasty for all to see. But in the conditions of civil war that was not possible. In 1918 the Whites were closing in on the relatively comfortable house they were being held at in Yekaterinburg. If the White armies could get hold of any of the royal family it would have become a rallying point for the counter-revolutionary forces who did not hesitate to murder the families of captured revolutionaries.

This otherwise militarily insignificant area was suddenly the object of a White Army offensive that threatened the lives of thousands of poorly defended people. The Red Army did not have the resources to reinforce the area either. Thus, faced with the onslaught of the White Army, the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks saw the execution of the Tsar’s family as the only way out of a bloodbath. In doing so they also removed what could have become a powerful figurehead for the counterrevolution to mobilise around.

They tell us that the killing of approximately 200,000 men, women, and children in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary because it ‘saved lives and shortened the war’. The reality is that the ending of the Romanov dynasty demoralized the Whites and saved lives by shortening the civil war.

What the capitalists object to is that instead of the imposition of violence by the rich against the poor, the oppressors against the oppressed, here we have an example where the slaves fought back and won. When the Romans defeated Spartacus’s revolt, they lined the Appian way with thousands of crucified slaves as a reminder to others.

Capitalism’s victims are nameless, and number in the millions. To quote Nicholas, sometimes, “terror must be met with terror”. The Bolshevik workers did not turn the other cheek, because they knew that there has never been a time that the meek inherited the earth. The violence of the poor majority to create a new world is essentially defensive and of far shorter duration than the violence of the rich minority to perpetually remain on their thrones. We do not seek violence, but we uphold the right of the majority to defend themselves against the violence of the minority by proportionate means.

6) Trotsky murdered the Kronstadt sailors

The Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921 represents one of the major anarchist critiques of the Bolshevik revolution. Sadly, those yelling the pejorative, “KRONSTADT” have rarely taken the time to study the actual events surrounding the revolt. The reality is that Kronstadt was an unfortunate tragedy, as opposed to being an example of dictatorial action by the anti-democratic Bolsheviks.

The name Kronstadt rightfully deserves pride of place in the annals of the October Revolution. The sailors from the fortress guarding Petrograd harbour were some of the most radical and self-sacrificing elements in 1917. However, the Kronstadters of 1921 were not the same people as 1917. The 1917 sailors were mostly the first to volunteer to fight the White armies in the civil war, and many of them died or found other postings. The 1921 Kronstadters were mainly sons of peasants.

To win the civil war the Soviets had adopted the policy of “war communism”. In essence this involved requisitioning grain from the peasants in order to feed the troops at the front or the munitions workers in the cities. In the first period the peasants were prepared to make this sacrifice as the Soviet government was protecting them from the return of the landowners. But as the civil war progressed, economic dynamics began to overcome political sympathies. The peasants started to demand free trade in grain, and this was the major demand of the peasants’ sons in Kronstadt. A small number of anarchists were present, and anarchist inspired resolutions were passed, but free trade remained the key issue.

The workers’ state began negotiating with the rebels towards the end of winter. Unfortunately, time was running out and there was a danger that the ice causeway to the island would melt. If this occurred it would have the result of surrendering the control of all shipping in and out of Petrograd. Kronstadt could literally starve the proletarian capital during a period of civil war. To allow this to continue would have been criminal negligence and the Soviet government had no choice but to organize an armed assault to take over the island.

The sad reality is that the Kronstadt revolt, and its subsequent suppression, was an unfortunate tragedy of the civil war. With further negotiation it need not have happened. But the Bolsheviks had no choice. Due to political malice the ‘blame’ for this tragedy has been laid at the feet of Leon Trotsky. There is a clear need by the liberals and bourgeois to use any excuse to throw mud on the clean banner of Trotsky and the Left Opposition to Stalinism. Trotsky subsequently pointed out that he personally had nothing to do with retaking the island, but as head of the Red Army he obviously politically agreed with the necessity of the actions taken by comrades on the ground.

Whatever the wishes of the individual rebel sailors may have been, their course of action would have led directly to the surrender of the island, and the city, to the White armies stationed in Finland. It is notable that in the months following Kronstadt the Bolsheviks realized that war communism had reached its limits and instituted the New Economic Policy (NEP). The key element of the NEP was free trade in grain. The Bolsheviks had previously resisted this measure as they understood it would favour the rich peasants (the ‘kulaks’). This just makes the whole episode that much more tragic. However, that did not stop the anarchists from opposing the NEP despite the fact that free trade was the main demand of the Kronstadters! Anarchists have never been renowned for their consistency.

7) Bolshevism inevitably leads to Stalinist dictatorship

No amount of ink has been spared in proving that Bolshevism inevitably leads to Stalinism and dictatorship. There is no greater slander against the fighters of 1917 than this: to identify them with those who were responsible for betraying, imprisoning, and executing them. There is a river of blood separating Bolshevism and Stalinism. By 1942, practically the entire Bolshevik central committee from 1917 were dead, mostly at the hands of Stalin. If Stalinism was the logical progression of Lenin’s party, why would this have been necessary? Nobody has been able to answer this basic question.

The reason for the rise of Stalinism had nothing to do with some so-called original sin of Leninism. The Bolshevik party of 1917 stood on the basis of not just political but economic democracy. Workers’ democratic control of production united with Soviet grassroots democracy. This is far more democracy than exists under capitalism, which is distorted by big money and gerrymandering in parliament, and is an absolute dictatorship in the workplace.

Unfortunately, Tsarist Russia had an incredibly low level of education. 90 percent of the population were peasants and literacy rates were below 30 percent. In this situation the young workers’ state had to rely upon the old bureaucrats from Tsarist times in order to make society function. This was acceptable in the early days, 1917-1921, when the workers kept the privileged bureaucrats in check. But after four years of world war, and three years of civil war, the workers were tired. The most self-sacrificing elements of the working-class were the first to volunteer to fight, and unfortunately many of these nameless proletarian heroes died in battle.

While formally victors of the civil war, the Soviet economy had been smashed by the blockade and by foreign armies. Most workers just wanted to go home to their families. In this context, the Tsarist bureaucrats began to become independent from the control of the workers. They began to push the workers aside and progressively remove elements of democratic control and accountability.

Stalin was the man who represented this bureaucratic clique. A secondary figure in 1917, he rose to prominence on the backs of the state apparatus that had become more arrogant as workers drifted out of active involvement. Workers making requests of state functionaries were told, “What do you think this is, 1918?” Lenin’s final struggle was to unite with Trotsky against this bureaucratic degeneration and Stalin in particular. Lenin said the following of the state machine:

“[It is like] a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both.”

In another work he said:

“[T]he state apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and Tsarist hotchpotch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the past five years without the help of other countries and because we have been ‘busy’ most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine…There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and Sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riff-raff like a fly in milk.”

In his last testament, that was subsequently suppressed, Lenin opened up a direct struggle against Stalin, on 24 December 1922 he wrote:

“Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.”

But 11 days later he added the following:

“Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc.”

The above is more than sufficient to show that Lenin was opposed to bureaucracy in general and Stalin in particular.

The anarchists point to so-called democratic centralism as the reason for Stalinism. This is a bizarre constitutionalist argument that insists that if only we ran a meeting the correct way people would be nicer to each other.

Democratic centralism is the only genuine democracy of action. Its basic precepts are full freedom of democracy in discussion, full unity in action. Democratic centralism is the democracy of a strike: all workers have the freedom to discuss the advisability of going on strike at a membership meeting, then a vote is held. If, for example, 70 percent of workers vote to strike, then 100 percent of the workers must be on the picket line or no strike would ever be successful. Minority rights are protected, but the majority decision decides the course of action.

Opposed to democratic centralism is the concept of ‘pure’ anarchism, where nobody is bound to the democratic decisions of the group which splits apart at the first challenge. We saw such paralysis in the Occupy movement. On the other side is the bureaucratic centralism of Stalinism, where there is no free discussion or protection of minority rights. Here again Stalinism is diametrically opposed to Bolshevism.

Ironically, many anarchist organizations with no ‘leaders’ actually find themselves in a situation analogous to bureaucratic centralism. The absence of elected and accountable leaders often means that these roles are replaced by unelected and unaccountable secret leaders: typically the loudest and most forceful person in the room. Decisions are still made, but nobody has the democratic right to challenge them.

“But the Bolsheviks banned opposition parties!” we hear our liberal-anarchist friends shout in unison. This was never the intention of the workers’ state. Unfortunately, every opposition party in the Soviets eventually transitioned over to the White armies or organised terrorist attacks against the workers. No democratic society would allow those using terrorist means to sit in a legislative assembly calmly passing laws. One could imagine the response if Al Qaeda tried to run a parliamentary candidate in London, or for governor of New York.

Marxists stand for multi-party democracy, but anybody picking up a bomb or a gun against the democratic will of the people will quickly lose their democratic rights – as in any other democratic society. Trotsky’s Left Opposition, the genuine inheritors of Bolshevism, were the most vociferous fighters for democratic rights. Subsequently, they were the first to be sent to Siberia, while Trotsky ultimately lost his life to a Stalinist assassin. These fighters against Stalinism are conveniently forgotten by the enemies of the Russian Revolution. It must be noted that in the struggle between Trotsky’s Left Opposition and Stalin’s bureaucracy, the fight between internationalist workers’ democracy and ‘socialism in one country,’ the sympathies of the imperialists were overwhelmingly on the side of the ‘practical’ Stalin.

The lie that Bolshevism leads inevitably to Stalinism is fundamentally an abstract conception. It tells us nothing about why the Russian Revolution and the Communist International degenerated. It ignores the backwardness of Tsarist Russia, the civil war, the blockade and invasion of 21 foreign armies, the failure of the revolution to spread to advanced capitalist countries, and the subsequent isolation of the revolution. There was nothing inevitable about the conditions the Russian workers and oppressed found themselves in. The liberals, reformists, and anarchists, who perpetuate this lie seem to think that ‘bureaucracy’ is some genetic human failing rather than a product of social relations. Bureaucracy is the inevitable result of shortage. The civil war and the inherited low level of technique made sure that the young workers’ state had to contend with plenty of shortages.

There are two methods of managing shortage – the capitalists do this via pricing a good so high that only the rich will receive it, but this method is incompatible with socialism. When there is a shortage in a socialist society the only options are lines and rationing. The only way for a queue to be orderly, and not merely result in the strong pushing all others aside, is to put a policeman on the line. But the policeman has to receive his due, or he will never keep things in order. Such is the economic base of bureaucracy.

That is why advanced technique is essential to achieve genuine socialism. If the German Revolution of 1918-1923 had succeeded then not only would Stalin’s bureaucracy never have usurped power from the workers, but it would likely have begun an irresistible process of world revolution. Advanced German technique united with the raw materials and agriculture of the former Tsarist empire would have shown what a democratically planned socialist economy can truly achieve.

A revolution in an advanced capitalist country like Canada, Britain, France, or the USA, would not have to face the same challenges as the USSR. These countries do not have the low cultural level of Russia in 1917, instead they have millions of graduates who cannot find work. These countries do not have massive shortages and inefficient technique, instead they have factories that sit idle and corporations sitting on billions of dollars of uninvested and unproductive ‘dead money’.

Today, the overwhelming majority of countries have a population that is primarily urban and working-class. Prior to 1945 most countries were largely agrarian. Educational and literacy levels are far higher today. Except for the upper echelons, a high percentage of modern state functionaries are not privileged like in 1917. Civil servants are normal, white collar workers who are frequently unionized and often go on strike. These workers would be more than happy to use their experience for the common good, rather than hold society to ransom like the Tsarist/Stalinist bureaucrats.

Lenin put forward conditions for a workers’ democracy: the election of all officials with the right of recall, no official to receive a wage higher than a skilled worker, the rotation of all bureaucratic tasks, and no standing armed force that can be used against the people. Backwardness stopped these conditions from being enacted in the USSR, but a modern revolution would have no problem putting them into practise. As Lenin said, when everybody is a bureaucrat, nobody is a bureaucrat. Stalinism is not inevitable.

8) Communism killed 100 million people

From newspaper editorials, to internet message boards, the “100 million killed by communism” retort is the preferred way to derail discussion. “You are a socialist? 100 million dead”, “you want a higher minimum wage? 100 million dead”, “you want healthcare? 100 million dead” The right-wing deploy this all-purpose slander whenever they have run out of real arguments!

What is the reality? This claim is based on the Black Book of Communism authored by Stephane Courtois in 1998. It has been widely debunked as biased, using shoddy methodology and hypocritical criteria. Even some of its main contributors critiqued the book saying that Courtois was obsessed with reaching the number of 100 million by whatever means necessary and that this figure cannot be sustained.

Over 90 percent of the deaths in the Black Book are apportioned to Stalinist or Maoist regimes. We have already explained how Stalinism has nothing in common with genuine Marxism. We do not take any responsibility for the real crimes of these regimes, and we point out that the first victims of Stalinism were the Trotskyists, the genuine inheritors of Bolshevism. We find it abhorrent that the deaths of our comrades are used by reactionaries to stain the banner that they fought under.

Whose responsibility are the deaths during the Russian Civil War? Is the civil war the fault of the mass of workers and peasants, the majority of the population, who wanted an end to WWI, land to the peasants, self determination for oppressed nationalities, and socialism? Or is it the fault of the White generals, the landowners, the bosses, the monarchists, and the 21 foreign armies of intervention, that didn’t accept the wishes of the majority? It is akin to bandits attacking your home, resulting in deaths on both sides: whose fault is that? The reactionaries answer that the homeowners are at fault as nobody would have been hurt if they had just surrendered. One may as well blame Abraham Lincoln for all the deaths during the American Civil War that freed the slaves. Proportionately, per head of population, a similar number of people were killed.

Even the attacks on the Stalinists are hypocritical. For example, the book lays responsibility for 1.5 million deaths in Afghanistan, practically all of the deaths during the Soviet-friendly regime. But it forgets that the CIA armed and funded the Mujahedeen insurgency with rocket launchers and other advanced weaponry in a prolonged guerrilla war. It also forgets that this Mujahedeen included such ‘freedom fighters’ as Osama Bin Laden, and renamed itself the Taliban in the 1990s. So who was responsible for these deaths?

One event that is frequently associated with the 100 million dead is the Soviet famine of 1932-1933, the so-called Holodomor. The Black Book lists 4 million dead in Ukraine and 2 million elsewhere in the USSR. The right-wing nationalist Ukrainian regime categorizes this famine as a genocide, and it is often used for political purposes to bolster the nationalist cause.

Marxists are the last to excuse the Stalinists for this famine, which was the result of Stalin’s criminal policy of forced collectivisation. Trotsky analysed this in his anti-Stalinist masterpiece, Revolution Betrayed. However, neither do we accept the anti-communist victimhood of the Ukrainian nationalists. The truth is that in the 1920s Stalin leaned on the the kulak peasants enriched by the New Economic Policy to defeat Trotsky’s Left Opposition. The Left Opposition was calling for a policy of voluntary collectivisation of the land in order to educate the peasants on the advantages of socialism.

But once Trotsky’s proletarian tendency was defeated the kulaks threatened a return to capitalism, endangering the privileges of the bureaucracy. Stalin did a 180-degree somersault and turned on the kulaks. Instead of voluntary collectivisation he introduced forced collectivisation, with the aim to “liquidate the kulaks as a class”. This insane policy led to rich peasants consuming the seed and livestock, rather than cultivating them, resulting in a famine. Ukraine faced a more acute impact as it was the breadbasket of the Tsarist empire. However the famine also had a significant impact outside Ukraine. While the facts do not support the nationalist claim of genocide, it was the Trotskyists who fought against this famine from the start.

The hypocritical methodology of the Black Book would result in a figure numbering in the billions if it was applied consistently to capitalism. Noam Chomsky, no supporter of Stalinism or Maoism, did this analysis to compare India with China. Due to the lower inequality and better distribution of medical resources in the Chinese planned economy, the number of excess deaths in India alone had reached 100 million by 1979 (and counting!) What of the decimation of indigenous populations in North and South America? The capitalist slave trade in Africa? The impact of imperialism globally?

Winston Churchill himself bears a key responsibility for the Bengal famine of 1943, in which millions died. During the famine, British controlled India was actually exporting food and Churchill was quoted as saying, „I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.“ This is not to mention the millions upon millions dying in wars for profit and imperialist strategic considerations. Over a million deaths in Iraq alone, plus the world wars and constant ‘minor’ wars.

In March of this year, UNICEF estimated that 600-million children face death, disease, and malnutrition by 2040 if current trends continue. In previous reports they have detailed how millions of children die every year by the same preventable causes while the top 8 billionaires own the same as the poorest half of humanity. By this measure capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism, have produced an entire library of “black books”. It is high time humanity turned the page on this social and economic system that is dripping with blood from every pore.

9) The fall of the USSR proves human nature is capitalist

Witnessing the present state of protracted crisis in the world economy it is quite laughable when the right wing defend capitalism as a ‘natural’ extension of the human condition. Capitalism as a social system has only existed for two or three hundred years, while Homo sapiens as a species has existed hundreds of thousands of years. Are we supposed to believe that humanity was somehow ‘unnatural’ for 99.9 percent of its existence?

Other works have answered this question from a more general philosophical and scientific viewpoint, so we will not repeat those explanations here. The basic argument of the right-wing is that the fall of the Soviet Union was because human beings are naturally selfish and will fall into laziness if they do not have the threat of dismissal and hunger to spur them on. This contention is another unproved assertion outside of time and space that bears no correlation with reality.

Starting from a very low level, the people of the Soviet Union achieved amazing things. This was all despite mismanagement by the Stalinist bureaucracy. People worked damn hard in the USSR, which produced more doctors, scientists, and engineers than capitalist countries, both in absolute and relative terms. This was due to the planned economy. Between 1913 and and 1963, productivity of labour rose 73 percent in Britain, 332 percent in the USA, and 1310 percent in the USSR. Annual growth rates exceeded 10 percent during this period, while capitalism faced the great depression.

The number of doctors per 100,000 people in the USSR was 205, as compared to 170 in Italy and Austria, 150 in America, 144 in West Germany, 110 in Britain, France and Netherlands, and 101 in Sweden. In 1970 there were 257,000 engineering graduates in the USSR, compared with 50,000 in the USA. This resulted in many groundbreaking discoveries, Nobel prizes, and general excellence. It is an abject slander on the brilliant people of the Soviet Union to say that Stalinism fell due to their stupidity or laziness.

So why did the Soviet Union collapse if the people were working so hard and were so smart? The blame lies at the feet of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Trotsky explained that a socialist planned economy needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. Under capitalism, the market is the check against inefficiency. If a company is being run inefficiently it will go bankrupt and disappear. In a healthy planned economy the check against inefficiency is the democratic control and participation of the workers themselves. If workers see inefficiency they will fix it, if they see a more efficient way of doing things they will enact it. But such democratic management by the workers was anathema to the Stalinist bureaucracy that could not allow anything to leave their tight autocratic control.

Fifty bureaucrats in Moscow could plan basic industrialization in the early period of the Soviet Union, but at a far higher cost than workers’ democracy. However, from the mid-1960s onwards, growth rates began to decline and then stagnate from the 1970s. The economy had become too complex to bureaucratically plan. The sheer weight of bureaucratic mismanagement, nepotism, corruption, and inefficiency, turned from a relative fetter on the planned economy to an absolute brake.

Quotas came down from on high which could not be completed without cutting corners and sacrificing quality. The grey and black economy rose to fill the gaps of bureaucratic waste and stupidity. This economic reality signalled the two-decade decline and fall of the Stalinist regimes. They tried almost everything to get things moving but nothing worked. The only thing they would never try is moving to workers’ democracy for fear of losing control. Therefore the massive creative potential of the Soviet working-class was left to vegetate and remained unrealized.

Instead of moving to workers’ control and a democratically planned socialist economy, the bureaucrats decided to make themselves capitalists at the expense of the rest of the Soviet population. Everything was put on the auction block at bargain basement prices – preparing the way for the current Russian oligarchy. If capitalism was a far more natural system than socialism, surely this ‘return to nature’ would have led to a leap forward of the productive forces? The return to capitalism was an abject disaster. There was a 60 percent reduction in GDP and a 15-year reduction in life expectancy. All the social ills of capitalism returned with a vengeance – alcoholism, prostitution, drug abuse, organized crime, etc. The position of women turned steeply down. This is the legacy of capitalism.

A genuine, healthy, democratically planned economy could unleash the amazing abilities of working-class people that capitalism and Stalinism deliberately suppress. Business administration students are taught to believe that workers are drones, while the fountain of knowledge and inspiration flows from the so-called ‘captains of industry’. But in the real world we see that it is these men and women in suits who have presided over bankruptcy, stagnation, bailouts, and layoffs while still collecting billions in bonuses.

It is the workers on the shop floor who really understand how things are run and how to improve things. It is management that disorganizes production by instituting inefficient split shifts and setting worker against worker. If a worker has a good idea under capitalism, the manager will steal it, take the credit, and then lower staffing relative to the increased efficiency. There is no incentive for workers to give their input when they are alienated from production. In a socialist society when workers contribute it goes to increase leisure time or to improve their local community. Capitalism and Stalinism are united in the belief that the majority of humanity are useless and stupid. Marxists believe that the overwhelming majority have something to contribute to society and it is management or the bureaucracy that are useless enforcers of a stupid, unnatural system.

10) Nothing was achieved by the Russian Revolution

Nothing was achieved by the Russian Revolution, they say! Then why do the hired guns of the bosses and bankers spend so much time saying this? Anybody who thinks things through will realise the falsity of this claim. If nothing was achieved then why treat the experience of October as such a threat? Here we have a country that went from being more backward than the most rural parts of Pakistan, to being the second world superpower. And yet we are told that there is nothing positive to learn from the Soviet Union. This lie should clearly be referenced under the dictionary definition of chutzpah!

We have already detailed some of the amazing technical and economic advances of the Soviet planned economy, despite the bureaucratic fetters of Stalinism. We can add some more. After the Nazi occupation in WW2, which adopted a ‘scorched earth’ policy of destruction, the planned economy bounced back without any Marshall aid from outside. Soviet national income rose 570 percent between 1945 and 1964, compared with 55 percent in the USA that was unscathed by the war. During this period nobody could rival Soviet space technology. Sputnik was the first satellite and Yuri Gagarin the first man in space.

One of the key achievements of the USSR was the defeat of Nazi Germany, which had access to the entire combined production of continental Europe. This is not taught in western schools, but 90 percent of the fighting and dying in WW2 occurred on the eastern front. 27 million Soviets died at the hands of Hitler’s armies.

Churchill and Roosevelt originally planned on letting Germany and Russia exhaust each other and then they would mop up the remains. That is why they did not open up the western front until 1944. The battle of Kursk still remains the largest tank battle in human history, and once the German army was defeated at Stalingrad, the Red Army registered one of the fastest advances in human history. The planned economy allowed the USSR to out-produce all of capitalist Europe when it really mattered. It was Soviet troops who freed the Jews in concentration camps, who liberated Eastern Europe, and who raised the red flag over the Reichstag. If the British and Americans had not opened the western front they would have met the Red Army at the English Channel rather than in Germany. Prior to D-day the main effort of the allies was away from the main theatre of battle, securing their colonies in Africa or the Pacific.

The gains of the Revolution were not just economic, but also social. While women in Britain did not get the vote until 1928, women in the Soviet Union achieved full legal equality from 1918. In Canada women were not even regarded legally as ‘persons’ until 1929! Soviet family law became gender neutral and homosexuality was legalized half a century before the west. For example, Trotsky took his wife’s name and nobody saw that as unusual. Abortion was also legalized. Much of this was unfortunately undone by the Stalinist counter-revolution. Despite the retreat in the 1930s, by 1970 there was gender equality in students admitted to university: a figure significantly in advance of most capitalist countries. The USSR provided free education, healthcare, and childcare, something that the United States has never been able to achieve. Not surprisingly female life expectancy jumped from 30 years in 1927 to 74 years in 1970 and infant mortality dropped by 90 percent.

Soviet culture and science flowered in the 1920s. There was an incredible explosion of experimental forms after the revolution. Eisenstein led the way with brilliant cinematic classics. Shostakovich and others revolutionized the symphony, and the Bolshoi ballet is renowned to this day. The USSR became dominant at the Olympics. Theoretical science also lept forward. Theodor Dobzhansky synthesized Darwinian natural selection with Mendelevian genetics. Again tragically this was cut across with socialist realism in the arts, and Lysenkoism in biology. The Stalinist bureaucracy could never allow full freedom to the youth via popular culture, and the CIA attempted to use the Rolling Stones and Beatles against the revolution. But despite the Stalinist censorship Soviet classical arts remained second to none.

Despite incredible material, social, and cultural backwardness, and attacks and sabotage from without and within, the Bolshevik Revolution produced miracles. Just imagine what today’s workers and youth could achieve with a far higher level of culture and education. What is holding down society is production for profit and the capitalist mode of production. Society is currently at an impasse and is lurching from one social, political, and economic crisis to another. We need to blow these fetters asunder in order to free the potential of humanity.

John Reed wrote his classic 10 Days That Shook The World which gave a vibrant account of the events of 1917. In this article we have attempted to answer the top 10 lies that aim to maintain the status quo. Lenin once said that the motor force of history is truth, and not lies. Elsewhere he said that Marxism is all powerful because it is true.

The revolutionary tendency has no need for lies: why would we want to miseducate ourselves about reality? Marxism aims to have a fully rounded out and scientific understanding of social conditions, so we are better positioned to change them. If we lie to ourselves we will only make this task more difficult. Thankfully, more and more workers, and especially young people, are beginning to see through the lies that maintain capitalist inequality. The Russian Revolution still to this day represents the greatest example of how the exploited and oppressed can achieve their emancipation. There is no greater threat to the status quo than the ideas of Bolshevism and the experience of the Russian revolution. Hopefully this contribution will help newly radicalized workers and youth find the answers they need to win the argument against the reactionaries and build a new October, 100 years later, but this time on a far higher level.

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„Das Philosophenschiff“ – Im Dienste der bürgerlichen Moral

Viktoria Filippovna — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Im Jahr des 100. Todestags von Lenin schafft es „Das Philosophenschiff“ auf die Longlist des deutschen Buchpreises. Der Autor Michael Köhlmeiers wärmt darin altbekannte Lügen und Verleumdungen über Lenin, Trotzki und den Bolschewismus auf. Die Literaturkritiker und Feuilletonisten hat das Buch so sehr begeistert, sie hielten es einer Auszeichnung würdig.

Köhlmeier versucht in seinem Roman anhand aus der Geschichte gerissener Schicksale den Roten Terror im Russischen Bürgerkrieg, nach der Oktoberrevolution 1917, als barbarischen Wahnsinn zu zeichnen. Lenin, porträtiert als kalter, teuflischer Kopf hinter den Bolschewiki und Trotzki, als Organisator, Lenins ausführende Hand – sie seien verantwortlich für die Erschießung und Deportation von Millionen unschuldiger Freigeister.

Künstler, Schriftsteller, Professoren, über deren politisches Wirken der Leser höchstens Anspielungen erfährt, macht Köhlmeier zu Opfern kaltblütiger und irrationaler Rache gekränkter Machthungriger. Den Bürgerkrieg verklärt er zu einem „Krieg der Armen und Ungebildeten, der Dummen und Bösartigen gegen die Intelligenzija“.

Die Methode hinter dem Buch ist nicht neu. Trotzki schrieb mal: „Die Lieblingsmethode des moralisierenden Philisters besteht darin, das Verhalten der Reaktion mit dem der Revolution zu identifizieren.“

Willkür und Despotismus

Der Roman unterschlägt den historischen Kontext, in dem der Bürgerkrieg stattfand und verklärt die Konterrevolution zur „Paranoia“ der Bolschewiki. „Immer wieder wurde von den Bolschewiken die Gefahr einer Konterrevolution heraufbeschworen“, erzählt die Protagonistin. Sie hätten mittels „Rechtfertigungspropaganda“ Gründe erdacht, um „jemanden zu erschießen“, oder zu deportieren – in aller Regel Unschuldige. Dem Leser drängt sich die „Einsicht“ auf: Der Rote Terror wäre eine barbarische Inszenierung gewesen. Lenin selbst kommt am Ende des Buches zu Wort: „Es gibt nur eine Macht. Die Macht zu töten.“ Getötet hätten die Bolschewiki, um ihren eigenen Wahn, ihre „Paranoia“, zu bestätigen und Lenins Machtgier zu befriedigen.

Diese Fälschung der Geschichte ist nur möglich, weil der Autor den Kontext des Bürgerkriegs verleugnet. Er erwähnt nicht die Invasion von 21 imperialistischen Armeen in die Sowjetunion, die zusammen mit der zarentreuen Weißen Armee weite Teile des Landes besetzen und dabei Bauern und Arbeiter mit Massenerschießungen, Folter und Pogromen unterdrückten. Diese Konterrevolution wollte die bolschewistische Regierung stürzen und die Führer der Oktoberrevolution auslöschen. Ihr Ziel war die Restauration des Kapitalismus und des Zarenreichs.

Stattdessen macht der Autor die weiße Armee zu einer Phantomarmee, ausgedacht von den Bolschewiken. Doch die historische Wahrheit ist, dass der Rote Terror eine Antwort auf die Attentate der Konterrevolution war. Zum Beispiel schoss 1918 die Sozialrevolutionärin Fanny Kaplan drei Mal auf Lenin. Zwei Kugeln verletzten ihn lebensgefährlich. Die Revolution hing am seidenen Faden.

Ihre Moral und unsere

Mittels seiner Geschichtsfälschung erhebt sich der Autor auf ein moralisches Podest und lässt den Leser über angeblich sinnlose Deportationen und Morde urteilen. Nur solange die Figuren der Konterrevolution im Roman geschichtslos erscheinen, kann man das Handeln der Bolschewiki vom Standpunkt einer scheinbar universellen Moral beurteilen.

Vom Gesichtspunkt der bürgerlichen Moral und dem zeitlosen „Humanismus“ wirkt der Rote Terror grausam. Diese Moral hat einen faulen Kern. Trotzki erklärte: „Hier wie sonst dient die Moral der Politik.“ So dient auch die bürgerliche Moral der herrschenden Klasse. Sie ist ein ideologisches Werkzeug, mit dem die Herrschenden ihre Ziele rechtfertigen und alles als unmoralisch verurteilen, das gegen ihre Interessen geht. Millionen toter Arbeiter und Bauern, Attentate auf die Bolschewiki, das war nach dieser Moral berechtigter Widerstand, während der revolutionäre Kampf um den Erhalt des ersten Arbeiterstaates als Terrorismus gebrandmarkt wird.

Wer sich der bürgerlichen Moral unterwirft bleibt, wie Trotzki formulierte, „Apostel der Sklaverei und Unterdrückung“. Wir Kommunisten haben eine andere Moral. Für uns gilt der proletarische Klassenstandpunkt als Kompass: Richtig ist, was die Befreiung der Arbeiterklasse aus der kapitalistischen Ausbeutung vorantreibt und den Klassenfeind schwächt. Trotzki bezeichnete die Philosophenschiffe als humanitären Akt. Die Passagiere, die ins Exil geschickt wurden, waren „als solches politisch bedeutungslos. Aber […] potenzielle Waffen in den Händen unserer möglichen Feinde“.

Michael Köhlmeier, „Das Philosophenschiff“, Hanser Verlag, 224 Seiten, 24 €

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