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Title: Russia: Revolution, Counter-Revolution
Author: Morpheus
Date: December 22, 2003
Language: en
Topics: Russian Revolution, anarcho-communism, analysis, history
Source: Retrieved on 1st August 2020 from https://web.archive.org/web/20051230054926/http://question-everything.mahost.org/History/Russian_Revolution.html

Morpheus

Russia: Revolution, Counter-Revolution

The Russian Revolution was one of the most important events of the

20^(th) century. It had a massive impact on the world and revolutionary

movements, especially in the period after world war two when many groups

seeking to imitate the Bolshevik triumph in Russia came to power. The

revolution itself shows two main things. Firstly, the revolution

validates anarchist critiques of the “workers state” or “dictatorship of

the proletariat” advocated by Marxists and other authoritarian

socialists. Anarchists have long predicted that these schemes would

inevitably result in the creation of a new bureaucratic ruling class

that dominated and exploited the proletariat, a prediction that was

proven correct in Russia and subsequent state socialist revolutions.

Second, the early phases of the revolution provide an example of how

society might be run in an anarchistic manner without capitalism, the

state or other authoritarian systems. This period saw the creation of

non-hierarchical organizations on a mass scale very similar to those

advocated by anarchists. These organs of self-management can be compared

to the systems set up by anarchists during the 1936 Spanish Revolution.

The 1917 revolution was preceded by the 1905 revolution, the “dress

rehearsal” for the 1917 revolution. As a result of Russia’s loss in the

war with Japan mass rebellions broke out against the king of Russia,

Tsar Nicholas Romanov the second. The Tsar quickly made peace with Japan

and granted a few concessions including changing Russia to a

constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the Duma, limiting

his power. This, combined with a good deal of repression, succeeded in

ending the rebellions and saving the monarchy. After the revolution was

defeated most of the concessions the Tsar made were undone and the Duma

lost most of its power.

In 1914 Russia joined the First World War on the side of the entente. As

in the Russo-Japanese war Russia took heavy loses and was severely

strained by the war. Unlike the Russo-Japanese war the Tsar could not

simply end the war when it threatened to topple his kingdom. The stress

was too much and the Tsar was overthrown in February 1917, thus

beginning the Great Russian Revolution. In the Tsar’s place a

provisional government was set up which was to hold elections to create

a Russian Republic. In October 1917 another revolution occurred which

overthrew the Provisional government and brought revolutionary

socialists to power. The Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Illyich Lenin

and Leon Trotsky played a leading role in the October revolution, but

did not do it alone. Although initially democratic the new government

quickly evolved into a totalitarian state under the dictatorship of the

Bolshevik party. This was followed by a civil war from May 1918 until

November 1920 and the solidification of the state bureaucracy into a new

ruling class.

Revolution in the Cities

The February Revolution began on February 23^(rd), international women’s

day. In the capital, Petrograd, spontaneous demonstrations, strikes and

battles with the police erupted. Their main slogan was a demand for

bread, other ones included “down with the autocracy” and “down with the

war.” Over the next several days the rebellion spread and became bigger,

by the 25^(th) it had turned into a general strike. “The workers come to

the factories in the morning; instead of going to work they hold

meetings; then” [1] demonstrations. Troops were called in to suppress

the insurrection, on the 27^(th) they mutinied en masse. The government

lost control of the capital and on March 2^(nd) the Tsar abdicated. The

Provisional Committee of the Duma created the provisional government.

This group of politicians (who were not elected to these posts) was to

run the government until they could hold elections for a constituent

assembly that would write a new republican constitution for Russia.

During and after the February revolution mass meetings were held by

ordinary people to discuss the situation and organize themselves. In

workplaces workers held worker assemblies, in villages peasants held

peasant assemblies, soldiers had soldier assemblies. These operated on

principles of direct democracy and served to organize revolutionary

action by the masses. These popular assemblies have appeared in many

revolutions – the French had the Sans-Culottes sectional assemblies, the

Mexican had peasant assemblies, the Portuguese had worker and

neighborhood assemblies and the Spanish had worker and peasant

assemblies. They have also been formed in recent rebellions in Argentina

and Algeria. Many anarchists see an anarchist society as being organized

by popular assemblies such as the ones formed in these revolutions.

The wake of the February revolution also saw the creation of another

anarchic institution – the soviets. These were decentralized directly

democratic institutions created by the workers to coordinate their

struggle. “The Russian Soviets fulfilled a double function: during great

events they served as rallying points for the direct initiative of the

masses, throwing into the scale their enthusiasm, their blood and lives.

In periods of relative stability they were organs of popular” [2]

self-management. As the struggle intensified they took on more power and

threatened the power of the state and ruling class, acting as an

alternative way to organize society. Workers in each workplace would

elect a number of delegates to the soviet based on the number of people

who worked there. Delegates were not only recallable but also mandated.

Most cities had soviets and there were eventually soldier and peasant

soviets set up. Large cities also had local borough soviets for

different parts of the city.

As historian Oscar Anweiler pointed out in his definitive history of the

Russian soviets, they came quite close to ideas advocated by many

anarchist thinkers, including Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin:

“Proudhon’s views are often directly associated with the Russian

councils, and sometimes even held decisive for their establishment.

Bakunin … much more than Proudhon, linked anarchist principles directly

to revolutionary action, thus arriving at remarkable insights into the

revolutionary process that contribute to an understanding of later

events in Russia.

In 1863 Proudhon declared ... ‘All my economic ideas as developed over

twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial

federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula:

political federation or decentralization.’...

Proudhon’s conception of a self-governing [society] ... founded on

producers’ corporations [i.e. federations of co-operatives], is

certainly related to the idea of ‘a democracy of producers’ which

emerged in the factory soviets. To this extent Proudhon can be regarded

as an ideological precursor of the councils. But his direct influence on

the establishment of the soviets cannot be proved....

Bakunin … suggested the formation of revolutionary committees with

representatives from the barricades, the streets, and the city

districts, who would be given binding mandates, held accountable to the

masses, and subject to recall.... Bakunin proposed the ... organization

of society ‘through free federation from the bottom upward, the

association of workers in industry and agriculture — first in the

communities, then through federation of communities into districts,

districts into nations, and nations into international brotherhood.’

These proposals are indeed strikingly similar to the structure of the

subsequent Russian system of councils ...

Bakunin’s ideas about spontaneous development of the revolution and the

masses’ capacity for elementary organization undoubtedly were echoed in

part by the subsequent soviet movement.... Because Bakunin — unlike Marx

— was always very close to the reality of social struggle, he was able

to foresee concrete aspects of the revolution. The council movement

during the Russian Revolution, though not a result of Bakunin’s

theories, often corresponded in form and progress to his revolutionary

concepts and predictions.” [3]

In classical anarchist theory popular assemblies (or other local groups)

would coordinate their activities through the use of mandated and

recallable delegates (also called spokes or contact people). Delegates

are mandated meaning they must represent the position the group

(assemblies, etc.) they come from has decided. They are instructed by

the group(s) they come from, at every level, on how to deal with any

issue. These instructions will be binding, committing delegates to a

framework of policies within which they must act and providing for their

recall and the nullification of their decisions if they fail to carry

out their mandates. Decision-making power stays with the assemblies (or

other local groups), delegates simply implement and communicate them to

delegates from other assemblies. This differs from representative

institutions in that decision making power stays in the assemblies

whereas representatives can make whatever decisions they want and have

authority over others. With this system assemblies (or other groups) can

coordinate their actions with each other without authority, organizing

things from the bottom up instead of centralizing power. Rather than top

down organizations, there are decentralized confederations and networks.

Contemporary North American anarchists often call these spokescouncils;

sometimes they are called workers’ councils.

Initially the soviets came very close to this system, but they did not

match exactly. The first soviets, which were born in the 1905 revolution

(and suppressed along with the defeat of the revolution), appear to have

come closer to the anarchist ideal. “This was the first experience of

direct democracy for most of those involved. The Soviets were created

from below, by the workers, peasants, and soldiers, and reflected their

desires--which were expressed in non-sectarian resolutions. No political

party dominated the Soviets, and many workers were opposed to allowing

representation for political parties.” [4] Anarchists raised the slogan

“all power to the soviets” in this revolution. [5]

After the February revolution the soviets were created once again. In

1905 the soviets were just a working class phenomenon, in 1917 soldiers

set up soviets and eventually so did peasants. In some cases the worker,

soldier and/or peasant soviets would merge together to form joint

soviets. Regional federations of soviets were set up and on June 3^(rd)

an all-Russian congress of soviets was held. That soviet congress agreed

to hold another soviet congress every three months.

Like the 1905 soviets, these soviets initially were very close to the

anarchist system of mandated and recallable delegates. However, there

were small differences that appeared. In the 1917 soviets political

parties eventually came to play a more important role and began to

dominate them. Mandates were not always strictly followed. Soviets

tended to go from being made up of mandated delegates to being

representative bodies, where delegates followed the party agenda instead

of the decisions of the workplace that elected them. Party discipline

over any party member that became a delegate interfered with the

directly democratic nature of the soviets. In addition, political

parties were often allowed to send their own delegates regardless of

their popular support, giving them disproportionate influence. The

higher-level soviets tended more to become representative institutions,

while the borough and local soviets stayed closer to the masses. The

transformation of soviets into representative, instead of mandated

delegate, bodies was rapidly accelerated by the October revolution but

their tendency to act as representative instead of delegate bodies

already existed prior to October. “Even before the Bolsheviks seized

power in October 1917, actual political authority had been shifted to

the Executive Committee while the soviet plenum was left with only

approval or rejection of ready-made resolutions and with decisions on

basic questions.” [6]

Since anarchists constituted only a small minority of those who

participated in the soviets it is not surprising that they deviated from

the anarchist ideal. The Tsar had only recently been overthrown and so

most was not as familiar with the dangers of representative democracy.

Mandates weren’t strictly followed and the attempts of political parties

to take them over were not resisted as much as they should have been.

What is remarkable is that the soviets (and other organizations) were

very close to what most anarchists had advocated for decades even though

most were not only non-anarchists but knew very little of anarchist

theory.

The February revolution began with the mutiny of the military and the

collapse of military discipline. Within the military participatory

democratic structures were created by rank-and-file soldiers that had

the effect of undermining the power of the government and military

command. Soldiers (most of whom were peasant conscripts) set up their

own soldiers’ soviets similar to the workers’ soviets. In some cases

they merged with worker soviets and in some with both worker and peasant

soviets. Officers and soldier committees were elected and subject to

recall by soldier assemblies. This kind of military democracy has

appeared in many revolutions – the soldiers’ councils among the

Levellers in the English revolution, the minutemen in the American

Revolution, the anarchist militias in the Spanish revolution and other

popular revolutions.

Another anarchic institution that appeared after the February revolution

was the factory committees. These were initially set up to coordinate

the workers’ struggle against their bosses and limit the power of

management. “Because the committees represented the worker right at his

place of work, their revolutionary role grew proportionately as the

soviet consolidated into a permanent institution and lost touch with the

masses.” [7] Many committees ended up taking over the factories. Factory

takeovers began first as a response to the closing down of factories by

their owners (usually due to un-profitability), the workers took them

over and were usually able to run them where capitalists had failed.

Eventually the expropriations spread to factories not abandoned by their

owners, accelerating with the October revolution. [8]

Many historians have noted the similarity of these factory committees to

the worker self-management advocated by anarcho-syndicalists (and other

anarchists). In anarcho-syndicalist theory, the workers using worker

assemblies would run their own workplaces. Factory committees would be

created to carry out coordination and administrative tasks. They would

be elected, mandated and subject to recall. Decision making power would

stay with the workers in their assemblies. The committees would simply

implement the decisions made by the workers in their assemblies and

would not have authority over workers.

This is what was implemented in the Spanish revolution; the factory

committees in the Russian Revolution were virtually identical. There

were two differences. The first was that, whereas the takeover of

industry in the Spanish revolution was done rapidly in the space of a

few weeks, the takeover of industry in Russia was comparatively slow,

taking the better part of a year. The second was that the self-managed

factories in Russia sold their products on the market, producing largely

the same thing and for the same customers. The majority of

anarcho-syndicalists are opposed not only to capitalism but also to

markets and so in Spain eventually set up non-hierarchical forms of

coordination between workplaces. Industry in Spain was reorganized to be

more effective and adapt to changing circumstances brought on by civil

war.

Agrarian Revolution

Prior to the revolution most Russian peasants were organized into

repartitional communes called the Mir. Each household in the Mir was

assigned land, which they farmed themselves and kept the product of for

themselves (minus taxes, rent, etc.). A village assembly consisting of

all the household heads called the skhod ran the commune. Except in

times of rebellion or revolution, male elders dominated the skhod. It

was patriarchical and ageist, women and the young were excluded. The

land assigned to each household would be periodically repartitioned by

the skhod, the intention being to maintain an egalitarian village as

much as possible. Peasant villages were rather egalitarian, but there

was some stratification between poor peasants, middle peasants and

Kulaks on the top. A disproportionate amount of the land was owned by a

landlord aristocracy, which had descended from the feudal nobility. The

landlords exploited the peasants through rent or other means.

Many revolutionaries, including the populists, social revolutionaries

(SRs) and many Russian anarchists, believed the Mir could play an

important role in overthrowing the Tsar and, if democratized, in

building a socialist society. They were right. During both the 1905 and

1917 revolutions the communes played a major role, serving as a

ready-made organization through which the peasants rebelled against the

landlords and the state. After the 1905 revolution reforms were

implemented with the intention of staving off another revolution,

including an attempt to undermine the Mir. Petr Arkadevich Stolypin,

prime minister of Russia from 1906 until his assassination in 1911, in

addition to using state terror to suppress all opposition to the Tsar

implemented land reforms designed to weaken and destroy the Mir. He

attempted to convert the peasantry into small holding farmers, each

owning his own plot of land instead of living in the communes. It was

hoped that doing this would generate a conservative class of farmers (as

had arisen in many West European countries) and make it more difficult

for peasants to organize against the regime. The Stolypin land reforms

failed to achieve its goal, only a tiny percentage of peasants became

small holding farmers, the vast majority stayed in the Mir.

In 1917 the communes played a major role in the overthrow of the old

order. The Volga region is not unusual in this regard. “During the

second half of March 1917 news of the February revolution in Petrograd

and the abdication of the Tsar filtered down to the villages ... During

the following weeks open assemblies were held in almost every village to

discuss the current situation and to formulate resolutions on a broad

range of local and national issues.” [9] These assemblies acted as a

counter-power against the landlords and state in the villages and were

used to organize against them. “The district and provincial peasant

assemblies of 1917 served as an important focus for the articulation of

peasant grievances and aspirations.... As the power of the state

collapsed in the provinces during 1917, the political initiative passed

to these district and provincial assemblies.” [10]

These assemblies were not the same ageist and patriarchical assemblies

that had previously run the communes. The revolution transformed not

only the relationship of the commune to landlords and the state, but

transformed relations within the communes as well:

“The village assemblies which met during the spring of 1917 marked a

process of democratization within the peasant community. Whereas village

politics before 1914 had been dominated by the communal gathering of

peasant household elders, the village assemblies which came to dominate

politics during 1917 comprised all the village inhabitants and were

sometimes attended by several hundred people. The patriarchical

domination of the peasant household elders was thus challenged by junior

members of the peasant households (including the female members),

landless laborers and craftsmen ... [and others] who had formerly been

excluded from the communal gathering.” [11]

After the February revolution the communes began expropriating the

landlord’s land and incorporating it into the communes. “It was very

rare indeed for the [landlord] himself to be harmed during these

proceedings.” [12] The peasants aimed to re-divide the land to give

everyone a fair share. The landlord’s land was added to the commune’s

land and then the land repartitioned, with each household assigned it’s

own plot of land by the (newly democratized) peasant assemblies. “The

meadows and the pasture were usually left in communal use (i.e. were not

partitioned), in accordance with traditional custom.” [13] The peasants’

aim was:

“to restore the idealized ‘good life’ of the village commune, a life

which had been irrevocably lost in the modern world. They appealed to

the ancient peasant ideals of truth and justice which, since the Middle

Ages, had been inextricably connected in the dreams of the peasants with

land and freedom. The village commune ... provided the organizational

structure and the ideological basis of the peasant revolution … Every

family household, including those of the former landowners, was given

the right to cultivate with its own labor a share of the land.” [14]

Most landlords who did not flee after the expropriations began were

incorporated within the communes as equal peasants. They were usually

given a portion of their former land to farm themselves, but no more

than any other peasant and only an amount they could farm themselves

(without hired labor). “Most of the peasant communities … recognized the

right of the ex-landowner to farm a share of his former land with the

labour of his family.... A survey in Moscow province on the eve of the

October revolution showed that 79% of the peasantry believed the

landowners and their families should be allowed to farm a share of the

land.” [15]

Returning peasant conscripts from the soldiers often played an important

role in radicalizing the village and leading the revolution. “The return

of the peasant-soldiers from the army during the winter and spring of

1917–18 had a profound effect on the course of the revolution. These

young men presented themselves as the natural leaders of the revolution

in the villages.... The mood of the soldiers on their return from the

army was radical and volatile.” [16] Peasant conscripts who otherwise

may never have left their village were placed in a situation (the army)

very different from the villages where they learned about large-scale

organization and came in contact with radical ideas.

The expropriation and repartitioning of land accelerated with the

October revolution. Without the peasant rebellions bringing down the old

order the insurrections in the cities would never have succeeded. For a

while after the October revolution Bolshevik power was very weak and

most villages were largely left to themselves. A kind of semi-anarchy

prevailed in many villages, with the landlords expropriated and the

Bolsheviks not yet imposing their authority on the village. The peasant

assemblies and communes that prevailed in this period are quite similar

to many of the institutions advocated by many anarchists but, as with

the soviets, there were some small differences.

The democratized village assemblies are quite similar to the community

assemblies (or “free communes”) advocated by many anarchists since the

early 19^(th) century. However, while anarchists envision their

community assemblies as being purely voluntary bodies that would respect

the individual freedom of its members (and this was the case with the

village assemblies during the Spanish revolution) in some cases the

Russian village assemblies turned into a “tyranny of the majority.” In

Spain those who did not want to participate in the collectives were not

coerced into doing so and were given some land but only as much as they

could work themselves (without hired labor). In Russia there were

instances of small holding farmers who had separated from the commune as

a result of the Stolypin land reforms being forced to rejoin the

commune, sometimes violently. Peasant assemblies were sometimes hostile

towards people from outside the village, especially if they had no

previous connection to the village.

Unlike Russia’s repartitioned communes, peasants in agrarian collectives

during the Spanish revolution generally cultivated the land in common

rather than assigning each household it’s own plot. What was produced

was shared as well. In some cases money was abolished and things

distributed on the basis of need. The Russian peasant’s repartitional

commune did not cultivate all land in common or share what was produced.

Although quite different from the collectives advocated by

anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists (and set up during the

Spanish revolution) these repartitional communes were similar to systems

advocated by mutualist anarchists like Joseph Proudhon. In many

mutualist schemes the land would be farmed by peasants who would work

their own land (without wage-labor or collectives) and trade any surplus

on the market with other peasants, self-employed artisans and/or

cooperatives. This is quite similar to what prevailed in rural Russia

during the high point of the revolution.

Villages often suffered from excessive parochialism and sometimes came

into conflict with each other. Unlike in revolutionary Spain there was

no confederations set up between communes to coordinate their actions or

equalize the wealth of different communes. The closest thing was the

peasant soviets, however these did not play as big a role in the

countryside as they did in the cities and soon transformed into a

hierarchical power over the villages.

As in the cities, the majority of peasants were not anarchists and so it

should not be surprising that these revolutionary agrarian structures

did not completely match the anarchist ideal. Despite this they came

very close. The embryo of an anarchist society was created before and

for a short while after October.

All of revolutionary Russia was covered with a vast network of workers’

and peasant soviets, which began to function as organs of

self-management. They developed, prolonged, and defended the Revolution.

… a vast system of social and economic workers’ self-management was

being created … This regime of soviets and factory committees, by the

very fact of its appearance, menaced the state system with death. [17]

Rise of the Bolsheviks

The February revolution was a spontaneous and leaderless revolution. It

left all the political parties behind, including the revolutionary ones.

This contrasts with Lenin’s vanguardist conception of the revolution. In

his book What is to be Done?, published in 1902, Lenin said that:

“The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively

by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness,

i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight

the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary

labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of

the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by

educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By

their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx

and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the

very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy

arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the

working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of

the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist

intelligentsia.” [18]

By Social Democracy Lenin meant revolutionary Marxism, this was written

before Social Democracy became a synonym for the welfare state. Lenin

argued that “Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers

only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle,

from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.”

[19] Only intellectuals (“educated representatives of the propertied

classes”) could develop revolutionary socialism, not by workers on their

own. The task of these revolutionary intellectuals was to form a

vanguard party run by professional revolutionaries that would spread

socialist ideology among the workers and lead them to make a revolution.

The party would be organized hierarchically, with a powerful central

committee at the top, based on a highly centralized version of

representative democracy called “Democratic Centralism.” This position

caused a split in the Russian Marxist movement. One faction, the

Bolsheviks, supported Lenin’s advocacy of a vanguard party while the

other faction, the Mensheviks, advocated a more traditional political

party. These two factions later broke into two separate parties, with

the Bolsheviks organizing theirs along the vanguardist lines Lenin

advocated.

Lenin’s claim that socialist ideology cannot be developed by the

workers’ exclusively by their own effort but can only be brought to them

from without is false. It may be true for Marxism, but it is not true

for all forms of socialism. There have been many examples of workers’

developing revolutionary anti-capitalist consciousness and going beyond

“trade union consciousness” without the aid of intellectuals. The

anarcho-syndicalist movement, which was once massive, is an excellent

example. It was literally created by ordinary workers, not by

intellectuals, and grew into a mass movement in many countries – even

launching a revolution in Spain. In the 1905 Revolution Lenin’s

“vanguard” was left behind by the revolutionary workers, the Bolsheviks

were initially suspicious of the Soviets and opposed them. In 1917

revolutionary workers again left behind the “vanguard”, both in the

February Revolution and again in the July days.

Even if Lenin was right and revolutionary ideology could only come from

the intellectuals his vanguardism would not follow. The intellectuals

could simply spread socialist ideology amongst the workers without

attempting to impose their authority on the workers. Hierarchical

organization is not necessary; the intellectuals could spread socialist

ideology to workers who would self-organize against capitalism. They can

organize non-hierarchically, instead of using “Democratic Centralism.”

Just because one group persuades another that a certain philosophy is a

good idea it does not follow that the persuading group has to have power

over those they persuade.

After the February revolution the Bolsheviks took a position not that

far from the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks claimed that the current

revolution was a “bourgeois revolution” which would lead to the

establishment of capitalism and the rule of the bourgeoisie. A working

class socialist revolution would only be possible after a long period of

industrial capitalism. The task of socialists was thus not to push for

another revolution to overthrow the capitalists but to help consolidate

the current revolution, build capitalism, prevent a counter-revolution

and build a reformist workers movement. The so-called “vanguard of the

revolution,” the Bolshevik party, was initially not revolutionary at

all!

This changed with Lenin’s return to Russia. The provisional government

decreed an amnesty for all persecuted dissidents, which resulted in

hordes of revolutionaries returning to Russia from exile in the months

following the February revolution. The Germans granted Lenin safe

passage through German territory to return to Russia, hoping that he

would stir up unrest and possibly force Russia to withdraw from the war.

Lenin arrived in April; shortly afterward he presented his April Theses

at a meeting of the Bolshevik party. In it he called for an end to the

First World War, another revolution to overthrow the provisional

government, establishing a “workers’ and peasants’ state” based on the

Soviets, “Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy,” and “a

state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.” Initially most

Bolsheviks reacted very negatively to his position. One Bolshevik,

“Bogdanov (Malinovksy), beside himself, shouted that Lenin’s speech was

the raving of a madman; pale with rage and contempt, he showered blame

on those who had applauded: ‘One should be ashamed to applaud this

rubbish, you cover yourselves with shame! And you are Marxists!’” The

old Bolshevik Goldenberg declared that “Lenin has presented his

candidacy for a throne in Europe vacant these thirty years: Bakunin’s

throne. Lenin’s new words tell the same old story of primitive

anarchism. Lenin the Social Democrat, Lenin the Marxist, Lenin the

leader of our militant Social Democracy is no more!” [20] Only one

senior Bolshevik leader, Alexandra Kollontai, supported Lenin’s April

Theses from the start. Despite this, Lenin was able to persuade the

Bolshevik party to adopt his revolutionary stance, overcoming major

resistance.

In April Theses, his book The State and Revolution (probably his most

libertarian work) and other writings Lenin put forth an ultra-democratic

and libertarian vision of society. He believed in a “dictatorship of the

proletariat,” also called a “workers’ state,” which would be the

“proletariat organized as ruling class.” Under this “workers’ state” the

“the police, the army and the bureaucracy” would all be abolished and

“the standing army [was] to be replaced by the arming of the whole

people.” Every government official would be elected, recallable and paid

a workman’s wage. It was to be a truly democratic state, controlled by

the majority. The working class would use this state to oppress the

capitalists (a minority of the population) and put down their resistance

to the new order. He said that “for a certain time … the bourgeois state

remains under communism, without the bourgeoisie!” [21] After the

revolution society would pass through two phases, first socialism and

then communism. Under socialism individuals would be paid based on how

much they worked, communism would be a classless society without

following the principle “from each according to ability, to each

according to need.” The ultimate aim of the “dictatorship of the

proletariat” was to bring about the end of the state, as it abolished

classes and brought about communism the state would begin to “wither

away” and eventually disappear completely. He claimed that the

“dictatorship of the proletariat” was needed only temporarily to

suppress the capitalists and build the new order, as communism comes

about it about it was supposed to disappear. Since Russia had a peasant

majority in Russia the “workers’ state” would be a “revolutionary

democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” – a joint

workers’ and peasants’ state controlled by the majority. The revolution

in Russia was to be the opening shot in a world revolution that would

topple capitalism around the globe.

The allegations made by some Bolsheviks that Lenin had gone over to

anarchism, though incorrect, are not without merit. Lenin’s views

between the February and October revolutions incorporated a considerable

degree of libertarian rhetoric and ideas. Anarchists have long advocated

the arming of the people and called for the abolition of the police,

standing army and bureaucracy along with the state in general.

Anarchists had already begun pushing for another revolution to overthrow

the Provisional government and criticizing the Mensheviks and SRs for

cooperating with it. The Bolsheviks took up many slogans the anarchists

had already raised, including “All Power to the Soviets” and “the

factory to the worker, the land to the peasant” but meant very different

things by them. By “All Power to the Soviets” the Bolsheviks meant that

the Soviets would run the new “proletarian” state, they would assume

state power. The anarchists meant that the state should be abolished and

society instead organized by voluntary non-hierarchical associations

such as the Soviets. By “the factory to the worker, the land to the

peasant” the Bolsheviks meant putting these under state control. Because

the state would supposedly be controlled by the workers and peasants

this would, they claimed, be equivalent to putting the factories and

land under the control of the workers’ and peasants. Lenin claimed that,

“socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve

the interests of the whole people.” [22] The anarchists meant the slogan

literally – the workers in the factory should directly control it

themselves and the peasants who work the land should control the land

themselves. Lenin even declared that “While the state exists there is no

freedom. When freedom exists, there will be no state.” [23] It is likely

that the libertarian influence on his thought at this time was more the

result of the libertarian structures created by the Russian masses, the

Soviets, factory committees, etc. rather than as a result of anarchist

theory.

Party as a result of the Bolshevik’s libertarian rhetoric the Russian

anarchist movement allied with the Bolsheviks against the Provisional

government, this alliance was broken after the October revolution. The

Bolsheviks also allied with the Maximalists (who had a position between

the Left SRs and the anarchists) and the left wing of the Social

Revolutionary party, the Left SRs. The SRs were a peasant party, the

oldest and largest party in Russia. The Left SRs were very critical of

the right SRs for cooperating with the Provisional government, it’s

failure to pass land reform and it’s capitalist policies. They advocated

Soviet Democracy, land reform and the overthrow of the provisional

government. Shortly after the October revolution the Left SRs broke off

and formed their own political party.

The vision of a hyper-democratic state outlined by Lenin in 1917 is not

feasible and even if it could be implemented it would not be able to

make the state an instrument of majority rule instead of minority rule.

In order to enforce it’s rule the state must have it’s own armed bodies

of people (police, military, etc.) with a top down chain of command to

make the population obey it’s laws. Abolishing the police, military,

etc. and arming the people would make it impossible for the state to

enforce its’ orders. These armed bodies of people have to have a top

down chain of command because if they are autonomous they won’t

necessarily do what the state wants. Theoretically it is possible to

have a state without bureaucracy but all states create hierarchical

organizations in order to implement their orders. In the modern state

this comes in the form of bureaucracy. Non-hierarchical organizations

cannot serve this role because a non-hierarchical organization, by

virtue of the fact that it is non-hierarchical, can choose not do what

those in the top levels of the government hierarchy order it to do. If

it has to follow the government’s orders then it is hierarchical.

Theoretically there are pre-modern forms the state could use instead of

bureaucracy (such as a system of vassals) but these are based on

personal authority rather than impersonal rules and so it would be

impossible to portray them as a implementing the decrees of a

“proletarian democracy.” Thus any “proletarian” state would have to be a

bureaucratic state. The modern state has thousands upon thousands of

government officials, as did most pre-modern states. Having every single

one of them be elected is impossible; there are far too many positions

to be able to choose candidates. At best everyone would spend all his or

her time voting, and doing nothing else. In addition this would lead to

paralysis within the state since only the electorate could fire

officials, not their superiors, interfering with discipline. The

different levels of the state would all come into conflict with each

other and gridlock would ensue. These anti-authoritarian elements were

infeasible and thus abandoned shortly after October.

The state is a hierarchical organization, based on centralization of

power; that maintains a monopoly (or near-monopoly) on the legitimate

use of violence. All states implement the rule of an elite over the

majority and are never controlled by the majority because of this

centralization of power and monopoly of force. Decisions are not

actually made by the majority but by those on the top of the hierarchy.

Ordinary people have no real control over elected politicians after

winning power. Once in power elected representatives are isolated from

the general population but subjected to great pressure from state

bureaucracies, political parties and (in bourgeois democracies) big

business. Elected politicians are in power temporarily, whereas the

bureaucracy is there permanently. Thus the bureaucracy tends to gain

more power than the representatives. In addition the bureaucracy can use

black ops, disinformation, bureaucratic slowdowns, media manipulation,

coups, brute force and other means to force representatives to go along

with their wishes. They can rig elections and repress parties with

platforms they do not like to insure that elections are won by parties

with platforms they approve of. The right of recall does not give the

majority control over the state since officials can use their monopoly

of force to disregard or otherwise subvert recall attempts (which is

exactly what happened to Russia in spring 1918) and even ignoring that

actual decision making power still lies with the elected officials. The

majority doesn’t actually make the decisions itself. In State and

Revolution Lenin focuses on administration and accounting but says

little about actual decision-making. Once in power elected officials can

not only use their authority to subvert elections and recall (insuring

that the same elite stays in power regardless of who wins the election)

but they can use it to pay themselves higher salaries than the average

workman as they do in every state. They will not give up power and

“wither away” but actually form a new ruling class over the proletariat.

Even if Lenin’s program could be implemented it would not result in a

state controlled by the majority. [24]

In State and Revolution Lenin said, “We want the socialist revolution

with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense

with subordination, control and ‘managers.’” [25] “Human nature” is an

ancient excuse used to justify tyranny for eons. If human nature is such

that humans are inherently evil then hierarchy should be abolished

because those on the top will abuse their power. If human nature is good

then there is no need for hierarchy. Either way, hierarchy should be

abolished. If people are too evil (or stupid) to rule themselves then

they are far too evil (or stupid) to rule others. The whole point of a

social revolution is to change human behavior. Present human behavior is

also based on private property, markets and imperialism yet that did not

prevent Lenin from calling for the revolution to abolish them

“overnight.” The workers and peasants in the Russian revolution were

already beginning to abolish subordination and managers, creating

alternative non-hierarchical forms of organization. Doing away with

subordination/hierarchy was not only possible; it was already starting

to be implemented.

In State and Revolution Lenin also claimed that “the post office [is] an

example of the socialist system. … Our immediate task is to organize the

whole of national economy on the lines of the postal system.” [26] The

post office is a highly bureaucratic and authoritarian organization. It

is based on a bureaucratic hierarchy, with those on the top giving

orders to those on the bottom. It is no surprise that a society

organized along the lines of the post office would end up being highly

bureaucratic and authoritarian.

Lenin argued that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was necessary to

prevent the capitalists from using armed force to launch a

counter-revolution, to defeat them in civil war. He misrepresented

anarchist theory by claiming that anarchists think the working class

should lie down its’ arms after the revolution and not defend it from

armed counter-revolutionaries. He then attacked this misrepresentation

of anarchism. Revolutionary anarchists, excluding anarcho-pacifists, do

believe that the workers should defend the revolution from violent

counter-revolutionaries, with force if necessary. A “proletarian” state

is not the only way to defend the revolution. If necessary the

population can be armed and democratic militias formed to wage a

guerilla war against counter-revolutionary armies. Anarchists have done

this repeatedly in Ukraine, Manchuria, Nicaragua and Spain. A communal

militia system, rather than a state, should be used to defend the

revolution.

The Marxist theory of the state claims that the state is an instrument

of whichever class happens to be dominant. Under feudalism the state is

the instrument of the aristocracy, under capitalism it is the instrument

of the capitalists, under socialism it is the instrument of the workers,

etc. This theory is incorrect. The state is not merely an instrument

through which the dominant class suppresses other classes; it is a means

through which a small elite dominates and exploits the majority. Because

it is a hierarchical, centralized organization the state always develops

a small elite on the top — those in the upper levels of the hierarchy.

The “state elite.” This elite dominates and exploits the population.

Sometimes it does this directly, as would happen in the USSR and Maoist

China. Other times it is more effective for this elite to defend the

interests of a separate economic elite – such as a corporate elite or a

landlord elite. The economic elite and state elite have very similar

interests and so it often appears as if the state is merely the

instrument of the state elite. Both seek to keep the subordinate classes

subordinate, in order to maintain their authority and keep the

extraction of surplus going. The state elite benefits from the economic

elite’s exploitation in many ways — it can leach off the surplus (taxes,

bribery, etc.), it can use the surplus to mobilize for war or other

goals, etc.

The state elite and economic elite (dominant class), although they have

broadly similar interests, do not always see eye to eye and sometimes

conflict. An example is Russia in the 1860s. Russia lost the Crimean war

because it was behind the times — hadn’t industrialized, had a backwards

system. The Russian Bourgeoisie didn’t really exist yet. The loss of

this war threatened the power of the state (it could be conquered) and

so the state implemented a bunch of reforms designed to modernize the

country. Part of this was the abolition of serfdom – which the feudal

landlords were overwhelmingly opposed to. The state threw the dominant

class overboard in order to save itself. Of course, the manner in which

the end of serfdom was implemented allowed the landlords to maintain a

position higher over the peasantry — by owning more land — but it was

still a major blow to their position opposed by most landlords. Thus,

the state is not automatically the instrument of whichever class happens

to be dominant — although the state and economic elites do usually share

very similar interests, and often tend to intermingle. Other examples of

the state not doing what the economic elite wants are France under

Napoleon the third, Peru’s revolutionary military dictatorship in the

late sixties and early seventies, Peron’s regime in Argentina, and the

later period of Nazi Germany.

The most common attempt by Marxists to explain these instances of the

state conflicting with the dominant class is the theory of Bonapartism.

When the classes are evenly powerful there is no dominant class and so

the state gains a certain degree of independence. Lenin claimed that

both of France’s Bonapartist regimes, Bismarck’s Germany and Europe’s

absolute monarchies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were all

examples of Bonapartism. This theory fails for empirical reasons. There

have been many cases of states conflicting with economic elites when

different classes clearly were not equally powerful. Tsarist Russia in

the 1860s (when the Russian capitalist didn’t really exist) and Nazi

Germany provide two clear examples where the ruling class and the

subordinate classes were most definitely not equally balanced yet they

did not see eye to eye with the economic elite. There have been several

cases where the workers and capitalists were equally powerful yet

Bonapartism did not develop, such as Italy in the early twenties. And

even in the case of Bonapartist France it is debatable whether the

workers and capitalists actually were equally powerful.

Even if the theory of Bonapartism were correct it would effectively

refute the Marxist advocacy of a “proletarian” state. In the process of

going from a situation where the capitalists are more powerful than the

workers to a situation where the workers are more powerful than the

capitalists there is a high probability that they will pass through the

point where the workers and capitalists are equally powerful. In the

course of the revolution(s) and attempted counter-revolutions that will

characterize the transition from capitalism to socialism it is almost

inevitable the workers and capitalists will be equally powerful for a

time, perhaps repeatedly. Bonapartism is thus almost inevitable during

the transition from capitalism to socialism. Hence, the workers’ cannot

rely on the state to defeat the bourgeoisie because when the class

struggle is most intense, when the capitalists and workers’ are equally

powerful, Bonapartism will come about and give the state a degree of

independence, making any “workers’ state” completely unreliable. The

only time the workers’ would be able to rely on any state would be in

the period when the bourgeoisie has been decisively defeated, but

according to Lenin a “workers’ state” is most needed when the

bourgeoisie are resisting the strongest. When they have been decisively

defeated the state is no longer needed by the workers and can begin to

“wither away.”

Some, including much of the right and some anarchists & contemporary

social democrats, portray Lenin and the Bolsheviks as Machiavellian

schemers who set out from day one to impose a totalitarian one party

state on Russia. The Bolsheviks just wanted to seize power for

themselves; the October revolution was just an elitist coup with no

popular support. This view is false. Lenin and the other revolutionaries

would not have risked their lives, spent countless years in jail and

gone into exile if they only wanted power for themselves. They genuinely

believed their actions would create a better society. Nor did Lenin’s

vision prior to seizing power explicitly call for the dictatorship of

one party. In State and Revolution and other writings Lenin put forth a

highly democratic vision of the state, not a one-party dictatorship.

Just a few weeks before the October revolution Lenin said, “By seizing

full power, the Soviets could … ensure … peaceful elections of deputies

by the people, and a peaceful struggle of parties inside the Soviets;

they could test the programmes of the various parties in practice and

power could pass peacefully from one party to another.” [27]

After Lenin came to power he eventually came out in favor of a one-party

state (and not just for Russia), but prior to seizing power he held a

highly democratic vision. There were statements that could be seen to

imply a one-party state, such as his reference in State and Revolution

to “the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the

vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of

crushing the oppressors” [28] but this was not explicit, as it would

become after seizing power. His theory, like the Marxist theory of the

state in general, was internally contradictory – is it to be “the

proletariat organized as ruling class” or “the vanguard of the

proletariat organized as ruling class”? This contradiction was really

just the Marxist version of a contradiction inherent in all democratic

theories of the state – they all advocate a society run by the majority

yet advocate an institution, the state, which is inherently a system

whereby a small minority rules. Ordinary bourgeois democracy is also

internally contradictory – is it to be “the people” who hold decision

making power or elected representatives? That Lenin’s vision of the

state, one of the most democratic in history, could turn into a

totalitarian dictatorship is an indictment not only of Marxism but also

of all democratic theories of the state.

In early July dissatisfied Petrograd workers and soldiers (including

sailors from the nearby Krondstadt Naval base, a stronghold of

radicalism) staged demonstrations against the provisional government.

They marched under revolutionary slogans including “all power to the

soviets,” beginning what would be known as the “July days.” This turned

into a semi-insurrection against the provisional government. Once again,

the so-called “vanguard” was left behind by the workers. The Bolsheviks

initially opposed the rebellion and attempted to prevent it but, as it

got under way, subsequently decided to support it. The July days failed

to overthrow the provisional government and were defeated. The

leadership of the provisional government was changed as a result of the

July days, making Kerensky head of the government. Kerensky was one of

the best-known socialists in the country, a member of the SR party, but

a right-wing very conservative “socialist,” basically a sell-out to the

capitalists. A period of reaction followed the defeat of the July days.

Kerensky persecuted revolutionary groups, including the Bolsheviks.

Lenin and several other leaders of the party had to go underground and

flee the country. Prospects for revolution looked increasingly dim as

the right advanced.

What changed this and radicalized the population was the Kornilov

affair. The most common account of this is that General Lavr Kornilov

launched an attempted coup against the provisional government, intent on

imposing a right-wing military dictatorship. This was Kerensky’s story.

What actually happened is less clear and the details remain murky. There

are many conflicting accounts of this story, some say Kerensky tricked

Kornilov into revolting, others that there was a miscommunication

between Kerensky and Kornilov and still others say Kerensky was trying

to play Kornilov and the Bolsheviks against each other. In A People’s

Tragedy Orlando Figes claims that Kerensky received a miscommunication

from Kornilov that he intentionally misinterpreted as implying that

Kornilov was about to launch a counter-revolutionary coup. Kerensky used

this for his own advantage, warning that Kornilov was about to launch a

counter-revolutionary coup and setting himself up as a great hero

fighting against Kornilov’s coup, causing Kornilov to revolt against the

government. This is a plausible account, though not necessarily correct.

Whatever actually happened between Kornilov and Kerensky, the effect was

to cause Kornilov to rebel against the provisional government and march

on Petrograd. The Bolsheviks played a major role in defeating his march

on the capitol, giving them more popularity. The attempted “coup” was

seen as confirmation that the provisional government could not defend

itself from the forces of counter-revolution, as the Bolsheviks claimed.

It radicalized many people, initiating a mass movement that would

culminate in the October revolution. The revolutionaries, mainly

Bolsheviks but also Left SRs and anarchists, won majorities in the

Soviets.

The revolutionary movement built up over the next two months, eventually

coming to comprise the majority of the population. The provisional

government got weaker and weaker, until the October revolution finally

overthrew it. The insurrection began on October 25^(th), not long before

the opening of the second soviet congress. Paramilitary forces and

revolutionary soldiers, including sailors from Krondstadt, stormed the

government buildings. Though the Bolsheviks played a major role in the

insurrection, it was not purely a Bolshevik affair. Other

revolutionaries, including anarchists, Maximalists and Left SRs,

participated as well. “The October Revolution was not a mere coup, but

the culmination of an authentic mass movement, notwithstanding the

ideology and scholarship inspired by the cold war.” [29] The October

revolution “was but the moment when the Provisional Government, whose

power and authority had been completely undermined by popular revolts,

was finally officially pushed aside.” [30] Worker and peasant

rebellions, the takeover of land and factories, accelerated with the

October revolution (had it not the case for viewing it as a mere coup

would be much stronger). By the time the provisional government was

destroyed the soviets, factory committees and popular assemblies had

already shattered most of its power. It is true that the October

revolution was not the leaderless spontaneous event that the February

revolution was, but just because a revolution has leaders and some

amount of planning does not change it into a coup. Many non-Bolsheviks

participated in the insurrection and, as shown by the revolutionaries’

victories in the Soviets, most of the population supported the overthrow

of the provisional government (although they did not support the

one-party dictatorship that would later evolve).

Most Mensheviks and right-wing SRs walked out of the second congress of

soviets in protest of the October revolution. They formed “committees to

defend the revolution” and attempted to stop the revolution. The

insurrection in Petrograd was followed by a brief miniature “civil war”

in which soviets seized power throughout the country. Local governments

were toppled and replaced with Soviet governments. Over the next several

months rightists attempted to form armies in order to launch a

counter-revolution, but they were defeated and frequently saw their

troops mutiny or desert. In April 1918 Lenin declared:

“We can say with confidence that in the main the civil war is at an end.

There will be some skirmishes, of course, and in some towns street

fighting will flare up here or there, due to isolated attempts by the

reactionaries to overthrow the strength of the revolution—the Soviet

system—but there is no doubt that on the internal front reaction has

been irretrievably smashed by the efforts of the insurgent people.” [31]

Of course, the “civil war” he was referring to here was merely the

initial resistance to October and an assortment of failed

counter-revolutionary plots and skirmishes. The real civil war would not

start until late May of 1918.

The October revolution created a Soviet state; the Soviets became the

government. The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was

declared. The second congress of soviets created the Council of People’s

Commissars or Sovnarkom that ran the state, many local soviets set up

local Sovnarkoms to run local governments. The Bolsheviks formed a

coalition government with the Left SRs and passed a number of decrees

and reforms. They embarrassed the entente by publishing secret

imperialist deals the old regime had made with its entente allies. They

legalized the peasant seizure of lands, decreed separation of church and

state, legalized abortion, decreed equality of the sexes, and made

divorce easier. A women’s section of the Bolshevik party was eventually

created to fight for women’s equality and help the party control the

female population. On February 1^(st)/14^(th) Russia switched it’s

calendar to the Gregorian calendar, putting it in sync with Western

Europe. In March 1918 the Bolshevik party renamed itself the Communist

party. Initially the power of the central government was extremely weak,

local soviets and party organs were relatively decentralized. Some

soviets even declared their own local republics and dictatorships that

ignored the directives of the national government. Some parts of Russia

were in near-anarchy. “Kaluga Province became proverbial for its

resistance to centralized authority in 1918. There was a Sovereign

Soviet Republic of Autonomous Volosts in Kaluga. It was the closest

Russia ever came to an anarchist structure of power.” [32] As the

Bolsheviks consolidated their power things became more centralized as

the national government asserted its’ authority over the country. This

process of centralization was greatly accelerated after the civil war

broke out but began prior to it.

Prior to the revolution the Bolsheviks had criticized the provisional

government for its failure to hold elections for the Constituent

Assembly. The Bolsheviks hoped that electoral victory in the Constituent

Assembly would solidify the power of the Soviet government and held

elections to the Assembly on November 12^(th). The socialist parties won

overwhelmingly, although the Bolsheviks did not gain a majority as they

had hoped. The Bolsheviks received 24 percent of the vote, the SRs 38

percent, the Mensheviks 3 percent, and the Ukrainian SRs 12 percent. The

Kadets (liberal capitalists) received only 5 percent of the vote.

It was not an entirely fair election on account of the split in the SRs.

The left SRs officially split from the SR party just after the election

lists had been drawn up and were therefore unable to run their own

slate. The right SRs also had a greater control over the party

nominating mechanisms then their support warranted. As a result the

right SRs were over-represented in the Constituent Assembly. Because the

left SRs were pro-October and the right SRs were anti-October this was

not a minor difference. Had the left SRs been able to run their own

slate in the election there would probably have been more left SRs and

less right SRs in it, especially if there had been enough time to

conduct a lengthy electoral campaign against the right SRs. It is not

unlikely that had the left SRs run their own slate the Bolsheviks could

have formed a majority coalition with them, having the Constituent

Assembly rubber-stamp the Soviet government and dissolve. [33]

Having failed to gain a majority in the Constituent Assembly, the

Bolsheviks decided it should be disbanded. After losing the election,

Lenin now argued that Soviet democracy represented a higher form of

democracy than the parliamentary democracy of the Constituent Assembly.

This argument was not without merit, since Soviet representatives could

theoretically be recalled although bourgeoisie (and allied strata) could

not vote in Soviet elections, [34] but if Soviet democracy were a better

form of democracy then elections to the Constituent Assembly should have

never been held in the first place. Armed forces dissolved the

Constituent Assembly on January 6, the day after it met. The right-wing

socialists whined about the closure of the Constituent Assembly, but

most ordinary Russians weren’t very bothered by it. “There was no mass

reaction to the closure of the Constituent Assembly.” [35] For most “the

constituent assembly was now a remote parliament. The peasants had

greeted its closure by the Bolsheviks with a deafening silence.” [36]

Zhelezniakov, an anarchist sailor from Krondstadt, led the detachment

that dispersed the Constituent Assembly. Unlike the Bolsheviks,

Anarchists had always opposed the constituent assembly — its purpose,

after all, was to establish a state and consequently the rule of a small

elite over the majority. The anarchists were opposed to even holding the

elections for the Constituent Assembly, whereas the Bolsheviks only

turned against the Constituent Assembly when it was clear that it

wouldn’t do what they wanted. Anarchists wanted to take this a step

further, dissolving the Sovnarkom and abolishing the Soviet state. After

October anarchists diverged from the Bolsheviks, their former allies.

Many called for a “third revolution” to overthrow the “Soviet”

government, establish a federation of free soviets and abolish the

state.

In March 1918 the Soviet government signed a humiliating peace treaty,

the Brest-Litovsk treaty, with the Central Powers, bringing Russia out

of the First World War. Russia was not in a good position to negotiate

and had to give up large amounts of territory. This treaty was very

controversial within Russia. The left SRs and the left wing of the

Communist party argued that they should not give in to the German

imperialists and should instead wage a guerilla war against them. The

coming world revolution would supposedly topple the German government

within a short time, bringing them to victory. They were outvoted and

Russia signed the treaty. The left SRs left the government in protest.

Counter-Revolution

There were really two October revolutions – the worker & peasant

revolution, which expropriated land and industry, and the Bolshevik

“revolution” which established a “dictatorship of the proletariat (and

peasantry).” In the months and years after October the Bolshevik

revolution would smash the worker & peasant revolution. Many anarchists

in the 19^(th) century predicted that if Marx’s “dictatorship of the

proletariat” were ever implemented it would result in the creation of a

new ruling class that would exploit the workers just as the old one did.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” inevitably becomes a “dictatorship

over the proletariat.” Mikhail Bakunin (and others) provided a

materialist explanation for this. Few predictions in the social sciences

have come true so dramatically. Not only in the USSR but also in every

single instance where “workers’ states” have been implemented (at one

point they ruled a third of the world) this prediction has come true.

The state is a hierarchical organization with a monopoly (or

near-monopoly) on the legitimate use of violence. It is a centralized

rule making body that bosses around everyone who lives in its territory.

It uses various armed bodies of people (police, militaries) with a top

down hierarchical chain of command and coercive institutions (courts,

prisons) to force its subjects to obey it. It has a pyramidal structure,

with a chain of command and a few people on the top giving orders to

those below them. Because of this pyramidal structure and monopoly of

force the state is always the instrument by which a minority dominates

the majority. It was precisely this kind of organization that the

Bolsheviks set up immediately following October. This led to the

formation of a new, bureaucratic, elite ruling over the masses. The

libertarian elements of Lenin’s thought conflicted with the interests of

this new elite (which he was a part of) and so were dropped one by one.

At the top of the state pyramid was the Council of People’s Commissars

or Sovnarkom; below it were several other bodies. It made laws and set

up various hierarchical organizations to implement its’ decrees. These

were bureaucracies because that was the most efficient way for its

orders to be implemented and to run the country. In order to enforce the

state’s laws armed bodies of people with a top down bureaucratic

hierarchical chain of command were set up. The All-Russian Extraordinary

Commission for Struggle against Counter-Revolution and Sabotage or Cheka

(secret police) was created not long after October to enforce the rule

of the state. Although at first they employed a relatively light amount

of repression, the Cheka soon went out of control and used excessive

force against anyone who did not agree with the state. The Soviets

gained a near-monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and

hierarchical authority over the population. This caused them to become

isolated and detached from the masses, transforming into representative

instead of directly democratic institutions.

During the course of the revolution the workers had taken over the

workplaces and ran them themselves through their factory committees and

factory assemblies. For a brief period a kind of “free market

syndicalism” prevailed, with self-managed workplaces selling their

products on the market. There were initial moves within the factory

committees towards setting up non-hierarchical forms of coordination

between workplaces without relying on the market, but the Bolsheviks

defeated these proposals. On November 15^(th) a decree on Worker’s

Control was passed that rubber-stamped the factory committee movement

but undermined workers’ self-management. The factory committees were

legalized but required to obey the state planners rather then the

workers in their factory. A system of central planning was set up, with

a set of top-down authoritarian councils giving the committees orders.

Workers lost control over the factories they had expropriated to the

state. This effectively killed worker self-management in favor of

centralized power. In December this process continued with the creation

of the Supreme Economic Council to centrally manage the economy. The

regime started nationalizing industries, centralizing the economy under

the control of the Supreme Economic Council. [37]

Starting in March 1918 the regime began abolishing the factory

committees (which had already been subordinated to the state) in favor

of outright one-man management. [38] The dictatorship of the bosses was

restored; capitalist relations in the workplace returned in the form of

state planning. Over the next several years the factory committees would

be eliminated in industry after industry until, by the early 20s, all

workplaces were under one-man management. [39] In 1920 Trotsky claimed

that, “if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all

that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we

should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the

sphere of economic administration much sooner, and much less painfully.”

[40]

In April Lenin was arguing that

“We must raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in

practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is

scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages

correspond to the total amount of goods turned out, or to the amount of

work done … The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is

valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. …

We must organize in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system.”

[41]

As Marx said, piece-wages are the “most fruitful source of reductions of

wages, and of frauds committed by capitalists,” [42] a way for

capitalists to increase the exploitation of workers. Its usage by the

state is increased exploitation by the state. Lenin continued this

counter-revolutionary theme, arguing, “that large-scale machine industry

… calls for absolute and strict unity of will … But how can strict unity

of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of

one.” He now claimed that “unquestioning subordination to a single will

is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organized on the

pattern of large-scale machine industry” and that the “revolution

demands—precisely in the interests of its development and consolidation,

precisely in the interests of socialism—that the people unquestioningly

obey the single will of the leaders of labour.” In the same document he

said:

“That in the history of revolutionary movements the dictatorship of

individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of

the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes has been shown by the

irrefutable experience of history. … There is, therefore, absolutely no

contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy

and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals.” [43]

The new regime exploited the peasants through grain requisitions, begun

a few weeks before the start of the civil war. In early May a state

monopoly on all grain was decreed. Any grain they produced in excess of

what they needed for themselves was to be given to the state; peasants

got little of value in return. The actual implementation of this was

fraught with difficulty. Determining exactly how much a peasant needed

for himself was not easy and telling whether a peasant was violating the

grain monopoly by hording more grain than he needed for himself was, as

a result, extremely difficult. “The calculations of the [grain

requisitions] made no allowance for the long-term production needs of

the peasant farms. The consumption norms left the peasant farms without

any grain reserves for collateral, or insurance against harvest

failure.” [44] Lenin himself admitted that under the grain monopoly, “we

actually took from the peasant all his surpluses and sometimes not only

the surpluses but part of the grain the peasant needed for food.” [45]

This policy eventually led to famine. The state exploited the peasants

by appropriating anything they produced in excess of what they

personally needed to survive and sometimes more than that.

All this resulted in the creation of a new bureaucratic ruling class.

Decisions in this immediate post-October period were not made by the

working class but by the small group of commissars and bureaucrats who

ran the state (a tiny minority of the population). Neither the workers

nor the peasants were running the state at any point in time. The state

did not later degenerate but was an instrument of minority rule from the

moment it established its authority, as are all states. This is clearly

shown by where decision making power lay: in the hands of the Sovnarkom

and hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations subordinated to it. When

the Sovnarkom makes the decisions the working class does not. If the

majority of the population is unquestioningly subordinated to the

“leaders of the labor process” then it is those leaders who rule, not

the workers or peasants, and form a new ruling class over the workers

and peasants. These authoritarian policies, combined with the disruption

from war and revolution, caused Russia to sink deeper into economic

crisis in the first months of Bolshevik rule.

The extreme degree of repression eventually employed by the “soviet”

state arose out of this process of class formation and the class

struggle between this new ruling class and the previously existing

classes. Both the Russian working class and peasantry were highly

combative and had just overthrown the previous ruling class. Subjugating

them to a new ruling class was not easy and required massive amounts of

repression, which is why all opposition was eventually suppressed. If

this hadn’t been done the new ruling class would have been overthrown.

In doing this the Bolsheviks were not defending the working class (much

of their repression was directed at the working class), they were

defending their own dictatorship. The suppression of opposition groups

(both left and right) could not have been caused by the civil war as

many Leninists claim because it started prior to the start of the civil

war.

At first government repression was relatively light and directed mainly

at the right-wing socialists and supporters of the old ruling class.

Although the actual dispersal of the constituent assembly was bloodless,

a protest in support of it held after it’s dissolution wasn’t. Bolshevik

troops opened fire on the demonstration. In December 1917 the Kadet

party (constitutional democrats who advocated a liberal capitalist

republic) was outlawed and some of its leaders arrested. On January

6^(th) 1918 Kokoshkin and Shingarev, leaders of the Kadets, were

murdered by the regime. Many bourgeois papers were shut down, as were

some anti-October socialist papers. A few right-wing socialist leaders

were arrested and harassed. Compared to what would come later this was a

very light degree of repression. Most of the groups attacked were

actively opposed the October revolution and/or were attempting to

overthrow the new government. The Kadets, for example, were attempting

to form counter-revolutionary armies to overthrow the government. This

repression wasn’t all that worse than the repression most governments,

including western “democracies,” employ against groups attempting to

overthrow the government. [46]

Late winter and spring of 1918 saw rising working class opposition to

the Bolshevik regime. Life for most workers had not significantly

changed for the better and many began to organize against the new

regime. In March there were a number of peaceful protests by workers

against the Bolshevik regime and organizing against the Bolsheviks by

workers stepped up. [47] They did this in a manner similar to how they

had struggled against the old bosses — they formed worker assemblies and

conferences of worker delegates, which functioned similarly to the way

the Soviets originally had — as organizations (similar to

spokescouncils) designed to coordinate worker actions against the

regime. The Soviets by this time had degenerated into weak parliaments

controlled by the Bolshevik party and were denounced by the workers, who

claimed they “have ceased to be the political representatives of the

proletariat and are little more than judicial or police institutions.”

[48] They criticized the subordination of the factory committees and

demanded that they “out immediately to refuse to do the things that are

not properly their real tasks, sever their links with the government,

and become organs of the free will of the working class, organs of its

struggle.” [49] In the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks lost elections in

Soviet after Soviet. The Mensheviks and SRs, the only other parties on

the ballot, won by a large margin. Just a few months after coming to

power, most workers were opposed to the continued rule of the

Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks reacted to this resistance with repression. Where they

lost soviet elections they resorted to various forms of electoral fraud;

usually they simply disbanded Soviets after losing. In order to maintain

their rule they destroyed the Soviets. [50] The right of recall, of even

free elections, was destroyed and party dictatorship fully implemented.

This resulted in a wave of worker and peasant protests and revolts,

which the Bolsheviks put down with force. On May 9^(th) armed guards

shot at a group of workers in Kolpino protesting shortages of food and

jobs. This touched off a wave of strikes and labor unrest that resulted

in more arrests and attacks from the state. [51]

This early workers’ movement against the Bolsheviks was largely

reformist, with a high degree of Menshevik influence. Some workers’ just

wanted “good Bolsheviks.” Most workers’ and groups involved in the

movement lacked “a compelling explanation for the new disasters

besetting Russian workers or a clear and convincing vision of a viable

alternative social order.” [52] An exception to this was the anarchists,

who had both an explanation of the problems in Bakunin’s (and others’)

warnings about authoritarian socialism and their own ideas about how to

organize society. So the anarchist movement had to be smashed. In early

April Anarchist organizations were raided; many anarchists were killed

and many more were arrested. This was the start of a major attack on the

Russian anarchist movement that eventually wiped it out. [53] Continuing

the crackdown on anarchism, in early May Burevestnik, Anarkhia, Golos

Truda and other major anarchist papers were shut down by the state. [54]

The “Communist” press put out all sorts of slanders against the

anarchists – calling them bandits and other nonsense. Other opposition

groups suffered similar fates — the Mensheviks, SRs, Left SRs and

Maximalists all saw many of their activists arrested or killed and

publications censored. All of this occurred prior to the start of the

civil war.

Civil War

This pre-civil war terror played a role in the start of the civil war.

The SRs, tired of being persecuted, let themselves be caught up in the

Czechoslovak adventure. The Czech legion was a group of Czech P.O.W.s in

Russia who had been organized by the Entente to fight against the

Central Powers in exchange for the promise of Czech independence. After

the Bolsheviks made peace with the Central Powers the Czech legion was

stuck in Russia, and started making their way out of Russian territory

via the East. Neither the Bolsheviks nor the Czechs really trusted each

other so the Czechs revolted on May 25^(th) and launched an attack

against the Bolsheviks. The SRs took advantage of this to form a new

government based in Samara. They created a coalition government very

similar to the provisional government. The civil war began as a war

between the Bolsheviks and one of the rival socialist groups they tried

to suppress. The civil war did not cause the Bolshevik’s suppression of

rival trends, but rather the suppression of rival trends was a catalyst

that helped started the civil war.

In the wake of this several more counter-revolutionary governments were

set up against the Bolsheviks:

“Between the Volga and the Pacific, no less than nineteen governments …

arose to oppose the Bolsheviks. Most prominent among the former, the

government of Komuch in Samara [set up by the SRs] and the Provisional

Government of Autonomous Siberia in Omsk, vied to establish their claims

as the Constituent Assembly’s legitimate heirs since both had been

formed by men and women [from the constituent assembly] “ [55]

The politics of these anti-Bolshevik governments ranged from right-wing

socialists, like the SRs, to the far right, including Monarchists. In

September these governments united by forming a Directorate of five

people, including both socialists and reactionaries. The Directory was

in a precarious situation from the start. The right continued to demand

the creation of a one-person dictatorship while the SRs advocated a

moderate socialist republic. The rising landlord counter-revolution

threatened the Directory and the SRs. The Directory, and the preceding

anti-Bolshevik governments, instituted a traditional military hierarchy

and began the building of their own army. Because most of the population

did not support them, and thus would not volunteer to fight for them,

they had to implement conscription.

The Bolsheviks were greatly hurt by the loss of popular support they had

held in the wake of October. Most did not support either side of the

conflict; some village communes passed resolutions calling on both sides

to end the civil war through negotiation and even declared themselves

‘neutral republics.’ [56] However, the loss of popular support made the

advance of anti-Bolshevik armies easier since few were willing volunteer

to risk their lives defending the Bolsheviks.

The civil war greatly accelerated the centralizing trends that were

already present in Bolshevik-controlled Russia and helped give an upper

hand to the more hard-line & repressive factions within the ruling

class. Power gradually transferred from the Sovnarkom to the party to

the Politburo. This process had already started prior to the civil war;

the civil war merely accelerated it.

At the start of the civil war the Bolsheviks had a very small military.

Most of it had disintegrated after October, as soldiers took the

opportunity to leave and go home. What was left consisted of a few small

units, some paramilitary groups and partisan units. Given their lack of

popular support, these were completely incapable of halting the

offensive by even the small Czech legion, let alone the large armies

that were later used. Trotsky was made Commissar of War, head of the

military, in March 1918. He reorganized the Red army. Because most

people opposed the Bolsheviks, and thus wouldn’t volunteer to fight for

them, conscription was instituted. The Bolsheviks claimed to support

military democracy during the run up to October, but now that they were

in power it was abolished in favor of a traditional military hierarchy.

If military democracy were maintained while simultaneously conscripting

huge numbers of people who didn’t want to fight and who were opposed to

the Bolsheviks it would result in the soldiers voting against the

Bolsheviks, refusing to fight for them and possibly even overthrowing

the Bolsheviks. Obviously they were not going to let that happen.

Trotsky defended the abolition of military democracy:

“So long as power was in the hands of the enemy class and the commanders

were an instrument in the hands of that class, we had to endeavor, by

means of the principle of election, to break the class resistance of the

commanding personnel. But now political power is in the hands of that

same working class from whose ranks the Army is recruited. Given the

present regime in the Army … the principle of election is politically

purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice,

abolished by decree.” [57]

Former Tsarist officers were made officers in the Red army. In order to

insure that the Tsarist officers obeyed the Red command, and didn’t

launch a coup, commissars were assigned to each unit to keep the

officers in line. Both sides of the civil war suffered from massive

desertion.

On August 31, 1918 SR assassins attempted to kill Lenin and nearly

succeeded. In response “the Communists inaugurated … mass arrests and

executions, accompanied by the suppression of practically all the

surviving non-Communist newspapers.” [58] The few civil liberties

Russians had left were shredded. The Red Terror is usually dated to have

begun with this heightened repression. “Hundreds of Cheka prisoners are

thought to have been summarily executed in the heightened paranoia that

followed the assassination attempt … By the end of 1918 there had been

6,300 official executions,” [59] and an unknown number of unofficial

executions. “There was hardly a single town where executions did not

take place.” [60]

At this point the civil war was still a war between socialists, although

the SRs were in a coalition with the right. In November 1918 a

right-wing coup deposed the directory and installed a military

dictatorship under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. [61] By allying with the

far right the SRs helped launch a right-wing counter-revolution that

suppressed the SRs and all other socialists. Two months after the Red

Terror was fully launched, eight months after it was partially launched,

the civil war was transformed from a war between socialists into a war

between Bolsheviks and reactionaries, between Reds and Whites. The

right-wing counter-revolution rose ascendant against the Bolshevik

counter-revolution. The Whites reinstated private property, restored the

rule of the landlords, and launched a White terror just as bad as the

Red terror, arguably worse. The Whites were officially Republicans, but

in reality were closet Monarchists.

From this point on the civil war was basically a three-sided class war:

the new ruling class (Reds) vs. the old ruling class (Whites) vs. the

workers and peasants (most Greens & Blacks). Greens were partisan groups

formed mostly by peasants against both the Reds and the Whites:

“Some deserters formed themselves into guerilla bands. These were called

the Greens partly because they hid out in the woods and were supplied by

the local peasants; sometimes these peasant armies called themselves

Greens to distinguish themselves from both Reds and Whites. They even

had their own Green propaganda and ideology based on the defense of the

local peasant revolution. During the spring of 1919 virtually the whole

of the Red Army rear, both on the Eastern and the Southern Fronts, was

engulfed by these Green armies.” [62]

The Greens advocated ideas similar to both the Maximalists and the

anarchists, though not identical to either. Some of these peasant rebels

appeared to have a poor understanding of the political situation, but

their rebellions were nonetheless an expression of class struggle

against Reds and Whites. Anarchists also formed their own Black

partisans that fought against Reds and Whites, mainly in the Ukraine.

Some historians group the Black forces in with the Greens, but this

isn’t really correct because the Greens did not fully agree with

anarchism (though there were some strong similarities). There were also

Blues – local nationalists who fought to establish an independent

nation-state in a country formerly ruled by Russia. They frequently came

into conflict with the Whites, because the Whites aimed to restore the

Russian empire, and also with the Reds because the Blues were usually

right-wing capitalists. In addition, there were also various wannabe

warlords, like Grigor’ev, who attempted to take advantage of the

instability of civil war to establish their own little fiefdoms.

Throughout the civil war both the Bolsheviks and the Whites were

continually beset with worker and peasant unrest. There were numerous

peasant revolts against them throughout the civil war, some quite large:

“if we were to look in greater detail at any one area behind the main

battle lines in the eastern Ukraine, in western Siberia, in the Northern

Caucasus, in parts of White Russia and Central Asia, in the Volga region

and Tambov province, then we would find a series of smaller ‘peasant

wars’ against the Reds and the Whites. These wars ... aimed to establish

peasant rule in the localities against the authority of the central

state.” [63]

Whole provinces were engulfed in rebellion including Tambov, Riazan,

Tula, Kaluga, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Siberia, Pskov, Novgorod, Mogilev and

even parts of Moscow. [64] “The peasant uprisings were localist in their

aspirations, and hostile to any form of central government.” [65] The

peasant rebels desired “to restore the localized village democracy of

the revolution, which had been lost” and “aimed not to march on Moscow

so much as to cut themselves off from its influence by fighting a

guerilla and terrorist war against the Red Army and the state officials

in the countryside.” [66] One peasant uprising against the Bolsheviks at

Simbirsk and Samara, the ‘War of the Chapany’ (Chapany was the local

peasant term for a tunic) in April of 1919 had as it’s main slogan ‘Long

live the Soviets! Down with the Communists!’ “The politics of the

uprising were couched in terms of the restoration of the soviet

democracy established during the October revolution.” [67] According to

statistics from the Cheka there were 245 anti-Bolshevik uprisings in

1918 [68] and 99 in the first seven months of 1919. [69] Most of these

were provoked by the grain requisitions against the peasants.

The Whites faced at least as much peasant unrest as the Reds, arguably

“By the height of the Kolchak offensive, whole areas of the Siberian

rear were engulfed by peasant revolts. This partisan movement could not

really be described as Bolshevik, as it was later by Soviet historians,

although Bolshevik activists, usually in a united front with the

Anarchists and Left SRs, often played a major role in it. It was … a

vast peasant war against the [Whites] … the partisan movement expressed

the ideas of the peasant revolution … Peasant deserters from Kolchak’s

army played a leading role in the partisan bands.” [70]

The peasant partisans used guerilla tactics to destroy White railroad

tracks, harass and destroy enemy forces, ambush trains, and disrupt

supply lines. [71] This forced the Whites to divert troops away from the

front in order to combat unrest in their rear. In the Ukraine Makhnovist

partisans waged a peasant war against the Whites. Workers in Omsk, the

White Capital, launched a revolt against Kolchak on December 22, 1919.

They managed to free more than a hundred political prisoners before

being brutally crushed. [72] Railway workers generally would not work

for the Whites except at the point of a gun. [73]

The Bolsheviks claimed to be a working class party but were opposed by

the majority of workers who rebelled against them ever since the spring

of 1918. The wave of labor unrest caused by the shooting of protesters

on May 9, 1918 continued through the start of the civil war and

culminated in a Petrograd general strike called for July 2. The state

responded with mass arrests, forcibly breaking up worker assemblies and

other standard union-busting tactics that succeeded in defeating the

general strike. On June 28 the Sovnarkom issued its’ famous decree

nationalizing all remaining industries not already nationalized, which

helped break the resistance of the working class by giving the state

control over the entire economy. [74] Industrial unrest continued

throughout the civil war. Workers denounced the “commissarocracy” and

rebelled against it. In March 1919 strikes and riots against the

Bolsheviks again broke out. A worker assembly at the Putilov Works,

which had originally been a stronghold of Bolshevism and militant

supporter of the October revolution, passed a resolution on March 10,

1919 saying:

“We, the workers of the Putilov Works, declare before the labouring

classes of Russia and the world that the Bolshevist government has

betrayed the ideals of the revolution, and thus betrayed and deceived

the workers and peasants in Russia; that the Bolshevist government,

acting in our names, is not the authority of the proletariat and

peasants, but a dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, self-governing with

the aid of Cheka and the police ... We demand the release of workers and

their wives who have been arrested; the restoration of a free press,

free speech, right of meeting and inviolability of person; transfer of

food administration to co-operative societies: and transfer of power to

freely elected workers’ and peasants’ soviets.” [75]

Several thousand workers participated in the assembly, only 22 voted

against the resolution. The Bolsheviks responded to the strikes and

unrest by firing strikers without compensation, banning meetings and

rallies, evicting dissident workers from their homes and using armed

force against strikers. Workers were forced to “confess” to being lead

astray by provocateurs and “counter-revolutionaries.” June and July of

1919 saw another wave of strikes and worker unrest against the

Bolsheviks, [76] as did 1920. [77]

In July 1918 the Left SRs, hoping to restart the war against Germany,

assassinated the German ambassador and launched an uprising against the

Bolsheviks. The assassination failed to restart the war and the

Bolsheviks suppressed the uprising. In 1919 Left SRs and anarchists

detonated a bomb at the Moscow headquarters of the Communist party,

managing to wound Bukharin. [78]

Strikes, insurrections and riots against both the Reds and Whites

continued all throughout the civil war. Conscripted troops often

mutinied or deserted, sometimes joining the greens.

As a result of the resistance of the other classes to the new

bureaucratic ruling class an extremely repressive police state was

implemented in “soviet” territory to maintain the power of the new

ruling class. There have been many instances of ruling classes

implementing totalitarianism when it was needed to keep them in power.

That is how fascism came about. The Bolsheviks implemented Red Fascism

in order to keep themselves, the new ruling class, in power much as the

German and Italian rulers implemented Fascism to keep themselves in

power. The center of power went from the Sovnarkom to the central

committee to the politburo.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” was in reality the dictatorship of

the Communist party; ever since early 1918 (before the civil war began)

the “soviets” did nothing more than rubber-stamp the decisions of the

party. “The borough soviets in the major cities disappeared. In areas

near the front and in territories conquered by the Red Army, special

revolutionary committees with unrestricted powers replaced

constitutionally provided soviet organs. They were frequently identical

with the Bolshevik Party committee.” [79] “The soviets, designed to

prevent bureaucratization through constant control by the voters, their

right to recall deputies, and the union of legislative and executive

branches, turned into bureaucratic authorities without effective control

from below.... The ‘soviets,’ allegedly ruling in Russia since 1918, are

only powerless adjuncts of the party bureaucracy.” [80]

All opposition groups were severely persecuted, although they were not

wiped out until the early twenties and the intensity of the persecution

varied in different parts of the civil war. This included the

anarchists:

“From 1918 to 1920 the fragmented anarchist groups were almost

constantly persecuted, with only occasional concessions. Echoing

Bakunin’s animosity to any [state], the anarchists fought Bolshevik

“dictatorship of the proletariat” and its threatening centralism,

commissars, and terror. They considered soviets a first step toward the

anarchist commune, but thought existing soviets were flawed and usually

refused to cooperate in them. … The group of anarcho-syndicalists active

in Petrograd and Moscow called soviet power an ‘exploitation machine for

subjugation of most workers by a small clique.’ Many anarchist slogans

and demands subsequently turned up during the Kronstadt revolt.” [81]

The Bolsheviks waged a class war on the poor. Under the grain monopoly

all grain produced by the peasants in excess of what they needed for

themselves was the property of the state. Often the state would take

some of what the peasant need as well. This policy provoked countless

peasant rebellions as they resisted Bolshevik exploiters. The government

sent armed forces into the villages to take the grain and suppress

peasant resistance. Peasants resisted by reducing the amount they

planted, which ultimately lead to less food being produced and a famine.

A black market flourished during the civil war; the Bolsheviks outlawed

it and attempted to stamp it out. ‘Bag traders’ traveled to and from the

city and countryside, attempting to trade city goods with the peasants.

These traders were not petty capitalists but ordinary workers and

peasants attempting to gain things they and/or their community needed.

The peasants were willing to trade when they could get around the

Bolsheviks. During the revolution co-operatives had often been set up to

trade between city and country. This system, though greatly flawed,

could have been used to feed the cities but the Bolsheviks instead

attempted to suppress it. The new ruling class, the Bolsheviks, was

waging a class war against the peasants & workers and so obviously could

not allow this independent system to continue. Unless they successfully

imposed their control over the food supply their control over the

economy would be damaged, greatly threatening their position.

These policies, combined with the civil war, lead to famine and

de-urbanization. Workers fled the cities to the villages, where they had

a better chance of feeding themselves. The workers most likely to flee

the cities were those who still had connections with the villages, who

had moved to the city more recently. Those who were left in the city

tended to be more connected to the city, often born in the city –

hardcore proletarians. [82]

Trotsky advocated iron control over the working class by the state,

completely crushing workers’ freedom and de-facto defending the

domination of the workers by a bureaucratic ruling class. In a speech at

the 9^(th) party congress Trotsky argued that, “the working masses

cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and

there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers … Deserters from labour

ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration

camps.” In 1920 he claimed that:

“The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist

quite unquestionable. … The only solution of economic difficulties that

is correct from the point of view both of principle and of practice is

to treat the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the

necessary labor power—an almost inexhaustible reservoir—and to introduce

strict order into the work of its registration, mobilization, and

utilization. … The introduction of compulsory labor service is

unthinkable without the application, to a greater or less degree, of the

methods of militarization of labor. … It would … be a most crying error

to confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat with the

question of boards of workers at the head of factories. The dictatorship

of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in

the means of production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet

mechanism of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in the

form in which individual economic enterprises are administered.” [83]

The Whites launched their own White terror against the populace just as

brutal and bloodthirsty as the Red terror, arguably worse. All

opposition was suppressed, even groups like the SRs who had helped in

the fight against the Bolsheviks. “Peasants were flogged and tortured,

hostages were taken and shot, and whole villages were burned to the

ground.” [84] Many White soldiers indulged themselves in mass rape and

pillage of the villages. [85] Workers in many cities were shot en masse.

In Yuzovka one in ten workers would be shot whenever factories and mines

failed to meet their output expectations. [86] In the town of Taganrog

the Whites blinded, mutilated and then buried alive anti-White workers.

[87] Similar events happened on a regular basis in White territory.

The Whites were also anti-Semites who carried out many pogroms against

Jews. Anti-Semitism had long been a part of Russia and had been used by

many Tsars to their advantage in the past. Anti-Semitism was more of a

hangover from the old regime than an outgrowth of the revolution. Many

on the right unfairly blamed Jews for the revolution and Communism.

Although most Jews were not Communists, many Bolsheviks were Jews and

Jews faced less persecution from the “Soviet” state than it’s Tsarist

predecessor. “White propaganda portrayed the Bolshevik regime as a

Jewish conspiracy.” [88] Whites would burn and destroy whole Jewish

towns, execute Jews en masse, rape Jewish women and display Jewish

corpses in the street with a red star cut into their chest. White

officers rarely attempted to halt any pogrom, but in several cases

encouraged them. During early October in Kiev White soldiers in Kiev,

with the encouragement of officers and priests, went around pillaging

Jewish homes, taking money, raping and killing Jews. The Whites cut off

limbs and noses of their victims and ripped fetuses from their mothers’

wombs. They forced Jews to run inside houses they had set on fire.

Jewish girls were frequently gang raped; in Cherkass hundreds of preteen

girls were gang raped by the Whites. In the town of Podole hundreds of

Jews were tortured and mutilated, many women and young children, and had

their corpses left in the snow for the dogs to eat. [89] When the Whites

occupied the village of “Gulyai-Polye, a large number of peasants were

shot, dwellings were destroyed, and hundreds of carts and wagons filled

with food and other possessions of the Gulyai-Polye inhabitants were

[seized] … Almost all the Jewish women of the village were raped.” [90]

Similar things happened all throughout White territory.

The Whites demonized anyone who opposed them as “Bolsheviks” including

those who most definitely were not. They set up a false dichotomy –

either you were with the Whites or you were with the Bolsheviks. Any

opposition to them was equated as support for the Bolsheviks. The

Bolsheviks did the same thing – any opposition to the Bolsheviks was

equated as being support for the Whites. They labeled their opponents

“counter-revolutionary” and other names – even groups like the

anarchists, Left SRs and Maximalists who were militantly opposed to the

Whites were smeared as “counter-revolutionary.” All peasants who opposed

the Bolsheviks were smeared as “Kulaks” regardless of whether they

actually were Kulaks or not. A Kulak was supposedly a rich peasant, but

in the hands of the Bolsheviks it lost all real meaning and became

little more than a term of abuse applied to any peasant opposition [91]:

“Soviet historians, unable to admit the existence of popular resistance

to the Bolshevik regime, have dismissed [peasant] uprisings as ‘kulak

revolts’, stage-managed by the opposition parties and their allies

abroad. The empirical poverty of this interpretation is such that it

does not warrant a detailed critique. Suffice to say that the few

Western studies so far completed of the Makhno uprising in the Ukraine

and the Antonov uprising in Tambov province have established beyond

doubt the mass appeal of these movements among the peasantry.” [92]

The agrarian revolution had a leveling effect on the peasantry,

decreasing stratification within the villages. Lenin overestimated

peasant stratification even before the revolution [93] and after the

revolution it became even more egalitarian. Russian peasant villages

were generally very egalitarian especially after the revolution.

Bolshevik supporters “have laid a great deal of stress on the ‘class

struggle’ between rich and poor peasants during the land re-divisions.

Yet the records of the village and volost’ soviets leave little evidence

to suggest that such a struggle played anything more than a very minor

role.” [94]

There was also military intervention by foreign imperialists who backed

the Whites and attempted to destroy the “soviet” state. Pro-Bolshevik

accounts of the revolution often leave the impression that, immediately

upon coming to power the whole world declared war on the Soviet Union.

They tell stories about how 17, 25, 33 or some other made up number of

countries invaded and waged full-scale war on the Bolsheviks. However,

the military interventions were not as major as they portray it as, nor

were the imperialist powers as universally hostile to the Bolsheviks as

they imply. The Germans had actually helped deliver Lenin from exile

into Russia in the hopes that he would stir up unrest and possibly force

Russia to make a separate peace with Germany. During the negotiations

for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which pulled Russia out of the First

World War, the Entente made friendly gestures towards the Bolsheviks in

the hope that they would continue the war, thereby keeping two fronts

against Germany open. They offered military and economic assistance to

keep the war going, which the Bolsheviks refused. These were capitalist

countries, both Entente and Central Power, making friendly advances

towards the Bolshevik regime in order to further their own imperialist

interests.

The Entente initially landed troops in the hopes of reopening the

Eastern Front and to retrieve supplies they had given to the Russians to

aid them in the war. They were too busy fighting World War One to launch

a serious intervention against the Bolsheviks until after the war was

over. A blockade was imposed on the country. The British were the most

active of the interventionists; their forces repeatedly clashed with the

Reds. Both the Japanese and United States landed forces in the Far East.

France attempted to intervene but their troops mutinied. The most

significant place of intervention was in the North, in Murmansk and

Archangel. Allied forces landed and propped up the local Whites, who

came close to taking Petrograd. This was mainly a British operation, but

included other countries (including small Canadian and Serbian

detachments). [95] Troops from newly independent Finland also made a few

small forays into Russian territory. In 1920 Russia fought a border war

with Poland, which had become independent from Russia in the wake of the

Revolution. Probably more significant than the military intervention was

the aid supplied to the Whites. The Whites were greatly helped by the

money, weapons and supplies provided to them by foreign powers – without

it they probably would have lost much quicker.

The existence of the Bolshevik government was a threat to the other

capitalist countries not only because it nationalized the property of

foreign companies but also because it provided the threat of a good

example. The Bolshevik government had the potential to inspire similar

revolutions in other countries, and so they had to destroy it to ward

off that threat. Despite this the imperialist intervention into Russia

was rather limited. The Whites bitterly complained that they were not

receiving enough aid. [96] The countries involved had just finished

fighting the First World War and were in no shape for another full-scale

war. In addition, the period after the Russian Revolution was a period

of global unrest that restricted the amount of intervention possible

without causing a revolution in the homeland. The intervention was also

hampered by conflicts between the different imperialist powers, which

were all competing with each other for greater influence within Russia.

[97]

The Bolsheviks had a military advantage in that they controlled the

center of the country while the Whites were based on the periphery. The

Whites were divided into several different areas, with their main bases

in the south and the east (for a while there was also a northern front

near Petrograd). For much of the civil war General Anton Denikin

commanded the south. The White forces in the south evolved from failed

attempts to launch a right-wing counter-revolution in the wake of

October but they had no real success until the later part of 1918.

Although Admiral Kolchak was officially the head of state for the entire

White army, in practice he only ran the east. The south (and north) was

autonomous, with little direction from Kolchak. Bolshevik control of the

center of the country also gave them control over most of the industrial

areas and many of the railroads, which gave them another advantage.

One of the main reasons the Whites lost was because they had even less

popular support than the Bolsheviks. Many “feared the return of Tsarist

and of the pomestchiki, the big land-owners, much more than Bolshevism.”

[98] The Whites wanted to restore the Russian empire, making enemies out

of anti-Bolshevik nationalists. Although most of the population was

opposed to both the Reds and the Whites, a substantial portion of the

population regarded the Reds as a “lesser of two evils.” Their

reactionary policies cost the Whites victory; White decrees made

excellent propaganda for the Reds. Near the end of the civil war General

Wrangel attempted to remedy this by implementing limited reforms, but it

was too little, too late.

The height of the civil war was in 1919, when the Whites came closest to

victory. Admiral Kolchak launched a major offensive from the east in

early 1919 but it was defeated in April. Denikin launched a major

offensive from the south in May that came the closest to victory of any

of the White forces. Denikin’s offensive came within 120 miles of Moscow

before being defeated in October, the closest of any White army. [99]

Black partisans inflicted serious damage on Denikin’s army in Ukraine,

which aided his defeat. By early 1920 the Whites were in retreat

everywhere. In November Kolchak abandoned Omsk, formerly his capital,

and fled east towards Irkutsk. On his way to Irkutsk Kolchak’s train was

held up by rebellious Czech troops and a popular uprising erupted in

Irkutsk. The uprising overthrew the Whites and established a new

government, the Political Center, run by SRs and Mensheviks. The

Political Center was later taken over by the Bolsheviks. The Reds

captured Kolchak and executed him on the morning of February 7^(th),

1920. The war in the east was effectively won; they only had to finish

mopping up the remnants of Kolchak’s forces. [100] In early 1920 it

looked as if the war was about to be won in the South as well. Denikin

resigned and handed command over to General Petr Wrangel. Wrangel

managed to launch one last offense against the Reds, but was also

defeated after a few months. In November 1920 Wrangel fled Russia. The

Reds had won the civil war.

Revolutionary Ukraine

The revolution in the Ukraine took a different course from many other

parts of the former Russian empire mainly as a result of the

Brest-Litovsk treaty, in which the Bolsheviks agreed to allow the

Central Powers to take over the Ukraine. In addition, the Bolshevik

party was relatively weak in Ukraine and the Ukrainian anarchists were

better organized than the Russian anarchists. An anarchist revolution

developed in the Ukraine, based on village assemblies, communes and free

soviets. A partisan militia was formed to fight against

counter-revolutionary armies that were attempting to forcibly re-impose

the state and class society. This militia succeeded in defeating the

Germans, Austrians, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the White armies of

Denikin and Wrangel. It was not, however, able to defeat the Bolsheviks,

who used their far superior resources to conquer the Ukraine in 1921.

At first the revolution in the Ukraine took a course similar to the rest

of the Russian empire. Soviets were formed, land was expropriated, etc.

The Germans and Austrians set up a puppet dictatorship headed by Hetman

Skoropadsky. This government launched a counter-revolution, restoring

the landlords to power and oppressing the peasants. The people living in

Ukraine did not have a say in the treaty delivering them to the

Austro-German imperialists and did not particularly want to be ruled by

the Central Powers. So they rebelled. Peasant insurrections erupted all

throughout the Ukraine against the Hetman government and it’s

imperialist masters. Peasants formed partisan units to wage guerilla

warfare. [101] These partisans formed links with each other and

eventually formed the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine.

The existence of this movement lends support to left-wing critics of the

Brest-Litovsk treaty, who argued in favor of a revolutionary guerilla

war.

A major organizer in this peasant war was the anarcho-communist Nestor

Makhno. Prior to the German takeover Makhno had been active in the

peasant and workers movement, acting to help expropriate the means of

production and overthrown capitalism. The RIAU was also called the

Makhnovists (after Nestor Makhno), the insurgent army and the black army

after it’s distinctive black flags (black being the color of anarchism).

Although named after Makhno, “The movement would have existed without

Makhno, since the living forces, the living masses who created and

developed the movement, and who brought Makhno forward merely as their

talented military leader, would have existed without Makhno.” [102] Many

other anarchists also played significant roles in organizing the

insurgent army, although it was not a purely anarchist army. Most

members of the movement were not well versed in anarchist theory; they

became anarchists more on the basis of their own experience:

“Ukrainian peasants had little reason to expect any good from the state.

For decades the Russian regime gave the peasants only national and

sociopolitical oppression, including conscription for military service,

[and] taxation, … Experiences with the ‘Reds,’ ‘Whites,’ Germans, and

Austro-Hungarians had taught them that all governments were essentially

alike – taking everything and giving nothing. Therefore, the peasants

were more apt to revolt than to create or support a national government.

They felt the Revolution gave them the right to secure the land and to

live peacefully on it. … they wanted to be left alone to arrange their

lives and affairs.” [103]

There was also a civilian anarchist organization during the revolution,

the Nabat confederation. This was a synthesist organization that

combined all the different anarchist tendencies into one organization.

In Ukraine at this time the main forms of anarchism were

anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-individualism. The

Nabat federation published anarchist newspapers, spread anarchist ideas

and attempted to defend and further the revolution. Nabat occasionally

criticized the Makhnovist army as well, neither was simply the tool of

the other.

The RIAU was not a traditional army but a democratic one. In many ways

this was a continuation of the military democracy created during 1917,

with soldier committees, general assemblies, etc. It was similar to the

democratic militias created by anarchists in the Spanish revolution and

the democratic militaries in many other revolutions. Officers in the

ordinary sense were abolished; instead all commanders were elected and

recallable. “Unlike the Red Army, none of the well-known Maknovist

commanders came from the ranks of Tsarist officers.” [104] Regular mass

assemblies were held to discuss policy. The army was based on

self-discipline, with all of the army’s disciplinary rules approved by

soldier assemblies. Unlike the Red and White armies the RIAU relied on

voluntary enlistment instead of conscription.

This partisan army was quite effective. Especially when defending their

own communities, democratic militias are quite capable of fighting

battles effectively. Traditional militaries have an ultra-hierarchical

undemocratic structure primarily to defend elite rule, which is what

their main purpose is. Traditional militaries are used by elites for

their own benefits, to suppress rebellions, conquer other countries,

etc. all of which primarily benefits the elite more than the rank and

file soldier. A democratic army might refuse to do these things and so

are not very good at achieving the goals set for them by elites.

Authoritarians thus disparage democratic armies as “ineffective” because

they defend elite rule and democratic militaries are ineffective at

defending elite rule. In terms of defending their communities from

hostile attack democratic militias have been shown to be effective many

times in history, including the Makhnovists.

The RIAU won countless battles against incredible odds. Makhno “was a

master of tactics.... he displayed great skill in the techniques of

guerilla warfare: the ability to work without a fixed based, the ability

to retreat as well as advance, and stratagems of various kinds.” [105]

They employed guerilla tactics and their close links with the peasantry

to their advantage. “The army was never a self-sufficient force. It

always derived its revolutionary ideas from the vast masses, and

defended their interests. The peasant masses, on their side, considered

this army as the leading organ in all facets of their existence.” [106]

Peasants supported the army with supplies, horses, food, information and

“at times large masses of peasants joined the detachments to carry out

in common some specific revolutionary task, battling alongside them for

two or three days, then returning to their fields.” [107] The partisans

were virtually indistinguishable from ordinary non-partisan peasants,

which they used to their advantage. In 1918 they were able to defeat

Ukrainian nationalists during a battle at Ekaterinoslav, despite being

outnumbered and outgunned, by “boarding what appeared to be an ordinary

passenger train, sending it across the river into the center of the

town” [108] and launching a surprise attack on the enemy. [109] They

used peasant carts to move quickly, and could infiltrate enemy positions

by hiding under hay in them and springing out to surprise and often

defeat the enemy. In retreat Makhnovists could bury their weapons and

join the local peasant population.

When enemy forces were captured they would usually shoot the officers

and release the rank and file soldiers. They encouraged the released

soldiers to spread the revolution to their homeland and spread unrest.

[110]

The Makhnovshchina came under massive attack from the Whites. The south,

near and including parts of Ukraine, was a strong hold of the White

counter-revolution. General Denikin commanded the Whites in the south

for most of this period, until 1920 when General Wrangel took over.

Despite this, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine was

able to successfully drive out multiple white invasions from Denikin and

then Wrangel.

The RIAU was outgunned and outnumbered in many battles, yet managed to

win anyway. One example was on September 25^(th) 1919 at the village of

Peregonovka when some militias, after retreating 400 miles, found

themselves surrounded by Denikin’s White army. They succeeded in turning

Denikin flank with a tiny force of cavalry and in the ensuing panic

Denikin’s army was routed. This action was one of the most massive

defeats inflicted on them. Denikin came the closest of any white General

to victory. In October of that same year he came within 120 miles of

Moscow. The Red army was eventually able to beat him and save their

dictatorship, but had the Anarchists not done significant damage to his

army in Ukraine Denikin may well have taken Moscow. [111] The Bolshevik

Victor Serge admitted that the Makhnovists “inflicted a defeat on

General Denikin from which the later was never to recover.” [112]

The RIAU also acted to counter anti-Semitic pogromists attempting to

impose their authority on Jews. For example, when in the summer of 1919

five men in Uman engaged in pogroms against Jews Makhnovists shot them.

Many Jews played an important role in the movement and the movement had

good relations with Jewish peasants and workers. Makhno encouraged Jews

to organize self-defense and furnished them with weapons. [113] The

Makhnovists also shot Grigor’ev, who was an opportunist attempting to

establish his own little fiefdom over the population and led vicious

anti-Semitic pogroms. [114] The Jewish historian M. Tcherikover, an

expert on the persecution of Jews in Russia and Ukraine (and who was

neither an anarchist nor a revolutionary), said, “of all these armies,

including the Red Army, the Makhnovists behaved best with regard the

civil population in general and the Jewish population in particular....

Do not speak of pogroms alleged to have been organized by Makhno

himself. That is a slander or an error. Nothing of the sort occurred.”

[115]

The RIAU did not implement a state or impose their authority on the

population but instead handed power over to the peasants (or

proletarians in the cities), upon with the army was based. “Makhno’s

Insurgent Army … was the quintessence of a self-administered, people’s

revolutionary army. It arose from the peasants, it was composed of

peasants, it handed power to the peasants.” [116] The insurgent army did

not stand above the population and give them orders. Peasants organized

themselves from the bottom up, without a state. The RIAU had no monopoly

on legitimate violence. All these militias did was defend their

communities from people attempting to impose a state on them. The RIAU

did not enforce the rule of anyone over the rest of the population. Its’

purpose was to prevent any group of people from imposing their rule over

anyone else. In this case, the various capitalist factions (Bolsheviks,

Whites, Austrians, Nationalists, etc.) were trying to impose their

authority on the peasants and workers so they ended up fighting the

capitalists. People could organize themselves as they saw fit, so long

as they didn’t impose their authority on others. As one participant put

it:

“As soon as they entered a city, they declared that they did not

represent any kind of authority, that their armed forces obliged no one

to any sort of obligation and had no other aim than to protect the

freedom of the working people. The freedom of the peasants and the

workers … resides in the peasants and workers themselves and may not be

restricted. In all fields of their lives it is up to the workers and

peasants themselves to construct whatever they consider necessary.”

[117]

When RIAU forces entered a city or town they posted on the walls notices

to the population making statements such as:

“This army does not serve any political party, any power, any

dictatorship. On the contrary, it seeks to free the region of all

political power, of all dictatorship. It strives to protect the freedom

of action, the free life of the workers against all exploitation and

domination. The Makhno Army does not therefore represent any authority.

It will not subject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role is

confined to defending the freedom of the workers. The freedom of the

peasants and the workers belongs to themselves, and should not suffer

any restriction.” [118]

“One of the most remarkable achievements of the Makhnovists was to

preserve a freedom of speech more extensive than any of their

opponents.” [119] Non-anarchist groups were free to organize and

advocate their views so long as they did not attempt to impose authority

upon others. Several non-anarchist groups published regular newspapers,

including Bolshevik, SR and Left SR papers.

The Insurgent Army was the armed wing of a mass movement aiming to

completely transform society. In the liberated areas the state and class

society were abolished in favor of free organization from the bottom up.

Prisons were abolished, in some cases physically destroyed. [120]

Private property was abolished and land was redistributed. Peasant

assemblies ran the villages and held regional congresses based on

mandated and recallable delegates. Although based mainly in the rural

areas, at it’s height the movement included cities where workers took

over their workplaces and implemented self-management.

Free soviets were formed. Unlike the Soviets in Russia these free

soviets were actually controlled from below. Political parties did not

play a significant role in the free soviets. Representatives instead

followed the mandates of the assemblies they came from. [121]

In most villages the repartitional system was in place. Individual

households were assigned a plot of land, but no more than they could use

themselves, and what they produced was theirs to keep. Some peasants

chose to take this further and formed “free communes.” Unlike in the

Mir, in these communes land was worked in common and the produce shared

among the members. Communes were run by general assemblies of all

members and usually set up on former estates of landlords. These

combined individual freedom with radical egalitarianism. Individuals in

the communes were given whatever personal space they desired; any member

who wanted to cook separately or take food from the communal kitchens to

eat in their quarters was free to do so. Those who preferred to eat in

common could also do so. They also decided to implement

anti-authoritarian schooling based on the ideas of Francisco Ferrer.

[122] These free communes were very similar to the rural collectives set

up on a large scale during the Spanish Revolution. “Very few peasant

movements in history have been able to show in practice the sort of

society and type of landholding they would like to see. The Makhnovist

movement is proof that peasant revolutionaries can put forward positive,

practical ideas.” [123]

The development of these anarchic institutions was limited by the civil

war situation. The Makhnovshchina was caught between several major

armies, several of which vastly outnumbered and outgunned them. They

unfortunately had no choice but to focus their energies on the military

struggle instead of the construction of a new society. The constant

attacks by the Whites, Reds and others disrupted the development of the

free society. Invading armies would smash the free communes and attempt

to destroy these organs of self-management. In times of relative peace

these institutions could begin to flourish, but in times of greater

conflict the rapid changing of territory made the setting up of

permanent organizations more difficult.

Successful counter-revolution in the Ukraine did not come from the

Whites, who were defeated by the Insurgent Army, but from the Reds.

While the RIAU and Reds were both fighting the Whites the Bolsheviks

took a friendlier attitude towards the Makhnovists. The Bolsheviks and

Makhnovists even made alliances against the Whites. The Bolsheviks in

Ukraine “were not very effective. They fought only along the railways

and never went far from their armored trains, to which they withdrew at

the first reverse, sometimes without taking on board all their own

combatants.” [124] As part of one of the alliances the Bolsheviks were

supposed to supply arms to the Insurgent Army, but they “refused to give

arms to Makhno’s partisans, failing in [their] duty of assisting them.”

[125] The Bolsheviks launched three assaults on the Makhnovists, the

final one succeeded in destroying the movement. After the civil war was

over the Bolsheviks invaded and imposed their dictatorship on the

Ukraine, suppressing the revolution. The Reds allied with the

Makhnovists when they could use the Makhnovists against the Whites, and

then betrayed them when the Whites were no longer a danger. [126]

While the RIAU was fighting against the Whites the Bolshevik press

hailed them as the “nemesis of the Whites” and portrayed the movement

positively. [127] When the Reds turned against the Insurgent Army they

demonized the movement, spewing all sorts of lies and slanders. The

Bolsheviks claimed that the Makhnovists were anti-Semitic Pogromists,

that they were Kulaks, that they supported the Whites and all sorts of

other nonsense. Many Jews participated in the movement and many Jews

present claimed that the accusation of being anti-Semitic Pogromists

were false including L. Zin’kovsky, Elena Keller, Alexander Berkman,

Emma Goldman, Voline and Sholem Schwartzbard. The Central Committee of

Zionist Organizations during the civil war listed many groups committing

Pogroms including the Whites, Grigor’ev and Reds, but did not accuse the

Insurgent Army of engaging in Pogroms. The Bolsheviks called any peasant

who opposed them a ‘Kulak.’ The movement was based mostly on poor

peasants, most of the commanders were poor peasants – most of the

exceptions were proletarians. Its’ policies, including the free

communes, redistribution of land, and the abolition of wage labor &

private property, favored poor peasants. Due to it’s heavy reliance on

local peasants the movement would not have been able to survive for as

long as it did if it depended only Kulaks (no more than a fifth of the

population). The Bolsheviks’ own press refutes the allegation that the

Makhnovists worked with the Whites; when the Red & Black Armies were

fighting together against the Whites the Makhnovists they were Makhno

was hailed as the “nemesis of the Whites.” In exile General Denikin

himself said that the Makhnovshchina was, “most antagonistic to the idea

of the White movement.” [128] Victor Serge, who was a member of the

Russian Communist party at the time, said in his memoirs (and elsewhere)

that these slanders were all lies. [129]

The Bolsheviks were able to defeat the Revolutionary Insurgent Army for

several reasons. The Bolsheviks had vastly superior numbers and vastly

superior resources compared to the Makhnovists. They had significant

industrialized areas; the Makhnovists did not. Most of the fighting the

Whites engaged in against Ukraine happened at the height of the civil

war when they were also battling the Red Army. When the Red Army

defeated the Anarchists the civil war was over, they had fewer enemies

to worry about and could focus more forces on Ukraine. Third, the

Makhnovists made the mistake of trusting the Leninists. They made

several deals with them, which the Bolsheviks broke, and believed that

the conflict with them would be fought mainly in the ideological realm

through propaganda and similar means. [130] It ended up being fought on

the military front. It was a mistake for the movement to ally with the

Bolsheviks.

The RIAU were able to repel several of the Red’s initial attacks. The

Red Army was initially incapable of dealing with the unusual guerilla

tactics employed by the resisting peasants. Eventually they realized

that they were fighting against an armed self-acting population, and

would need a different strategy. [131] As one Red officer pointed out:

“This ‘small war’ requires different organization, different training of

troops, from the war against Wrangel or, let us say, against the White

Poles. Our units maintained a cumbersome, burdensome rear; hence, we

acted slowly, heavily, while Makhno, on the other hand, [used] speed and

bold maneuver. We have not considered the environment that nourishes the

criminal bands. They have their bases, that is, certain segments of the

population, a flexible structure, stand behind them.” [132]

So they developed a different strategy: station units in all occupied

territories and have them terrorize the population:

“The third campaign against the Makhnovists was at the same time a

campaign against the Ukrainian peasantry. The general aim of this

campaign was not merely to destroy the Makhnovist army, but to subjugate

the dissatisfied peasants and to remove from them all possibility of

organizing any type of revolutionary-guerilla movement.... The Red

Divisions traveled through all the rebel villages in the insurgent

region and exterminated masses of peasants on the basis of information

provided by local kulaks.” [133]

“On the occupation of a village by the Red Army the Cheka would hunt out

and hang all active Makhnovite supporters.” [134] These attacks

ultimately succeeded in subduing the population and imposing the

dictatorship of the party over the proletariat on the Ukraine. The Reds

“concentrated huge numbers of troops against them and stepped up brutal

actions against peasants who sheltered them. This counter insurgency

strategy, which the US later used in Vietnam, succeeded because of the

relatively small size and isolation of the Eastern Ukraine.” [135] They

won because they resorted to war crimes.

As historian Michael Palij, one of the few American historians to write

a book on the Makhnovshchina, said, “The history of the Makhno movement,

despite its significance to the history of the Ukrainian Revolution and

the Russian Civil War, has generally been neglected.” [136] The

Makhnovshchina are frequently ignored in accounts of the Russian

Revolution and in the rare cases where it is mentioned they are smeared,

repeating one or more of the old (usually Bolshevik-originated)

slanders. This is true of both left wing and right-wing accounts of the

revolution. There are two main reasons for this. Partly it is the

outcome of the sources on the Revolution. Many historians, especially in

the earlier decades after the revolution, basically had to rely on Red,

White or Nationalist propaganda as sources, although this is less true

today. Partly this is because of ideology – history in Russia was

written by the victors and in the West was written by White

sympathizers. Both of these groups are obviously very hostile towards a

peasant movement opposed to both groups. There are exceptions to this,

though; a few non-anarchist historians have analyzed the movement.

Christopher Read included a well-written section on the Makhnovists in

his book From Tsar to Soviets. Michael Malet and Michael Palij have both

written good monographs on the subject, Malet’s book is arguably the

best book ever written on the subject. In addition there are various

eyewitness accounts and anarchist histories of the movement.

The Makhnovshchina was not perfect. The hero worship of Makhno isn’t

terribly anarchistic, there were a couple occasions where military

democracy was not followed as closely as it should have, allying with

the Bolsheviks was a big mistake and there were other flaws. But it was

vastly superior to the totalitarian state implemented by Lenin and

Trotsky. The fact that they were able to defeat the whites, nationalists

and foreign imperialists without a state, let alone the one-party

dictatorship implemented by the Bolsheviks, proves that Lenin’s

repressive policies were not necessary to defeat the Whites. The

Makhnovshchina disproves the Leninist claims that censorship, party

dictatorship, etc. was necessary to defeat the Whites. The imperialist

invasion and conquest of the Ukraine by the Bolsheviks further shows how

counter-revolutionary they really were. The construction of a free

society that was begun in the liberated areas also shows that a

stateless and classless society is possible. The regions where the state

was abolished did not turn into complete chaos, quite the opposite – the

areas where states ruled were wracked with unrest and quite chaotic.

Anarchy is order; government is chaos.

Red Fascism Ascendant

Power in “soviet” Russia went from being concentrated in the Sovnarkom,

to the central committee, to the politburo. A centralized one-party

dictatorship came about. In 1920 Lenin described the structure of this

new regime:

“the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the

Soviets; the proletariat is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks,

which, according to the figures of the latest Party Congress (April

1920), has a membership of 611,000. … The Party, which holds annual

congresses (the most recent on the basis of one delegate per 1,000

members), is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen elected at the

Congress, while the current work in Moscow has to be carried on by still

smaller bodies, known as the Organising Bureau and the Political Bureau,

which are elected at plenary meetings of the Central Committee, five

members of the Central Committee to each bureau. This, it would appear,

is a full-fledged “oligarchy”. No important political or organisational

question is decided by any state institution in our republic without the

guidance of the Party’s Central Committee.” [137]

This was not the rule of the working class (and/or peasants) as

Leninists claim; it was the rule of the 19 people on the central

committee. If no major decision is made without the approval of the

central committee then it is the central committee that rules, not the

proletariat.

Along with this centralization of power, the ideology of the Bolsheviks

changed to match their practice. Whereas prior to the revolution most

Bolsheviks favored a highly democratic state after coming to power they

came to believe in a one-party state. The party was a very effective

means of organizing the ruling class & controlling society and was

already available to them as they consolidated their power. At first

this one-party state was viewed as just being particular to Russia under

their present circumstances but eventually they came to the conclusion

that Workers’ rule would take this form in all societies. Zinoviev is

not unusual in this regard:

“Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the

working class can be achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard,

i.e., by the Communist Party ... All questions of economic

reconstruction, military organisation, education, food supply — all

these questions, on which the fate if the proletarian revolution depends

absolutely, are decided in Russia before all other matters and mostly in

the framework of the party organisations … Control by the party over

soviet organs, over the trade unions, is the single durable guarantee

that any measures taken will serve not special interests, but the

interests of the entire proletariat.” [138]

In 1919 Lenin said, “When we are reproached with having established a

dictatorship of one party … we say, ‘Yes, it is a dictatorship of one

party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that

position.” [139] A year later he generalized this:

“In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat is

inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation which takes in

all industrial workers. … What happens is that the Party, shall we say,

absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the

dictatorship of the proletariat. … the dictatorship of the proletariat

cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that

class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in

one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so

degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries)

that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly

exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a

vanguard” [140]

Lenin claimed that “The mere presentation of the question—‘dictatorship

of the party or dictatorship of the class; dictatorship (party) of the

leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?’— testifies to most

incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking.” [141] In 1921 he said,

“After two and a half years of the Soviet power we came out in the

Communist International and told the world that the dictatorship of the

proletariat would not work except through the Communist Party.” [142]

Trotsky came to the same conclusions. In 1920 he said, “the dictatorship

of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the

party. … In this “substitution” of the power of the party for the power

of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there

is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental

interests of the working class.” [143] He continued to argue this even

after being exiled from Stalin. In 1937 he claimed that, “The

revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship

surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution ... abstractly speaking,

it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the

‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people without any party, but this

presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses

that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions.” [144] In the

same year he also said:

“A revolutionary party, even having seized power … is still by no means

the sovereign ruler of society. … The proletariat can take power only

through its vanguard. In itself the necessity for state power arises

from the insufficient cultural level of the masses and their

heterogeneity. In the revolutionary vanguard, organised in a party, is

crystallized the aspiration of the masses to obtain their freedom.

Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of

the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of

power. In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the

work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard.

The Soviets are the only organised form of the tie between the vanguard

and the class. A revolutionary content can be given this form only by

the party. … Those who propose the abstraction of the Soviets from the

party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party

dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of

reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat.” [145]

Note the new justification here: workers are too stupid (“lack the

political development” “divided and corrupted”) to rule themselves. The

main justification used for the state prior to the revolution had been

that it would be necessary in order to defeat counter-revolutionaries.

Most Bolsheviks believed that what they had created was not the rule of

a new bureaucrat-capitalist ruling class but the rule of the workers &

peasants. They equated their own rule with the rule of the peasants &

workers. This new justification fit well with their new position as

ruling class — since workers opposed their rule (which they confused

with worker’s rule) the workers were not fit to govern themselves. They

needed a vanguard to stand over them and defeat “wavering” elements of

the working class that wanted to rule itself. This transformation in

Marxist ideology is consistent with Bakunin’s description of how

concentrations of power affect those who wield it:

“Nothing is more dangerous for man’s private morality than the habit of

command. … Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this

demoralization; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation

of one’s own merits. “The masses” a man says to himself, “ recognizing

their incapacity to govern on their own account, have elected me their

chief. By that act they have publicly proclaimed their inferiority and

my superiority. Among this crowd of men, recognizing hardly any equals

of myself, I am alone capable of directing public affairs. The people

have need of me; they cannot do without my services, while I, on the

contrary, can get along all right by myself; they, therefore, must obey

me for their own security, and in condescending to obey them, I am doing

them a good turn. “ … It is thus that power and the habit of command

become for even the most intelligent and virtuous men, a source of

aberration, both intellectual and moral.” [146]

Along with inequalities of power came inequalities of wealth. Economic

inequality skyrocketed. In early 1921 the Bolshevik leader Alexandra

Kollontai complained that:

“so far the problems of hygiene, sanitation, improving conditions of

labour in the shops — in other words, the betterment of the workers’ lot

has occupied the last place in our policy. … To our shame, in the heart

of the Republic, in Moscow itself, working people are still living in

filthy, overcrowded and unhygienic quarters, one visit to which makes

one think that there has been no revolution at all. We all know that the

housing problem cannot be solved in a few months, even years, and that

due to our poverty, its solution is faced with the serious difficulties.

But the facts of ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups

of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers … breed

and nourish the dissatisfaction. The rank and file worker sees how the

Soviet official and the practical man lives and how he lives … during

the revolution, the life and health of the workers in the shops

commanded the least attention … “We could not attend to that; pray,

there was the military front. “ And yet whenever it was necessary to

make repairs in any of the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions,

they were able to find both the materials and the labour.” [147]

By 1921 there were twice as many bureaucrats as workers. The bureaucracy

consumed ninety percent of the paper made in Russia during the first

four years of “Soviet” rule. One historian describes the opulent

lifestyle enjoyed by the new ruling class:

“In early 1918 Lenin himself had backed a plan to organize a special

closed restaurant for the Bolsheviks in Petrograd on the grounds that

they could not be expected to lead a revolution on an empty stomach....

Since then the principle had been gradually extended so that, by the end

of the civil war, it was also deemed that party members needed higher

salaries and special rations, subsidized housing in apartments and

hotels, access to exclusive shops and hospitals, private dachas,

chauffeured cars, first-class railway travel and holidays abroad, not to

mention countless other privileges once reserved for the tsarist elite.

Five thousand Bolsheviks and their families lived in the Kremlin and the

special party hotels, such as the National and the Metropole, in the

center of Moscow. The Kremlin’s domestic quarters had over 2,000 service

staff and it’s own complex of shops, including a hairdresser and a

sauna, a hospital and a nursery, and three vast restaurants with cooks

trained in France. Its domestic budget in 1920, when all these services

were declared free, was higher than that spent on social welfare for the

whole of Moscow. In Petrograd the top party bosses lived in the Astoria

Hotel, recently restored to its formal splendor, after the devastation’s

of the revolution, as the First House of the Soviets. From their suites,

they could call for room service from the ‘comrade waiters’, who were

taught to click their heels and call them ‘comrade master’.

Long-forgotten luxuries, such as champagne and caviar, perfume and

toothbrushes, were supplied in abundance. The hotel was sealed to the

public by a gang of burly guards in black leather jackets. In the

evening government cars were lined up by the entrance waiting to take

the elite residents off to the opera or to the Smolny for a banquet....

The top party leaders had their own landed estates requisitioned from

the tsarist elite. … Trotsky had one of the most resplendent estates in

the country: it had once belonged to the Yusupovs. As for Stalin, he

settled into the country mansion of a former oil magnate. There were

dozens of estates dotted around the capital which the Soviet Executive

turned over to the party leaders for their private used. Each had its

own vast retinue of servants, as in the old days.” [148]

This was at a time when ordinary Russians were literally starving to

death.

Along with the solidification of a new ruling class came imperialist

policies. Before the Bolsheviks seized power they were in favor of

national self-determination and opposed imperialism. In June 1917 Lenin

declared, “The Russian Republic does not want to oppress any nation,

either in the new or in the old way, and does not want to force any

nation, either Finland or Ukraine, with both of whom the War Minister is

trying so hard to find fault and with whom impermissible and intolerable

conflicts are being created.” [149]

Once in power this opposition to imperialism was only applied to other

countries, not to “Soviet” Russia. During the revolution and civil war

many countries broke away from Russia and became independent, usually

setting up independent nation-states. This included Finland, Poland,

Georgia, Armenia and others. The Bolsheviks invaded many of them and

installed client states. In April 1920 Azerbaijan was conquered and the

Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, a Bolshevik client state,

proclaimed. In November Armenia was conquered and the Armenian Soviet

Socialist Republic declared. These “soviet socialist republics” were

modeled after Bolshevik Russia, with a party dictatorship, grain

requisitions, nationalized industry, a Sovnarkom, and “soviets” that

rubber-stamped the decisions of the party. On December 30, 1922 the

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and its client states, these

“soviet socialist republics” it had installed, merged into one big state

to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. [150]

In most cases these break away states were very conservative

governments; some were basically ultra-rightist dictatorships. Some also

had their own imperialist ambitions and fought border wars with each

other. In Finland right-wing capitalists massacred thousands of

left-wing workers. There were two major exceptions to this, Ukraine,

which went anarchist, and Georgia, where the Mensheviks came to power.

Georgia was officially neutral in the civil war but unofficially

preferred the Whites win, a position that the Russian Mensheviks

criticized. They implemented a progressive capitalist system very

similar to the New Economic Policy the Bolsheviks would later implement

in Russia. Most industry was nationalized and land reform was

implemented. [151] The Bolsheviks invaded in February 1921; on February

25^(th) Tiflis was captured and the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic,

a Russian client state, was declared. [152] “A campaign of terror was

unloosed against Socialists, workers, [and] peasants with the

meaningless cruelty characteristic of the Bolsheviks.” [153]

The Bolsheviks modified their support for national self-determination to

“self-determination for workers” as a justification of their

imperialism. This meant countries had self-determination so long as they

“determined” to do what the Russian Bolsheviks wanted – creating a

“soviet” state similar to Russia and subordinated to Moscow. This change

came about as a result of the creation of a new ruling class.

Imperialism is the result of the state and class society. In a society

ruled by a small elite (which all statist/class societies are) that

elite can often gain benefits for itself by attacking other peoples.

This can include resources, territory, labor and other things. The elite

who decides whether or not to invade other countries are not the same

people who have to fight and die in those wars. Statist/class societies

thus encourage war and imperialism because the individuals who decide

whether to launch wars are not the ones who have to pay most of the

costs of war but they gain most of the potential benefits. The rulers of

the world send the workers of the world to slaughter each other while

keeping the spoils of victory for themselves. Bolshevik imperialism

arose from the creation of a new elite, which now found it beneficial to

conquer other countries even though their ideology prior to coming to

power was opposed to it.

During the civil war, although most were opposed to both the Reds and

the Whites, a substantial portion of the population considered the Reds

the ‘lesser of two evils.’ As a result many people who would otherwise

have taken up arms against the Bolsheviks did not do so, for fear that

this would lead to the victory of the Whites. With the end of the civil

war this was no longer a possibility and so massive rebellions erupted

throughout Russia against the Bolsheviks. The threat of the Whites could

no longer be used as an excuse to justify Bolshevik tyranny. The

rebellions started in late 1920, peaked in February and March 1921 and

then declined afterwards. According to Cheka sources there were 118

anti-Bolshevik uprisings in February 1921 alone. [154] This occurred at

the same time Makhno was fighting a guerilla war against the Bolshevik’s

final assault on the Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were able to defeat the

rebellions through a combination of brutal repression and granting

concessions, especially the end of the grain requisitions. Most of the

rebellions were not from the right but were anti-capitalist. Demands of

the rebellions ranged from the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly

to the restoration of Soviet Democracy to full-fledged anarchy.

The grain requisitions resulted in many peasant uprisings against the

Bolsheviks demanding the end of the grain monopoly among other things.

Peasant insurgents surged across the land in a showdown between the Reds

and Greens. Peasant uprising in Armenia provoked by grain requisitions

and Bolshevik imperialism nearly succeeded in toppling the “soviet”

client state; Russian troops had to be called in to suppress the

rebellion. [155] “In western Siberia the tide of rebellion engulfed

nearly the entire Tiumen region and much of the neighboring provinces”

[156] as many who had formerly rebelled against the Whites now turned

their guns on the Reds. “The Siberian irregulars were for free soviets

and free federations.” [157] The largest and best known of these

rebellions was in Tambov province, where A.S. Antonov’s Green partisans

waged a guerilla war against the Bolsheviks from August 1920 until June

1921, when it was defeated. “The Tambov revolt was a genuine peasant

movement, led by radical populists and supported by a broad band of the

Russian working peasantry provoked especially by the continued armed

requisitioning of August 1920.” [158] Most of these rebellions sought to

defend the peasant revolution against the Bolshevik counter-revolution.

The cities were engulfed by a wave of strikes and worker unrest.

“Soviet” historians labeled this the “Volynka,” which means “go slow.”

By using this term, instead of calling it a strike wave, they made this

working class anti-Bolshevik unrest seem less serious and lighter.

Strikes erupted in the Donbass, Saratov, Aleksandrovsk, the Urals and

elsewhere. Strikes in Saratov peaked on March 3^(rd) and had been

defeated by March 6^(th). The strikes in Moscow reached their peak in

late February. On February 25^(th) Bolshevik forces opened fire on

demonstrators; on the 25^(th) they declared martial law and made mass

arrests of opposition anti-capitalists. On March 3^(rd) the leaders of

the railway strike was arrested. By March 6^(th) the strike wave in

Moscow had been mostly defeated. In Petrograd the strike wave reached

it’s peak on February 26^(th). One observer described the situation as

“strikingly akin to the scenes of the March Revolution of 1917. The same

cry for bread, the same demand for liberty of speech and the press, only

this time the banners read ‘Down with the Soviet.’ Children running

around merrily sang popular songs satirizing the government.” [159] On

February 24^(th) the Bolsheviks declared martial law and imposed a

curfew banning movement after 11pm. On the 26^(th) they launched mass

arrests and a military clampdown on the city. By February 28^(th) the

high point had passed and by March 8^(th) the strike wave in Petrograd

was basically over. Most of these strikes followed forms very similar to

the traditional forms of worker protest in Russia. [160]

On February 26^(th) rank and file sailors at the Kronstadt naval base,

about twenty miles west of Petrograd, decided to send a delegation to

Petrograd to find out what was happening. On the 28^(th) they returned

and told of the Bolshevik’s suppression of the strikers. Many of the

sailors were already unhappy with the Bolsheviks and the suppression of

the Petrograd strikes prompted them to rebel. At a general assembly on

March 1^(st) the sailors unanimously voted to rebel (with two

abstentions) and put forth these demands:

”(I) In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the

will of the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by

secret ballot, the pre-election campaign to have full freedom of

agitation among the workers and peasants;

[161] To establish freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants,

for Anarchists and Left Socialist parties;

[162] To secure freedom of assembly for labor unions and peasant

organizations;

[163] To call a non-partisan Conference of the workers, Red Army

soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and of Petrograd Province,

no later than March 19, 1921;

[164] To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well

as all workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors imprisoned in connection

with the labor and peasant movements;

[165] To elect a Commission to review the cases of those held in prison

and concentration camps;

[166] To abolish all politodeli (political bureaus) because no party

should be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or

receive the financial support of the Government for such purposes.

Instead there should be established educational and cultural

commissions, locally elected and financed by the Government;

[167] To abolish immediately all zagraditelniye otryadi (Armed units

organized by the Bolsheviki for the purpose of suppressing traffic and

confiscating foodstuffs and other products. The irresponsibility and

arbitrariness of their methods were proverbial throughout the country).

[168] To equalize the rations of all who work, with the exception of

those employed in trades detrimental to health;

[169] To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all branches of

the Army, as well as the Communist guards kept on duty in mills and

factories. Should such guards or military detachments be found

necessary, they are to be appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in

the factories according to the judgment of the workers;

[170] To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their

land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants

manage with their own means; that is, without employing hired labor;

[171] To request all branches of the Army, as well as our comrades, the

military kursanti, to concur in our resolutions [to endorse this

resolution];

[172] To demand for the latter publicity in the press;

[173] To appoint a Traveling Commission of Control;

[174] To permit free kustarnoye (individual small scale) production by

one’s own efforts.” [175]

Originally the Kronstadt rebels hoped to get the Bolsheviks to agree to

their demands without bloodshed, but when Trotsky ordered them “shot

like partridges” they had no choice but to defend themselves.

Complaining that “The Communists hope to renew their despotic rule at

the price of the blood of toilers” [176] and that “They shoot workers

and peasants right and left” they called for a Third Revolution to

“destroy the commissarocracy.” [177] They rejected the Constituent

Assembly and instead called for Soviet Democracy. They stood “for power

of Soviets, and not parties. … for freely elected representatives of

laborers. The current Soviets, seized and subverted by the Communists,

have always been deaf to all our needs and demands. In answer we

received only executions.” [178] Their newspaper proclaimed, “The dawn

of the 3^(rd) Revolution is rising. The bright sun of freedom shines

here in Kronstadt. The oppressors power tumbled down like a house of

cards, and we, free, are building our Revolutionary Soviet. … power to

Soviets, and not parties.” [179] They accused the Bolsheviks of

betraying the revolution:

“Carrying out the October Revolution, the working class hoped to achieve

its emancipation. The result, however, was the creation of a still

greater enslavement of the human personality. The power of

police-gendarme monarchism passed into the hands of usurpers, the

Communists, who brought to the laborers, instead of freedom, the fear

every minute of falling into the torture chamber of the Cheka. … The

Communist authorities have replaced the hammer and sickle, glorious arms

of the laboring state, in fact with the bayonet and prison bars. They

have done this for the sake of preserving a calm, unsaddened life for

the new bureaucracy of Communist commissars and bureaucrats. To protests

by peasants, expressed in spontaneous uprisings, and by workers, forced

into strikes by the very condition of life, they answer with mass

executions, and with such bloodthirstiness that they don’t have to

borrow any from the tsarist generals. … the [Communist Party] is not

defender of the laborers, as it has presented itself. Rather, the

interests of the laboring mass are foreign to it. Having achieved power,

it fears only to lose it, and for this end all means are allowable:

slander, violence, fraud, murder, and revenge on the families of

rebels.” [180]

In their newspaper they printed an article titled “Socialism in Quotes”

which complained that under Bolshevik rule:

“From a slave of the capitalist, the worker became a slave of the

bureaucratic institutions. Even that became too little. They planned to

bring in the Taylor sweat shop system …The entire laboring peasantry was

counted with the kulaks, declared an enemy of the people. … [Kronstadt]

is fighting for a laboring Soviet Republic, where the producer will find

himself the fully empowered master and commander of the produce of his

own labor.” [181]

The rebellion caused mass resignations from the Communist Party who

sided with Kronstadt. One said made an appeal to his fellow party

members to rebel and overthrow the leaders of the party:

“Rank and file Communist comrades! … we are caught in a terrible bind.

We have been led into it by a handful of bureaucratic “Communists” who,

under cover of being Communists, have feathered themselves very

comfortable nests in our Republic. … As a Communist, I beseech you: dump

these phony “Communists” who are herding you in the direction of

fratricide. … Do not let yourselves be taken in by these bureaucratic

“Communists” who are provoking and inciting you into carnage. Show them

the door!” [182]

Kronstadt was long a center of revolutionary ideology and activism. They

played major roles in the 1905 revolution, in the July days, in October

and other rebellions. They were at the forefront of the revolutionary

movement and helped put the Bolsheviks in power. Trotsky called them the

“pride and glory of the Revolution.” [183] That they came out against

the Bolsheviks, accusing them of betraying the revolution, is a damning

indictment of the Bolsheviks. The same revolutionaries who put the

Bolsheviks now denounced the Bolsheviks for destroying the gains of the

revolution.

The Bolsheviks spread all sorts of lies about Kronstadt (and other

rebellions) in order to justify the suppression of the rebellions and to

prevent them from spreading. They claimed the Kronstadt rebels were

Whites led by former Tsarist General Kozlovsky. General Kozlovsky was

actually one of the many ex-Tsarist officers employed by the Red army;

he was a Red general not a White general. Trotsky stationed him in

Kronstadt. During the rebellion he offered his advice to the rebels and

drew up military plans, which the rebels rejected and chose not to

implement. Every non-Leninist account of the Kronstadt rebellion agrees

that Kozlovsky did not play a significant role in the revolt. The

newspaper, resolutions and propaganda of the rebellion all explicitly

opposed the Whites and call for Soviet Democracy. There is no evidence

that Kronstadt was a White plot. Another lie was the claim that the

Kronstadt rebels demanded privileges for themselves. In fact they

explicitly called for the end of privileges and point nine of their

program demanded the equalization of rations. It was the Bolsheviks who

defended privileges (for party members), the Kronstadt rebels demanded

equality. Another Leninist lie was the claim that the sailors who

rebelled in 1921 were not the same revolutionary sailors who had helped

make the October revolution in 1917. Peasant conscripts who no longer

had the same revolutionary spirit as the original Kronstadt

revolutionaries had allegedly replaced them. Historian Israel Geltzer

researched this claim and found that 75.5% of the sailors in Kronstadt

during the revolt had been recruited before 1918, disproving this

Bolshevik lie. This claim was invented to justify the suppression of the

rebellion; before the rebellion erupted the Bolsheviks were still

calling Kronstadt the “backbone of the revolution” even in the period

when new recruits had allegedly replaced Kronstadt’s revolutionary

sailors. In his memoirs the Bolshevik Victor Serge, who considered the

suppression of the rebellion an unfortunate necessity, admitted that all

these claims were lies. [184]

The Bolshevik’s brutal suppression of Kronstadt, the “pride and glory”

of the revolution, further shows their counter-revolutionary nature.

Using airplanes and artillery, the final defeat of the rebels occurred

on March 17^(th). Trotsky authorized the use of chemical warfare if the

final assault failed to defeat the rebels. “Among the dead, more than a

few were massacred in the final stages of the struggle. A measure of the

hatred which had built up during the assault was the regret expressed by

one soldier that airplanes had not been used to machine gun the rebels

fleeing across the ice.” [185] Many of the survivors were put in

concentration camps and executed as “counter-revolutionaries.” Similar

brutality was used against Tambov, the Volynka and the other

anti-Bolshevik rebellions.

Although these attempts at a Third Revolution were defeated, they did

force the Bolsheviks to grant concessions and make a major change in the

economic system of “Soviet” Russia (and it’s client states). The tenth

congress of the Communist party met in early March, at the same time as

the Kronstadt rebellion. At the congress there were several proposals

for reform, including two groups within the Communist party opposed to

the mainstream leadership of the Communist party. One opposition group

was the Democratic Centralists; they criticized the increasing

centralization within the Communist party and called for greater party

democracy. [186] The other, larger, group was the Workers’ Opposition.

They criticized the increasing bureaucratization of Russian and

advocated having the economy run by the trade unions that would organize

an All-Russian Congress of Producers to centrally plan the economy. They

were (incorrectly) accused of ‘syndicalism.’ One of their leaders,

Shliapnikov, advocated a separation of powers between the Soviets, Trade

Unions and party. [187] The leadership of the Workers’ Opposition also

included Alexandra Kollontai, who was the only senior Bolshevik leader

to support Lenin’s “April Theses” from the very beginning. Neither of

these groups challenged the dictatorship of the Communist party and both

supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion.

Trotsky took a position on the unions opposite from the Workers’

Opposition, arguing that the unions should be completely subordinated to

the state. Trotsky accused the Workers’ Opposition of having

“come out with dangerous slogans, making a fetish of democratic

principles! They place 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. It is necessary to create amongst us the

awareness of the revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged

to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in

the working classes. … The dictatorship does not base itself at every

given moment on the formal principle of a workers’ democracy.” [188]

Lenin took a position on the trade unions that seemed to be in-between

the Workers’ Opposition and Trotsky but in actual practice was not that

far removed from Trotsky’s position. He opposed Trotsky’s idea of

directly subordinating the unions to the state, claiming that they

should have their own autonomy from the state. In practice this was not

that different from Trotsky’s position because the party dictatorship

ensured that the party would always have control of the unions and the

party also controlled the state. Thus they would in practice be

subordinated to the same people running the state, even if they

officially had some autonomy. Lenin also opposed the Workers’

Opposition. He said of their program:

“What is this “All- Russia Congress of Producers”? Are we going to waste

more time on that sort of opposition in the Party? I think we have had

enough of this discussion! All the arguments about freedom of speech and

freedom to criticize, of which the pamphlet is full and which run

through all the speeches of the Workers’ Opposition, constitute

nine-tenths of the meaning of these speeches, which have no particular

meaning at all. They are all words of the same order. After all,

comrades, we ought to discuss not only words, but also their meaning.

You can’t fool us with words like “freedom to criticize”. … this is no

time to have an opposition. Either you’re on this side, or on the other”

[189]

Lenin’s position won a majority of the votes at the Tenth party

congress. A resolution was passed condemning the Workers’ Opposition as

a ‘syndicalist’ deviation, which the Democratic Centralists voted in

favor of. [190] A resolution banning factions (including the Workers’

Opposition and Democratic Centralists) within the party was passed,

marking the beginning of the end of (representative) democracy within

the party.

Instead of the left-wing proposals for reform advocated by the Workers’

Opposition and Democratic Centralists a right-wing proposal called the

New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented. The grain requisitions were

abolished and replaced by a tax in kind. Instead of taking all the

peasant’s surplus grain the state only took part of their grain. The

remainder they were allowed to sell on the open market. The NEP allowed

a limited amount of free enterprise although most industry, the

“commanding heights” of the economy, stayed under state ownership. Lenin

characterized the NEP as “state-capitalism,” the previous system was now

called War Communism. Most Bolshevik leaders viewed the NEP as a retreat

compared to War Communism, but a necessary one given the circumstances.

The NEP succeeded in decreasing anti-Bolshevik rebellions and in getting

the economy back on its feet. The end of grain requisitions probably

played a role in defeating the post-Civil War peasant uprisings since

that was the peasants’ number one grievance. In the years that followed

the economy gradually recovered to it’s pre-World War One levels.

The NEP was basically a variation of the Menshevik’s economic program.

This did not prevent the Bolsheviks from continuing to suppress and

execute Mensheviks, in fact the suppression of opposition groups

increased in this period. Lenin implemented Menshevism while shooting

the Mensheviks. His justification of this was:

“The Mensheviks and SRs who advocate such views wonder when we tell them

that we are going to shoot them for saying such things. They are amazed

at it, but the question is clear: when an army is in retreat, it stands

in need of discipline a hundred times more severe than when it advances

because in the later case everyone is eager to rush ahead. But if now

everyone is just as eager to rush back, the result will be a

catastrophe. And when a Menshevik says: ‘you are now retreating but I

was always favoring a retreat, am in full accord with you, I am one of

your people, let us retreat together,’ we tell them in reply: an avowal

of Menshevik views should be punished by our revolutionary courts with

shooting, otherwise the latter are not courts but God knows what. … if

you don’t refrain from openly enunciating such [Menshevik and SR] views,

you will be put against the wall” [191]

This shows a link between the economic retreat to the NEP and the

greater repression of the time period. The period after the defeat of

Kronstadt and the other rebellions saw massive repression against all

opposition groups. Before this period the Mensheviks, anarchists, Left

SRs and other opposition groups had been severely persecuted but at

least managed to survive. The early twenties saw systemic assaults on

all these groups, which succeeded in annihilating them. In the situation

the Bolsheviks found themselves, with the immense majority of the

population completely opposed to them, the only way they could stay in

power was through Red Fascism, suppressing all opposition. They had even

support than previously because they could no longer use the White

boogeyman to scare everyone into submission and the NEP discredited

their ideology, since they were no longer even defending something

remotely resembling socialism. The opposition groups were now eliminated

from society.

Inside the ruling party there was also a clampdown. During the civil war

the Communist party had maintained a certain degree of internal

democracy. This was a highly centralized, representative democracy but

there were still different factions within the Communist party who

openly debated and competed with each other. Outside the party all

opposition was repressed, but within the party (ruling class) a limited

degree of democracy survived. The tenth party congress ended this with

its ban on factions. Lenin, and several other Bolshevik leaders, was

very afraid of a split within the party. Such an eventuality would

probably have lead to the fall of the “soviet” state because the vast

majority of the population was opposed to it and would take advantage of

such a split to overthrow it. In the kind of precarious situation the

ruling class found itself in the only way it could be sure of staying in

power was to completely suppress all dissent, both inside and outside

the party. [192]

The tenth party congress should be considered the beginning of Russia’s

long Thermidor. What followed afterwards, Stalinism, was the logical

outcome of the way the system was set up at that congress. Had the

congress made different decisions things may have gone differently but

the rise of Stalinism was made the most likely outcome by the decisions

made at this congress. The ban on factions led to a closing of party

democracy and the consolidation of power into the hands of one man,

Joseph Stalin. Purging and repression against party members began in the

last years of Lenin’s life, including the purging of Miasnikov, [193]

but reached massive proportions under Stalin. The ban on factions made

organizing against Stalin almost impossible, allowing him to solidify

his rule.

A power struggle arose between Trotsky and Stalin, each fighting for

leadership of the party. One of the controversies in the struggle

between Stalin and Trotsky was the issue of “Socialism in One Country.”

Trotsky defended the original view of the Bolsheviks that a worldwide

revolution was necessary in order to build real socialism in Russia

while Stalin argued that since the world revolution had been defeated

they should attempt to build socialism in Russia by itself. “Socialism

in one country” entailed abandoning the goal of a global revolution,

instead seeking what was best for the Russia, and taking a less hostile

stance towards bourgeois governments. By the time of Lenin’s death

Russia had already started moving towards a de-facto “socialism in one

country.” They signed a friendship treaty with Turkey even after the

Turkish government carried out massacres of Turkish Communists. [194]

Stalin formed a Troika with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky that

dominated the party for several years. Later that broke up and Stalin

allied with more right-wing elements against Trotsky. Trotsky led the

“Left Opposition” against Stalin. Trotsky accused Stalin of replacing

“the party by its own apparatus” and of therefore violating the

“Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the

dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realized only through the

dictatorship of the party” [195] by replacing the dictatorship of the

party with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy. In 1927 Trotsky and the

Left Opposition were defeated and expelled from the party. Trotsky was

sent into exile and murdered by a Stalinist agent with an ice pick in

1940.

In the context of this many Bolshevik leaders were starting to become

aware of the increasing bureaucratization of “Soviet” society. The

Workers’ Opposition was among the first of the Bolsheviks to realize

this. Even Lenin realized it in the later years of his life. He proposed

to combat it in a top down fashion that would have been completely

ineffective because they were top down and did not truly combat the

source of the bureaucracy’s power. He advocated greatly increasing the

size of the Central Committee (and other organs) but this would not have

combated bureaucratization because the bureaucrats would just appoint

people who were loyal to them and, once in power, they would just become

more bureaucrats. Bureaucratization was the natural outcome of the

Bolshevik program, even though they did not intend it. In a situation

where a modern state has complete control over almost every aspect of

society it should come as no surprise that the state bureaucracy would

acquire great power.

The NEP contained within it the seeds of it’s own destruction. “Soviet”

Russia underwent a series of “scissors crises.” Agriculture was able to

recover from the wars and revolution faster than industry. Workers were

unable to produce enough goods for the peasants to buy (in addition to

giving the elite a huge share of the economic pie), leading to economic

crisis. In the first scissors crisis Trotsky proposed a state-driven

program of crash industrialization designed to rapidly build up Russian

industry. This was rejected and instead they used price fixing to end

the crisis. This proved to be only a temporary fix, because they faced

further scissors crises. They could have continued manipulating prices

(and other economic interventions) in order to keep the NEP going, but

this would have resulted in lower industrial growth. This was

unacceptable to the elite because of their Marxist ideology (which was

very much in favor of industrialization), the need to build an

industrial infrastructure to defend against foreign invaders, and

because it would require the ruling class to accept the extraction of a

smaller surplus. In 1928 Stalin ended the NEP and opted for a variant of

Trotsky’s proposal of rapid industrialization (of course Trotsky was not

given credit and had already been expelled by this time). This came in

the form of a series of five-year plans made by central planners. This

system of five year plans, a new one being drawn up every five years,

continued with small variations for decades until Gorbachev.

Along with the five-year plans the state launched a war on the peasants

in the form of forced collectivization. The Mir was destroyed and

peasants coerced into joining state-run agricultural collectives. The

collectives employed wage-labor and had a very authoritarian structure.

It brought about mass famine and the death of millions. This class war

on the peasants allowed the state to extract agricultural surpluses with

which to fuel industrialization. In addition, it smashed the section of

society most hostile to the ruling class and over which it had the least

control, the peasants:

“The collective farm was to be an instrument of control: it would enable

the state to exact a tribute from the peasantry in the form of grain and

other produce and extend political and administrative domination to the

countryside. … the party aimed at nothing less than the eradication of

peasant culture and independence. It launched a wholesale campaign

against … peasant institutions … Peasants lost control of their means of

production and economic destiny. Collectivization was an all-out attack

against the peasantry, its culture, and way of life.” [196]

Peasant resistance to collectivization was enormous, at one point

bringing the country close to civil war. Peasants called

collectivization a “second serfdom” and believed they were in the middle

of Armageddon, with Stalin being the anti-Christ. In 1930 alone more

than two million peasants participated in 13,754 mass rebellions.

In the end these rebellions failed to stop collectivization. The

peasants were proletarianized – turned from peasants into workers. Every

society transitioning from an agrarian peasant society into a capitalist

society has undergone a period of proletarianization like this, although

Russia’s proletarianization was much faster and had it’s own

peculiarities. Capitalism is an economic system based on wage-labor, in

which the majority of the population (the working class) has to sell

their labor to a minority of the population (the capitalist class) in

order to make a living. In order to establish capitalism a capitalist

class must establish a monopoly (or near monopoly) over the means of

production, including arable land. If the average person can make a

living off the land they will not have to sell their labor to the

capitalists in order to survive, which impedes the development of

capitalism and negatively impacts their profits. Although the USSR

claimed to be socialist, it actually practiced state monopoly

capitalism. The five-year plan system begun in 1928 was a centrally

planned form of capitalism. Most of the population had to sell their

labor, to the state, in order to survive. The capitalist class was made

up of high-level bureaucrats and party members who controlled the state

and exploited the workers. There is little difference between

Stalinist-style central planning and having a single corporation

monopolize the entire economy. Marxism is the ultimate capitalist

monopoly. The NEP was also state-capitalist (as the Bolsheviks

admitted), but of a different kind, and War Communism was a kind of

state monopoly capitalism combined with elements of “agrarian

despotism.”

Stalin had already killed millions through the collectivization of

agriculture but in the mid-thirties he launched a series of purges that

slaughtered millions more, including most of the original

revolutionaries who had helped build the “soviet” state. “From the

beginning of the thirties Stalin relied more and more on young Party

officials, hand-picked by himself, and slighted many veterans of the

Revolution.” [197] In late 1934 the great terror began, lasting through

1938. Stalin had Kirov, the second most powerful man in the country,

assassinated and then framed his enemies for the assassination. A bloody

hurricane of death swept across the country, as paranoid witch-hunts

demonizing “Trotskyite terrorists” and other boogeymen killed thousands.

“In 1936, the right to carry weapons was taken away from Communist Party

members. Preparing for mass terror against the Party, Stalin feared some

kind of active response.” [198] In that same year a new constitution was

adopted. The height of the Great Terror occurred in 1937–38, when many

members of the Communist party were liquidated. Dissidents were forced

(through torture or other means) to “confess” to being Nazi agents,

terrorists or some other absurd charge. Show trials and executions were

used not only against dissidents and ordinary people but also against

many leaders of the Bolshevik revolution.

The Great Terror was a sort of coup-without-a-coup, in which the

bureaucracy liquidated the original revolutionary leaders. It was “the

culmination of the counter-revolution.” [199] The Marxist “dictatorship

of the proletariat” created an extremely powerful bureaucracy that

established its rule over the country. In the Great Terror that

bureaucracy killed the original revolutionaries who created it and

solidified it’s rule. “Almost all the most outstanding Red Army

commanders who had risen to prominence during the Civil War perished.”

[200] The rise of Stalin was part of the triumph of the bureaucracy.

Stalin was not a major revolutionary leader but basically a bureaucrat

who monopolized administrative positions (including the position of

General Secretary of the party). When the bureaucracy launched its

“coup” against the revolutionary leaders it did not need to actually

overthrow the state because it already controlled most of the state,

including it’s coercive machinery. Major victims of the terror “were

hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file party members.” The “soviet”

secret police “arrested and killed, within two years, more Communists

than had been lost in all the years of the underground struggle, the

three revolutions, and the Civil War.” [201] At the 17^(th) congress of

the Communist Party 80 percent of representatives joined the party

before 1920, at the next (18^(th)) party congress only 19 percent of the

representatives had joined the party before 1920. The bureaucracy

succeeded in eliminating the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution and

solidifying its’ rule, thereby completing Russia’s long Thermidor.

The early stages of the French Revolution saw popular organs of

self-management, such as the Sans-Culottes’ sectional assemblies, come

into being just as the early part of the Russian Revolution saw popular

organs of self-management such as the Soviets and factory committees.

The Jacobins used these to attain power for themselves, just as the

Bolsheviks did. However, the institutions the Jacobins advocated

(capitalism and representative government) are inherently systems of

elite rule and are incompatible with non-hierarchical (anarchist) ways

of running society like the sectional assemblies. This brought about a

counter-revolution that destroyed the sectional assemblies and brought

about Jacobin dictatorship and the reign of terror. The institutions the

Bolsheviks advocated (centralism, “proletarian” dictatorship) are also

inherently systems of elite rule and are incompatible with

non-hierarchical (anarchist) ways of running society like the Soviets

and factory committees. This also brought about a counter-revolution

that the destroyed the Soviets, factory committees, etc. and brought

about Bolshevik dictatorship and the reign of terror. In the French

Revolution after this new elite had succeeded in holding off it’s

enemies and establishing its’ rule it overthrew the revolutionaries who

created it – Thermidor. In the Russian Revolution after the new elite

succeeded in hold off its’ enemies and firmly establishing its’ rule it

overthrew the revolutionaries who created it – Stalinism. Just as

Robespierre was killed with his own Guillotine, Stalinism used the same

repressive machine developed by Lenin & co. to eliminate the

revolutionaries who built it. There were quite a few differences between

the French and Russian Revolutions, but they underwent similar processes

because they both established the rule of a new elite through similar

mechanisms (popular social revolution). Thermidor/Stalinism constituted

a kind of ‘second counter-revolution’ in both cases.

Stalinism, Russia’s long Thermidor, was not the outcome of Stalin’s

personality but of the structure of the state and society created in the

early twenties. Had another individual been in power more or less the

same things would have occurred. Preventing Stalinism or something

similar to Stalinism would have required either a different outcome of

the tenth party congress or an event that drastically changed things,

like another revolution, another civil war, or a meteor destroying

Moscow. Stalinism was the logical outcome of the way things were set up

in the early twenties. Most of the things attributed to Stalinism had

their precursors in the first years of Bolshevik rule:

-state farms/“collectives” first established in 1918

-war on the peasants — grain requisitions under Lenin / forced

collectivization under Stalin

-using torture to extract “confessions” was first used against striking

workers in 1919

-One party state established in the first half of 1918

-persecution of dissident party members began in 1921 with the decree

banning factions

-suppression of independent socialist and labor organizations began in

1918

Of course Stalin took these things to an extreme beyond that of Lenin

and Trotsky, but the precursors were there. There is more continuity

between Lenin and Stalin than most anti-Stalin Leninists would have us

believe. Stalin used the same strategies and repressive machinery

(systemic lying, repression of all opposition, etc.) Lenin used against

the Left SRs, anarchists, Mensheviks, etc. against his opponents.

What existed in the USSR was not communism or even socialism, but Red

Fascism. The USSR was a totalitarian state that murdered millions and

suppressed all opposition, even other revolutionaries. This form of

government was very similar to that established by Mussolini in Italy,

Hitler in Germany and Franco in Spain. These classical Fascist states

also implemented state-capitalism with a high degree of central

planning, like the USSR. Just as Leninists pretend to be socialists,

Nazis also call themselves socialists (neither are). Hitler claimed to

be a ‘national socialist.’ Nazi Germany nationalized several industries

and instituted a series of three-year plans similar to the five-year

plans in the USSR. Mussolini implemented a form of joint state-corporate

central planning. Most fascist states have historically used some form

of central planning, and not only the classical fascist states. The

biggest difference between Red Fascism (Leninism) and Brown Fascism

(Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, etc.) lies in the philosophy and rhetoric

they use to justify their policies. The policies themselves are very

similar. Brown Fascists tend to be more favorable towards private

property and never completely eliminate it (although they usually place

some restrictions on it) whereas Red Fascists seek to completely replace

private property with state (public) property. Brown Fascism, when it is

not imposed by a foreign power, comes about as a defense of the

presently existing state and ruling class, as a way of warding off

revolution. Red Fascism, when it is not imposed by a foreign power,

comes to power by overthrowing the old ruling class and establishing a

new one. The new elite, created by the attempt to implement Marx’s

“dictatorship of the proletariat,” implements Red Fascism to insure it

stays in power. Other than that, Brown and Red Fascisms are very

similar. Marxist-Leninism is the left-wing version of Fascism.

Kissinger-esque Excuses

The standard Leninist defense of the authoritarian actions of the

Bolsheviks after coming to power is that it was necessary to defeat the

Whites, imperialists, etc. and prevent the gains of the revolution from

being destroyed. This is wrong for several reasons. The Revolutionary

Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist) was able to defeat the

Whites, imperialists, etc. under conditions more difficult than the

Bolsheviks had in Russia without their authoritarian policies. Thus,

these authoritarian policies could not have been the only way the

Bolsheviks could have defeated the Whites since there are successful

examples of other ways to fight the counter-revolution.

The Bolsheviks were already becoming increasing dictatorial by the time

the civil war, imperialist invasions, etc. happened. The civil war

started on May 25 1918 with the revolt of the Czech legion. In spring

1918 the Bolsheviks lost the soviet elections. Their response was to

disband all the soviets that voted the wrong way. This is what caused

party dictatorship to come about, not the civil war. They also started

disbanding factory committees in March 1918 and in April launched raids

against anarchists. Anarchists (and others) were jailed and newspapers

shut down, all before the civil war start. It is rather difficult to

blame the civil war for Bolshevik authoritarianism when their

authoritarian policies began before the civil war.

This pre-civil war authoritarianism actually played a role in starting

the civil war and undermining popular support for the Bolsheviks. Far

from being absolutely necessary to defeat the Whites, Bolshevik

brutality probably helped the White cause. These actions caused many

uprisings against the Bolsheviks, which the Whites took advantage of,

and decreased eagerness to fight against the Whites. Bolshevik

totalitarianism was the only way they could keep themselves, and the new

ruling class created as a result of the “dictatorship of the

proletariat,” in power, not the only way to stop the Whites from

winning.

If these “objective circumstances” (civil war, imperialism, etc.) caused

Bolshevism to degenerate and become authoritarian then Bolshevism will

always degenerate and become authoritarian because those “exceptional

circumstances” commonly occur with revolutions. Revolutions are

frequently caused and accompanied by economic and/or political crises.

The revolution will inherit this crisis. A successful revolutionary

strategy must be capable of dealing with it without degenerating. In

State and Revolution (and elsewhere) Lenin claimed that a “dictatorship

of the proletariat” was needed in order to defeat capitalist

counter-revolutionary armies in civil war. If this “proletarian” state

cannot do that without degenerating into a totalitarian hellhole then it

should be avoided because it is incapable of achieving it’s goal and

will always degenerate into a totalitarian hellhole. It’s pretty

unrealistic to think that you can have a revolution without resistance

from the capitalists. If Bolshevism cannot overcome that resistance

without turning into a totalitarian nightmare then Bolshevism is to be

avoided because it will always turn into a totalitarian nightmare.

This justification for Lenin’s dictatorship cannot possibly justify the

suppression of the Workers Opposition faction of the Bolsheviks party.

The Workers Opposition was not only defeated but also banned. All

factions within the Bolshevik party were banned, making Stalin’s rise to

power much easier since no one was allowed to organize against him. Nor

can it justify the imperialism engaged in by Soviet Russia in the early

20s. They invaded not only Ukraine, where the anarchists had defeated

the bourgeoisie, but also other states, which had become independent of

the Russian Empire during the course of the revolution & civil war.

Repression not only continued after the civil war but increased, making

the civil war excuse even more implausible. Many Leninists defend this

by claiming that the country was too exhausted for genuine Soviet

Democracy, had they not continued party dictatorship the right would

have come to power. The country obviously wasn’t too exhausted at the

end of the civil war because they were quite capable of launching

numerous large revolts against the Bolsheviks (Kronstadt, Tambov, the

Volynka, etc.). It is quite possible that had the Bolsheviks held free

elections the SRs or Mensheviks might have won (the Bolsheviks would

almost certainly have lost). It is further possible that this might have

resulted in a restoration of the capitalists to power, through a

Kolchak-style coup, a Menshevik-SR slide to the right or some other

means. But the Bolshevik dictatorship resulted in the rule of the

capitalist class anyway. I’m referring here not only to the eventual

downfall of the USSR but the fact that the Bolsheviks established

themselves as a new state-capitalist ruling class shortly after coming

to power. Their dictatorship was defending one capitalist class against

a different capitalist class (and the workers & peasants) — not the

workers against the capitalists. All of the political parties

represented different forms of capitalism, even if they called their

version “socialism.” The only real way to end bourgeois rule would have

been the anarchist solution using partisan warfare along the lines of

the Makhnovshchina. The triumph of any of the parties, including the

Bolsheviks, meant the triumph of capitalist rule. It is contradictory to

argue that Bolshevik authoritarianism was necessary to defend the gains

of the revolution because Bolshevik authoritarianism destroyed the gains

of the revolution by gerrymandering soviets, shutting down factory

committees, repressing opposition socialists, etc. Bolshevik methods

brought about the very thing they were allegedly supposed to stop.

Another defense of this is the claim that the Russian working class had

become “declassed” or “atomized.” Allegedly, the proletariat had

effectively ceased to exist as a proletariat due to the depopulation of

the cities brought about by the civil war and thus the party had no

choice but to substitute it’s own dictatorship for the rule of the

proletariat. It is true that Russian cities underwent large-scale

depopulation during the civil war due both to the civil war and the

disastrous set of policies known as War Communism. Those who fled the

cities tended to be those who had come to the cities more recently and

still had ties to villages. The “hardcore proletarians” who had been

born in the city and lived there for their whole life were less likely

to leave. These “hardcore proletarians” were the ones who went on strike

and rebelled against the Bolsheviks, culminating in the Volynka. The

working class obviously had not ceased to exist or lost its’ ability to

engage in collective action since it was quite capable of taking

collective action, including strikes and other actions, against the

Bolshevik dictatorship. [202]

The “it was necessary” defense of Lenin’s dictatorship is the same as

the defenses offered by John Ashcroft, Henry Kissinger, the CIA and

other apologists of American imperialism. They claim that repressive

measures are necessary in order to “stop the terrorists” and other

boogeymen. They too reject both “pure democracy” and “pure repression.”

The CIA only imposes police states on other countries when it is needed

to maintain US imperialism. When it is not necessary they do not usually

impose a police state. If it is necessary both Leninists and the CIA

will use extreme terror to force their vision of how the world should be

organized on the majority. Associating Leninism with brutal

dictatorships is no different than associating the CIA with brutal

dictatorships. There are no circumstances in which it is ever acceptable

to implement a police state (or any other kind of state). A police state

can never be used to defend workers’ rule because all police states have

a tiny minority ruling at the top over the proletariat. Implementing a

police state guarantees that a classless and stateless society will not

come about.

Lessons of the Revolution

There are several lessons to be learned from the Russian Revolution. The

most important is that the anarchist critique of state socialism is

correct – implementing state socialism results in a bureaucratic ruling

class over the workers (and peasants), not a classless society. The

Russian Revolution and many other state socialist revolutions prove

this.

Anarchists predicted the history of the state socialist (Marxist)

movement in the 19^(th) and early 20^(th) century. Proudhon warned that

implementing authoritarian socialist ideas would be “apparently based on

the dictatorship of the masses, but in which the masses have only the

power to insure universal servitude … [and] the systemic destruction of

all individual … thought believed to be subversive [and] … an

inquisitorial police force.” [203] Stirner made similar criticisms.

Probably the best-known anarchist critic of state socialism was Mikhail

Bakunin, Marx’s nemesis in the First International. He predicted that

Authoritarian Socialist movements (such as Marxism) would take two

possible routes. One was the path of becoming enmeshed in electoralism,

which would result in them becoming reformist and helping to perpetuate

the system instead of leading the revolution. The more power they would

win through elections the more conservative they would become. This

prediction was correct, with the Social Democrats being the first major

example of a revolutionary movement using electoralism and, as a result,

becoming reformist. The second was that they would not come to power

through the ballot but instead come to power through revolution. This

would result in the rule of the “Red Bureaucracy” which would exploit

the proletariat just as the old ruling class had. He criticized Marx:

“What does it mean, “the proletariat raised to a governing class?” Will

the entire proletariat head the government? The Germans number about 40

million. Will all 40 million be members of the government? The entire

nation will rule, but no one will be ruled. Then there will be no

government, there will be no state; but if there is a state, there will

also be those who are ruled, there will be slaves. … They claim that

only a dictatorship … can create popular freedom. We reply that no

dictatorship can have any objective than to perpetuate itself, and that

it can engender and nurture only slavery in the people who endure it.

Liberty can be created only by liberty, by an insurrection of all the

people and the voluntary organization of the workers from below upward.

… According to Marx’s theory … the people not only must not destroy [the

state], they must fortify it and strengthen it, and in this form place

it at the complete disposal of their benefactors, guardians, and

teachers — the leaders of the communist party … They will concentrate

the reins of government in a strong hand … and will divide the people

into two armies, one industrial and one agrarian, under the direct

command of state engineers, who will form a new privileged scientific

and political class.” [204]

History has proven him correct, on both counts. The revolution must not

only abolish capitalism but most also abolish the state. If it does not

the state will establish itself as a new ruling class over the

proletariat. Any attempt to create a “workers’ state” or “dictatorship

of the proletariat” inevitably results in the “tyranny of the Red

Bureaucracy.”

Some tangential predictions have been shown to be correct as well. In

1919 Errico Malatesta claimed that Lenin and Trotsky

“are preparing the governmental structures which those who will come

after them will utilize to exploit the Revolution and do it to death.

They will be the first victims of their methods and I am afraid that the

Revolution will go under with them. History repeats itself; mutatis

mutandis, it was Robespierre’s dictatorship that brought Robespierre to

the guillotine and pave the way for Napoleon.” [205]

This too happened, we call it Stalinism. Nearly twenty years before the

Russian Revolution Kropotkin claimed that “Should an authoritarian

Socialist society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not

last; general discontent would force it to break up, or to reorganize

itself on principles of liberty.” [206] The fall of the USSR showed this

to be correct as well.

Marxists, of course, do not admit that the failure of the revolution was

the result of creating a “workers’ state” but have instead invented all

sorts of ad hoc hypotheses to explain it’s failure. They would have us

believe that the remarkable accuracy of the anarchist critique of

Marxism is nothing more than a coincidence.

Some vulgar “Marxists” claim that the revolution went wrong because

Lenin and the Bolsheviks didn’t really implement what Marx wanted. They

misinterpreted Marx and weren’t “true Marxists.” This theory conflicts

with historical materialism, one of the cornerstones of Marxism. Any

attempt to explain what went wrong in Russia solely as a result of the

ideas held in the head of certain “Great Men” (Lenin, Trotsky, etc.), as

a sole result of their alleged ideological differences with Marx, is

historical idealism, not materialism. If this idealist theory were true

it would disprove Marxism because it would disprove historical

materialism. Those “Marxists” who put forth this theory don’t really

understand Marxism at all, or are disingenuous. Any materialist account

of the revolution (Marxist or otherwise) should focus on the social

structures created, how they evolved and the conditions they were in. In

the case of Marxism this should focus on class struggle.

One ad hoc explanation invented by Marxists is the theory that the

isolation of the “soviet” state, the fact that the world revolution

failed, caused the revolution to degenerate and fail. This theory can’t

really explain the authoritarian actions taken by the “soviet” state in

the early years of the revolution, such as the disbanding of Soviets

after the Bolsheviks lost elections in spring 1918 and the suppression

of left-wing opponents of the Bolsheviks. World revolution was still on

the table and many countries were experiencing major unrest that could

have resulted in imitations of the October revolution yet Bolshevik

Russia had already developed a new ruling class and begun suppressing

workers and the opposition. There were eventually a number of other

authoritarian socialist revolutions around the world ending Russia’s

isolation, at one point they ruled a third of the world. Yet all of

these subsequent revolutions (which were not isolated) developed

bureaucratic ruling classes and Russia’s bureaucracy continued to rule

even when no longer isolated. Some of these regimes were less oppressive

than Bolshevik Russia, others were more oppressive (such as Pol Pot’s

genocidal reign) but all were run by bureaucratic elites even though

they weren’t isolated.

Some say that had Germany (or another country) imitated the October

Revolution things could have gone differently by ending Russia’s

isolation, but this would have just established a second

state-capitalist regime. In Hungary they managed to imitate October,

establishing the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This Republic was only

around for a few months before imperialist armies crushed it, yet even

in that short time it managed to develop a party dictatorship, Red

Terror and bureaucratic elite. The same would have happened in Germany

had it imitated October.

Another ad hoc hypothesis is the theory that the revolution failed

because Russia was economically “backwards” – it was not very developed

or industrialized. This theory basically amounts to the claim that the

Mensheviks were right – socialism was impossible in Russia at the time.

This theory can’t really explain the early repression engaged in by the

Bolsheviks (dispersing soviets, etc.) – there’s no reason why the lack

of industrialization should automatically result in these repressive

acts. A Bolshevik style-revolution in an industrialized society would

result in even greater disruption of the economy, as Lenin admitted.

According to pre-1917 orthodox Marxism the Russian Revolution should

have been impossible, the fact that it happened at all disproves it.

There is no reason why the creation of a classless society absolutely

requires industrialization. There have been many examples of agrarian

socialist societies – the Iroquois, the !Kung and others. During the

Russian Revolution anarchists were able to build a stateless and

classless society in the Ukraine despite there being even less

industrialization, further showing that the building of a classless

society does not require industrialization.

Most peasant societies, including pre-Stalinist Russia, are organized

into communes. Villages are run by village assemblies and many things

are communally owned. Usually the Feudal landlord expropriates the

peasants by extracting rent, crops and other forms of unpaid labor.

Although often partiarchical and ageist (except in times of rebellion),

these communes come much closer to Libertarian Socialism than the

representative democracy that prevails in most contemporary industrial

societies. In most industrial capitalist societies there is nothing like

these village assemblies and there is very little communalism. Almost

everything is private property or state property. The domination of the

bosses and the state is often much more rigid than the domination of the

landlord. These peasant communes can serve as the embryo of the

revolution, both serving as a springboard to organize rebellion and as

the beginning of the organization of society without classes. In Russia

these communes were repartitional, but there have been examples of

peasant revolutionaries organizing more collective systems. In both the

Ukrainian Revolution and (especially) the Spanish Revolution peasants

organized collectives in which land was farmed in common and the produce

shared on the basis of need.

Furthermore, the capitalist plays a much more intricate role in

production than the landlord. The landlord doesn’t really participate in

production — he just extracts rent, unpaid labor, etc. The capitalist,

however, often does participate in production (if only to enhance the

exploitation of his workers) by managing the business(es). And if the

capitalist doesn’t manage his business, he hires a member of the

techno-managerial class to do so. Although both are parasites and

unnecessary, it is much easier for peasants to see the landlord as a

parasite than it is for the worker because the peasants are already

running production — whereas the capitalist or manager directs

production in industrial capitalism. It’s possible to run production

without bosses, Russia’s factory provide one example of how to do it,

but it is less obvious than farming without landlords. In addition,

workers are much more interconnected with one another under capitalism

and this often makes revolution more difficult. If the post office

workers go on strike that can adversely affect other workers, disrupting

solidarity and making coordinated rebellion more difficult. If a peasant

village rebels, that doesn’t usually bother other peasants the way a

post-office strike can bother other workers. A successful worker

revolution will require much greater coordination and planning because

of this increased interconnectedness, whereas a successful peasant

rebellion would not need as much coordination. A whole bunch of

uncoordinated local village uprisings are often sufficient to topple a

regime, whereas workers usually have to coordinate across the entire

country due to their increased interconnectedness. This is one reason

why there tends to be greater unrest in peasant societies than

industrial ones. Peasant societies will also have an easier time after

the revolution, since a less complex economy is easier to manage and

coordinate. It is not a coincidence that the rural revolution was more

radical than the industrial one during the Spanish revolution.

Probably the strongest of these ad hoc hypotheses is the ‘bourgeois

revolution’ theory. In Marxist theory a ‘bourgeois revolution’ is a

revolution that results in the bourgeoisie seizing control of the state

and implementing full-blown capitalism. Examples include the English,

French, German and (arguably) American revolutions. Some Marxists claim

that that the Russian Revolution was really a bourgeois revolution that

used socialist ideology to legitimize the new state-capitalist order,

but wasn’t actually socialist. The theory of a bourgeois revolution is

false in all cases because it is premised upon the Marxist view of

states being instruments of whichever class is dominant. Although the

interests of the economic elite and the state usually coincide, the

state is not simply the tool of the dominant class. In addition, in

Russia’s case the bourgeoisie were literally destroyed. They had their

wealth nationalized and were impoverished. Many were killed or put in

forced labor camps. The individuals who seized power in the October

Revolution were not members of the capitalist class; most came from the

intelligentsia. It is true that the result of the Russian Revolution was

eventually state monopoly capitalism but this does not mean that the

revolution was a ‘bourgeois revolution.’ The triumph of state-capitalism

was the outcome of the implementation of the Marxist program, not of the

Russian bourgeoisie seizing state power.

A non-Marxist explanation of the failure of the Russian Revolution is

the cultural determinist theory. This states that Russia became

totalitarian after the revolution because Russia had an authoritarian

culture. Russia was extremely authoritarian prior to the revolution and

so had to become extremely authoritarian after the revolution. The

problem with cultural determinism is that there have been numerous cases

of cultures undergoing major transformations, sometimes in a very short

period of time. Many countries have successfully transferred from

absolute Monarchies or brutal dictatorships to very different, often

less repressive, systems – England, France, the Philippines and numerous

others. During the holocaust the Jews were passive and launched

relatively few rebellions considering they were being exterminated. Many

psychologists wrote about the Jews’ passive mentality. Yet only a few

years after this Zionist Jews managed to build a highly militaristic

state in Israel – quite a big change compared to their lack of actions

just a few years earlier. The early phase of the Russian Revolution saw

radically libertarian forms of organization spring up even though Russia

had no real experience with democracy of any type. They were destroyed

not by “Russian culture” (most Russians supported them) but by the

Bolshevik counter-revolution. Cultural determinism amounts to arguing

that major change is impossible, a non-democratic society is doomed to

remain a non-democratic society. History shows that major change is

possible and has happened repeatedly, even in relatively short periods

of time.

Some right-wing capitalists claim that the descent of the Russian

Revolution into totalitarianism was the result of their attack on

private property. Supposedly, private property and civil liberties go

hand in hand – destroy one and you destroy the other. Like the anarchist

explanation, this theory has the virtue of having been created before

the Russian Revolution – that revolution is seen as confirmation of its’

predictions. The problem with this theory is that there have also been a

number of societies which did not conform to its’ predictions, which

greatly reduced (or completely abolished) private property and did not

turn into a totalitarian nightmare like Russia. The Iroquois and !Kung

didn’t practice private property, yet did not develop brutal

totalitarian states. Swedish Social Democrats made significant

restrictions on private property yet did not suffer a large drop in

civil liberties. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua made major inroads on

private property, far more than Russia under the NEP, yet had less

repression compared to Bolshevik Russia (though they certainly were not

devoid of abuses). Chille under Pinochet was a very brutal dictatorship

that murdered thousands yet it had a high degree of private property and

a very free market oriented capitalist economy. Under the NEP the

Bolsheviks introduced a limited degree of private property, much greater

than under War Communism, yet government repression increased in this

period. The human race has been around tens of thousands of years;

capitalism has been around for only a couple centuries. It is absurd to

argue that capitalism is “human nature” or that any alternative must

always be a Bolshevik-style dungeon because most of human history was

neither capitalist nor Bolshevik.

The second most important lesson to be learned from the revolution is

from the libertarian forms of organization created during the early

period of the revolution – Soviets, factory committees, village

assemblies, etc. These show the broad outlines of an alternative to

capitalist society (including Bolshevism), the beginnings of an

anarchist society. They show that an anarchist society is possible and

can work. For a time these anarchic institutions basically ran most of

Russia, the factory committees were capable of running the factories and

peasant communes were able to run the village. In the Ukraine they went

all the way and were able to build a stateless and classless society.

These were defeated and destroyed not because they “didn’t work” or

anything like that but because of the Bolshevik counter-revolution,

which was a logical outcome of the creation of a “workers’ state.”

Trying to put the Soviets in state form killed them.

The defeat of this revolution, and the Bolshevik’s ability to

outmaneuver the anarchists, also contains some organizational lessons

for contemporary revolutionaries. One of the reasons the Bolsheviks were

able to outmaneuver and defeat the anarchists was because the anarchists

were very disorganized. The Russian Revolution shows the importance of

anarchists organizing and spreading our ideas both before and during the

revolution. In the Ukraine the anarchists were more organized, although

they probably could have done better, which is part of the reason

anarchist there were more successful. Because it was a predominantly

rural movement in Ukraine it encountered problems in the cities, showing

the need for both urban and rural organization. It also shows the

treacherous nature of the Bolsheviks. It was a mistake for the

anarchists to become as close allies with the Bolsheviks as they did

(especially Makhno’s final alliance with the Bolsheviks against

Wrangel). The Bolsheviks literally shot them in the back.

All Leninist revolutions have historically resulted in repressive

one-party dictatorships. This is a logical outcome of the way in which

they come to power. A highly centralized vanguard party comes to power

through a violent social revolution in which they encourage rebellion on

the part of the oppressed classes and promise them a socialist society

that will solve their problems and make their lives much better. This

results in a highly combative Peasantry and Working class, which require

the use of high levels of repression to keep them under control. The

vanguard seizes power, making itself the new ruling class. It must use

high levels of repression to keep itself in power because it comes to

power on the back of a wave of class-conscious worker & peasant

uprisings. It takes the form of a one party state because that is the

form it uses to seize power — the vanguard party. This necessitates

further repression because it is more difficult for a party-state to

convincingly present itself as a democratic state. After they’ve been in

power a while, and have defeated the workers & peasants, the vanguard

can decrease the level of repression (and sometimes do) because they no

longer face a major threat from rebellious workers & peasants. The means

you use will determine the ends you get. Using a centralized vanguard

party to wage revolution will result in a society similar to it — a

centralized party-state.

There have been over 30 “workers states” implemented (including several

that did not model themselves on Stalinist Russia); all of them have

resulted in exactly what anarchists predicted. Are we really supposed to

believe that each and every one of these was just a coincidence? Not

repeated over thirty times. Even the few (non-Leninist) examples of

“workers states” which did not rely on state terror resulted in the rule

of the red bureaucracy. The Marxist movement has followed exactly the

path anarchists predicted: becoming either reformist or implementing the

rule of a bureaucratic elite. This has happened over and over again,

every time proving anarchist predictions correct. Predictions based on

Marxist theory have proven incorrect, but predictions based on anarchist

theory have proven correct. Marxists can invent all the ad hoc

hypotheses in the world but that doesn’t change this. As Marx himself

said, what people do is as important as what they say. We need to look

not only at the Marxists’ manifesto, but also their record. Leninists

have implemented one-party dictatorships every time they have come to

power. Every “workers state” has always been ruled by the red

bureaucracy. It does not matter what rhetoric is used to justify it,

these are the inevitable outcomes of Leninism and “workers states.”

Albert Einstein is said to have defined insanity as “doing the same

thing over and over and expecting a different result.” History shows

what “workers states” leads to, if we try to do it again we will get the

same bad results. It would be insanity to expect anything else.

Appendix A: On Right-Wing Estimates Of The Number Killed By

Marxist-Leninism

Although there can be little doubt that Stalinism in particular and

Leninism in general slaughtered millions, many right-wing historians,

political scientists and commentators overly exaggerate the number

killed using dishonest methods. These methods are only applied to

official enemies (primarily Leninist states), never to western

countries. If they were applied to western countries one would find that

they have killed an even greater number than the states they are

criticizing.

The standard methodology for calculating the number killed by Leninism

(often incorrectly called “Communism”) is to take the highest estimate

of the number directly, intentionally killed (executions, etc.), add in

the number of people who starved to death, and then add in the number of

people who would have been born if previous population trends continued.

This is the methodology used by Pipes in his histories of the

Revolution, by The Black Book of Communism and other on the hardcore

right.

This methodology is flawed for a number of reasons. Claiming that a

change in population trends is equivalent to killing people is

ridiculous. In order to be killed you first have to be born. Just

because the birth rate goes down does not mean that mass murder is being

committed. If this were applied to Western Europe it would find that the

last fifty years was a time of massive death – but nothing of the sort

is true. Western Europe’s birth rate has just declined greatly and there

is a big difference between a declining birth rate (or even a declining

life expectancy) and actively killing people – a fact that is ignored by

many rightists when it is convenient for propaganda purposes.

Counting death by starvation is probably fair, so long as it is done

consistently and put in context. In most cases death by starvation is

not intentional in the same way that executions are. In most cases,

including Russia, leaders do not sit down and decide, “I want this many

people to starve to death.” Death by starvation is usually the result of

systemic causes and is not intentional. The mass famine that occurred

under Stalin (and, to a lesser extend, under Lenin) was the result of

the Leninist system, which was incapable of feeding people, not the ill

will of any particular leaders. This fact leads to a deeper critique of

Leninism, since the starvation was cause by the Leninist system it would

not matter if Stalin was a perfect saint – such atrocities would still

occur. This needs to be applied consistently, though. Global capitalism

causes thousands of people to starve to death every day, even though

enough food is produced to feed everyone, yet none of these right-wing

critiques that complain of starvation in Leninist states condemn global

capitalism because of this. Market capitalist countries have a long

history of mass famine throughout the globe just as bad as the Leninist

states, yet death by famine is not usually added to the body count if

these market capitalist countries. Adding death by starvation to the

body count of Leninist states is legitimate, but it should also be added

to the body count of market capitalist states, which the right does not

do.

Counting the number of people directly killed through execution, death

camps, etc. is obviously legitimate. Using high-end estimates is some

times correct, some times not – it depends on the evidence supporting

it. In some cases it is definitely not justified. For example, some

right-wing accounts use Taiwanese propaganda as a source for the number

of people killed by Mao, which would be like using Stalinist propaganda

as a source for the number of people the US killed. It’s obviously not

credible. The “soviet” state was probably responsible for the deaths of

10–15 million people between 1917 and Stalin’s death.

Capitalist condemnation of the millions killed by Leninism is thoroughly

hypocritical. Capitalism has a long history of slaughtering millions,

from the Atlantic Slave Trade, to the extermination of the Native

Americans, to colonialism, to classical fascism and many more. Belgium’s

colonialism in Congo alone killed at least 10 million and the

extermination of the Native Americans killed more than 100 million.

Liberal capitalism brought about famine after famine in Ireland, India,

Africa and many other parts of the globe. Thousands starve to death

every day because of global capitalism. Non-Marxist forms of capitalism

have killed more than Marxist-Leninism (state monopoly capitalism). Yet

the massive deaths caused by most of these capitalist states are never

given as much attention and is usually ignored. If we applied the

methodology used by the right to estimate deaths due to “Communism” to

the west we would find the numbers killed are even worse than the

Leninists. That this methodology is only applied to Leninist states is a

double standard and exposes their methodology as nothing more than a

dishonest propaganda tool. To condemn Leninism for killing millions

while supporting market capitalism (or vice versa) is the height of

hypocrisy.

Appendix B: The Russian Anarchist Movement

Russian socialism has always had a libertarian strain. One of the

earliest socialist movements in Russia were the Nihilists, a close

cousin of anarchism. The nihilists were extreme skeptics who stressed

rationalism, materialism, anti-clerical atheism and science while

advocating revolution and individual freedom. Many used individualistic

acts of violence, such as assassinations and arson, against the

Monarchy. Nihilists participated in the Decembrist revolt and

assassinated Tsar Alexander the second.

The famous anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Marx’s nemesis in the first

international, was from Russia although he became an anarchist in exile.

He was born into nobility, but lost his privileges (and spent many years

in prisons) due to his opposition to the revolutionary activity. Bakunin

participated in the 1848 revolutions and was a Republican and

nationalists for many years; it was not until the later years of his

life when he became an anarchist. Some of Bakunin’s writings influenced

the “to the people” (populist) movement of the 1870s, although it was

not explicitly anarchist. The Social Revolutionary party eventually

evolved out of the populist movement.

Another famous anarchist was Peter Kropotkin. His story was similar to

Bakunin’s. He was born a noble, lost his privileges (and spent years in

jail) as a result of his revolutionary activity and became an anarchist

in exile. Kropotkin was a scientist and developed anarchist theory in

more depth than Bakunin, as well as advocating anarchist-communism

(Bakunin was an anarcho-collectivist). Kropotkin was able to return to

his native Russia after the February revolution, where he died in 1921.

His funeral, held just a few weeks before the Kronstadt rebellion, was

effectively also a large anarchist rally against the Bolshevik

dictatorship. Black flags and banners were displayed, one proclaiming

“where there is authority, there is no freedom.” This was the last

public anarchist gathering allowed in Russia by the state until

Gorbachev.

Anarchists participated in the Russian Revolution and played a major

role in the Ukraine. The anarchists allied with the Bolsheviks against

the provisional government and participated in the October revolution.

After October the anarchists broke with the Bolsheviks and advocated a

“third revolution” to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Starting in April 1918

the Bolsheviks began repressing the anarchist movement, eventually

eliminating it all together. Bolshevik propaganda claimed that they did

not repress “ideological anarchists” but only “bandits” and “criminals”

who used the anarchist label as cover for criminal activity. This was a

lie concocted to justify totalitarianism and convert foreign anarchists

to their cause. There were many “ideological anarchists” who were jailed

including Voline, Maximoff, and others. Mirroring bourgeois propaganda

any anarchist who opposed the Bolsheviks was demonized as a “criminal”

or “bandit.” Bolshevik propaganda sometimes portrayed Makhno as a

bandit. This Bolshevik propaganda was helped by the “soviet anarchists;”

“anarchists” who supported the Bolshevik government, effectively

abandoning anarchism in fact if not in name. The most famous of these

“soviet anarchists” was Bill Shatov. A similar strategy of repression

and propaganda against anarchists was used in during the revolution in

Cuba, which had the largest anarchist movement in the world at the time.

The anarchist movement was effectively destroyed in the post-Kronstadt

repression, what little was left was annihilated in Stalin’s gulags.

The Russian anarchist movement began to revive after Stalin’s death.

Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, increased civil liberties and ended the

worst excesses of Stalinism. As a result a small underground anarchist

movement was able to develop, although it was not very big until

Gorbachev. Under Gorbachev and the greatly increased freedoms of the

period anarchism grew rapidly. Anarchists were the first group in Moscow

to take advantage of the greater civil liberties to hold a public

demonstration against the government, marching under a banner reading

“Freedom without Socialism is Privilege and Injustice, Socialism without

Freedom is Slavery and Brutality” (a quote from Bakunin). For a while

anarchism was a significant opposition movement, but after the coup and

collapse of the USSR the Russian anarchist movement greatly shrank. In

recent years it has begun growing again.

Appendix C: Timeline

1825: Decembrist Revolt

1861: Abolition of serfdom in Russia

1904: Russo-Japanese war begins

1905

Mass rebellions caused by Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese war

culminate in the 1905 Revolution. First formation of Soviets

January: “Bloody Sunday” Troops fire on a defenseless march of workers

led by Father Gapon. Mass strikes, mutinies and insurrections break out.

October: Height of the 1905 revolution. Tsar forced to proclaim “October

Manifesto” turning Russia into a constitutional Monarchy. Huge strike

and insurrection attempts to overthrow the government, fails.

1907: Height of the post-1905 reaction.

1914: First World War begins.

1917

February and March: February revolution. Uprising forces Tsar to

abdicate, provisional government created. Soviets, factory committees

and popular assemblies formed. Peasants begin expropriating land.

April: Lenin and other revolutionaries return to Russia. Lenin publishes

April Theses. “April days.”

May: Trotsky returns to Russia from America.

June: First all-Russian congress of soviets. Major offensive launched

against Central Powers.

July: “July Days.” Defeat of Russia’s offensive. Kerensky made President

of the provisional government.

August: Kornilov affair/coup. Population radicalized.

September/early October: Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries win

majority in the Soviets.

October

25^(th): October Revolution. Provisional Government overthrown

26^(th)-27^(th): Second All-Russian Congress. October Revolution

overwhelmingly approved, Menshevik and right SR delegates walk out.

Soviet government proclaimed, Council of People’s Commissars created.

Decrees on peace and land passed.

Worker take-over of factories and peasant expropriation of land rapidly

accelerates.

Soviet government makes temporary armistice with Central Powers.

November: Elections for the Constituent Assembly. Decree on Workers’

Control legalizes factory committee movement, but places the factory

committees under the control of a system of state councils. Beginning of

the centrally planned economy.

December: Kadets outlawed. Supreme economic council set up to run the

economy, central planning takes another leap forward.

1918

January: Constituent Assembly dissolved. Third All-Russian Congress of

Soviets.

February: Switch from old calendar to new calendar.

March: Brest-Litovsk treaty signed. Left SRs resign from the Sovnarkom

as protest against the treaty. Bolsheviks begin disbanding factory

committees. Trotsky appointed Commissar of Military Affairs (head of the

military). Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets Anti-Bolshevik worker

unrest, including the conference movement, pick up.

Spring and Summer: Bolsheviks lose elections in soviet after soviet.

They forcibly disperse soviets that do not have Bolshevik majorities and

create undemocratic “soviets” with a Bolshevik majority. Effective end

of the Soviet system, beginning of party dictatorship

April: Worker unrest against Bolsheviks increases. Cheka raids

anarchists. Beginning of the suppression of the Russian Anarchist

movement.

May: Burevestnik, Anarkhia, Golos Truda and other major anarchist papers

suppressed.

9^(th): Grain monopoly decreed. Bolsheviks fire on a working class

protest in Kolpino, touching of a wave of anti-Bolshevik proletarian

unrest.

25^(th): Revolt of the Czech legion. SRs form anti-Bolshevik government

in Samara. Beginning of the civil war.

Right-wing rebellions in Siberia and Southeastern Russia

June 28^(th) Sovnarkom issues decree nationalizing almost all remaining

privately owned businesses. Start of ‘War Communism’

July: Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Soviet Constitution

approved ‘July Uprising’ of Left SRs against Bolsheviks

August: High point of Volga offensive by SRs. Attempted assassination of

Lenin by SRs. Start of the Red Terror.

September: Anti-Bolshevik governments merge, form 5 person directory to

run the new state. Thee of the five are SRs, who make up the left-wing

of the government.

November: Sixth all-Russian Congress of Soviets. Kolchak’s Coup against

the directory. Closet Monarchists come to power in anti-Bolshevik

Russia, White military dictatorship implemented.

December: Hetman, Austro-German puppet government, driven out of the

Ukraine

1919

Height of the Civil War

In the first months of 1919 the Bolsheviks loosen repression for a few

months, but then put it back to its previous level.

March: First Congress of 3^(rd) International

April: Kolchak’s offensive in the East stopped. ‘War of the Chapany’ —

Green uprising against Bolsheviks in the Volga.

September: Battle of Peregonovka Anarchist partisans in the Ukraine

route General Denikin’s forces, launch counter-offensive

October: Denikin’s offensive in the south stopped.

December: Seventh All-Russian Congress of Soviets

1920

January: Collapse of eastern Whites, Kolchak shot. Blockade lifted by

Britain and France.

April: Border war between Russia and Poland begins. Denikin resigns and

hands power over to Wrangel

June: Wrangel launches new offensive

August: Martial law on railways declared, railway labor militarized.

Major Green uprising in Tambov begins.

October: Bolsheviks and Poland make peace

November

14^(th): General Wrangel flees the Crimea. End of the civil war

26^(th): Final Bolshevik assault on Makhonvshchina begins

Late 1920: Peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks intensify.

December: Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets

1921

February – March: Height of the post-Civil War unrest.

February: Large strikes in Moscow, Petrograd and many other cities.

Numerous peasant uprisings

March:

1^(st)-17^(th): Kronstadt rebellion

8^(th)-16^(th): Tenth Party Congress. Workers’ Opposition and Democratic

Centralists defeated. Ban on factions. Beginning of the New Economic

Policy (NEP).

June: Peasant rebellion in Tambov defeated

August: Makhno flees to Romania. Ukrainian anarchists defeated.

1922

December 30^(th): Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed.

1923: Lenin retires from political activity after a series of strokes.

First “scissors crisis.”

1924 January 24^(th): Lenin dies

Triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zionviev defeats Trotsky

1927: Expulsion of Trotsky, consolidation of Stalin’s dictatorship

1928: Beginning of five-year plans

1934–38: The Great Terror

Appendix D: Glossary

Anarchism: A philosophy advocating the abolition of all forms of

hierarchical authority, including capitalism and the state

Anarcho-Communism: A form of anarchism advocating the abolition of money

and markets and the organizing of the economy along the lines of “from

each according to ability, to each according to need”

Anarcho-Syndicalism: Anarchism oriented towards unions and the labor

movement

Authoritarian Socialism: Any form of socialism which relies on the state

to bring about socialism

Bakunin, Mikhail: Major 19^(th) century Russian anarchist. Marx’s

nemesis in the 1^(st) international

Batko: Ukrainian for ‘little father.’

Black Hundreds: Extreme right absolute Monarchists

Bolsheviks: Revolutionary Marxist party. Renamed the Communist Party in

March 1918

Bourgeoisie: Capitalist class

Black Guard: Russian Anarchist militia

Blues: Local Nationalist troops in the civil war

Bukharin: Major Bolshevik theoritician and leader. Member of the

Bolshevik party during the October Revolution. Killed during the Great

Terror.

Bund: Jewish Socialist organization

Central Powers: Germany, Austria, and their allies during the First

World War

Cheka: “Soviet” secret police

Chernov, Victor: Leader of the SRs, in it’s centrist wing

Comintern: Communist International of Leninist parties and unions, also

called 3^(rd) international

Commissar: Government official

Communism: 1. Any philosophy advocating a classless society without

money or markets organized according to the principle “from each

according to ability, to each according to need” 2. In Marxist theory,

the stage of history coming after socialism when the state has “withered

away” and society is run according to the principle “from each according

to ability, to each according to need” 3. Leninism 4. Marxism

Constituent Assembly: A legislature elected to write a constitution

Denikin: Tsarist general, commanded White army in South Russia.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Also called a “workers’ state.” In

Marxist theory, a state controlled by the workers and used to suppress

the bourgeoisie. This will “wither away” during the transition from

socialist to communism

Duma: Russian parliament or city council

Entente: France, Britain and allies during the First World War

Free Battallions: Makhnovist volunteer fighters against the Rada and

Austro-German imperialists

Greens: Peasant rebels who fought against both the Reds & Whites during

the civil war. Defended the local peasant revolution.

Kadets: Constitutional Democrats, advocates of a liberal capitalist

republic

Kamenev: Bolshevik leader

Kerensky: Head of the provisional government after July. Member of the

SR party, in its right wing.

Kolchak: Tsarist admiral. Leader of the Whites between November 1918 and

his execution in 1920

Kollontai, Allexandra: Bolshevik leader, leader of the Workers’

Opposition. Member of the central committee during the October

revolution.

Komuch: SR-dominated government established in Samara after the revolt

of the Czech legion

Kornilov: Russian general. Allegedly launched a coup against the

provisional government in august 1917 to impose a military dictatorship.

Kronstadt: Naval base about 20 miles west of Petrograd. A center of

radicalism and big supporters of the October Revolution. In 1921 they

rebelled against the Bolsheviks, called for Soviet Democracy and accused

them of betraying the revolution.

Kropotkin, Peter: Major Russian anarchist theorist

Kulak: 1. A relatively wealthy peasant 2. A derogatory term for any

peasant opposed to the Bolsheviks

Left SRs: Faction that broke away from the SRs shortly after the October

Revolution. Advocated Soviet Democracy. A peasant party.

Lenin, Vladmir: Russian Marxist, leader and founder of the Bolshevik

party

Leninism: Philosophy based on the ideas of Vladmir Lenin.

Libertarian Communism: 1. Anarchism 2. Anarcho-Communism 3. Libertarian

Marxism

Libertarian Socialism: Anarchism

Makhno, Nestor: Ukrainian Anarcho-Communist

Makhnovists: Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine

Makhnovshchina: Makhno Movement

Martov: Menshevik leader

Marxism: A philosophy based on the ideas of Karl Marx. Includes

historical materialism, the labor theory of value, dialectical

materialism and advocacy of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Maximalists: Also called SR-Maximalists. Faction that broke off from the

SRs as a result of the 1905 revolution. Their politics were between the

anarchist and Left SRs.

Maximoff: Russian Anarcho-Syndicalist

Mensheviks: Marxist party. Believed that Russia’s revolution had to be

capitalist and democratic, opposed the October revolution. The more

conservative of the two Marxist parties.

Mir: Peasant commune

NEP: New Economic Policy (1921–28), allowed a limited degree of private

enterprise and a regulated market

Octobrists: Constitutional Monarchists

Oshchina: Village land commune (Mir)

Petty Bourgeoisie: 1. Small business owner 2. peasants or artisans 3.

Lower middle class 4. a derogatory term for someone who disagrees with

Marxism or a specific brand of Marxism

Plekhanov: Father of Russian Marxism

Pogrom: Massacre of Jews

Pravda: Official Bolshevik newspaper

Proletariat: Working class

Rada: Ukrainian nationalist government

Red Army: Bolshevik army

Red Guards: Workers’ militias, often loyal to the Bolsheviks

Red Terror: Massive repression launched by Bolsheviks after an attempted

assassination of Lenin

Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine: Revolutionary

partisans in Ukraine organized by the anarcho-communist Nestor Makhno

Skhod: Village assembly

Socialism: 1. A classless society 2. In Marxist theory, the stage after

capitalism but before Communism in which the dictatorship of the

proletariat rules and individuals are paid according to how much they

work

Soviet: Russian for council. In this text the term is used to refer to

either the councils of workers’, soldiers’ and/or peasants’ deputies or

to the Bolshevik state

SRs: Social Revoluionary Party, non-Marxist socialists. A peasant party,

strong supporter of the Constituent Assembly. Two groups split off: the

Maximalists after the 1905 revolution and the Left SRs during the 1917

revolution.

Stalin, Joseph: Bolshevik who became dictator over Russia in the late

20s

Stalinism: 1. The period in Russian history in which Stalin ruled the

USSR 2. A philosophy based on the ideas of Joseph Stalin 3. Any form of

Leninism which is not hostile to Joseph Stalin and does not thoroughly

condemn his rule

Tachanki: Sprung carts used by the Makhnovists to move swiftly

Tsar: Russian King/Emperor

Trotsky, Leon: Major Marxist leader. Joined the Bolsheviks in 1917,

helped lead the October Revolution. Head of the military during the

civil war. Opponent of Stalin.

Trotskyism: Philosophy based on the ideas of Leon Trotsky

Voline: Russian anarcho-syndicalist

Volost: The smallest administrative unit in Russia

Volynka: Russian for ‘go slow.’ Used to refer to the post-civil war wave

of anti-Bolshevik strikes and worker unrest.

War Communism: The economic system in Bolshevik Russia from summer 1918

until 1921

Wrangel: Tsarist general, leader of the White forces in the south after

Denikin resigned

Zemstvo: Provincial and district level local government, dominated by

the gentry

Zinoviev: Leader of the Bolshevik party. On the central committee during

the October Revolution

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[1] Trotsky, Russian Revolution p. 123

[2] Chernov, 103–4

[3] Anweiler, p. 8–11

[4] Rachleff

[5] Flood, Russian Revolution

[6] Anweiler, p. 235

[7] Anweiler, p. 174

[8] Farber, p. 62–80

[9] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 32

[10] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 40

[11] Ibid, p. 33

[12] Ibid, p. 52

[13] Ibid, p. 111

[14] Ibid, p. 101–102

[15] Ibid, p. 132

[16] Ibid, p. 144

[17] Archinov, Two Octobers

[18] Essential works, p. 74–75 “What is to be Done” section II, A

[19] Essential works, p. 112 “What is to be Done” section III, E

[20] Chernov, p. 418

[21] Essential Works, p. 346, “State & Revolution” Ch. 5, section 4

[22] Lenin, Impending Catastrophe part 11

[23] Essential Works, p. 343 “State & Revolution” Ch. 5, section 4

[24] See my essay “Authoritarian Socialism: A Geriatric Disorder” for a

longer explanation of why “workers states” always become forms of elite

rule and my essay “Death to Leviathan” for a further elaboration on the

analysis of the state contained here.

[25] Essential works, p. 307 “State & Revolution” Ch. 3, section 3

[26] Essential Works, p. 307–308 “State & Revolution” Ch. 3, section 3

[27] Lenin, Tasks of the Revolution

[28] Essential Works, p. 337 “State & Revolution” Ch. 5, section 2

[29] Farber, p. 43

[30] Skocpol, p. 213

[31] Lenin, “Speech in the Moscow Soviet”

[32] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 685

[33] Farber, 56–57

[34] Lenin, Theses On The Constituent Assembly

[35] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 518

[36] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 576

[37] Brinton, 1917; Lenin, Draft Decree on Workers’ Control

[38] Brinton, 1918

[39] Farber, p. 66–69

[40] Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism ch. 8

[41] Lenin, Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government

[42] Marx, Capital p. 694

[43] Lenin, Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government

[44] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 251

[45] quoted on Avrich, Krondstadt p. 9

[46] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 48–58; Farber, p. 114–115

[47] Rosenburg, Russian Labor

[48] quoted in Rosenburg, p. 230

[49] quoted in Rosenburg, p. 231

[50] Brovkin, Menshevik Comeback; Farber, p. 22–27

[51] Rosenburg, p. 232

[52] Rosenburg, p. 237

[53] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 57; Guerin, Anarchism p. 96; Farber, p.

126–127; Voline, Unkown p. 307–309; Serge, Year One p. 212–216

[54] Brinton, 1918

[55] Lincoln, p. 235

[56] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 596

[57] Trotsky, Work, Discipline, Order

[58] Schapiro, p. 124

[59] Read, p. 207

[60] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 79

[61] Lincoln, 240–248

[62] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 599–600

[63] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 321

[64] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 596

[65] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 348

[66] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 322–323

[67] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 330

[68] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 79

[69] Read, p. 206

[70] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 657–658

[71] Lincoln, p. 264–265; Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 658

[72] Linclon, p. 254

[73] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 665

[74] Rosenburg, 235–238

[75] quoted on Serge, Year One p. 9

[76] Brovkin, Workers’ Unrest

[77] Aves, p. 39–80

[78] Schapiro, p. 126

[79] Anweiler, p. 235

[80] Anweiler, p. 243

[81] Anweiler, p. 234–235

[82] Figes, p. 610

[83] Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism ch. 8

[84] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 657

[85] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 659

[86] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 665

[87] Lincoln, p. 86

[88] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 676

[89] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 677–679

[90] Arshinov, p. 134

[91] See Viola and Figes, Peasant Russia for more on this

[92] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 321–322

[93] Farber, p. 45

[94] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 124

[95] Footman, Civil War p. 167–210

[96] Voline, p. 431

[97] Bradly

[98] Voline, p. 429

[99] Lincoln, p. 224

[100] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 658–659; Lincoln p. 266–269

[101] Arshinov, p. 47–51

[102] Arshinov, p. 19

[103] Palij, p. 58

[104] Malet, p. 91

[105] Malet, p. 85

[106] Arshinov, p. 82

[107] Arshinov, p. 61

[108] Read, p. 260

[109] Arshinov, p. 84

[110] Arshinov, p. 57; Footman, Civil War p. 293; Anarchist FAQ H.6.4

[111] Arshinov, p. 141–145

[112] Serge, Memoirs p. 121

[113] Arshinov, p. 209–220

[114] Arshinov, p. 109–118, 134–137; Malet p. 138–140; Palij p. 160–174

[115] quoted by Voline, p. 699

[116] Read, p. 260

[117] Arshinov, p. 148

[118] Palij, p. 59

[119] Malet, p. 175

[120] Malet, p. 179–180

[121] Malet, 107–113; Arshinov, 81–82, 90–91

[122] Malet, 117–125; Arshinov, 86–87; Anarchist FAQ H.6.7

[123] Malet, 121

[124] Guerin, Anarchism p. 100

[125] Guerin, Anarchism p. 101

[126] Malet, p. 126–137; Palij, p. 148–159, 175–177, 209–241

[127] Palij, p. 227

[128] Quoted on Malet, p. 140

[129] For detailed refutations of these slanders see: Malet p. 117–125,

168–174, 140–142; Arshinov, p. 209–220; Voline 695–700; Anarchist FAQ

sections H.6.8 through H.6.12

[130] Palij, p. 231; Arshinov p. 159–172

[131] Palij, p. 231–241

[132] Quoted on Palij, p. 238

[133] Arshinov, p. 207

[134] Footman, Civil War p. 292

[135] Flood, Anarchist Army

[136] Palij, ix

[137] Lenin, Left-Wing Communism ch. 7

[138] quoted in Anweiller, p. 239–240

[139] Lenin, Speech at the Congress of Workers in Education and

Socialist Culture

[140] Lenin, The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky’s

Mistakes

[141] Lenin, Left-Wing Communism Ch. 5

[142] Lenin, 10^(th) Party Congress, section 3

[143] Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, ch. 7

[144] Breitman, p. 514

[145] Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism

[146] Bakunin, Power Corrupts

[147] Kollontai, section one, part 6

[148] Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 683–684

[149] Quoted on Palij, p. 27

[150] Lincoln, p. 450–461; Carr vol. 1, p. 286–409

[151] Farber, p. 203–204

[152] Lincoln, p. 460–461; Carr vol. 1 p. 339–350

[153] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 171

[154] Read, p. 266

[155] Carr, vol. 1 p. 348

[156] Avrich, Kronstadt p. 14

[157] Maximoff, Guillotine p. 177

[158] Read, p. 271

[159] Aves, p. 116

[160] Aves, p. 112–155

[161] Chernov, 103–4

[162] Anweiler, p. 8–11

[163] Rachleff

[164] Flood, Russian Revolution

[165] Anweiler, p. 235

[166] Anweiler, p. 174

[167] Farber, p. 62–80

[168] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 32

[169] Figes, Peasant Russia p. 40

[170] Ibid, p. 33

[171] Ibid, p. 52

[172] Ibid, p. 111

[173] Ibid, p. 101–102

[174] Ibid, p. 132

[175] Berkman, Bolshevik Myth ch. 38

[176] Krondsadt Izvesta, no. 5

[177] Kronstadt Izvesta, no. 8

[178] Kronstadt Izvesta no. 4

[179] Kronstadt Izvesta no. 14

[180] Krondsradt Izvesta no. 6

[181] Kronstadt Izvesta no. 14

[182] Guerin, No Gods p. 189

[183] Goldman, Disillusionment ch. 27

[184] For more detailed refutation of these Bolshevik lies see Getzler,

Kronstadt; Mett, Kronstadt; Avrich, Kronstadt; Anarchist FAQ section

H.5, Goldman, Further Disillusionment ch. 6; Berkman, Bolshevik Myth ch.

38; Farber p. 189–195

[185] Avrich, Kronstadt p. 211

[186] Farber, p. 173–174

[187] Farber, p. 174–175

[188] Quoted on Farber, p. 209

[189] Lenin, 10^(th) Party Congress, section 3

[190] Farber, p. 175–176

[191] quoted on Maximoff, Guillotine p. 204

[192] Farber, 28, 99–104, 113–143; Maximoff, Guillotine, p. 144–241

[193] Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin

[194] Farber, 199

[195] Trotsky, Platform of the Opposition, ch. 7

[196] Viola, p. vii

[197] Medvedev, p. 154

[198] Medvedev, p. 167

[199] Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom p. 227

[200] Medvedev, p. 210

[201] Medvedev, p. 234

[202] Aves, 124–126; Figes, People’s Tragedy p. 610; Anarchist FAQ

section H.7.5

[203] quoted on Guerin, Anarchism p. 22

[204] Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy p. 177–182

[205] Guerin, No Gods p. 39

[206] Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread p. 143