A Revolution Without Recipes
A review by JJ Plant of
In Defence of the Russian Revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings 1917-1923,
Edited by Al Richardson
Porcupine Press, 1995
This review originally appeared in The International, theoretical journal of the WRP
‘There can be nothing more mistaken than to assume that the Russian proletariat, or even its leader, the Communist Party, came into power with recipes prepared in advance, of practical measures for the realisation of the dictatorship.’
Kamenev’s statement is from his 1920 pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, one of the many valuable documents, compiled by Al Richardson for this collection, which have been unavailable for many years. Some, for example Lenin’s speeches on the invasion of Poland, have been suppressed by the Soviet authorities. Others, including Kamenev’s, lay neglected in the Marx Memorial Library, never republished.
Kamenev continues:
‘Only “Socialist” ignoramuses, or charlatans, could suggest that the Russian Communists came into power with a prepared plan for a standing army, Extraordinary Commissions, and limitations of political liberty, to which the Russian proletariat was obliged to resort for self-defence after bitter experience. The cause of the proletariat was saved because it soon profited by its acquired experience, and, with unfailing energy, applied these methods of struggle when it became convinced of their inevitability.’
This collection illustrates the process by which the bolshevik state learned from experience. Few readers will agree with all the Bolsheviks’ conclusions. Trotsky’s views on the ‘militarisation of labour’ are rarely supported these days. Therefore, it is helpful to have the words Trotsky used to make his proposals to the 10th Congress. Trotsky had a more political idea of the state direction of labour in the 1920s than the union bureaucracy (Tomsky, Losovsky). He insisted on the active role of the unions in the labour plan. ‘Militarisation’ was linked with a campaign against bureaucratism in industry,and for the training of workers in the management of the economy.
We see several articles by Radek for the first time in English. His 1922 The Paths of the Russian Revolution shows the influence of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, disproving the stalinist lies that this theory was never accepted by the Bolsheviks.
By far the most interesting documents are two speeches by Lenin to the 9th Party Congress, in 1920 on the Soviet invasion of Poland. Lenin himself instructed that delegates should not take notes on these speeches, and the unedited verbatim notes vanished into the Party archives, until they resurfaced in Moscow in 1992. (The editors of the journal Historical Archives, report that a large number of documents by Lenin remain unpublished, previously considered ‘inexpedient to publish’!)
Lenin reports frankly to the Congress on the failure of the invasion. Here we see the leader of the Soviet state making one of his most determined attempts to make use of the strength of the state to push the revolution westwards into Europe. In Lenin’s phrase, the Bolsheviks decided to ‘probe with bayonets to discover whether the social revolution of the proletariat was ripe in Poland’.
The invasion was a failure in that respect – whatever response there was from the proletarians was swamped by the nationalist response to the invasion. But valuable and unexpected results flowed elsewhere – such as the formation of a Council of Action by British workers to prevent war against Russia.
Lenin is also extremely interested in the responses in Germany to the invasion. A ‘block contrary to nature’ formed between the German communists (favouring the extension of the revolution) and the right wing patriots (who welcomed the challenge to the Versailles Treaty). Brian Pearce, who translated these two speeches, refers to another unpublished document of Lenin’s – a letter to Paul Levi, in which he considers the advantages for the revolution of a new war between Germany and the victorious Versailles powers.
Here we see Lenin ‘getting the feel’ of heading a large, potentially powerful state. He recognises the importance of Soviet Russia as a new actor on the world stage – an actor, moreover, who has arrived to rewrite the play. There is also recognition that the international spread of the revolution may be a difficult, contradictory process, full of compromise and calculation, mistakes and unexpected successes.
This collection merits serious study – for more reasons than can be outlined in a short review. Many of the documents can only be understood with the aid of the editor’s extensive footnotes. This should not deter readers who want to decide for themselves; indeed, this is a book that can only be enjoyed by readers who want to think for themselves. Members of the Bolshevik fan club(s) will not easily turn it into ammunition. It is no recipe book, it records living experiences of political leaders dealing with some of the most difficult problems they ever faced.
It is a book about the leadership of the revolution. There are no contributions from the rank and file, whose views would be of great interest. Perhaps Kamenev was right in saying that the Bolsheviks approached the revolution without recipes. But did the led share this open minded approach, and did they draw the same conclusions from the same experiences? We know something of the most serious expressions of dissent at Tambov and Kronstadt, as well as a little about the Workers Opposition. We know less of the response in the factories to the suppression of rival parties, and the Bolsheviks’ enthusiasm for ‘one-man management’. How did these men and women make the political transition (if indeed they did) from ‘bread, peace and land’ – the programme of the war weary and hungry – to Trotsky’s ‘Save the Soviet kopeck’ – the programme ofthe political centralist?
There is a story of a conversation with a bolshevik (usually Lenin or Trotsky) where an anarchist (usually Voline or Goldman) remarks ‘Yes I see the broken eggs, but where is your omelette?’ The rank and file revolutionaries must have found this an important question, and wondered a little to themselves about omelettes and recipe books. Zinoviev gives us a glimpse from the leadership perspective ‘in view of the fact that it is incumbent upon us to direct the state, we should establish within our party such a division of labour as would free us from the necessity of directing political life by means of resolutions of the provincial party committees’. ‘Division of labour’ is a phrase with two possible meanings.
Does the book achieve the editor’s objective of ‘defence of the Russian revolution’? Certainly it dispels myths and rebuts some of the lies. It puts back in the centre of debate about the revolution, the Bolsheviks’ ideas about their responsibility to and for the movement.
But at the end of his introduction, Al Richardson leaves his own question mark. ‘If, like the Paris Commune, it was a false start, we can still salute its spokesmen ...’ There are no ‘false starts’ in history. There are no track officials, and if you wait to hear the starting pistol you will find that somebody else’s political power has grown out of its barrel.
The defeat of the October revolution was a much different process from the defeat of the Commune, and its consequences are on a different scale. So too is its legacy of ‘theory’ and practical experience, which we are beginning to rescue from the wreckage. The makers of the 1917 revolution had only a few descriptions of the Commune; we have available for study an enormous body of historical knowledge. But no recipe book. Our revolution will be even more different from 1917 than 1917 was from the Commune.
JJ Plant
18 October 1995
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