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Title: From Russia with Critique Author: Anarcho Date: September 29, 2016 Language: en Topics: Russian Revolution, Soviet Union, critique, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, book review Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=942
Why bother with the Russian Revolution? The Soviet Union, rightly, has
been classed as a failed, horrific, experiment since its collapse in
1991 so what is the benefit to have yet another book on it? There are
three main reasons why this excellent book is worth your time.
First, a great many socialists still believe in what one of its authors,
Alexander Berkman, labelled The Bolshevik Myth and are busy trying to
reproduce what the Bolsheviks did. They need facts, not fairy tales.
Second, revolutions have a habit of breaking out when least expected and
learning the lessons from previous ones makes sense. Third, these are
the works of two of the world’s leading revolutionary anarchists seeking
to do both of these important tasks when it was deeply unfashionable to
do so – in the 1920s and 1930s.
While Berkman and Emma Goldman should be well known in anarchist
circles, it is worth recounting their histories – particularly as shows
why they were so well situated to learn the lessons of the Russian
Revolution. Both were immigrants to America from the Tsarist Empire;
both became active revolutionary communist-anarchists in the 1880s; both
were imprisoned and then expelled to Soviet Russia from America for
their opposition to the imperialist slaughter of the First World War;
both arrived in Russia in January 1920 willing to put their anarchist
fears over state socialism aside to work with the Bolsheviks and help
the revolution they had been dreaming of for decades; and both, by
December 1921, had left Russia to warn the world’s working classes not
to follow the Bolshevik path.
It is often forgotten or overlooked that the 1917 revolutions were
viewed positively by most socialists – particularly anarchists who saw
both the February and October revolutions as following libertarian
lines. Workers and peasants formed councils, industrial workers started
to expropriate their workplaces, peasants ended landlordism by seizing
the land. Direct action was the means used and the Bolsheviks, by
supporting this and articulating the demand to end the war, gained much
credibility within anarchist and syndicalist circles.
Goldman and Berkman were no exception but unlike many, they actually got
to see the Bolshevism up-close. Their unease increased until they
finally broke with the regime (but not the revolution, quite the
reverse!) in early 1921, with the Bolshevik crushing of the revolt of
the Kronstadt naval base and town for soviet democracy as recounted by
Berkman in “The Kronstadt Rebellion” included in this volume. Fittingly,
the book’s title comes from the appeal (161) they sent to the Soviet
Authorities urging them to use negotiation rather than force during the
revolt (a fact strangely unmentioned in its introduction). The book
collects most of their key short works from immediately after they left
Russia (1922) to 1938 and comprises thirteen pieces, a combination of
articles, pamphlets and one book chapter written by Goldman and/or
Berkman (bar one, “The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party”,
which was the product of four unnamed Moscow Anarchists). So the book
includes articles which should be well known in anarchist circles
(having been republished before) but also some extremely rare ones which
have never been collected in book form before (or republished at all).
So, for example, it includes the three works “The Russian Tragedy”, “The
Russian Revolution and the Communist Party” and “The Kronstadt
Rebellion” were collected into one volume in the 1976 by Cienfuegos
Press and reissued by Phoenix Press ten years later (with a different
introduction). Likewise the “Afterward” to Goldman’s My Disillusionment
in Russia was in the excellent anthology Red Emma Speaks. In addition,
and what should be of interest to even the most well-read anarchist, are
the many, much rarer, pieces – the crowning jewel of which is “The
Crushing of the Russian Revolution” which was last issued by Freedom
Press in the 1920s based on a series of articles which had previously
appeared in Freedom in 1922. It is these articles which make this an
important book.
So an important series of articles written by two seasoned
Russian-speaking libertarian revolutionaries who spent two years in
Bolshevik Russia and expressing the lessons they had drawn from the
experience. What were those lessons? That for a revolution to succeed
the masses need to be in control. This means decentralisation of power,
federations from the bottom-up, workers’ self-management and initiative,
in a word, anarchist principles.
Sadly, the dominant political forces within the working classes in 1917
– initially the Mensheviks and then the Bolsheviks – were Marxists who
had a statist, centralised outlook. The Bolsheviks had very specific
ideas of what constituted “socialism” and, equally important, its
preconditions (a fusion of state and capitalism). Ideas have
consequences – particularly when they are the ideology of the ruling
party in a centralised state. If you favour centralisation, then you
will create centralised structures and these produce very specific
social relationships – unfree and unequal ones embryonic of future class
divisions.
This is what the Bolsheviks did, with the negative consequences which
Goldman and Berkman describe well. Thus we find the latter providing an
excellent overview of what had happened in Russia after the October
Revolution:
“The elective system was abolished, first in the army and navy, then in
the industries. The Soviets of peasants and workers were castrated and
turned into obedient Communist Committees, with the dreaded sword of the
Cheka [political para-military police] ever hanging over them. The
labour unions governmentalised, their proper activities suppressed, they
were turned into mere transmitters of the orders of the State. Universal
military service, coupled with the death penalty for conscientious
objectors; enforced labour, with a vast officialdom for the apprehension
and punishment of ‘deserters’; agrarian and industrial conscription of
the peasantry; military [or War] Communism in the cities and the system
of requisitioning in the country […] the suppression of workers’
protests by the military; the crushing of peasant dissatisfaction with
an iron hand […]” (“The Russian Tragedy”, 98)
The sad fact is that today most revolutionaries are as ignorant of these
developments – particularly the suppression of popular protest – as they
were at the time Berkman and Goldman were writing. Worse, these policies
are justified – due to the civil war – and completely divorced from
Bolshevik ideology.
The latter is important, as Berkman and Goldman make clear. For the
Bolsheviks, once in power, naturally sought to implement their vision of
socialism and, unsurprisingly, it reflected their assumptions,
prejudices and dogmas. This lead to the ironic situation of leading
Bolsheviks bemoaning the gigantic inefficient, corrupt bureaucratic
machine which somehow had sprung up around them while seeking solutions
by increasing the very thing – centralism – which had produced it in the
first place.
Thus, a “bureaucratic machine is created that is appalling in its
parasitism, inefficiency and corruption. In Moscow alone this new class
of sovburs (Soviet bureaucrats) exceeds, in 1920, the total of office
holders throughout the whole of Russia under the Tsar in 1914 […] The
Bolshevik economic policies, effectively aided by this bureaucracy,
completely disorganise the already crippled industrial life of the
country.” (96) Bolshevik ideology simply handed the whole of industry to
the state bureaucracy – while, in the workplace, usually placed the old
boss back into position (unsurprisingly, the bosses preferred
nationalisation to workers’ control just as much as the Bolsheviks did).
There was nothing accidental about this – it was the aim of Marxism from
the start. The Bolsheviks inherited a faith in centralisation from Marx
and Engels (along with much else from the Communist Manifesto, such as
“industrial armies” which provided ideological credence for their
attempts to militarise labour in 1920). That this did not work as
predicted would not have surprised Bakunin.
The Marxist dogma of centralisation went against their claims of
empowering the working class – simply because that was what it was
designed to do. Every ruling (minority) class has created a state – as
Kropotkin continually stressed – marked by centralisation, hierarchy and
a pyramidal structure. It was naïve, in fact unscientific, to expect
reproducing those structures not to also reproduce minority rule and so
create “the dictatorship over the proletariat, as it is popularly
characterised in Russia”. (95)
Needless to say, the pro-Bolshevik will proclaim that Goldman and
Berkman “ignore” the civil war and foreign intervention which, we are
equally assured, forced the Bolsheviks to be authoritarian and “betray”
their ideas. This ignores many things, not least that Goldman and
Berkman did not ignore the counter-revolution, but, more importantly,
the Bolshevik vision of “socialism” was always impoverished compared to
the anarchist one and they built a system in-line with it, not against
it. So, to give what should be a well-known example, the notion that
Lenin supported workers management of production rather than some vague
“supervision” has long been debunked (the introduction rightly
references Maurice Brinton’s still essential The Bolsheviks and Workers’
Control) and his infatuation with centralisation was inspired by Marx.
Not that anarchists have ever denied the need for defence of a
revolution (regardless of Lenin’s assertions in State and Revolution),
we just do not confuse a freed people fighting to maintain its freedom
with an institution which has evolved to crush that freedom in the
interests of a few. Ultimately, the pro-Bolshevik will proclaim the
anarchist naïve because we do not recognise that counter-revolution and
civil war are “inevitable” so necessitating the so-called workers’ state
yet, in the same breath, blame both for the failure of Bolshevism. If
Bolshevism cannot handle the inevitable without degenerating into
tyranny then it is to be avoided, surely?
Needless to say, this work is based on eye-witness accounts and so, for
some, may be lacking in sources. Sadly the editors did not seek to add
appropriate follow-up references for interested reader nor explain
certain expressions and words used (for example, the reader may work out
that the Okhrana was the Tsar’s secret police from the context of its
use by Berkman and Goldman but a footnote or glossary would not go
amiss). Perhaps such a task is asking too much in terms of research but,
for example, referencing Silvana Malle’s The Economic Organization of
War Communism 1918–1921 (Cambridge University Press, 1985) supports
Goldman’s comments on the inefficiency of centralisation as well as the
influence of Marxist ideology in Bolshevik ideological support for it:
“Only free initiative and popular participation in the affairs of the
revolution can prevent the terrible blunders committed in Russia. For
instance, with fuel only a hundred versts [about sixty-six miles] from
Petrograd there would have been no necessity for that city to suffer
from cold had the workers’ economic organizations of Petrograd been free
to exercise their initiative for the common good. The peasants of the
Ukraina would not have been hampered in the cultivation of their land
had they had access to the farm implements stacked up in the warehouses
of Kharkov and other industrial centres awaiting orders from Moscow for
their distribution. These are characteristic examples of Bolshevik
governmentalism and centralization, which should serve as a warning to
the workers of Europe and America of the destructive effects of Statism”
(“Afterward to My Disillusionment in Russia”, 191)
Suffice to say, the notion that a central body could make efficient and
well-informed decisions over allocating products or ordering their
creation ignores completely the informational burden in collecting,
processing and evaluating the information – as well as the power which
accrues to the officialdom needed to do – even badly – such a huge task.
Combine this with the disruption caused by the destruction of the civil
war, it comes as no surprise the economy collapsed as it did.
In terms of lessons, these are as valid today as when Goldman and
Berkman initially wrote. They rightly stress the need for mass
participation and the free initiative of popular working class
organisations – such as soviets, labour unions and co-operatives. The
key point they stress is that for a revolution to succeed the masses
must be in control, that they must see that they in charge of their own
destinies everywhere – the workplace, the community, their unions, the
defence of the revolution, co-operatives. This means full freedom for
the masses – of assembly, speech, organisation, etc.
Ironically, Marxist talk of the so-called workers’ state and love of
centralisation undermined all this – along with their own popularity.
For anarchists, the former is as unsurprising as the latter for the
state has evolved a structure to exclude the masses from the decision
making (how else can a minority rule?) and Bolshevik centralisation did
precisely that – the masses were alienated and disempowered as
anarchists had long predicted. The new ruling few could not solve the
many problems a social revolution threw up and so the masses turned away
from them.
This process of alienation, bureaucratisation and Bolshevik loss of
popular support – and resulting state repression – started very early,
in fact by early 1918. As Goldman and Berkman arrived in Russian in
January 1920, the focus of their writings are well after such key events
as the Bolshevik disbanding of soviets elected with non-Bolshevik
majorities, the packing of soviets of “delegates” from Bolshevik
controlled bodies (so swamping those elected directly from the
workplace), the breaking of workers’ protests and strikes as well as the
gerrymandering of the Fifth All-Russian Soviet Congress which denied the
Left-Social Revolutionaries their rightful majority (which lead to the
assassination of the German Ambassador and their crushing).
All bar the last occurred before the outbreak of civil war at the end of
May1918 as had the centralisation of power into a few hands –
politically in the Bolshevik dominated executive committees of soviets
(at all levels but flowing downwards from the national Bolshevik
government) and economically in the nationalised, state-run, committees.
Both spawned an ever-growing bureaucracy and were backed up by the
Bolshevik’s political police and armed forces whose democratic
structures had been abolished by Trotsky’s decree in April 1918.
So by the start of the civil war the Bolshevik’s had created a state
pretty-much like any other state (marked by a few rulers and armed
forces separate from and used against the masses) and an economy which
had replaced the bosses by the state bureaucracy. The Bolsheviks soon
faced a choice – remain true to their stated principles of soviet
democracy or hold onto power by any means possible. They choose the
latter. By the beginning of 1919, Bolshevik ideology now proclaimed the
inevitability of party dictatorship during any “successful” revolution –
needed, you understand, to withstand the vacillating and wavering of the
masses themselves. Trotsky was repeating this “lesson” (as openly
proclaimed to the world by Zinoviev at the Second Congress of the
Communist International in 1920) until his death.
In short, as Goldman and Berkman argue, the failure of Bolshevism was
not due to external factors but the inevitable outcome of their
ideology, its prejudices and the structures it favoured. For those
interested, section H.6 of my An Anarchist FAQ (volume 2) summarises the
current research on this subject.
Rather than being their undoing, the civil war helped the Bolsheviks
secure their rule because they could justify their actions in terms of
defending the revolution (and, since then, for their followers to
dismiss critiques by anarchists!). Indeed, repression against the
non-Bolshevik left was inversely related to success of the Whites. When
the Whites were winning, the left (Menshevik Internationalists, Left
Social Revolutionaries, Anarchists, etc.) was allowed more freedom as
they sought to help defend the revolution. When the Whites were
retreating, the left was crushed. Unsurprisingly, the winning of the
Civil War saw the ending of all opposition – including within the party
itself by the banning of factions.
Was this repression, this police state, needed? The book includes an
article by Goldman comparing the political liberties in the Spanish
revolution to the political repression under the Bolshevik, so no. Ah,
some may say, Franco won but the Whites were defeated – but the
Bolsheviks also defeated the revolution, which was surely the whole
point rather than simply ensuring Lenin stayed in power? Likewise, the
anarchist-influenced Makhnovists in the Ukraine show that theory played
its role in the outcome of the revolution – for while fighting the same
civil war as the Bolsheviks, the Makhnovists organised soviet
conferences while the Bolsheviks banned them.
So the editor and publisher should be congratulated in producing such a
useful book full of such key texts. This does not mean the book is
perfect. There are a few minor typos and hopefully any second edition
will pick those up. Far more importantly, some obvious pieces are
missing. There is nothing from Berkman’s The Bolshevik Myth nor from the
two hundred pages (chapters 52 and 53) on Russia from Goldman’s
autobiography Living My Life (and neither are mentioned in the
introduction) while just the “Afterward” from her My Disillusionment in
Russia is included. Perhaps the editor considered these as being easily
available and so did not need to be included, but it does feel like a
missed opportunity.
Still this does raise the one really glaring omission, namely the final
chapter of Berkman’s The Bolshevik Myth. This included Berkman’s lessons
from his experiences but was rejected by Berkman’s publisher as being an
“anti-climax” from a literary standpoint. Berkman self-published it
under that title in 1925 and while it was included in the 1989 Pluto
press reprint of the book it is a shame it was not included here –
particularly given its history. Also missing, although perhaps more
understandably, are the prefaces to Goldman’s My Disillusionment or at
least quotes from them in the introduction where she refutes some of the
standard claims against her account – such as she expected anarchism to
exist in Russia, that she should be siding with the regime because
Russia is “on strike”, and so forth. Such nonsense is trotted out (pun
intended!) regularly and it is a shame not to have used the opportunity
to debunk them (again!).
Still, it includes Goldman’s ridiculously good “Trotsky Protests Too
Much” (sadly not in Red Emma Speaks) and the well-argued, if somewhat
stating the basics (or so we should hope!), “There is No Communism in
Russia”. The latter’s distinction between nationalisation and
socialisation should be read by all on the left for even after the
failure of Bolshevism and social-democracy you still see
state-capitalism being portrayed as socialism. Sure, it may be better
than privatisation but it is hardly the best we can aim for – we need to
place workers’ self-management (freedom within the workplace) at the
core of socialism otherwise we end up replacing one set of bosses with
another, namely state bureaucrats.
To conclude: To Remain Silent is Impossible is an excellent collection
of most of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s key writings on the
Russian Revolution. They present the grim reality of so-called
“revolutionary” Russia (a party dictatorship presiding over a
state-capitalist economy), how the revolution failed and, equally as
important, the lessons learned so that this failure is not repeated. It
is essential reading because history has shown anarchism was right on
Marxism. As it collects in one volume many of the most important
articles on the Russian Revolution by Berkman and Goldman, many of which
have not left the archives of anarchist newspapers for many decades,
this is a must-have for historians as well as radicals.
Given that next year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Russian
Revolution, this work must find its way onto every revolutionary’s
reading list – particularly those who still believe the myth that things
were different before Stalin. Particularly given that Stalin simply
applied the tactics used by Lenin against the external opposition
(whether anarchist, socialist, worker and peasant) within the party
itself.
To Remain Silent is Impossible: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in
Russia
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
Andrew Zonneveld (Editor)
On Our Own Authority!
2013