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Title: Articles on the Russian revolution.
Author: Various (Workers Solidarity Movement)
Date: 1991 - 1993
Description: A collection of articles and talks
that discuss the Russian revolution and the
anarchist opposition to Leninism. We also look
at one Leninist attempt to answer this criticism.
In three parts: part 1
Keywords: Russia, 1917, Soviets, Mhakno,
Kronsdadt, Lenin, Bolshevik, Factory Committees.
Related material: See booklist at end.
Talk by Andrew Flood to the
WSM public meeting in
Dublin on Anarchism and
the Russian Revolution
I want to talk about the Russian revolution of
1917. This has been a subject of key importance
to anarchists for 70 years now, for two reasons.
The first reason is that for the first time in
history a working class revolution succeeded in
ousting the old ruling classes. The second
reason is that after the old ruling class was
ousted a new class came to power. Those of us
who want to make a revolution to-day must
understand where the successes and failures of
the past came from.
The Russian revolution demonstrated that it was
possible for the working class to take over the
running of the economy and to bring down their
old rulers, not once but twice in a single year.
After the February revolution of 1917 the workers
entered into a period of almost constant struggle
with the state and the bosses. At the start of
this period many workers supported the Kerensky
government. This struggle changed their
attitudes on a mass basis and gave them the
confidence to try to overturn all the old order
and privilege. Committees sprung up in the
factories and the armed forces. In the run up to
October the workers had already taken control of
the factories, for the most part. The purpose of
the October revolution was to smash the state,
destroying the power of the bosses to use armed
force to recover their property.
There were several organisations arguing for a
workers revolution in this period. This included
many anarchists particularly in Kronstadt. They
were however much fewer in number than the
Bolshevik party which came to claim the
revolution as its legacy alone. During the 1905
revolution the anarchists had raised the slogan
"All power to the soviets", at the time this was
opposed by what became the Bolshevik party but in
1917 they used this slogan to gain mass support.
Other Marxists at the time were, incorrectly to
accuse the Bolsheviks as having abandoned Marxism
for Anarchism but as events were to show they had
done no such thing.
The revolution was made by no single
organisation, but rather was the work of the
working class of Russia. During the October
revolution 4 anarchists were members of the
Revolutionary military committee that co-
ordinated the military side of the revolution..
An Anarchist sailor from Kronstadt led the
delegation which dissolved the constituent
assembly.
After October the working class of the Russia set
about the process of building the new society on
the ruins of the old. If they had succeeded there
would be little need for this meeting to-night.
Within a few short years however the revolution
had collapsed. The old bosses never came back as
a class although many individuals returned.
Instead a new class of rulers arose, one which
successfully incorporated many of the
revolutionaries of 1917. Too socialists to-day
there is no more pressing task than understanding
not only why the revolution failed but also why
it failed in such a manner. The fact the patient
died is now obvious, the question to-night is
what it died of.
Many Socialists have tried to explain this
degeneration of the revolution as a product of a
unique set of circumstances, comprising the
backwards state of the USSR and the heavy toll
inflicted by three years of civil war and western
intervention. According to this theory the
Bolsheviks were forced to take dictatorial
measures in order to preserve the revolution.
These were intended as emergency measures only
and would have been repealed later if not for
Stalin's rise to power in the 20's. This
interpretation of history presents the Bolsheviks
as helpless victims of circumstances.
This is not a view we would accept as most of you
are no doubt aware. It is a view that falls
beneath even a casual look at what occurred in
the USSR between 1917 and 1921. It also collapses
when you look at what Leninist ideology had stood
for before and after the revolution. We instead
lay the blame at the feet of Lenin and the
Bolshevik party. The degeneration was part and
parcel of the policies of the Bolsheviks.
What actually happened in this period was the
replacement of all the organs of workers
democracy and self-management with Bolshevik
imposed state rule. One example of many is given
by the factory committees. These were groups of
workers elected at most factories before, during
and after the October revolution. The delegates
to these committees were mandatable and
recallable. They were elected initially in order
to prevent the individual bosses from sabotaging
equipment. They quickly attempted to expanded
their scope to cover the complete administration
of the workplace and displaced the individual
managers. As each workplace relied on many
others to supply raw materials, power and to take
their products on to the next stage of production
the Factory Committees tried to federate in
November 1917.
They were prevented from doing so by the
Bolsheviks through the trade union bureaucracy.
The planned 'All Russian Congress of Factory
Committees" never took place. Instead the
Bolshevik party decided to set up the "All
Russian council of workers control" only 25% of
the delegates coming from the factory committees.
In this way the creative energy of Russian
workers which would have resulted in a co-
ordinating centre not under Bolshevik control was
blocked in favour of an organisation the party
could control. This body was in itself still
born, it only met once. In any case it was soon
absorbed by the Supreme Economic Council set up
in November 1917 which was attached to the
Council of Peoples Commissars, itself entirely
made up of Bolshevik party members.
So within a few short months of October the
Bolsheviks had taken control of the Economy out
of the hands of the Working class and into the
hands of the Bolshevik party. This was before the
civil war, at a time when the workers had showed
themselves capable of making a revolution but
according to the Bolsheviks incapable of running
the economy. The basis of the Bolshevik attack
on the factory committees was simple, the
Bolsheviks wanted the factories to be owned and
managed by the state, the factory committees
wanted the factories to be owned and managed by
the workers. One Bolshevik described the factory
committees attitude as " We found a process which
recalled the anarchist dreams of autonomous
productive communes".
There were many anarchists involved in the
factory committee movement at the time, mainly
through the K.A.S., the Confederation of Anarcho-
Syndicalists. In some areas they were the
dominant influence in the factories. From this
stage on the influence of the KAS was to grow
rapidly in the Unions to the point where the
Bolsheviks started to physically suppress its
activists in 1918. At the first all Russian
council of trade unions the anarcho-syndicalists
had delegates representing 75,000 workers. Their
resolution calling for real workers control and
not state workers control was defeated by an
alliance of the Bolshevik, Menshevik and Social-
Revolutionary delegates. By the end of 1918
Workers Control was replaced with individual
management of the Factories (by Bolshevik decree)
and the KAS had been weakened by armed Cheka
raids and the closing down of its national
publication in April and May 1918.
All this occurred before the Civil war and the
allied intervention attempted to smash the
revolution. The civil war was to reap an enormous
harvest on the Soviet union as the combined
forces of White generals and 17 foreign armies
captured up to 60% of the land area and
threatened to capture Petrograd. It also
provided the excuse the Bolsheviks were to use
for the suppression of workers control but as we
have seen this was a process that was already
under way. It did however mean that most of the
non-Bolshevik revolutionaries temporarily sunk
their differences with the Bolsheviks in order to
defeat the whites.
The civil war greatly weakened the ability of the
working class to resist the further undermining
of the gains they had made in 1917. During the
civil war emphasis was placed on the need for
unity to defeat the whites. After the civil war a
much weakened working class found itself faced
with a complete state structure armed with all
the repression apparatus of the modern state.
Many of the activists had been jailed or executed
by the Bolsheviks. In 1921 at the end of the
civil war only a fresh revolution could have set
the USSR back on the path towards socialism.
Those of you who have read Workers Solidarity
will be aware of these arguments in more detail.
The major point I want to make to-night is that
the repression of workers democracy by the
Bolsheviks was as a result of Bolshevik ideology
rather then due to character flaws in the
Bolshevik leadership. Lenin had a very limited
view of what socialism was, seeing it as little
more then an extension of state capitalism.
"State capitalism is a complete material
preparation for socialism, the threshold of
socialism, a rung on the ladder of history
between which and the rung called socialism there
are no gaps".
The introduction of Taylorism and one man
management in the factories in 1918 and 1919
displays a similar fixation with efficiency and
productivity.
Lenin also believed that ordianary workers could
not run society. A party of intellectuals was
necessary to do this. He thought that workers
were unable to go beyond having a "trade union
consciousness" because of the fact they had no
time to study socialism.
"there are many...who are not enlightened
socialists and cannot be such because they have
to slave in the factories and they have neither
the time nor the opportunity to become
socialists".
Briefly in 1917 Lenin was forced to acknowledge
this to be wrong when he admitted that the
workers were 100 times ahead of the party from
February to October.
This was the justification behind the
dictatorship of the party. In a modern sense it
is the justification behind putting the party
before all else. Leninists today will happily
argue that a socialist should have no principles
beyond building the party and that even scabbing
is excusable if it is in the parties interests.
Leninist organisations tend to look at struggles
purely in terms of recruitment, remaining
involved just long enough to pick up any
activists then heading on for the next one. For
the Leninists the chance of a revolution being
successful is mainly determined by the size of
their party at the time.
Anarchists have a different view of what
socialism is and how people become socialists.
We do not think it is something that comes from
reading books or engaging in debates. The basic
ideas of socialism are produced whenever workers
come into conflict with the bosses. it is at this
time that large numbers of people activey ask who
runs the factories, what is the role of the
state, etc. The purpose of a anarchist
organisation is not simply to grow by grabbing
activists out of campaigns. Its function is to
get involved with such struggles using its
reservoir of experience and theory to win them.
It's function is to link up many individual
struggles into a widespread anti-capitalist
movement. Its function is to agitate for the
smashing of the state and it's replacement with a
society based on communism and workers self-
management.
We do not see the number of people in our
organisation as being the most important factor
behind the success or failure of a revolution.
Rather we look at the level of confidence in the
class, and the level of understanding about what
needs to be built as well as what must be
destroyed. Although we want our ideas to be taken
up and used on a mass basis we have no wish to
get become leaders in order for this to happen.
The Bolsheviks saw their party as comprising all
the advanced revolutionaries (vanguard). They saw
socialism as something best implemented by a
professional leadership of intellectuals. So when
they talked of dictatorship of the proletariat
they did not mean the working class as a whole
exercising control of society. They meant the
party holding power on behalf of the working
class and in practise the leadership of the party
being the ones making all the important policy
decisions.
They believed the party, because of its unique
position was always right and therefore it had
the right to rule over all the class. Therefore
while the Soviets had been useful to the
Bolsheviks up to the October revolution after the
revolution they became a threat. They could and
did decide policy which would contradict the
party line. Most of them were not under
sufficiently under the control of the party as
they contained many other revolutionaries also.
So the Bolsheviks proceeded to turn them into
organs which rubberstamped party decisions.
By 1918 this process had been completed to the
extent that the decisions to sign the treaty of
Brest-Livtosk which surrendered a huge area of
the revolutionary Ukraine to Germany and the
Austro-Hungarian empire was made at a party
Central Committee meeting. Indeed the central
committee was split, the decision going through
only by one vote, yet the Soviets had no role at
all in this decision making. This was again long
before the Civil war and the famine was to
provide an excuse for such manoeuvres.
The success and failure throws up all the
questions that still separate anarchism from all
other socialist theories. Where do revolutionary
ideas come from. Lenin was quite clear on this
in what is to be done
"History in all countries attests that, on it's
own, the working class cannot go beyond the level
of trade union consciousness, the realisation
that they must combine into trade unions, fight
against the employers, force the governments to
pass such laws as benefit the conditions of the
workers...As for the socialist doctrine, it was
constructed out of the philosophical, historical
and economic theories elaborated by educated
members of the ruling class by intellectuals".
Anarchists on the other hand point to the
creative energy of the working class, the
creation of Soviets in 1905 and of the Hungarian
Workers Councils in 1956 for instance were
spontaneous events, unguided by any organisation.
Revolutionary organisations are created by
sections of the working class although it is
certainly true that as the ruling class dominate
education it may well be ex-members of this class
that write down and formularise these ideas.
The Leninists also see their party as
representing the working class. This was the
justification of the suppression of all rivals in
1918 for the Bolsheviks and for the closing down
of factions in the party from 1918 to 1921.
Trotsky even more then Stalin or Lenin was the
most prominent supporter of what was called the
parties historical birthright. In the early 20's
he was to repeatedly use this idea of the parties
birthright against minority groups and
individuals in the Bolshevik party. The most
astounding part of this however was the
willingness of the same groups and individuals to
accept this silencing in the name of the party.
By the 30's this whole process was to reach its
logical conclusion with Stalins show trials of
many of the old Bolshevik leadership.
The right of the party to dictate over the class
was clearly expressed in 1921 by Trotsky at the
10th party congress. In attacking a faction
within the Bolshevik party he said of them
"They have come out with dangerous slogans. They
have made a fetish of democratic principles. They
have placed the workers right to elect
representatives above the party. As if the party
were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even
if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the
passing moods of the workers' democracy!"
Here we have one of the clearest statements of
the ideology behind Bolshevik practise in these
years. This is the road many of to-days
revolutionaries would like to lead us on to.
We have an entirely different project of how
capitalism is to be overthrown and what is to
replace it. We don't think Workers democracy is
icing on the cake or a step towards a workers
state. We have no illusions in the neutrality of
the state, no matter in whose hands power may
lie. We wish to take part in the building of a
workers movement not only capable of tearing down
existing society but also of building a new
society free of exploitation on its ruins.
How Lenin led to Stalin
From Workers Solidarity No. 33
FOR THE LENINIST far left the collapse of the
USSR has thrown up more questions then it
answered. If the Soviet Union really was a
'workers state' why were the workers unwilling to
defend it? Why did they in fact welcome the
changes?
What happened to Trotskys "political revolution
or bloody counter revolution"? Those Leninist
organisations which no longer see the Soviet
Union as a workers state do not escape the
contradictions either. If Stalin was the source
of the problem why do so many Russian workers
blame Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders too.
The mythology of "Lenin, creator and sustainer of
the Russian revolution" is now dying. With it
will go all the Leninist groups for as the Soviet
archives are increasingly opened it will become
increasingly difficult to defend Lenin's legacy.
The Left in the west has dodged and falsified the
Lenin debate for 60 years now. Now however there
is a proliferation of articles and meetings by
the various Trotskyist groups trying to convince
workers that Lenin did not lead to Stalin.
Unfortunately much of this debate is still based
on the slander and falsifications of history that
has been symptomatic of Bolshevism since 1918.
The key questions of what comprises Stalinism and
when did "Stalinism" first come into practice are
dodged in favour of rhetoric and historical
falsehood.
Stalinism is defined by many features and indeed
some of these are more difficult then others to
lay at the feet of Lenin. The guiding points of
Stalin's foreign policy for instance was the idea
of peaceful co-existence with the West while
building socialism in the USSR ("socialism in one
country"). Lenin is often presented as the
opposite extreme, being willing to risk all in
the cause of international revolution. This
story like many others however is not all it
seems. Other points that many would consider
characteristic of Stalinism include, the creation
of a one party state, no control by the working
class of the economy, the dictatorial rule of
individuals over the mass of society, the brutal
crushing of all workers' action and the use of
slander and historical distortion against other
left groups.
SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY
The treaty of Brest-Livtosk of 1918, which pulled
Russia out of World War I, also surrendered a
very large amount of the Ukraine to the Austro-
Hungarians. Obviously, there was no potential of
continuing a conventional war (especially as the
Bolsheviks had used the slogan "peace, bread,
land" to win mass support). Yet, the presence of
the Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine, clearly
demonstrated a vast revolutionary potential among
the Ukrainian peasants and workers. No attempt
was made to supply or sustain those forces which
did seek to fight a revolutionary war against the
Austro-Hungarians. They were sacrificed in order
to gain a respite to build "socialism" in Russia.
The second point worth considering about Lenin's
internationalism is his insistence from 1918
onwards, that the task was to build "state
capitalism, as "If we introduced state capitalism
in approximately 6 months' time we would achieve
a great success..".1 He was also to say
"Socialism is nothing but state capitalist
monopoly made to benefit the whole people". 2
This calls into question Lenin's concept of
socialism.
ONE PARTY STATE
Another key feature many would associate with
Stalinism was the creation of a one party state,
and the silencing of all opposition currents
within the party. Many Trotskyists will still
try to tell you that the Bolsheviks encouraged
workers to take up and debate the points of the
day, both inside and outside the party. The
reality is very different for the Bolsheviks
rapidly clamped down on the revolutionary forces
outside the party, and then on those inside that
failed to toe the line .
In April 1918 the Bolshevik secret police (The
Cheka) raided 26 Anarchist centres in Moscow. 40
Anarchists were killed or injured and over 500
imprisoned 3. In May the leading Anarchist
publications were closed down4. Both of these
events occurred before the excuse of the outbreak
of the Civil War could be used as a
'justification'. These raids occurred because
the Bolsheviks were beginning to lose the
arguments about the running of Russian industry.
In 1918 also a faction of the Bolshevik party
critical of the party's introduction of
'Talyorism' (the use of piece work and time &
motion studies to measure the output of each
worker, essentially the science of sweat
extraction) around the journal Kommunist were
forced out of Leningrad when the majority of the
Leningrad party conference supported Lenin's
demand "that the adherents of Kommunist cease
their separate organisational existence". 5
The paper was last published in May, silenced"Not
by discussion, persuasion or compromise, but by
a high pressure campaign in the Party
organisations, backed by a barrage of violent
invective in the party press...". 6 So much for
encouraging debate!!
A further example of the Bolsheviks 'encouraging
debate' was seen in their treatment of the
Makhnovist in the Ukranine. This partisan army
which fought against both the Ukrainian
nationalists and the White generals at one time
liberated over 7 million people. It was led by
the anarchist Nestor Mhakno and anarchism played
the major part in the ideology of the movement.
The liberated zone was ran by a democratic soviet
of workers and peasants and many collectives were
set up.
ECHOS OF SPAIN
The Makhnovists entered into treaties with the
Bolsheviks three times in order to maintain a
stronger united front against the Whites and
nationalists. Despite this they were betrayed by
the Bolsheviks three times, and the third time
they were destroyed after the Bolsheviks arrested
and executed all the delegates sent to a joint
military council. This was under the
instructions of Trotsky! Daniel Guerin's
description of Trotskys dealings with the
Makhnovists is instructive "He refused to give
arms to Makhno's partisans, failing in his duty
of assisting them, and subsequently accused them
of betrayal and of allowing themselves to be
beaten by white troops. The same procedure was
followed 18 years later by the Spanish Stalinists
against the anarchist brigades" 7
The final lid was put on political life outside
or inside the party in 1921. The 1921 party
congress banned all factions in the communist
party itself. Trotsky made a speech denouncing
one such faction, the Workers Opposition as
having "placed the workers right to elect
representatives above the party. As if the party
were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even
if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the
passing moods of the workers democracy". 8
Shortly afterwards the Kronstadt rising was used
as an excuse to exile, imprison and execute the
last of the anarchists. Long before Lenins death
the political legacy now blamed on Stalin had
been completed. Dissent had been silenced inside
and outside the party. The one party state
existed as of 1921. Stalin may have been the
first to execute party members on a large scale
but with the execution of those revolutionaries
outside the party and the silencing of dissidents
within it from 1918 the logic for these purges
was clearly in place.