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<title>What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?</title>
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<H1>What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?</H1>
<p>
As is well known, the Russian Revolution failed. Rather than 
produce socialism, the Bolshevik revolution gave birth to an
autocratic party dictatorship residing over a state capitalist
economy. In turn, this regime gave rise to the horrors of 
Stalin's system. While Stalinism was denounced by all genuine 
socialists, a massive debate has existed within the Marxist
movement over when, exactly, the Russian Revolution failed 
and why it did. Some argue around 1924, others say around 1928,
some (libertarian Marxists) argue from the Bolshevik seizure of
power. The reasons for the failure tend to be more readily 
agreed upon: isolation, the economic and social costs of civil 
war, the <i>"backward"</i> nature of Russian society and economy are
usually listed as the key factors. Moreover, what the Stalinist 
regime was is also discussed heatedly in such circles. Some
(orthodox Trotskyists) claiming it was a <i>"degenerated workers
state,"</i> others (such as the neo-Trotskyist UK SWP) that it was
<i>"state capitalist."</i>
<p>
For anarchists, however, the failure of Bolshevism did not come
as a surprise. In fact, just as with the reformist fate of the 
Social Democrats, the failure of the Russian Revolution provided
empirical evidence for Bakunin's critique of Marx. As Emma Goldman
recounts in her memoirs
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Professor Harold Laski . . . expressed the opinion that I ought
to take some comfort in the vindication anarchism had received 
by the Bolsheviki. I agreed, adding that not only their regime, 
but their stepbrothers as well, the Socialists in power in 
other countries, had demonstrated the failure of the Marxian
State better than any anarchist argument. Living proof was always
more convincing than theory.  Naturally I did not regret the
Socialist failure but I could not rejoice in it in the face of
the Russian tragedy."</i> [<b>Living My Life</b>, vol. 2, p. 969]
<p></blockquote>
Given that Leninists claim that the Russian revolution was a 
success (at least initially) and so proves the validity of 
their ideology, anarchists have a special duty to analysis and
understand what went wrong. Simply put, if the Russian Revolution
was a "success," Leninism does not need "failures"</i>!
<p>
This section of the FAQ will discuss these explanations for the
failure of Bolshevism. Simply put, anarchists are not convinced 
by Leninist explanations on why Bolshevism created a new class 
system, not socialism. 
<p>
This subject is very important. Unless we learn the lessons of
history we will be doomed to repeat them. Given the fact that 
many people who become interested in socialist ideas will come
across the remnants of Leninist parties it is important that 
anarchists explains clearly and convincingly why the Russian 
Revolution failed and the role of Bolshevik ideology in that
process. We need to account why a popular revolution became 
in a few short years a state capitalist party dictatorship.
As Noam Chomsky put it:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In the stages leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917,
there <b>were</b> incipient socialist institutions developing in 
Russia -- workers' councils, collectives, things like that. 
And they survived to an extent once the Bolsheviks took over
-- but not for very long; Lenin and Trotsky pretty much 
eliminated them as they consolidated their power. I mean,
you can argue about the <b>justification</b> for eliminating them,
but the fact is that the socialist initiatives were pretty
quickly eliminated.
<p>
"Now, people who want to justify it say, 'The Bolsheviks had
to do it' -- that's the standard justification: Lenin and
Trotsky had to do it, because of the contingencies of the 
civil war, for survival, there wouldn't have been food 
otherwise, this and that. Well, obviously the question is,
was that true. To answer that, you've got to look at the 
historical facts: I don't think it was true. In fact, I 
think the incipient socialist structures in Russia were 
dismantles <b>before</b> the really dire conditions arose . . .
But reading their own writings, my feeling is that Lenin 
and Trotsky knew what they were doing, it was conscious
and understandable."</i> [<b>Understanding Power</b>, p. 226] 
<p></blockquote>
As we discussed in the appendix on
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, Chomsky's feelings are more
than supported by the historical record. The elimination of
meaningful working class freedom and self-management started
from the start and was firmly in place before the start of 
the civil war at the end of May, 1918. The civil war simply 
accelerated processes which had already started, strengthened
policies that had already been applied. And it could be argued
that rather than impose alien policies onto Bolshevism, the
civil war simply brought the hidden (and not-so-hidden) state
capitalist and authoritarian politics of Marxism and Leninism
to the fore. 
<p>
Which is why analysing the failure of the revolution is important. 
If the various arguments presented by Leninists on why Bolshevism
failed (and, consequently, Stalinism developed) can be refuted, 
then we are left with the key issues of revolutionary politics -- 
whether Bolshevik politics had a decisive negative impact on the 
development of the Russian Revolution and, if so, there is an
alternative to those politics. As regards the first issue, as we
discussed in the appendix on <a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>, anarchists argue that this was the case.
Bolshevik ideology itself played a key role in the degeneration of
the revolution. And as regards the second one, anarchists can point
to the example of the Makhnovists, which proves that alternative 
policies were possible and could be applied with radically different 
outcomes (see the appendix on <a href="append46.html">"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to Bolshevism?"</a> for more on the Makhnovist movement). 
<p>
This means that anarchists stress the interplay between the 
"objective factors" and the subjective one (i.e. party ideology). 
Faced with difficult circumstances, people and parties react in 
different ways. If they did not then it would imply what they 
thought has no impact at all on their actions. It also means 
that the politics of the Bolsheviks played no role in their 
decisions. As we discussed in the appendix on 
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, this position simply
cannot be maintained. Leninist ideology itself played a key role
in the rise of Stalinism. A conclusion Leninists reject. They, 
of course, try to distance themselves from Stalinism, correctly 
arguing that it was a brutal and undemocratic system. The 
problem is that it was Lenin and Trotsky rather then Stalin 
who first shot strikers, banned left papers, radical organisations 
and party factions, sent workers and revolutionaries to the gulags, 
advocated and introduced one-man management and piece-work in the 
workplace, eliminated democracy in the military and shut down 
soviets elected with the "wrong" (i.e. non-Bolshevik) delegates.
<p>
Many Leninists know nothing of these facts. Their parties simply 
do not tell them the whole story of when Lenin and Trotsky were 
in power. Others do know and attempt to justify these actions. 
When anarchists discuss why the Russian Revolution failed, 
these Leninists have basically one reply. They argue that 
anarchists never seem to consider the objective forces at play 
during the Russian revolution, namely the civil war, the legacy 
of World War One, the international armies of counter-revolution 
and economic disruption. These <i>"objective factors"</i> meant that the 
revolution was, basically, suffocated and where the overriding 
contribution to the rise of militarism and the crushing of 
democracy within the soviets. 
<p>
For anarchists such <i>"objective factors"</i> do not (and must not) 
explain why the Russian Revolution failed. This is because, as
we argue in the following sections, almost all revolutions 
will face the same, or similar, problems. Indeed, in sections
<a href="append43.html#app1">1</a> and 
<a href="append43.html#app2">2</a> 
both anarchists like Kropotkin and Marxists 
like Lenin argued that this was the case. As we discussed in
<a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>, 
Leninists like to claim that they are <i>"realistic"</i>
(unlike the <i>"utopian"</i> anarchists) and recognise civil war is
inevitable in a revolution. As 
<a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a> indicates, any 
defence of Bolshevism based on blaming the impact of the civil
war is both factually and logically flawed. As far as economic
disruption goes, as we discuss in 
<a href="append43.html#app4">section 4</a> this explanation
of Bolshevik authoritarianism is unconvincing as <b>every</b> revolution
will face this problem. Then 
<a href="append43.html#app5">section 5</a> analyses the common 
Leninist argument that the revolution failed because the Russian
working class became <i>"atomised"</i> or <i>"declassed."</i> As that section
indicates, the Russian working class was more than capable of
collective action throughout the 1918 to 1921 period (and
beyond). The problem was that it was directed <b>against</b> the
Bolshevik party. Finally, 
<a href="append43.html#app6">section 6</a> indicates whether the 
Bolshevik leaders explained their actions in terms of the 
"objective factors" they faced. 
<p>
It should be stressed that we are discussing this factors individually
simply because it is easier to do so. It reality, it is less hard to 
do so. For example, civil war will, undoubtedly, mean economic disruption.
Economic disruption will mean unemployment and that will affect the 
working class via unemployment and less goods available (for example).
So just because we separate the specific issues for discussion purposes,
it should not be taken to imply that we are not aware of their combined
impact on the Russian Revolution.
<p>
Of course there is the slight possibility that the failure of
Bolshevism can be explained <b>purely</b> in these terms. Perhaps
a future revolution will be less destructive, less isolated, 
less resisted than the Russian (although, as we noted in the
<a href="append43.html#app2">section 2</a>, 
leading Bolsheviks like Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin
doubted this). That <b>is</b> a possibility. However, should we embrace
an ideology whose basic, underlying, argument is based on the
hope that fate will be kinder to them this time? As Lenin argued
against the Russian left-communists in early 1918:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Yes, we shall see the world revolution, but for the time being it
is a very good fairy-tale . . . But I ask, is it proper for a serious
revolutionary to believe in fairy-tales? . . . [I]f you tell the 
people that civil war will break out in German and also guarantee
that instead of a clash with imperialism we shall have a field
revolution on a world-wide scale, the people will say you are
deceiving them. In doing this you will be overcoming the difficulties
with which history has confronted us only in your minds, by your
wishes . . . You are staking everything on this card! If the 
revolution breaks out, everything is saved . . . But if it does
not turn out as we desire, if it does not achieve victory tomorrow
-- what then? Then the masses will say to you, you acted like 
gamblers -- you staked everything on a fortunate turn of events
that did not take place . . ."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 27, 
p. 102]
<p></blockquote>
Anarchists have always recognised that a revolution would face
problems and difficult "objective factors" and has developed
our ideas accordingly. We argue that to blame "objective factors"</i>
on the failure of the Russian Revolution simply shows that 
believing in fairy-tales is sadly far too common on the "serious"</i>
Leninist "revolutionary" left. And as we discuss in 
the appendix on <a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>, 
the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the failure of the revolution
was important and decisive. Even <b>if</b> the next revolution is less
destructive, it cannot be argued that socialism will be the result
if Bolshevik ideology is reapplied. And as Cornelius Castoriadis
argues, <i>"this 'response' [of explaining the failure of the Russian
Revolution on "objective factors"] teaches us nothing we could 
extend beyond the confines of the Russian situation in 1920. The 
sole conclusion to be drawn from this kind of 'analysis' is that 
revolutionaries should ardently hope that future revolutions break 
out in more advanced countries, that they should not remain 
isolated, and that civil wars should not in the least be 
devastating."</i> [<b>The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of 
the Bureaucracy</b>, p. 92] While this may be sufficient for the
followers of Bolshevism, it cannot be sufficient for anyone who
wants to learn from history, not to repeat it.
<p>
Ultimately, if difficult times back in 1918-21 justified suppressing 
working class freedom and self-management, imprisoning and shooting 
anarchists and other socialists, implementing and glorifying party
dictatorship, what might we expect in difficult times in the future? 
Simply put, if your defence of the Bolsheviks rests simply on 
"difficult circumstances" then it can only mean one thing, namely 
if "difficult circumstances" occur again we can expect the same
outcome. 
<p>
One last point. We should stress that libertarians do not think any
future revolution will suffer as terrible conditions as that experienced
by the Russian one. However, it might and we need to base our politics
on the worse case possibility. That said, we argue that Bolshevik 
policies made things worse -- by centralising economic and political
power, they automatically hindered the participation of working class
people in the revolution, smothering any creative self-activity under
the dead-weight of state officialdom. As a libertarian revolution would
be based on maximising working class self-activity (at all levels,
locally and upwards) we would argue that it would be better placed
to respond to even the terrible conditions facing the Russian 
Revolution.
<p>
That is not all. As we argue in the appendix on
<a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a> we are of the opinion 
that Bolshevism itself undermined the socialist potential of the 
revolution, irrespective of the actual circumstances involved 
(which, to some degree, will affect <b>any</b> revolution). For example, 
the Bolshevik preference for centralisation and nationalisation
would negatively affect a revolution conducted in even the best 
circumstances, as would the seizure of state power rather than its
destruction. As is clear from the appendix on
<a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>, only the elimination of
what makes Bolshevism Bolshevik would ensure that a revolution would
be truly libertarian. So anarchists stress that rather than be
forced upon them by <i>"objective factors"</i> many of these policies 
were, in fact, in line with pre-civil war Bolshevik ideas. The
Bolshevik vision of socialism, in other words, ensured that they
smothered the (libertarian) socialist tendencies and institutions 
that existed at the time. As Chomsky summarises, <i>"Lenin and
Trotsky, shortly after seizing state power in 1917, moved to
dismantle organs of popular control, including factory committees
and Soviets, thus proceeding to deter and overcome socialist
tendencies."</i> [<b>Deterring Democracy</b>, p. 361] That they <b>thought</b>
their system of state capitalism was a form of "socialism" is
irrelevant -- they systematically combated (real) socialist 
tendencies in favour of state capitalist ones and did so knowingly
and deliberately (see sections 
<a href="secH3.html#sech31">H.3.1</a> and 
<a href="secH3.html#sech313">H.3.13</a> on the differences
between real socialism and Marxism in its Bolshevik mode and, of
course, <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> on Bolshevik practice itself).
<p>
So it is important to stress that even <b>if</b> the Russian Revolution 
had occurred in better circumstances, it is unlikely that Bolshevism 
would have resulted in socialism rather than state capitalism. Certain 
Bolshevik principles ensure that any revolution lead by a vanguard party 
would not have succeeded. This can be seen from the experience of
Bolshevism immediately after it seized power, before the start of
the civil war and major economic collapse. In the circumstances of 
post-world war I Russia, these principles were attenuated but their 
application in even the best of situations would have undermined 
socialist tendencies in the revolution. Simply put, a statist 
revolution will have statist, not libertarian, ends.
<p>
The focusing on "objective factors" (particularly the civil war) 
has become the traditional excuse for people with a romantic 
attachment to Leninism but who are unwilling to make a stand 
over what the Bolsheviks actually did in power. This excuse is 
not viable if you seek to build a revolutionary movement today: 
you need to choose between the real path of Lenin and the real, 
anarchist, alternative. As Lenin constantly stressed, a revolution 
will be difficult -- fooling ourselves about what will happen now 
just undermines our chances of success in the future and ensure
that history will repeat itself.
<p>
Essentially, the "objective factors" argument is not a defence 
of Leninism, but rather one that seeks to evade having to make 
such a defence. This is very typical of Leninist parties today. 
Revolutionary politics would be much better served by confronting 
this history and the politics behind it head on. Perhaps, if
Leninists did do this, they would probably remain Leninists, 
but at least then their party members and those who read their
publications would have an understanding of what this meant.
And they would have to dump Lenin's <B>State and Revolution</b> into
the same place Lenin himself did when in power -- into the rubbish
bin -- and admit that democracy and Bolshevik revolution do not
go together.
<p>
It is precisely these rationalisations for Bolshevism based on 
"objective factors" which this section of the FAQ discusses and 
refutes. However, it is important to stress that it was <b>not</b> 
a case of the Bolshevik regime wanting to introduce communism 
but, being isolated, ended up imposing state capitalism instead. 
Indeed, the idea that "objective factors" caused the degeneration 
of the revolution is only valid if and only if the Bolsheviks were 
implementing socialist policies during the period immediately after 
the October revolution. That was not the case. Rather than objective 
factors undermining socialist policies, the facts of the matter are 
that the Bolsheviks pursued a statist and (state) capitalist policy 
from the <b>start.</b> As we discuss in the appendix on
<a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a> the likes of Lenin 
explicitly argued for these policies as essential for building 
socialism (or, at best, the preconditions of socialism) in Russia
and Bolshevik practice flowed from these comments. As we discuss 
in more detail in the appendix on
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, the Bolsheviks happily introduced 
authoritarian and state capitalist policies <b>from the start.</b> Many 
of the policies denounced as "Stalinist" by Leninists were being 
advocated and implemented by Lenin in the spring of 1918, i.e. 
before the start of the civil war and massive economic chaos.
In other words, the usual excuses for Bolshevik tyranny do not hold
much water, both factually and logically -- as this section of the 
FAQ seeks to show.
<p>
And, ironically, the framework which Leninists use in this discussion 
shows the importance of Bolshevik ideology and the key role it played 
in the outcome of the revolution. After all, pro-Bolsheviks argue that 
the <i>"objective factors"</i> forced the <b>Bolsheviks</b> to act as they did. 
However, the proletariat is meant to be the <i>"ruling class"</i> in the 
<i>"dictatorship of the proletariat."</i> As such, to argue that the 
Bolsheviks were forced to act as they did due to circumstances means 
to implicitly acknowledge that the party held power in Russia, 
<b>not</b> the working class. That a ruling party could become a party 
dictatorship is not that unsurprising. Nor that <b>its</b> vision of what
"socialism" was would be given preference over the desires of the 
working class in whose name it ruled.
<p>
Ultimately, the discussion on why the Bolshevik party failed shows
the validity of Bakunin's critique of Marxism. As he put it:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Nor can we comprehend talk of freedom of the proletariat or 
true deliverance of the masses within the State and by the State.
State signifies domination, and all domination implies subjection
of the masses, and as a result, their exploitation to the 
advantage of some governing minority.
<p>
"Not even as revolutionary transition will we countenance national
Conventions, nor Constituent Assemblies, nor provisional governments,
nor so called revolutionary dictatorships: because we are persuaded
that revolution is sincere, honest and real only among the masses 
and that, whenever it is concentrated in the hands of a few 
governing individuals, it inevitably and immediately turns into
reaction."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 160]
<p></blockquote>
The degeneration of the Russian Revolution can be traced from when 
the Bolsheviks seized power <b>on behalf of</b> the Russian working 
class and peasantry. The state implies the delegation of power 
and initiative into the hands of a few leaders who form the 
"revolutionary government." Yet the power of any revolution, as
Bakunin recognised, derives from the decentralisation of power, 
from the active participation of the masses in the collective 
social movement and the direct action it generates. As soon as 
this power passes out of the hands of the working class, the 
revolution is doomed: the counter-revolution has begun and it 
matters little that it is draped in a red flag. Hence anarchist 
opposition to the state.
<p>
Sadly, many socialists have failed to recognise this. Hopefully this
section of our FAQ will show that the standard explanations of the
failure of the Russian revolution are, at their base, superficial 
and will only ensure that history will repeat itself.
<p>
<a name="app1"><h2>1 Do anarchists ignore the objective factors facing the 
      Russian revolution?</h2>
<p>
It is often asserted by Leninists that anarchists simply ignore
the "objective factors" facing the Bolsheviks when we discuss the
degeneration of the Russian Revolution. Thus, according to this
argument, anarchists present a basically idealistic analysis of
the failure of Bolshevism, one not rooted in the material 
conditions facing (civil war, economic chaos, etc.) facing Lenin
and Trotsky. 
<p>
According to one Trotskyist, anarchists <i>"do not make the slightest
attempt at a serious analysis of the situation"</i> and so <i>"other 
considerations, of a different, 'theoretical' nature, are to be
found in their works."</i> Thus:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Bureaucratic conceptions beget bureaucracy just as opium begets
sleep by virtue of its sleep-inducing properties. Trotsky was 
wrong to explain the proliferation and rise of the bureaucracy 
on the basis of the country's backwardness, low cultural level,
and the isolation of the revolution. No, what have rise to a
social phenomenon like Stalinism was a conception or idea . . .
it is ideas, or deviations from them, that determine the 
character of revolutions. The most simplistic kind of 
philosophical idealism has laid low historical materialism."</i> 
[Pierre Frank, <i>"Introduction,"</i> Lenin and Trotsky, <b>Kronstadt</b>, 
pp. 22-3]
<p></blockquote>
Many other Trotskyists take a similar position (although 
most would include the impact of the Civil War on the rise 
of Bolshevik authoritarianism and the bureaucracy). Duncan 
Hallas, for example, argues that the account of the Bolshevik 
counter-revolution given in the Cohn-Bendit brothers' <b>Obsolete
Communism</b> is marked by a <i>"complete omission of any consideration
of the circumstances in which they [Bolshevik decisions] took 
place. The ravages of war and civil war, the ruin of Russian
industry, the actual disintegration of the Russian working 
class: all of this, apparently, has no bearing on the outcome."</i>
[<b>Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Party</b>, p. 41] Thus the
<i>"degree to which workers can 'make their own history' depends
on the weight of objective factors bearing down on them . . .
To decide in any given circumstance the weight of the subjective
and objective factors demands a concrete analysis of the 
balance of forces."</i> The conditions in Russia meant that 
the <i>"subjective factor"</i> of Bolshevik ideology <i>"was reduced to
a choice between capitulation to the Whites or defending the
revolution with whatever means were at hands. Within these
limits Bolshevik policy was decisive. But it could not wish
away the limits and start with a clean sheet. It is a tribute
to the power of the Bolsheviks' politics and organisation that
they took the measures necessary and withstood the siege for
so long."</i> [John Rees, <i>"In Defence of October,"</i> pp. 3-82, 
<b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52, p. 30]
<p>
So, it is argued, by ignoring the problems facing the Bolsheviks 
and concentrating on their <b>ideas,</b> anarchists fail to understand 
<b>why</b> the Bolsheviks acted as they did. Unsurprisingly anarchists 
are not impressed with this argument. This is for a simple reason. 
According to anarchist theory the <i>"objective factors"</i> facing 
the Bolsheviks are to be expected in <b>any</b> revolution. Indeed, 
the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin predicted that a revolution 
would face the very <i>"objective factors"</i> which Leninists use to 
justify and rationalise Bolshevik actions (see 
<a href="append43.html#app2">next section</a>). As 
such, to claim that anarchists ignore the <i>"objective factors"</i> 
facing the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution is simply a 
joke. How can anarchists be considered to ignore what they 
consider to be the inevitable results of a revolution? Moreover, 
these Bolshevik assertions ignore the fact that the anarchists 
who wrote extensively about their experiences in Russia never 
failed to note that difficult objective factors facing it. 
Alexander Berkman in <b>The Bolshevik Myth</b> paints a clear picture 
of the problems facing the revolution, as does Emma Goldman in 
her <b>My Disillusionment in Russia</b>. This is not to mention 
anarchists like Voline, Arshinov and Maximoff who took part in
the Revolution, experiencing the <i>"objective factors"</i> first hand
(and in the case of Voline and Arshinov, participating in the
Makhnovist movement which, facing the same factors, managed <b>not</b>
to act as the Bolsheviks did).
<p>
However, as the claim that anarchists ignore the <i>"objective 
circumstances"</i> facing the Bolsheviks is relatively common, it 
is important to refute it once and for all. This means that 
while have we discussed this issue in association with Leninist 
justifications for repressing the Kronstadt revolt (see 
<a href="append42.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix 
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>), 
it is worthwhile repeating them here. We are sorry for 
the duplication.
<p>
Anarchists take it for granted that, to quote Bakunin, revolutions
<i>"are not child's play"</i> and that they mean <i>"war, and that implies
the destruction of men and things."</i> The <i>"Social Revolution must 
put an end to the old system of organisation based upon violence,
giving full liberty to the masses, groups, communes, and associations,
and likewise to individuals themselves, and destroying once and for
all the historic cause of all violences, the power and existence of
the State."</i> This meant a revolution would be <i>"spontaneous, chaotic,
and ruthless, always presupposes a vast destruction of property."</i>
[<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, p. 372, p. 373, p. 380]
In other words:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The way of the anarchist social revolution, which will come
from the people themselves, is an elemental force sweeping away
all obstacles. Later, from the depths of the popular soul, there
will spontaneously emerge the new creative forms of life."</i>
[<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, p. 325]
<p></blockquote>
He took it for granted that counter-revolution would exist, 
arguing that it was necessary to <i>"constitute the federation
of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . to
organise a revolutionary force capable of defeating reaction"</i>
and <i>"for the purpose of self-defence."</i> [<b>Selected Writings</b>,
p. 171]
<p>
It would, of course, be strange if this necessity for defence
and reconstruction would have little impact on the economic
conditions in the revolutionised society. The expropriation of
the means of production and the land by a free federation of 
workers' associations would have an impact on the economy.
Kropotkin built upon Bakunin's arguments, stressing that a 
<b>social</b> revolution would, by necessity, involve major 
difficulties and harsh objective circumstances. It is
worth quoting one of his many discussions of this at 
length:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Suppose we have entered a revolutionary period, with or
without civil war -- it does not matter, -- a period when
old institutions are falling into ruins and new ones are
growing in their place. The movement may be limited to
one State, or spread over the world, -- it will have
nevertheless the same consequence: an immediate slackening
of individual enterprise all over Europe. Capital will
conceal itself, and hundreds of capitalists will prefer to
abandon their undertakings and go to watering-places 
rather than abandon their unfixed capital in industrial
production. And we know how a restriction of production in
any one branch of industry affects many others, and these
in turn spread wider and wider the area of depression.
<p>
"Already, at this moment, millions of those who have created
all riches suffer from want of what must be considered 
<b>necessaries</b> for the life of a civilised man. . . Let the
slightest commotion be felt in the industrial world, and it
will take the shape of a general stoppage of work. Let the
first attempt at expropriation be made, and the capitalist
production of our days will at once come to a stop, and 
millions and millions of 'unemployed' will join the ranks 
of those who are already unemployed now.
<p>
"More than that . . . The very first advance towards a 
Socialist society will imply a thorough reorganisation of 
industry as <b>to what we have to produce.</b> Socialism implies 
. . . a transformation of industry so that it may be adapted 
to the needs of the customer, not those of the profit-maker. 
Many a branch of industry must disappear, or limits its 
production; many a new one must develop. We are now producing 
a great deal for export. But the export trade will be the 
first to be reduced as soon as attempts at Social Revolution 
are made anywhere in Europe . . . 
<p>
"All that <b>can</b> be, and <b>will</b> be reorganised in time -- not
by the State, of course (why, then, not say by Providence?),
but by the workers themselves. But, in the meantime, the 
worker . . . cannot wait for the gradual reorganisation of
industry. . .
<p>
"The great problem of how to supply the wants of millions 
will thus start up at once in all its immensity. And the
necessity of finding an <b>immediate solution</b> for it is the
reason we consider that a step in the direction of 
[libertarian] Communism will be imposed on the revolted 
society -- not in the future, but as soon as it applies
its crowbar to the first stones of the capitalist edifice."</i>
[<b>Act for Yourselves</b>, pp. 57-9]
<p></blockquote>
As noted in 
<a href="append42.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Uprising?"</a>, the perspective was at the core
of Kropotkin's politics. His classic work <b>Conquest of Bread</b>
was based on this clear understanding of the nature of a
social revolution and the objective problems it will face.
As he put it, while a <i>"political revolution can be 
accomplished without shaking the foundations of industry"</i>
a revolution <i>"where the people lay hands upon property will
inevitably paralyse exchange and production . . . This point
cannot be too much insisted upon; the reorganisation of
industry on a new basis . . . cannot be accomplished in a
few days."</i> Indeed, he considered it essential to <i>"show how
tremendous this problem is."</i> [<b>The Conquest of Bread</b>, 
pp. 72-3]
<p>
Therefore, <i>"[o]ne of the great difficulties in every Revolution 
is the feeding of the large towns."</i> This was because the <i>"large 
towns of modern times are centres of various industries that 
are developed chiefly for the sake of the rich or for the
export trade"</i> and these <i>"two branches fail whenever any crisis 
occurs, and the question then arises of how these great urban
agglomerations are to be fed."</i> This crisis, rather than making
revolution impossible, spurred the creation of what Kropotkin
terms <i>"the communist movement"</i> in which <i>"the Parisian proletariat
had already formed a conception of its class interests and had
found men to express them well."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>The Great French 
Revolution</b>, vol. II, p. 457 and p. 504]
<p>
As for self-defence, he reproached the authors of classic
syndicalist utopia <b>How we shall bring about the Revolution</b>
for <i>"considerably attenuat[ing] the resistance that the Social
Revolution will probably meet with on its way."</i> He stressed
that the <i>"check of the attempt at Revolution in Russia has
shown us all the danger that may follow from an illusion of
this kind."</i> [<i>"preface,"</i> Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget, <b>How
we shall bring about the Revolution</b>, p. xxxvi]
<p>
It must, therefore, be stressed that the very <i>"objective factors"</i>
supporters of Bolshevism use to justify the actions of Lenin and
Trotsky were predicted correctly by anarchists decades before 
hand. Indeed, rather than ignore them anarchists like Kropotkin 
based their political and social ideas on these difficulties. As
such, it seems ironic for Leninists to attack anarchists for 
allegedly ignoring these factors. It is even more ironic as these
very same Leninists are meant to know that <b>any</b> revolution will
involve these exact same <i>"objective factors,"</i> something that Lenin
and other leading Bolsheviks acknowledged (see 
<a href="append43.html#app2">next section</a>).
<p>
Therefore, as noted, when anarchists like Emma Goldman and 
Alexander Berkman arrived in Russia they were aware of the 
problems it, like any revolution, would face. In the words 
of Berkman, <i>"what I saw and learned as in such crying contrast 
with my hopes and expectations as to shake the very foundation 
of my faith in the Bolsheviki. Not that I expected to find 
Russia a proletarian Eldorado. By no means. I knew how great 
the travail of a revolutionary period, how stupendous the 
difficulties to be overcome. Russia was besieged on numerous 
fronts; there was counter-revolution within and without; the 
blockade was starving the country and denying even medical 
aid to sick women and children. The people were exhausted by 
long war and civil strive; industry was disorganised, the 
railroads broken down. I fully realised the dire situation, 
with Russia shedding her blood on the alter of the Revolution."</i> 
[<b>The Bolshevik Myth</b>, p. 329] Emma Goldman expressed similar 
opinions. [<b>My Disillusionment in Russia</b>, pp. xlvii-xlix]
<p>
Unsurprisingly, therefore this extremely realistic 
perspective can be found in their later works. Berkman, 
for example, stressed that <i>"when the social revolution 
had become thoroughly organised and production is 
functioning normally there will be enough for 
everybody. But in the first stages of the revolution, 
during the process of re-construction, we must take 
care to supply the people the best we can, and 
equally, which means rationing."</i> This was because the 
<i>"first effect of the revolution is reduced production."</i> 
This would be initially due to the general strike which 
is its <i>"starting point."</i> However, <i>"[w]hen the social 
revolution begins in any land, its foreign commerce 
stops: the importation of raw materials and finished 
products is suspended. The country may even be blockaded 
by the bourgeois governments."</i> In addition, he thought 
it important not to suppress <i>"small scale industries"</i> 
as they would be essential when <i>"a country in revolution 
is attacked by foreign governments, when it is blockaded 
and deprived of imports, when its large-scale industries 
threaten to break down or the railways do break down."</i> 
[<b>ABC of Anarchism</b>, p. 67, p. 74 p. 78-9 and p. 79]
<p>
He, of course, considered it essential that to counteract 
isolation workers must understand <i>"that their cause is 
international"</i> and that <i>"the organisation of labour"</i> must 
develop <i>"beyond national boundaries."</i> However, <i>"the
probability is not to be discounted that the revolution
may break out in one country sooner than in another"</i> and
<i>"in such a case it would become imperative . . . not to
wait for possible aid from outside, but immediately to
exert all her energies to help herself supply the most
essential needs of her people by her own efforts."</i> [<b>Op. 
Cit.</b>, p. 78]
<p>
Emma Goldman, likewise, noted that it was <i>"a tragic fact 
that all revolutions have sprung from the loins of war. 
Instead of translating the revolution into social gains 
the people have usually been forced to defend themselves 
against warring parties."</i> <i>"It seems,"</i> she noted, <i>"nothing 
great is born without pain and travail"</i> as well as <i>"the 
imperative necessity of defending the Revolution."</i> However,
in spite of these inevitable difficulties she point to
how the Spanish anarchists <i>"have shown the first example 
in history <b>how Revolutions should be made</b>"</i> by <i>"the 
constructive work"</i> of <i>"socialising of the land, the 
organisation of the industries."</i> [<b>Vision on Fire</b>, p. 218, 
p. 222 and p. 55-56] 
<p>
These opinions were, as can be seen, to be expected from 
revolutionary anarchists schooled in the ideas of Bakunin 
and Kropotkin. Clearly, then, far from ignoring the <i>"objective 
factors"</i> facing the Bolsheviks, anarchists have based their 
politics around them. We have always argued that a social 
revolution would face isolation, economic disruption and 
civil war and have, for this reason, stressed the importance 
of mass participation in order to overcome them. As such, 
when Leninists argue that these inevitable <i>"objective factors"</i> 
caused the degeneration of Bolshevism, anarchists simply reply 
that if it cannot handle the inevitable then Bolshevism should 
be avoided. Just as we would avoid a submarine which worked 
perfectly well until it was placed in the sea or an umbrella 
which only kept you dry when it was not raining.
<p>
Moreover, what is to be made of this Leninist argument against 
anarchism? In fact, given the logic of their claims we have to
argument we have to draw the conclusion that the Leninists seem 
to think a revolution <b>could</b> happen <b>without</b> civil war and 
economic disruption. As such it suggests that the Leninists 
have the <i>"utopian"</i> politics in this matter. After all, if 
they argue that civil war is inevitable then how can they 
blame the degeneration of the revolution on it? Simply put, 
if Bolshevism cannot handle the inevitable it should be
avoided at all costs.
<p>
Ironically, as indicated in the 
<a href="append43.html#app2">next section</a>, we can find ample 
arguments to refute the Trotskyist case against the anarchist 
analysis in the works of leading Bolsheviks like Lenin, Trotsky 
aand Bukharin. Indeed, their arguments provide a striking 
confirmation of the anarchist position as they, like Kropotkin, 
stress that difficult <i>"objective factors"</i> will face <b>every</b> 
revolution. This means to use these factors to justify Bolshevik 
authoritarianism simply results in proving that Bolshevism is 
simply non-viable or that a liberatory social revolution is, 
in fact, impossible (and, as a consequence, genuine socialism).
<p>
There are, of course, other reasons why the Leninist critique 
of the anarchist position is false. The first is theoretical. 
Simply put, the Leninist position is the crudest form of 
economic determinism. Ideas <b>do</b> matter and, as Marx himself 
stressed, can play a key in how a social process develops. 
As we discuss in the appendix on 
<a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>, Marxist ideology played a key 
role in the degeneration of the revolution and in laying the 
groundwork for the rise of Stalinism. 
<p>
Ultimately, any Leninist defence of Bolshevism based purely
on stressing the <i>"objective factor"</i> implies that Bolshevik 
ideology played <b>no role</b> in the decisions made by the party 
leaders, that they simply operated on autopilot from October 
1917 onwards. Yet, at the same time, they stress the importance 
of Leninist ideology in ensuring the "victory" of the revolution. 
They seek to have it both ways. However, as Samuel Farber puts it:
<p><blockquote><i>
"determinism's characteristic and systemic failure is to understand 
that what the masses of people do and think politically is as much 
part of the process determining the outcome of history as are the 
objective obstacles that most definitely limit peoples' choices."</i> 
[<b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 198]
<p></blockquote>
This is equally applicable when discussing the heads of a highly
centralised state who have effectively expropriated political, 
economic and social power from the working class and are ruling 
in their name. Unsurprisingly, rather than just select policies 
at random the Bolshevik leadership pursued consistently before,
during and after the civil war policies which reflected their 
ideology. Hence there was a preference in policies which 
centralised power in the hands of a few (politically <b>and</b> 
economically), that saw socialism as being defined by 
nationalisation rather than self-management, that stressed 
that role and power of the vanguard above that of the working 
class, that saw class consciousness as being determined by 
how much a worker agreed with the party leadership rather 
than whether it expressed the actual needs and interests 
of the class as a whole.
<p>
Then there is the empirical evidence against the Trotskyist 
explanation.
<p>
As we indicate in <a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a>, 
soviet democracy and workers' 
power in the workplace was <b>not</b> undermined by the civil war. 
Rather, the process had began before the civil war started and,
equally significantly, continued after its end in November 1920. 
Moreover, the <i>"gains"</i> of October Trotskyists claim that Stalinism 
destroyed were, in fact, long dead by 1921. Soviet democracy, 
working class freedom of speech, association and assembly, 
workers' self-management or control in the workplace, trade union 
freedom, the ability to strike, and a host of other, elementary, 
working class rights had been eliminated long before the end of 
the civil war (indeed, often before it started) and, moreover, 
the Bolsheviks did not lament this. Rather, <i>"there is no evidence 
indicating that Lenin or any mainstream Bolshevik leaders lamented 
the loss of workers' control or of democracy in the soviets , or 
at least referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared 
with the replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921."</i> [Samuel 
Farber, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 44]
<p>
And then there is the example of the Makhnovist movement. Operating 
in the same <i>"objective circumstances,"</i> facing the same <i>"objective 
factors,"</i> the Makhnovists did <b>not</b> implement the same policies as 
the Bolsheviks. As we discussed in the appendix on
<a href="append46.html">"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
Bolshevism?"</a>, rather than undermine 
soviet, soldier and workplace democracy and replace all with party 
dictatorship, the Makhnovists applied these as fully as they could. 
Now, if <i>"objective factors"</i> explain the actions of the Bolsheviks, 
then why did the Makhnovists not pursue identical policies? 
<p>
Simply put, the idea that Bolshevik policies did not impact on 
the outcome of the revolution is a false assertion, as the 
Makhnovists show. Beliefs are utopian if subjective ideas are 
not grounded in objective reality. Anarchists hold that part 
of the subjective conditions required before socialism can 
exist is the existence of free exchange of ideas and working 
class democracy (i.e. self-management). To believe that revolution 
is possible without freedom, to believe those in power can, through 
their best and genuine intentions, impose socialism from above, 
as the Bolsheviks did, is indeed utopian. As the Bolsheviks proved.
The Makhnovists shows that the received wisdom is that there was 
no alternative open to the Bolsheviks is false. 
<p>
So while it cannot be denied that objective factors influenced how
certain Bolshevik policies were shaped and applied, the inspiration
of those policies came from Bolshevik ideology. An acorn will grow 
and develop depending on the climate and location it finds itself 
in, but regardless of the <i>"objective factors"</i> it will grow into 
an oak tree. Similarly with the Russian revolution. While the 
circumstances it faced influenced its growth, Bolshevik ideology 
could not help but produce an authoritarian regime with no relationship
with <b>real</b> socialism.
<p>
In summary, anarchists do not ignore the objective factors
facing the Bolsheviks during the revolution. As indicated, we 
predicted the problems they faced and developed our ideas to 
counter them. As the example of the Makhnovists showed, our ideas
were more than adequate for the task. Unlike the Bolsheviks.
<p>
<a name="app2"><h2>2 Can <i>"objective factors"</i> really explain the failure of Bolshevism?</h2>
<p>
As noted in the 
<a href="append43.html#app1">previous section</a> Leninists tend to argue that
anarchists downplay (at best) or ignore (at worse) the <i>"objective
factors"</i> facing the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. As
noted in the same section, this argument is simple false. For
anarchists have long expected the <i>"objective factors"</i> usually 
used to explain the degeneration of the revolution.
<p>
However, there is more to it than that. Leninists claim to be
revolutionaries. They claim to know that revolutions face problems,
the civil war is inevitable and so forth. It therefore strikes
anarchists as being somewhat hypocritical for Leninists to blame
these very same <i>"objective"</i> but allegedly inevitable factors for
the failure of Bolshevism in Russia.
<p>
Ironically enough, Lenin and Trotsky agree with these anarchist 
arguments. Looking at Trotsky, he dismissed the CNT's leaderships'
arguments in favour of collaborating with the bourgeois state:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The leaders of the Spanish Federation of Labour (CNT) . . . 
became, in the critical hour, bourgeois ministers. They explained 
their open betrayal of the theory of anarchism by the pressure of 
'exceptional circumstances.' But did not the leaders of the German 
social democracy invoke, in their time, the same excuse? Naturally, 
civil war is not a peaceful and ordinary but an 'exceptional 
circumstance.' Every serious revolutionary organisation, however, 
prepares precisely for 'exceptional circumstances' . . . We have 
not the slightest intention of blaming the anarchists for not 
having liquidated the state with the mere stroke of a pen. A 
revolutionary party , even having seized power (of which the 
anarchist leaders were incapable in spite of the heroism of the 
anarchist workers), is still by no means the sovereign ruler of 
society. But all the more severely do we blame the anarchist 
theory, which seemed to be wholly suitable for times of peace, 
but which had to be dropped rapidly as soon as the 'exceptional 
circumstances' of the... revolution had begun. In the old days 
there were certain generals - and probably are now - who 
considered that the most harmful thing for an army was war. 
Little better are those revolutionaries who complain that 
revolution destroys their doctrine."</i> [<b>Stalinism and Bolshevism</b>]
<p></blockquote>
Thus to argue that the <i>"exceptional circumstances"</i> caused by the
civil war are the only root cause of the degeneration of the Russian
Revolution is a damning indictment of Bolshevism. After all, Lenin
did not argue in <b>State and Revolution</b> that the application of
soviet democracy was dependent only in <i>"times of peace."</i> Rather,
he stressed that they were for the <i>"exceptional circumstance"</i> of
revolution and the civil war he considered its inevitable consequence.
As such, we must note that Trotsky's followers do not apply this 
critique to their own politics, which are also a form of the 
"exceptional circumstances"</i> excuse. Given how quickly Bolshevik 
"principles"</i> (as expressed in <b>The State and Revolution</b>) were 
dropped, we can only assume that Bolshevik ideas are also suitable 
purely for <i>"times of peace"</i> as well. As such, we must note the 
irony of Leninist claims that <i>"objective circumstances"</i> explains 
the failure of the Bolshevik revolution. 
<p>
Saying that, we should not that Trotsky was not above using such 
arguments himself (making later-day Trotskyists at least ideologically
consistent in their hypocrisy). In the same essay, for example, he 
justifies the prohibition of other Soviet parties in terms of a 
"measure of defence of the dictatorship in a backward and devastated 
country, surrounded by enemies on all sides."</i> In other words, an 
appeal to the exceptional circumstances facing the Bolsheviks! 
Perhaps unsurprisingly, his followers have tended to stress this
(contradictory) aspect of his argument rather than his comments 
that those <i>"who propose the abstraction of Soviets to 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. The 
Bolshevik party achieved in the civil war the correct combination 
of military art and Marxist politics."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>] Which, of course, 
suggests that the prohibition of other parties had little impact 
on levels of soviet "democracy" allowed under the Bolsheviks (see
<a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix on 
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>for more on this).
<p>
This dismissal of the <i>"exceptional circumstances"</i> argument 
did not originate with Trotsky. Lenin repeatedly stressed 
that any revolution would face civil war and economic disruption. 
In early January, 1918, he was pointing to <i>"the incredibly 
complications of war and economic ruin"</i> in Russia and noting 
that <i>"the fact that Soviet power has been established . . . is 
why civil war has acquired predominance in Russia at the present 
time."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 26, p. 453 and p. 459] 
<p>
A few months later he states quite clearly that <i>"it will never be 
possible to build socialism at a time when everything is running
smoothly and tranquilly; it will never be possible to realise 
socialism without the landowners and capitalists putting up a
furious resistance."</i> He reiterated this point, acknowledging 
that the <i>"country is poor, the country is poverty-stricken, 
and it is impossible just now to satisfy all demands; that is
why it is so difficult to build the new edifice in the midst
of disruption. But those who believe that socialism can be 
built at a time of peace and tranquillity are profoundly mistake:
it will be everywhere built at a time of disruption, at a time
of famine. That is how it must be."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 27, p. 520
and p. 517]
<p>
As regards civil war, he noted that <i>"not one of the great revolutions
of history has take place"</i> without one and <i>"without which not a
single serious Marxist has conceived the transition from capitalism
to socialism."</i> Moreover, <i>"there can be no civil war -- the inevitable
condition and concomitant of socialist revolution -- without 
disruption."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 496 and p. 497] He considered this 
disruption as being applicable to advanced capitalist nations as 
well:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In Germany, state capitalism prevails, and therefore the 
revolution in Germany will be a hundred times more devastating 
and ruinous than in a petty-bourgeois country -- there, too, 
there will be gigantic difficulties and tremendous chaos and 
imbalance."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 28, p. 298] 
<p></blockquote>
And from June, 1918:
<p><blockquote><i>
"We must be perfectly clear in our minds about the new disasters
that civil war brings for every country. The more cultured a 
country is the more serious will be these disasters. Let us 
picture to ourselves a country possessing machinery and 
railways in which civil war is raging., and this civil war cuts
off communication between the various parts of the country. 
Picture to yourselves the condition of regions which for decades
have been accustomed to living by the interchange of manufactured
goods and you will understand that every civil war brings forth
disasters."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 27, p. 463]
<p></blockquote>
As we discuss in <a href="append43.html#app4">section 4</a>, 
the economic state of Germany
immediately after the end of the war suggests that Lenin had a 
point. Simply put, the German economy was in a serious state of
devastation, a state equal to that of Russia during the equivalent
period of its revolution. If economic conditions made party 
dictatorship inevitable in Bolshevik Russia (as pro-Leninists
argue) it would mean that soviet democracy and revolution cannot
go together.
<p>
Lenin reiterated this point again and again. He argued that <i>"we 
see famine not only in Russia, but in the most cultured, advanced
countries, like Germany . . . it is spread over a longer period
than in Russia, but it is famine nevertheless, still more severe
and painful than here."</i> In fact, <i>"today even the richest countries 
are experiencing unprecedented food shortages and that the 
overwhelming majority of the working masses are suffering 
incredible torture."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 27, p. 460 and p. 461]
<p>
Lenin, unlike many of his latter day followers, did not consider
these grim objective conditions are making revolution impossible.
Rather, for him, there was <i>"no other way out of this war"</i> which
is causing the problems <i>"except revolution, except civil war
. . . a war which always accompanies not only great revolutions
but every serious revolution in history."</i> He continued by arguing 
that we <i>"must be perfectly clear in our minds about the new 
disasters that civil war brings for every country. The more 
cultured a country is the more serious will be these disasters. 
Let us picture to ourselves a country possessing machinery and 
railways in which civil war is raging, and this civil war cuts 
communication between the various parts of the country. Picture 
to yourselves the condition of regions which for decades have 
been accustomed to living by interchange of manufactured goods 
and you will understand that every civil war brings fresh 
disasters."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 463] The similarities to Kropotkin's
arguments made three decades previously are clear (see 
<a href="append43.html#app1">section 1</a> for details).
<p>
Indeed, he mocked those who would argue that revolution could
occur with <i>"exceptional circumstances"</i>:
<p><blockquote><i>
"A revolutionary would not 'agree' to a proletarian revolution
only 'on the condition' that it proceeds easily and smoothly,
that there is, from the outset, combined action on the part
of proletarians of different countries, that there are 
guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is
broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during
the march to victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to
'bide one's time in a besieged fortress,' or to make one's
way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous
mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary."</i> 
[<b>Selected Works</b>, vol. 2, p. 709]
<p></blockquote>
He then turned his fire on those who failed to recognise the
problems facing a revolution and instead simply blamed the
Bolsheviks:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The revolution engendered by the war cannot avoid the terrible
difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged, 
ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us
for the 'destruction' of industry, or for the 'terror', is
either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an
inability to understand the basic conditions of the fierce
class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity,
that is called revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 709-10]
<p></blockquote>
Thus industrial collapse and terrible difficulties would face
any revolution. It goes without saying that if it was <i>"hypocrisy"</i>
to blame Bolshevik politics for these problems, it would be the
same to blame these problems for Bolshevik politics. As Lenin
noted, <i>"in revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always,
inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of
<b>civil war,</b> and civil war is inconceivable without the
severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal
democracy in the interests of this war."</i> Moreover, <i>"[w]e know 
that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part 
of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and
that this resistance will <b>grow</b> with the growth of the 
revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 710 and p. 712] To blame the 
inevitable problems of a revolution for the failings of 
Bolshevism suggests that Bolshevism is simply not suitable 
for revolutionary situations.
<p>
At the 1920 Comintern Congress Lenin lambasted a German socialist
who argued against revolution because <i>"Germany was so weakened by
the War"</i> that if it had been <i>"blockaded again the misery of the 
German masses would have been even more dreadful."</i> Dismissing this
argument, Lenin argued as follows:
<p><blockquote><i>
"A revolution . . . can be made only if it does not worsen the
workers' conditions 'too much.' Is it permissible, in a communist
party, to speak in a tone like this, I ask? This is the language
of counter-revolution. The standard of living in Russia is 
undoubtedly lower than in Germany, and when we established the
dictatorship, this led to the workers beginning to go more
hungry and to their conditions becoming even worse. The workers'
victory cannot be achieved without sacrificing, without a 
temporary deterioration of their conditions. . . If the German 
workers now want to work for the revolution, they must make
sacrifices and not be afraid to do so . . . The labour aristocracy,
which is afraid of sacrifices, afraid of 'too great' impoverishment
during the revolutionary struggle, cannot belong to the party.
Otherwise the dictatorship is impossible, especially in western
European countries."</i> [<b>Proceedings and Documents of the Second 
Congress 1920</b>, pp. 382-3]
<p></blockquote>
In 1921 he repeated this, arguing that <i>"every revolution entails
enormous sacrifice on the part of the class making it. . .  The
dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has entailed for the
ruling class -- the proletariat -- sacrifices, want and privation
unprecedented in history, and the case will, in all probability,
be the same in every other country."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 32, 
p. 488] Thus Lenin is on record as saying these "objective factors" 
will always be the circumstances facing a socialist revolution. 
Indeed, in November 1922 he stated that <i>"Soviet rule in Russia is 
celebrating its fifth anniversary, It is now sounder than ever."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 33, p. 417]
<p>
All of which must be deeply embarrassing to Leninists. After all,
here is Lenin arguing that the factors Leninist's list as being
responsible for the degeneration of the Russian Revolution were
inevitable side effects of <b>any</b> revolution!
<p>
Nor was this perspective limited to Lenin. The inevitability of 
economic collapse being associated with a revolution was not 
lost on Trotsky either (see 
<a href="append42.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>). Nikolai Bukharin
even wrote the (infamous) <b>The Economics of the Transition 
Period</b> to make theoretical sense of (i.e. rationalise and 
justify) the party's changing policies and their social 
consequences since 1918 in terms of the inevitability of 
bad "objective factors" facing the revolution. While some 
Leninists like to paint Bukharin's book (like most Bolshevik 
ideas of the time) as <i>"making a virtue out of necessity,"</i> 
Bukharin (like the rest of the Bolshevik leadership) did not. 
As one commentator notes, Bukharin <i>"belive[d] that he was 
formulating universal laws of proletarian revolution."</i> [Stephan 
F. Cohen, <b>In Praise of War Communism: Bukharin's The 
Economics of the Transition Period</b>, p. 195] 
<p>
Bukharin listed four <i>"real costs of revolution,"</i> namely <i>"the 
physical destruction or deterioration of material and living elements
of production, the atomisation of these elements and of sectors
of the economy, and the need for unproductive consumption (civil
war materials, etc.). These costs were interrelated and followed
sequentially. Collectively they resulted in '<b>the curtailment of
the process of reproduction</b>' (and 'negative expanded reproduction')
and Bukharin's main conclusion: 'the production <i>"anarchy"</i> . . . ,
<i>"the revolutionary disintegration of industry,"</i> is an historically
inevitable stage which no amount of lamentation will prevent.'"</i>
This was part of a general argument and his <i>"point was that great 
revolutions were always accompanied by destructive civil wars . . . 
But he was more intent on proving that a proletarian revolution 
resulted in an even greater temporary fall in production than did 
its bourgeois counterpart."</i> To do this he formulated the <i>"costs of
revolution"</i> as <i>"a law of revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 195-6 and 
p. 195]
<p>
Cohen notes that while this <i>"may appear to have been an obvious
point, but it apparently came as something of a revelation to
many Bolsheviks. It directly opposed the prevailing Social 
Democratic assumption that the transition to socialism would
be relatively painless . . . Profound or not, Bolsheviks 
generally came to accept the 'law' and to regard it as a 
significant discovery by Bukharin."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 196] To 
quote Bukharin:
<p><blockquote><i>
"during the transition period the labour apparatus of society 
inevitably disintegrates, that reorganisation presupposes 
disorganisation, and that there the temporary collapse of 
productive forces is a law inherent to revolution."</i> [quoted
by Cohen, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 196]
<p></blockquote>
It would appear that this <i>"obvious point"</i> would <b>still</b> come 
<i>"as something of a revelation to many Bolsheviks"</i> today! 
Significantly, of course, Kropotkin had formulated this 
law decades previously! How the Bolsheviks sought to cope 
with this inevitable law is what signifies the difference 
between anarchism and Leninism. Simply put, Bukharin endorsed 
the coercive measures of war communism as the means to go 
forward to socialism. As Cohen summarises, <i>"force and coercion 
. . . were the means by which equilibrium was to be forged out 
of disequilibrium."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 198] Given that Bukharin 
argued that a workers' state, by definition, could not exploit 
the workers, he opened up the possibility for rationalising 
all sorts of abuses as well as condoning numerous evils 
because they were <i>"progressive."</i> Nor was Bukharin alone 
in this, as Lenin and Trotsky came out with similar nonsense.
<p>
It should be noted that Lenin showed <i>"ecstatic praise for the 
most 'war communist' sections"</i> of Bukharin's work. <i>"Almost 
every passage,"</i> Cohen notes, <i>"on the role of the new state,
statisation in general, militarisation and mobilisation met
with 'very good,' often in three languages,  . . . Most 
striking, Lenin's greatest enthusiasm was reserved for the
chapter on the role of coercion . . . at the end [of which]
he wrote, 'Now this chapter is superb!'"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 202-3]
Compare this to Kropotkin's comment that the <i>"revolutionary
tribunal and the guillotine could not make up for the lack
of a constructive communist theory."</i> [<b>The Great French
Revolution</b>, vol. II, p. 519]
<p>
Ultimately, claims that "objective factors" caused the 
degeneration of the revolution are mostly attempts to 
let the Bolsheviks of the hook for Stalinism. This approach
was started by Trotsky and continued to this day. Anarchists, 
unsurprisingly, do not think much of these explanations. For 
anarchists, the list of "objective factors" listed to explain
the degeneration of the revolution are simply a list of factors 
<b>every</b> revolution would (and has) faced -- as Lenin, Bukharin 
and Trotsky all admitted at the time! 
<p>
So we have the strange paradox of Leninists dismissing and
ignoring the arguments of their ideological gurus. For Trotsky,
just as for Lenin, it was a truism that revolutionary politics 
had to handle <i>"objective"</i> factors and <i>"exceptional circumstances."</i> 
And for both, they thought they had during the Russian revolution. 
Yet for their followers, these explain the failure of Bolshevism. 
Tony Cliff, one of Trotsky's less orthodox followers, gives us 
a means of understanding this strange paradox. Discussing the 
<b>Platform of the United Opposition</b> he notes that it <i>"also 
suffered from the inheritance of the exceptional conditions 
of the civil war, when the one-party system was transformed 
from a necessity into a virtue."</i> [<b>Trotsky</b>, vol. 3, pp. 248-9] 
Clearly, <i>"exceptional circumstances"</i> explain nothing and are 
simply an excuse for bad politics while <i>"exceptional conditions"</i> 
explain everything and defeat even the best politics!
<p>
As such, it seems to us extremely ironic that Leninists blame 
the civil war for the failure of the revolution as they 
continually raise the inevitability of civil war in a 
revolution to attack anarchism (see 
<a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a> for an 
example). Did Lenin not explain in <b>State and Revolution</b>
that his <i>"workers' state"</i> was designed to defend the revolution
and suppress capitalist resistance? If it cannot do its 
proclaimed task then, clearly, it is a flawed theory. 
Ultimately, if <i>"civil war"</i> and the other factors listed by 
Leninists (but considered inevitable by Lenin) preclude the 
implementation of the radical democracy Lenin argued for 
in 1917 as the means to suppress the resistance of the 
capitalists then his followers should come clean and say 
that that work has no bearing on their vision of revolution.
Therefore, given that the usual argument for the <i>"dictatorship 
of the proletariat"</i> is that it is required to repress 
counter-revolution, it seems somewhat ironic that the event 
it was said to be designed for (i.e. revolution) should be 
responsible for its degeneration! 
<p>
As such, anarchists tend to think these sorts of explanations
of Bolshevik dictatorship are incredulous. After all, as 
<b>revolutionaries</b> the people who expound these <i>"explanations"</i> 
are meant to know that civil war, imperialist invasion and 
blockade, economic disruption, and a host of other <i>"extremely 
difficult circumstances"</i> are part and parcel of a revolution. 
They seem to be saying, "if only the ruling class had not 
acted as our political ideology predicts they would then the 
Bolshevik revolution would have been fine"</i>! As Bertrand Russell 
argued after his trip to Soviet Russia, while since October 
1917 <i>"the Soviet Government has been at war with almost all 
the world, and has at the same time to face civil war at 
home"</i> this was <i>"not to be regarded as accidental, or as a 
misfortune which could not be foreseen. According to Marxian 
theory, what has happened was bound to happen."</i> [<b>The Theory 
and Practice of Bolshevism</b>, p. 103]
<p>
In summary, anarchists are not at all convinced by the claims
that <i>"objective factors"</i> can explain the failure of the Russian
Revolution. After all, according to Lenin and Trotsky these 
factors were to be expected in <b>any</b> revolution -- civil war 
and invasion, economic collapse and so forth were not restricted
to the Russian revolution. That is why they say they want a 
"dictatorship of the proletariat,"</i> to defend against 
counter-revolution (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a> on how, once in power,
Lenin and Trotsky revised this position). Now, if Bolshevism 
cannot handle what it says is inevitable, then it should be 
avoided. To use an analogy:
<p><blockquote>
<b>Bolshevik: <i>"Join with us, we have a great umbrella which will 
            keep us dry."</i>
<p>
Anarchist: <i>"Last time it was used, it did not work. We all got 
            soaked!"</i>
<p>
Bolshevik: <i>"But what our anarchist friend fails to mention is 
            that it was raining at the time!"</i>
<p></b></blockquote>
Not very convincing! Yet, sadly, this is the logic of the common
Leninist justification of Bolshevik authoritarianism during the
Russian Revolution.  
<p>
<a name="app3"><h2>3 Can the civil war explain the failure of Bolshevism?</h2>
<p>
One of the most common assertions against the anarchists case
against Bolshevism is that while we condemn the Bolsheviks, 
we fail to mention the civil war and the wars of intervention.
Indeed, for most Leninists the civil war is usually considered
the key event in the development of Bolshevism, explaining and
justifying all anti-socialist acts conducted by them after they
seized power.
<p>
For anarchists, such an argument is flawed on two levels, namely
logical and factual. The logical flaw is that Leninist argue 
that civil war is inevitable after a revolution. They maintain,
correctly, that it is unlikely that the ruling class will 
disappear without a fight. Then they turn round and complain that
because the ruling class did what the Marxists predicted, the
Russian Revolution failed! And they (incorrectly) harp on about 
anarchists ignoring civil war (see 
<a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>).
<p>
So, obviously, this line of defence is nonsense. If civil war is 
inevitable, then it cannot be used to justify the failure of the
Bolshevism. Marxists simply want to have their cake and eat it to. 
You simply cannot argue that civil war is inevitable and then blame
it for the failure of the Russian Revolution. 
<p>
The other flaw in this defence of Bolshevism is the factual one,
namely the awkward fact that Bolshevik authoritarianism started
<b>before</b> the civil war broke out. Simply put, it is difficult to 
blame a course of actions on an event which had not started yet.
Moreover, Bolshevik authoritarianism <b>increased</b> after the civil 
war finished. This, incidentally, caused anarchists like Alexander
Berkman to re-evaluate their support for Bolshevism. As he put it, 
<i>"I would not concede the appalling truth. Still the hope persisted
that the Bolsheviki, though absolutely wrong in principle and
practice, yet grimly held on to <b>some</b> shreds of the revolutionary
banner. 'Allied interference,' 'the blockade and civil war,' 'the
necessity of the transitory stage' -- thus I sought to placate
my outraged conscience . .  . At last the fronts were liquidated,
civil war ended, and the country at peace. But Communist policies
did not change. On the contrary . . . The party groaned under the
unbearable yoke of the Party dictatorship. . . . Then came 
Kronstadt and its simultaneous echoes throughout the land . . . 
Kronstadt was crushed as ruthlessly as Thiers and Gallifet 
slaughtered the Paris Communards. And with Kronstadt the entire
country and its last hope. With it also my faith in the 
Bolsheviki."</i> [<b>The Bolshevik Myth</b>, p. 331]
<p>
If Berkman had been in Russia in 1918, he may have realised that
the Bolshevik tyranny during the civil war (which climaxed, post
civil war, with the attack on Kronstadt -- see the appendix on
 <a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a> for
more on the Kronstadt rebellion) was not at odds with their 
pre-civil war activities to maintain their power. The simple 
fact is that Bolshevik authoritarianism was <b>not</b> caused by the 
pressures of the civil war, rather they started before then. All 
the civil war did was strengthen certain aspects of Bolshevik
ideology and practice which had existed from the start (see 
the appendix on <a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>).
<p>
While we discuss the Russian Revolution in more detail in 
the appendix on <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, it is 
useful to summarise the Bolshevik attacks
on working class power and autonomy before the civil war broke
out (i.e. before the end of May 1918).
<p>
The most important development during this period was the 
suppression of soviet democracy and basic freedoms. As
we discuss in <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of
the appendix on <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, 
the Bolsheviks pursued a
policy of systematically undermining soviet democracy 
from the moment they seized power. The first act was the
creation of a Bolshevik government over the soviets, so
marginalising the very organs they claimed ruled in Russia.
The process was repeated in the local soviets, with the
executive committees holding real power while the plenary
sessions become infrequent and of little consequence. 
Come the spring of 1918, faced with growing working class
opposition they started to delay soviet elections. When
finally forced to hold elections, the Bolsheviks responded
in two ways to maintain their power. Either they gerrymandered
the soviets, packing them with representatives of Bolshevik
dominated organisation or they simply disbanded them by 
force if they lost the soviet elections (and repressed by 
force any protests against this). This was the situation
at the grassroots. At the summit of the soviet system, 
the Bolsheviks simply marginalised the Central Executive
Committee of the soviets. Real power was held by the 
Bolshevik government. The power of the soviets had simply
become a fig-leaf for a "soviet power" -- the handful of
Bolsheviks who made up the government and the party's
central committee.
<p>
It should be stressed that the Bolshevik assault on the soviets
occurred in March, April and May 1918. That is, <b>before</b> the
Czech uprising and the onset of full-scale civil war. So, to 
generalise, it cannot be said that it was the Bolshevik party 
that alone whole-heartedly supported Soviet power. The facts 
are that the Bolsheviks only supported <i>"Soviet power"</i> when the 
soviets were Bolshevik. As recognised by the left-Menshevik 
Martov, who argued that the Bolsheviks loved Soviets only when 
they were <i>"in the hands of the Bolshevik party."</i> [quoted by 
Getzler, <b>Martov</b>, p. 174] If the workers voted for others, 
<i>"soviet power"</i> was quickly replaced by party power (the real 
aim). The Bolsheviks had consolidated their position in early 
1918, turning the Soviet State into a de facto one party state 
by gerrymandering and disbanding of soviets before the start of 
the Civil War. 
<p>
Given this legacy of repression, Leninist Tony Cliff's assertion 
that it was only <i>"under the iron pressure of the civil war [that] 
the Bolshevik leaders were forced to move, as the price of survival, 
to <b>a one-party system</b>"</i> needs serious revising. Similarly, his
comment that the <i>"civil war undermined the operation of the 
local soviets"</i> is equally inaccurate, as his is claim that <i>"for
some time -- i.e. until the armed uprising of the Czechoslovak
Legion -- the Mensheviks were not much hampered in their 
propaganda work."</i> Simply put, Cliff's statement that <i>"it was
about a year after the October Revolution before an actual
monopoly of political power was held by one party"</i> is false.
Such a monopoly existed <b>before</b> the start of the civil war,
with extensive political repression existing <b>before</b> the 
uprising of the Czechoslovak Legion which began it. There 
was a <b>de facto</b> one-party state by the spring of 1918. 
[<b>Lenin</b>, vol. 3, p. 163, p. 150, p. 167 and p. 172]
<p>
The suppression of Soviet democracy reached it logical conclusion 
in 1921 when the Kronsdadt soviet, heart of the 1917 revolution, was 
stormed by Bolshevik forces, its leaders executed or forced into 
exile and the rank and file imprisoned, and scattered all over the 
USSR. Soviet democracy was not just an issue of debate but one many 
workers died in fighting for. As can be seen, similar events to 
those at Kronstadt had occurred three years previously.
<p>
Before turning to other Bolshevik attacks on working class power
and freedom, we need to address one issue. It will be proclaimed
that the Mensheviks (and SRs) were <i>"counter-revolutionaries"</i> and
so Bolshevik actions against them were justified. However, the
Bolsheviks' started to suppress opposition soviets <b>before</b> the 
civil war broke out, so at the time neither group could be called
<i>"counter-revolutionary"</i> in any meaningful sense of the word. The
Civil War started on the 25th of May and the SRs and Mensheviks 
were expelled from the Soviets on the 14th of June. While the 
Bolsheviks <i>"offered some formidable fictions to justify the 
expulsions"</i> there was <i>"of course no substance in the charge 
that the Mensheviks had been mixed in counter-revolutionary 
activities on the Don, in the Urals, in Siberia, with the 
Czechoslovaks, or that they had joined the worst Black Hundreds."</i> 
[Getzler, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 181] The charge that the Mensheviks
<i>"were active supporters of intervention and of counter-revolution"</i>
was <i>"untrue . . . and the Communists, if they ever believed it,
never succeeded in establishing it."</i> [Schapiro, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 193]
The Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks in the context of political 
loses before the Civil War. As Getzler notes the Bolsheviks <i>"drove 
them underground, just on the eve of the elections to the Fifth 
Congress of Soviets in which the Mensheviks were expected to make 
significant gains."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 181]
<p>
Attacks on working class freedoms and democracy were not limited
to the soviets. As well as the gerrymandering and disbanding of 
soviets, the Bolsheviks had already presented economic visions 
much at odds with what most people consider as fundamentally 
socialist. Lenin, in April 1918, was arguing for one-man
management and <i>"[o]bedience, and unquestioning obedience at 
that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, 
of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, 
vested with dictatorial powers."</i> [<b>Six Theses on the Immediate 
Tasks of the Soviet Government</b>, p. 44] His support for a new
form of wage slavery involved granting state appointed <i>"individual 
executives dictatorial powers (or 'unlimited' powers)."</i> Large-scale 
industry (<i>"the foundation of socialism"</i>) required <i>"thousands 
subordinating their will to the will of one,"</i> and so the revolution 
"demands"</i> that <i>"the people <b>unquestioningly</b> obey the single will 
of the leaders of labour."</i> Lenin's <i>"superior forms of labour 
discipline"</i> were simply hyper-developed capitalist forms. The 
role of workers in production was the same, but with a novel 
twist, namely <i>"unquestioning obedience to the orders of individual 
representatives of the Soviet government during the work."</i> [Lenin, 
<b>Selected Writings</b>, vol. 2, p. 610, p. 611, p. 612] 
<p>
This simply replaced private capitalism with <b>state</b> 
capitalism. <i>"In the shops where one-man management 
(Lenin's own preference) replaced collegial management,"</i> 
notes Diane Koenker, <i>"workers faced the same kinds of 
authoritarian management they thought existed only under 
capitalism."</i> [<b>Labour Relations in Socialist Russia</b>, 
p. 177] If, as many Leninists claim, one-man management 
was a key factor in the rise of Stalinism and/or 
<i>"state-capitalism"</i> in Russia, then, clearly, Lenin's 
input in these developments cannot be ignored. After 
advocating <i>"one-man management"</i> and <i>"state capitalism"</i> 
in early 1918, he remained a firm supporter of them. 
In the light of this it is bizarre that some later day 
Leninists claim that the Bolsheviks only introduced one-man 
management because of the Civil War. Clearly, this was <b>not</b> 
the case. It was <b>this</b> period (before the civil war) that saw
Lenin advocate and start to take the control of the economy 
out of the hands of the workers and placed into the hands of 
the Bolshevik party and the state bureaucracy.
<p>
Needless to say, the Bolshevik undermining of the factory 
committee movement and, consequently, genuine worker's 
self-management of production in favour of state capitalism 
cannot be gone into great depth here (see the appendix on <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, 
for a 
fuller discussion). Suffice to say, the factory committees 
were deliberately submerged in the trade unions and state 
control replaced workers' control. This involved practising 
one-man management and, as Lenin put in at the start of May 
1918, <i>"our task is to study the state capitalism of the 
Germans, to spare <b>no effort</b> in copying it and not to shrink 
from adopting <b>dictatorial</b> methods to hasten the copying of 
it."</i> He stressed that this was no new idea, rather he <i>"gave
it <b>before</b> the Bolsheviks seized power."</i> [<b>Selected Writings</b>, 
vol. 2, p. 635 and p. 636] 
<p>
It will be objected that Lenin advocated <i>"workers' control."</i> 
This is true, but a <i>"workers' control"</i> of a <b>very</b> limited 
nature. As we discuss in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech314">section H.3.14</a>, rather than seeing 
"workers' control" as workers managing production directly, 
he always saw it in terms of workers' <i>"controlling"</i> those who 
did and his views on this matter were <b>radically</b> different
to those of the factory committees. This is not all, as 
Lenin always placed his ideas in a statist context -- rather 
than base socialist reconstruction on working class 
self-organisation from below, the Bolsheviks started <i>"to 
build, from the top, its 'unified administration'"</i> based on 
central bodies created by the Tsarist government in 1915 and 
1916. [Maurice Brinton, <b>The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control</b>, 
p. 36] The institutional framework of capitalism would 
be utilised as the principal (almost exclusive) instruments 
of "socialist" transformation. Lenin's support for <i>"one-man 
management"</i> must be seen in this context, namely his 
vision of "socialism."</i>
<p>
Bolshevik advocating and implementing of <i>"one-man management"</i> was 
not limited to the workplace. On March 30th Trotsky, as Commissar 
of Military Affairs, set about  reorganising the army. The death 
penalty for disobedience under fire was reintroduced, as was 
saluting officers, special forms of address, separate living 
quarters and privileges for officers. Officers were no longer 
elected. Trotsky made it clear: <i>"The elective basis is politically 
pointless and technically inexpedient and has already been set 
aside by decree."</i> [quoted by Brinton, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 37-8] The
soldiers were given no say in their fate, as per bourgeois armies.
<p>
Lenin's proposals also struck at the heart of workers' power 
in other ways. For example, he argued that <i>"we must raise the 
question of piece-work and apply it . . . in practice."</i> [<b>The 
Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government</b>, p. 23] As Leninist 
Tony Cliff (of all people) noted, <i>"the employers have at 
their disposal a number of effective methods of disrupting th[e] 
unity [of workers as a class]. Once of the most important of these 
is the fostering of competition between workers by means of 
piece-work systems."</i> He notes that these were used by the Nazis 
and the Stalinists <i>"for the same purpose."</i> [<b>State Capitalism in 
Russia</b>, pp. 18-9] Obviously piece-work is different when Lenin 
introduces it!
<p>
Finally, there is the question of general political freedom. It
goes without saying that the Bolsheviks suppressed freedom of
the press (for left-wing opposition groups as well as capitalist
ones). It was also in this time period that the Bolsheviks first 
used the secret police to attack opposition groups. Unsurprisingly, 
this was not directed against the right. The anarchists in Moscow 
were attacked on the night of April 11-12, with armed detachments
of the Cheka raiding 26 anarchist centres, killing or wounding 40 
and jailing 500. Shortly afterwards the Cheka carried out similar 
raids in Petrograd and in the provinces. In May <b>Burevestnik</b>, 
<b>Anarkhiia</b>, <b>Golos Truda</b> and other leading anarchist periodicals 
closed down. [Paul Avrich, <b>The Russian Anarchists</b>, pp. 184-5]
It must surely be a coincidence that there had been a <i>"continued
growth of anarchist influence among unskilled workers"</i> after
the October revolution and, equally coincidentally, that <i>"[b]y 
the spring of 1918, very little was heard from the anarchists in 
Petrograd."</i> [David Mandel, <b>The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet 
Seizure of Power</b>, p. 357]
<p>
All this <b>before</b> the Trotsky provoked revolt of the Czech legion
at the end of May, 1918, and the consequent "democratic 
counter-revolution" in favour of the Constituent Assembly (which
the right-Socialist Revolutionaries led). This, to repeat, was 
months before the rise of the White Armies and Allied intervention. 
In summary, it was <b>before</b> large-scale civil war took place, 
in an interval of relative peace, that we see the introduction of 
most of the measures Leninists now try and pretend were 
necessitated by the Civil War itself.
<p>
So if anarchists appear to "downplay" the effects of the civil war
it is not because we ignore. We simply recognise that if you think
it is inevitable, you cannot blame it for the actions of the 
Bolsheviks. Moreover, when the Bolsheviks eliminated military
democracy, undermined the factory committees, started to disband 
soviets elected with the "wrong" majority, repress the anarchists 
and other left-wing opposition groups, and so on, <b>the civil war 
had not started yet.</b> So the rot had started before civil war 
(and consequent White Terror) and "imperialist intervention" 
started. Given that Lenin said that civil war was inevitable, 
blaming the inevitable (which had not even started yet!) for 
the failure of Bolshevism is <b>not</b> very convincing.
<p>
This factual problem with the <i>"civil war caused Bolshevik 
authoritarianism"</i> is the best answer to it. If the Bolsheviks 
pursued authoritarian policies before the civil war started, 
it is hard to justify their actions in terms of something that 
had not started yet. This explains why some Leninists have 
tried to muddy the waters somewhat by obscuring when the 
civil war started. For example, John Rees states that <i>"[m]ost
historians treat the revolution and the civil war as separate
processes"</i> yet <i>"[i]n reality they were one."</i> He presents a
catalogue of <i>"armed resistance to the revolution,"</i> including
such <i>"precursors of civil war before the revolution"</i> as the
suppression after the July days and the Kornilov revolt in 1917.
[John Rees, <i>"In Defence of October,"</i> pp. 3-82, <b>International 
Socialism</b>, no. 52, p. 31-2] 
<p>
Ironically, Rees fails to see how this blurring of when the
civil war started actually <b>harms</b> Leninism. After all, most
historians place the start of the civil war when the Czech
legion revolted <b>because</b> it marked large-scale conflict 
between armies. It is one thing to say that authoritarianism
was caused by large-scale conflict, another to say <b>any</b> form
of conflict caused it. Simply put, if the Bolshevik state could
not handle relatively minor forms of counter-revolution then
where does that leave Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b>? So while 
the period from October to May of 1918 was not trouble free, 
it was not one where the survival of the new regime looked 
to be seriously threatened as it was after that, particularly 
in 1919 and 1920. Thus "civil war" will be used, as it is
commonly done, to refer to the period from the Czech revolt
(late May 1918) to the final defeat of Wrangel (November 1920).
<p>
So, the period from October to May of 1918, while not trouble 
free, was not one where the survival of the new regime looked 
to be seriously threatened as it was to be in 1919 and 1920. 
This means attempts to push the start of the civil war back
to October 1917 (or even earlier) simply weakens the Leninist
argument. It still leaves the major problem for the <i>"blame it 
on the civil war"</i> Leninists, namely to explain why the months 
<b>before</b> May of 1918 saw soviets being closed down, the start 
of the suppression of the factory committees, restrictions on 
freedom of speech and association, plus the repression of 
opposition groups (like the anarchists). Either any level of
"civil war" makes Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> redundant or
the source of Bolshevik authoritarianism must be found elsewhere.
<p>
That covers the period <b>before</b> the start of the civil war. 
we now turn to the period <b>after</b> it finished. Here we find
the same problem, namely an <b>increase</b> of authoritarianism
even after the proclaimed cause for it (civil war) had ended.
<p>
After the White General Wrangel was forced back into the Crimea,
he had to evacuate his forced to Constantinople in November 1920. 
With this defeat the Russian civil war had come to an end. Those 
familiar with the history of the revolution will realise that 
it was some 4 months <b>later</b> that yet another massive strike wave
occurred, the Kronstadt revolt took place and the 10th Party 
Congress banned the existence of factions within the Bolshevik 
party itself. The repression of the strikes and Kronstadt revolt 
effectively destroying hope for mass pressure for change from 
below and the latter closing off the very last "legal" door for 
those who opposed the regime from the left.
<p>
It could be argued that the Bolsheviks were still fighting peasant 
insurrections and strikes across the country, but this has 
everything to do with Bolshevik policies and could only be 
considered <i>"counter-revolutionary"</i> if you think the Bolsheviks
had a monopoly of what socialism and revolution meant. In the
case of the Makhnovists in the Ukraine, the Bolsheviks started
that conflict by betraying them once Wrangel had been defeated.
As such, any resistance to Bolshevik rule by the working class
and peasantry of Russia indicated the lack of democracy within
the country rather than some sort of "counter-revolutionary"</i>
conflict.
<p>
So even the end of the Civil War causes problems for this 
defence of the Bolsheviks. Simply put, with the defeat of
the Whites it would be expected that some return to democratic
norms would happen. It did not, in fact the reverse happened.
Factions were banned, even the smallest forms of opposition 
was finally eliminated from both the party and society as a
whole. Those opposition groups and parties which had been 
tolerated during the civil war were finally smashed. Popular
revolts for reform, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the
strike wave which inspired it, were put down by force (see
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a> on 
these events). No form of opposition was 
tolerated, no freedom allowed. If civil war <b>was</b> the cause 
of Bolshevik authoritarianism, it seems strange that it got 
worse after it was finished.
<p>
So, to conclude. Bolshevik authoritarianism did not begun with
the start of the civil war. Anti-socialist policies were being
implemented before it started. Similarly, these policies did
not stop when the civil war ended, indeed the reverse happened.
This, then, is the main factual problem with the <i>"blame the civil 
war"</i> approach. Much of the worst of the suppression of working 
class democracy either happened <b>before</b> the Civil War started 
or <b>after</b> it had finished.
<p>
As we discuss in 
<a href="append44.html">"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?"</a>, the root causes for Bolshevik 
authoritarian post-October was Bolshevik ideology combined with 
state power. After all, how "democratic" is it to give all power 
to the Bolshevik party central committee? Surely socialism 
involves more than voting for a new government? Is it not about 
mass participation, the kind of participation centralised 
government precludes and Bolshevism fears as being influenced 
by <i>"bourgeois ideology"</i>? In such circumstances, moving from party 
rule to party dictatorship is not such leap. 
<p>
That "civil war" cannot explain what happened can be shown by a
counter-example which effectively shows that civil war did not 
inevitably mean party dictatorship over a state capitalist 
economy (and protesting workers and peasants!). The Makhnovists 
(an anarchist influenced partisan army) managed to defend the 
revolution and encourage soviet democracy, freedom of speech, 
and so on, while doing so (see the appendix <a href="append46.html">"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
Bolshevism?"</a> discusses the Makhnovists 
in some detail). In fact, the Bolsheviks tried to <b>ban</b> their 
soviet congresses. Which, of course, does not really fit in 
with the Bolsheviks being forced to be anti-democratic due to 
the pressures of civil war. 
<p>
So, in summary, civil war and imperialist intervention cannot be 
blamed for Bolshevik authoritarianism simply because the latter
had started before the former existed. Moreover, the example of
the Makhnovists suggests that Bolshevik policies during the civil
war were also not driven purely by the need for survival. As
Kropotkin argued at the time, <i>"all foreign armed intervention
necessarily strengthens the dictatorial tendencies of the
government . . . The evils inherent in a party dictatorship
have been accentuated by the conditions of war in which this 
party maintains its power. This state of war has been the pretext
for strengthening dictatorial methods which centralise the control
of every detail of life in the hands of the government, with the
effect of stopping an immense part of the ordinary activity of
the country. The evils natural to state communism have been 
increased ten-fold under the pretext that all our misery is 
due to foreign intervention."</i> [<b>Kropotkin's Revolutionary
Pamphlets</b>, p. 253] 
<p>
In other words, while the civil war may have increased Bolshevik 
authoritarianism, it did not create it nor did it end with the 
ending of hostilities.
<p>
<a name="app4"><h2>4 Did economic collapse and isolation destroy the revolution?</h2>
<p>
One of the most common explanations for the failure revolution is
that the Bolsheviks faced a terrible economic conditions, which 
forced them to be less than democratic. Combined with the failure 
of the revolution to spread to more advanced countries, party 
dictatorship, it is argued, was inevitable. In the words of
one Leninist:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In a country where the working class was a minority of the
population, where industry had been battered by years of war
and in conditions of White and imperialist encirclement, the
balance gradually titled towards greater coercion. Each
step of the way was forced on the Bolsheviks by dire and
pressing necessities."</i> [John Rees, <i>"In Defence of October,"</i>
<b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52, p. 41]
<p></blockquote>
He talks of <i>"economic devastation"</i> [p. 31] and quotes various
sources, including Victor Serge. According to Serge, the 
<i>"decline in production was uninterrupted. It should be noted 
that this decline had already begun before the revolution.
In 1916 the output of agricultural machinery, for example, was
down by 80 per cent compared with 1913. The year 1917 had been
marked by a particularly general, rapid and serious downturn.
The production figures for the principal industries in 1913 and
1918 were, in millions of <b>poods</b>: coal, from 1,738 to 731 
(42 per cent); iron ore, from 57, 887 to 1,686; cast-iron, 
from 256 to 31.5 (12.3 per cent); steel, from 259 to 24.5;
rails, from 39.4 to 1.1. As a percentage of 1913 production, 
output of linen fell to 75 per cent, of sugar to 24 per cent,
and tobacco to 19 per cent."</i> Moreover, production continued 
<i>"to fall until the end of civil war . . . For 1920, the following 
indices are given as a percentage of output in 1913: coal, 27 
per cent; cast iron, 2.4 per cent; linen textiles, 38 per cent."</i> 
[<b>Year One of the Russian Revolution</b>, p. 352 and p. 425]
<p>
According to Tony Cliff (another of Rees's references), the
war-damaged industry <i>"continued to run down"</i> in the spring of
1918: <i>"One of the causes of famine was the breakdown of 
transport . . . Industry was in a state of complete collapse.
Not only was there no food to feed the factory workers; there
was no raw material or fuel for industry . . . The collapse
of industry meant unemployment for the workers."</i> Cliff provides
economic indexes. For large scale industry, taking 1913 as the
base, 1917 saw production fall to 77%. In 1918, it was at 35%
of the 1913 figure, 1919 it was 26% and 1920 was 18%. 
Productivity per worker also fell, from 85% in 1917, to 
44% in 1918, 22% in 1919 and then 26% in 1920. [<b>Lenin</b>,
vol. 3, pp. 67-9, p. 86 and p. 85]
<p>
In such circumstances, it is argued, how can you expect the
Bolsheviks to subscribe to democratic and socialist norms?
This meant that the success or failure of the revolution
depended on whether the revolution spread to more advanced
countries. Leninist Duncan Hallas argues that the <i>"failure
of the German Revolution in 1918-19 . . . seems, in retrospect,
to have been decisive . . . for only substantial economic aid
from an advanced economy, in practice from a socialist 
Germany, could have reversed the disintegration of the 
Russian working class."</i> [<i>"Towards a revolutionary socialist
party,"</i> pp. 38-55, <b>Party and Class</b>, Alex Callinicos (ed.),
p. 44]
<p>
Anarchists are not convinced by these arguments. This is for
two reasons. 
<p>
Firstly, we are aware that revolutions are disruptive no matter 
where they occur (see 
<a href="append43.html#app1">section 1</a>) Moreover, Leninists are
meant to know this to. Simply put, there is a certain incredulous 
element to these arguments. After all, Lenin himself had argued 
that <i>"[e]very revolution . . . by its very nature implies a 
crisis, and a very deep crisis at that, both political and 
economic. This is irrespective of the crisis brought about 
by the war."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 30, p. 341] Serge 
also considered crisis as inevitable, arguing that the
<i>"conquest of production by the proletariat was in itself a
stupendous victory, one which saved the revolution's life. 
Undoubtedly, so thorough a recasting of all the organs of
production is impossible without a substantial decline in
output; undoubtedly, too, a proletariat cannot labour and
fight at the same time."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 361] As we discussed in 
detail in 
<a href="append43.html#app2">section 2</a>, 
this was a common Bolshevik position 
at the time (which, in turn, belatedly echoed anarchist 
arguments -- see 
<a href="append43.html#app1">section 1</a>). And if we look at other 
revolutions, we can say that this is the case.
<p>
Secondly, and more importantly, every revolution or near 
revolutionary situation has been accompanied by economic
crisis. For example, as we will shortly prove, Germany 
itself was in a state of serious economic collapse in 1918 
and 1919, a collapse which would have got worse is a 
Bolshevik-style revolution had occurred there. This means
that <b>if</b> Bolshevik authoritarianism is blamed on the 
state of the economy, it is not hard to conclude that 
<b>every</b> Bolshevik-style revolution will suffer the same
fate as the Russian one.
<p>
As we noted in 
<a href="append43.html#app1">section 1</a>, Kropotkin had argued from the
1880s that a revolution would be accompanied by economic 
disruption. Looking at subsequent revolutions, he has been
vindicated time and time again. Every revolution has been 
marked by economic disruption and falling production. This
suggests that the common Leninist idea that a successful
revolution in, say, Germany would have ensured the success
of the Russian Revolution is flawed. Looking at Europe 
during the period immediately after the first world war, we 
discover great economic hardship. To quote one Trotskyist 
editor:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In the major imperialist countries of Europe, production still
had not recovered from wartime destruction. A limited economic
upswing in 1919 and early 1920 enabled many demobilised 
soldiers to find work, and unemployment fell somewhat. 
Nonetheless, in 'victorious' France overall production in
1920 was still only two-thirds its pre-war level. In Germany
industrial production was little more than half its 1914
level, human consumption of grains was down 44 per cent,
and the economy was gripped by spiralling inflation. Average
per capita wages in Prague in 1920, adjusted for inflation,
were just over one-third of pre-war levels."</i> [John Riddell,
<i>"Introduction,"</i> <b>Proceedings and Documents of the Second
Congress, 1920</b>, vol. I, p. 17]
<p></blockquote>
Now, if economic collapse was responsible for Bolshevik 
authoritarianism and the subsequent failure of the revolution,
it seems hard to understand why an expansion of the revolution
into similarly crisis ridden countries would have had a major
impact in the development of the revolution. Since most Leninists
agree that the German Revolution, we will discuss this in more
detail before going onto other revolutions.
<p>
By 1918, Germany was in a bad state. Victor Serge noted <i>"the 
famine and economic collapse which caused the final ruin of
the Central Powers."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 361] The semi-blockade of 
Germany during the war badly effected the economy, the 
<i>"dynamic growth"</i> of which before the war <i>"had been largely 
dependent on the country's involvement in the world market"</i>. 
The war <i>"proved catastrophic to those who had depended on 
the world market and had been involved in the production of 
consumer goods . . . Slowly but surely the country slithered 
into austerity and ultimately economic collapse."</i> Food 
production suffered, with <i>"overall food production declined 
further after poor harvests in 1916 and 1917. Thus grain 
production, already well below its prewar levels, slumped 
from 21.8 million to 14.9 million tons in those two years."</i> 
[V. R. Berghahn, <b>Modern Germany</b>, p. 47, pp. 47-8, p. 50]
<p>
The parallels with pre-revolution Russia are striking and 
it is hardly surprising that revolution did break out in 
Germany in November 1918. Workers' councils sprang up all 
across the country, inspired in part by the example of the 
Russian soviets (and what people <b>thought</b> was going on in 
Russia under the Bolsheviks). A Social-Democratic government 
was founded, which used the Free Corps (right-wing volunteer 
troops) to crush the revolution from January 1919 onwards.
This meant that Germany in 1919 was marked by extensive civil 
war within the country. In January 1920, a state of siege 
was re-introduced across half the country. 
<p>
This social turmoil was matched by economic turmoil. As in 
Russia, Germany faced massive economic problems, problems 
which the revolution inherited. Taking 1928 as the base year, 
the index of industrial production in Germany was slightly 
lower in 1913, namely 98 in 1913 to 100 in 1928. In other 
words, Germany effectively lost 15 years of economic 
activity. In 1917, the index was 63 and by 1918 (the year 
of the revolution), it was 61 (i.e. industrial production 
had dropped by nearly 40%). In 1919, it fell again to 37, 
rising to 54 in 1920 and 65 in 1921. Thus, in 1919, the 
<i>"industrial production reached an all-time low"</i> and it 
<i>"took until the late 1920s for [food] production to recover 
its 1912 level . . . In 1921 grain production was still . . . 
some 30 per cent below the 1912 figure."</i> Coal production
was 69.1% of its 1913 level in 1920, falling to 32.8% in
1923. Iron production was 33.1% in 1920 and 25.6% in 1923.
Steel production likewise fell to 48.5% in 1920 and fell
again to 36% in 1923. [V. R. Berghahn, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 258, 
pp. 67-8, p. 71 and p. 259]
<p>
Significantly, one of the first acts of the Bolshevik government
towards the new German government was to <i>"the offer by the
Soviet authorities of two trainloads of grain for the 
hungry German population. It was a symbolical gesture and,
in view of desperate shortages in Russia itself, a generous
one."</i> The offer, perhaps unsurprisingly, was rejected in 
favour of grain from America. [E.H. Carr, <b>The Bolshevik 
Revolution</b>, vol. 3, p. 106]
<p>
The similarities between Germany and Russia are clear. As
noted above, in Russia, the index for large scale industry 
fell to 77 in 1917 from 100 in 1913, falling again to 35 in 
1918, 26 in 1919 and 18 in 1920. [Tony Cliff, <b>Lenin</b>, vol. 3, 
p. 86] In other words, a fall of 23% between 1913 and 1917, 
54.5% between 1917 and 1918, 25.7% in 1918 and 30.8% in 1919. 
A similar process occurred in Germany, where the fall 
production was 37.7% between 1913 and 1917, 8.2% between 
1917 and 1918 and 33.9% between 1918 and 1919 (the year of 
revolution). While production did rise in 1920 by 45.9%, 
production was still around 45% less than before the war. 
<p>
Thus, comparing the two countries we discover a similar 
picture of economic collapse. In the year the revolution
started, production had fallen by 23% in Russia (from 
1913 to 1917) and by 43% in Germany (from 1913 to 1918).
Once revolution had effectively started, production fell
even more. In Russia, it fell to 65% of its pre-war level
in 1918, in Germany it fell to 62% of its pre-war level 
in 1919. Of course, in Germany revolution did not go as
far as in Russia, and so production did rise somewhat in 
1920 and afterwards. What is significant is that in 1923,
production fell dramatically by 34% (from around 70% of its
pre-war level to around 45% of that level). This economic
collapse did not deter the Communists from trying to provoke 
a revolution in Germany that year, so suggesting that economic 
disruption played no role in their evaluation of the success 
of a revolution. 
<p>
This economic chaos in Germany is never mentioned by Leninists
when they discuss the <i>"objective factors"</i> facing the Russian
Revolution. However, once these facts are taken into account,
the superficiality of the typical Leninist explanation for the
degeneration of the revolution becomes obvious. The very 
problems which, it is claimed, forced the Bolsheviks to 
act as they did also were rampant in Germany. If economic
collapse made socialism impossible in Russia, it would 
surely have had the same effect in Germany (and any social 
revolution would also have faced more disruption than actually 
faced post 1919 in Germany). This means, given that the economic 
collapse in both 1918/19 and 1923 was as bad as that facing 
Russia in 1918 and that the Bolsheviks had started to undermine 
soviet and military democracy along with workers' control by 
spring and summer of that year (see 
<a href="append43.html#app5">section 5</a>), to blame 
Bolshevik actions on economic collapse would mean that any 
German revolution would have been subject to the same 
authoritarianism <b>if</b> the roots of Bolshevik authoritarianism
were forced by economic events rather than a product of applying
a specific political ideology via state power. Few Leninists 
draw this obvious conclusion from their own arguments although 
there is no reason for them not to.
<p> 
So the German Revolution was facing the same problems the 
Russian one was. It seems unlikely, therefore, that a 
successful German revolution would have been that much aid 
to Russia. This means that when John Rees argues that giving
machinery or goods to the peasants in return for grain instead 
of simply seizing it required <i>"revolution in Germany, or at
least the revival of industry"</i> in Russia, he completely fails
to indicate the troubles facing the German revolution. <i>"Without 
a successful German revolution,"</i> he writes, <i>"the Bolsheviks 
were thrown back into a bloody civil war with only limited 
resources. The revolution was under siege."</i> [John Rees, <i>"In 
Defence of October,"</i> pp. 3-82, <b>International Socialism</b>, 
no. 52, p. 40 and p. 29] Yet given the state of the German 
economy at the time, it is hard to see how much help a
successful German revolution would have been. As such, his
belief that a successful German Revolution would have mitigated
Bolshevik authoritarianism seems exactly that, a belief without
any real evidence to support it (and let us not forget, Bolshevik
authoritarianism had started before the civil war broke out -- 
see 
<a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a>). 
Moreover, <b>if</b> the pro-Bolshevik argument 
Rees is expounding <b>is</b> correct, then the German Revolution 
would have been subject to the same authoritarianism as befell 
the Bolshevik one simply because it was facing a similar economic
crisis. Luckily, anarchists argue, that this need not be the case
if libertarian principles are applied in a revolution:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The first months of emancipation will inevitably increase
consumption of goods and production will diminish. And, 
furthermore, any country achieving social revolution will be
surrounded by a ring of neighbours either unfriendly or
actually enemies . .  . The demands upon products will increase
while production decreases, and finally famine will come. There
is only one way of avoiding it. We should understand that as
soon as a revolutionary movement begins in any country the only
possible way out will consist in the workingmen [and women]
and peasants from the beginning taking the whole national
economy into their hands and organising it themselves . . . 
But they will not be convinced of this necessity except when
all responsibility for national economy, today in the hands of
a multitude of ministers and committees, is presented in a
simple form to each village and city, in every factory and shop,
as their own affair, and when they understand that they must
direct it themselves."</i> [<b>Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets</b>,
pp. 77-8]
<p></blockquote>
So, as regards the Russian and German revolution, Kropotkin's 
arguments were proven correct. The same can be said of other 
revolutions as well. Basing himself on the actual experiences 
of both the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, we can 
see why Kropotkin argued as he did. The Paris Commune, for 
example, was born after a  four-month-long siege <i>"had left 
the capital in a state of economic collapse. The winter had 
been the severest in living memory. Food and fuel had been 
the main problems . . . Unemployment was widespread. Thousands 
of demobilised soldiers wandered loose in Paris and joined in 
the general hunt for food, shelter and warmth. For most working 
men the only source of income was the 1.50 francs daily pay 
of the National Guard, which in effect had become a form of 
unemployment pay."</i> The city was <i>"near starving"</i> and by March 
it was <i>"in a state of economic and political crisis."</i> [Stewart 
Edwards, <i>"Introduction,"</i> <b>The Communards of Paris, 1871</b>, 
p. 23] Yet this economic collapse and isolation did not stop 
the commune from introducing and maintaining democratic forms 
of decision making, both political and economic. A similar
process occurred during the French Revolution, where mass 
participation via the <i>"sections"</i> was not hindered by economic
collapse. It was finally stopped by state action organised by
the Jacobins to destroy popular participation and initiative
(see Kropotkin's <b>The Great French Revolution</b> for details).
<p>
During the Spanish Revolution, <i>"overall Catalan production 
fell in the first year of war by 30 per cent, and in the 
cotton-working sector of the textile industry by twice as 
much. Overall unemployment (complete and partial) rose by 
nearly a quarter in the first year, and this despite the 
military mobilisation decreed in September 1936. The cost
of living quadrupled in just over two years; wages . . .
only doubled."</i> [Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 234] 
Markets, both internally and externally, for goods and raw 
materials were disrupted, not to mention the foreign blockade 
and the difficulties imposed in trying to buy products from 
other countries. These difficulties came on top of problems
caused by the great depression of the 1930s which affected
Spain along with most other countries. Yet, democratic norms 
of economic and social decision making continued in spite of
economic disruption. Ironically, given the subject of this
discussion, it was only once the Stalinist counter-revolution 
got going were they fatally undermined or destroyed.
<p>
Thus economic disruption need not automatically imply 
authoritarian policies. And just as well, given the fact that
revolution and economic disruption seem to go hand in hand.
<p>
Looking further afield, even <b>revolutionary</b> situations can
be accompanied with economic collapse. For example, the 
Argentine revolt which started in 2001 took place in the face
of massive economic collapse. The economy was a mess, with 
poverty and unemployment at disgusting levels. Four years of 
recession saw the poverty rate balloon from 31 to 53 percent 
of the population of 37 million, while unemployment climbed 
from 14 to 21.4 percent, according to official figures. Yet
in the face of such economic problems, working class people
acted collectively, forming popular assemblies and taking 
over workplaces.
<p>
The Great Depression of the 1930s in America saw a much deeper
economic contradiction. Indeed, it was as bad as that associated
with revolutionary Germany and Russia after the first world war.
According to Howard Zinn, after the stock market crash in 1929
<i>"the economy was stunned, barely moving. Over five thousand
banks closed and huge numbers of businesses, unable to get
money, closed too. Those that continued laid off employees and
cut the wages of those who remained, again and again. Industrial
production fell by 50 percent, and by 1933 perhaps 15 million
(no knew exactly) -- one-forth or one-third of the labour
force --  were out of work."</i> [<b>A People's History of the 
United States</b>, p. 378]
<p>
Specific industries were badly affected. For example, total GNP 
fell to 53.6% in 1933 compared to its 1929 value. The production 
of basic goods fell by much more. Iron and Steel saw a 59.3% 
decline, machinery a 61.6% decline and <i>"non-ferrous metals and 
products"</i> a 55.9% decline. Transport was also affected, with 
transportation equipment declining by 64.2% railroad car 
production dropping by 73.6% and locomotion production declining 
by 86.4%. Furniture production saw a decline of 57.9%. The 
workforce was equally affected, with unemployment reaching 25%
in 1933. In Chicago 40% of the workforce was unemployed. Union
membership, which had fallen from 5 million in 1920 to 3.4
million in 1929 fell to less than 3 million by 1933. [Lester 
V. Chandler, <b>America's Greatest Depression, 1929-1941</b>, p. 20,
p. 23, p. 34, p. 45 and p. 228]
<p>
Yet in the face of this economic collapse, no Leninist proclaimed
the impossibility of socialism. In fact, the reverse what the case.
Similar arguments could apply to, say, post-world war two Europe,
when economic collapse and war damage did not stop Trotskyists
looking forward to, and seeking, revolutions there. Nor did the
massive economic that occurred after the fall of Stalinism in 
Russia in the early 1990s deter Leninist calls for revolution. 
Indeed, you can rest assured that any drop in economic activity, 
no matter how large or small, will be accompanied by Leninist 
articles arguing for the immediate introduction of socialism.
And this was the case in 1917 as well, when economic crisis had 
been a fact of Russian life throughout the year. Lenin, for 
example, argued at the end of September of that <i>"Russia is 
threatened with an inevitable catastrophe . . .A catastrophe 
of extraordinary dimensions, and a famine, are unavoidably 
threatening . . . Half a year of revolution has passed. The 
catastrophe has come still closer. Things have come to a state 
of mass unemployment. Think of it: the country is suffering from 
a lack of commodities."</i> [<b>The Threatening Catastrophe and how
to Fight It</b>, p. 5] This did not stop him calling for revolution
and seizing power. Nor did this crisis stop the creation of 
democratic working class organisations, such as soviets, trade 
unions and factory committees being formed. It did not stop mass 
collective action to combat those difficulties. It appears, 
therefore, that while the economic crisis of 1917 did not stop 
the development of socialist tendencies to combat it, the 
seizure of power by a socialist party did. 
<p>
Given that no Leninist has argued that a revolution could take
place in Germany after the war or in the USA during the darkest
months of the Great Depression, the argument that the grim economic
conditions facing Bolshevik Russia made soviet democracy impossible
seem weak. By arguing that both Germany and the USA could create
a viable socialist revolution in economic conditions just as bad
as those facing Soviet Russia, the reasons why the Bolsheviks
created a party dictatorship must be looked for elsewhere. Given
this support for revolution in 1930s America and post-world war
I and II Europe, you would have to conclude that, for Leninists, 
economic collapse only makes socialism impossible once <b>they</b> are 
in power! Which is hardly convincing, or inspiring.
<p>
<a name="app5"><h2>5 Was the Russian working class atomised or <i>"declassed"</i>?</h2>
<p>
A standard Leninist explanation for the dictatorship of the
Bolshevik party (and subsequent rise of Stalinism) is based
on the <i>"atomisation"</i> or <i>"declassing"</i> of the proletariat. John
Rees summarises this argument as follows:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The civil war had reduced industry to rubble. The working 
class base of the workers' state, mobilises time and again
to defeat the Whites, the rock on which Bolshevik power 
stood, had disintegrated. The Bolsheviks survived three 
years of civil war and wars in intervention, but only at
the cost of reducing the working class to an atomised,
individualised mass, a fraction of its former size, and
no longer able to exercise the collective power that it
had done in 1917 . . . The bureaucracy of the workers'
state was left suspended in mid-air, its class base 
eroded and demoralised. Such conditions could not help
but have an effect on the machinery of the state and
organisation of the Bolshevik Party."</i> [<i>"In Defence of 
October,"</i> pp. 3-82, <b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52,
p. 65]
<p></blockquote>
It is these objective factors which, it is argued, explain why
the Bolshevik party substituted itself for the Russian working
class. <i>"Under such conditions,"</i> argues Tony Cliff, <i>"the class
base of the Bolshevik Party disintegrated -- not because of 
some mistakes in the policies of Bolshevism, not because of one
or another conception of Bolshevism regarding the role of the
party and its relation to the class -- but because of mightier
historical factors. The working class had become declassed . . .
Bolshevik 'substitutionism' . . . did not jump out of Lenin's
head as Minerva out of Zeus's, but was born of the objective
conditions of civil war in a peasant country, where a small
working class, reduced in weight, became fragmented and 
dissolved into the peasant masses."</i> [<b>Trotsky on Substitutionism</b>,
pp. 62-3] In other words, because the working class was so 
decimated the replacement of class power by party power was 
inevitable. 
<p>
Before discussing this argument, we should point out that this
argument dates back to Lenin. For example, he argued in 1921
that the proletariat, <i>"owning to the war and to the desperate 
poverty and ruin, has become declassed, i.e. dislodged from
its class groove, and had ceased to exist as proletariat . . .
the proletariat has disappeared."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 33,
p. 66] However, unlike his later-day followers, Lenin was sure
that while it <i>"would be absurd and ridiculous to deny that the 
fact that the proletariat is declassed is a handicap"</i> it could 
still <i>"fulfil its task of wining and holding state power."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 32, p. 412] As we will see, the context in
which Lenin started to make these arguments is important. 
<p>
Anarchists do not find these arguments particularly convincing.
This is for two reasons. Firstly, it seems incredulous to 
blame the civil war for the <i>"substitution"</i> of Bolshevik power
for working class power as party power had been Lenin's stated
aim in 1917 and October saw the seizure of power by the 
Bolsheviks, <b>not</b> the soviets. As we saw in 
<a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a>, 
the Bolsheviks started to gerrymander and disband soviets to
remain in power <b>before</b> the civil war started. As such, to
blame the civil war and the problems it caused for the usurpation
of power by the Bolsheviks seems unconvincing. Simply put, the
Bolsheviks had <i>"substituted"</i> itself for the proletariat from
the start, from the day it seized power in the October revolution.
<p>
Secondly, the fact is the Russian working class was far from
<i>"atomised."</i> Rather than being incapable of collective action,
as Leninists assert, Russia's workers were more than capable
of taking collective action throughout the civil war period.
The problem is, of course, that any such collective action
was directed <b>against</b> the Bolshevik party. This caused the
party no end of problems. After all, if the working class 
<b>was</b> the ruling class under the Bolsheviks, then who was
it striking against? Emma Goldman explains the issue well:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In my early period the question of strikes had puzzled me
a great deal. People had told me that the least attempt of
that kind was crushed and the participants sent to prison.
I had not believed it, and, as in all similar things, I 
turned to Zorin [a Bolshevik] for information. 'Strikes under 
the dictatorship of the proletariat!' he had proclaimed;
'there's no such thing.' He had even upbraided me for 
crediting such wild and impossible tales. Against whom, 
indeed, should the workers strike in Soviet Russia, he
argued. Against themselves? They were the masters of the
country, politically as well as industrially. To be sure,
there were some among the toilers who were not yet fully
class-conscious and aware of their own true interests.
These were sometimes disgruntled, but they were elements
incited by . . . self-seekers and enemies of the Revolution."</i>
[<b>Living My Life</b>, vol. 2, p. 872]
<p></blockquote>
This, unfortunately, still seems to be the case in pro-Bolshevik
accounts of the Revolution and its degeneration. After the
Bolshevik seizure of power, the working class as an active
agent almost immediately disappears from the accounts. This
is unsurprising, as it does not bode well for maintaining the
Bolshevik Myth to admit that workers were resisting the 
so-called <i>"proletarian dictatorship"</i> from the start. The notion
that the working class had <i>"disappeared"</i> fits into this selective
blindness well. Why discuss the actions of a class which did not
exist? Thus we have a logical circle from which reality can be
excluded: the working class is <i>"atomised"</i> and so cannot take
industrial action, evidence of industrial action need not be
looked for because the class is <i>"atomised."</i>
<p>
This can be seen from Lenin. For example, he proclaimed in 
October 1921 that <i>"the proletariat had disappeared."</i> Yet
this non-existent class had, in early 1921, taken collective
action which <i>"encompassed most of the country's industrial
regions."</i> [J. Aves, <b>Workers Against Lenin</b>, p. 111] 
Significantly, the Communists (then and now) refused to call 
the movement a strike, preferring the word <i>"volynka"</i> which
means <i>"go-slow."</i> The Menshevik leader Dan explained why:
<i>"The Bolshevik press carefully tried, at first, to hush up
the movement, then to hide its real size and character. 
Instead of calling the strike a strike, they thought up
various new terms -- <b>yolynka,</b> <b>buza</b> and so on."</i> [quoted
by Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 112] As Russian anarchist Ida Mett 
succinctly put it: <i>"And if the proletariat was that exhausted 
how come it was still capable of waging virtually total general 
strikes in the largest and most heavily industrialised cities?"</i> 
[Ida Mett, <b>The Kronstadt Rebellion</b>, p. 81] 
<p>
The year after Lenin proclaimed the proletariat <i>"disappeared"</i>
we discover similar evidence of working class collective
action. Ironically, it is Leninist Tony Cliff who presents
the evidence that <i>"the number of workers involved in labour 
conflicts was three and a half million, and in 1923, 1,592,800."</i> 
Strikes in state-owned workplaces in 1922 involved 192,000 
workers. [<b>State Capitalism in Russia</b>, p. 28] Given that
Cliff states that in 1921 there was only <i>"one and a quarter
million"</i> industrial workers <i>"proper"</i> (compared to over 
three million in 1917), this level of strikes is extremely
large -- particular for members of a class which did not,
according to Lenin which had <i>"disappeared"</i>!
<p>
Before providing more evidence for the existence of working
class collective struggle throughout the period 1918 to 1923,
it is necessary to place Lenin's comments on the <i>"declassing"</i>
of the working class in context. Rather than being the result
of a lack of industrial protest, Lenin's arguments were the
product of its opposite -- the rise in collective struggle by
the Russian working class. As one historian notes: <i>"As 
discontent amongst workers became more and more difficult to 
ignore, Lenin . . . began to argue that the consciousness of 
the working class had deteriorated . . . workers had become 
'declassed.'"</i> <i>"Lenin's analysis,"</i> he continues, <i>"had a 
superficial logic but it was based on a false conception of
working-class consciousness. There is little evidence to suggest 
that the demands that workers made at the end of 1920 . . . 
represented a fundamental change in aspirations since 1917
. . . [Moreover] an analysis of the industrial unrest in 1921 
shows that long-standing workers were prominent in protest."</i>
[J. Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 90 and pp. 90-1]
<p>
Lenin's pessimistic analysis of 1921 is in sharp contrast to
the optimistic mood of early 1920, reproduced by the defeat
of the White armies, in Bolshevik ranks. For example, writing 
in May, 1920, Trotsky seemed oblivious to the <i>"atomisation"</i> 
of the Russian working class, arguing that <i>"in spite of 
political tortures, physical sufferings and horrors, the 
labouring masses are infinitely distinct from political
decomposition, from moral collapse, or from apathy . . . Today, 
in all branches of industry, there is going on an energetic 
struggle for the establishment of strict labour discipline, 
and for the increase of the productivity of labour. The party 
organisations, the trade unions, the factory and workshop 
administrative committees, rival each one another in this 
respect, with the undivided support of the working class as
a whole."</i> Indeed, they <i>"concentrate their attention and will 
on collective problems"</i> (<i>"Thanks to a regime which . . . 
given their life a pursue"</i>!). Needless to say, the party had 
<i>"the undivided support of the public opinion of the working 
class as a whole."</i> [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. 6] 
<p>
The turn around in perspective after this period did not happen
by accident, independently of the working class resistance to
Bolshevik rule. After all, the defeat of the Whites in early
of 1920 saw the Bolsheviks take <i>"victory as a sign of the 
correctness of its ideological approach and set about the task 
of reconstruction on the basis of an intensification of War
Communism policies with redoubled determination."</i> This led
to <i>"an increase in industrial unrest in 1920,"</i> including 
<i>"serious strikes."</i> The resistance was <i>"becoming increasingly
politicised."</i> Thus, the stage was set for Lenin's turn around
and his talk of <i>"declassing."</i> In early 1921 <i>"Lenin argued that 
workers, who were no more demoralised than they were in early 
1920, had become 'declassed' in order to justify a political 
clamp-down."</i> [J. Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 37, p. 80 and p. 18]
<p>
Other historians also note this context. For example, while the 
<i>"working class had decreased in size and changed in composition,
. . . the protest movement from late 1920 made clear that it was 
not a negligible force and that in an inchoate way it retained a 
vision of socialism which was not identified entirely with Bolshevik 
power . . . Lenin's arguments on the declassing of the proletariat 
was more a way of avoiding this unpleasant truth than a real 
reflection of what remained, in Moscow at least, a substantial 
physical and ideological force."</i> [Richard Sakwa, </b> Soviet 
Communists in Power</b>, p. 261] In the words of Diane Koenker,
<i>"[i]f Lenin's perceptions of the situation were at all 
representative, it appears that the Bolshevik party made 
deurbanisation and declassing the scapegoat for its political
difficulties, when the party's own policies and its unwillingness
to accept changing proletarian attitudes were also to blame."</i>
Ironically, this was not the first time that the Bolsheviks
had blamed its problems on the lack of a <i>"true"</i> proletariat
and its replacement by "petty-bourgeois" elements, <i>"[t]his
was the same argument used to explain the Bolsheviks' lack
of success in the early months of 1917 -- that the cadres of
conscious proletarians were diluted by non-proletarian 
elements."</i> [<i>"Urbanisation and Deurbanisation in the Russian
Revolution and Civil War,"</i> pp. 424-450, <b>The Journal of 
Modern History</b>, vol. 57, no. 3, p. 449 and p. 428]
<p>
It should be noted that the <i>"declassing"</i> argument does have a 
superficial validity if you accept the logic of vanguardism.
After all, if you accept the premise that the party alone 
represents socialist consciousness and that the working class,
by its own efforts, can only reach a reformist level of 
political conscious (at best), then any deviation in working 
class support for the party obviously represents a drop in 
class consciousness or a <i>"declassing"</i> of the proletariat (see 
section H.5.1 -- <i><a href="secH5.html#sech51">"Why are 
vanguard parties anti-socialist?"</a></i>).
Thus working class protest against the party can be dismissed
as evidence of <i>"declassing"</i> which has to be suppressed rather 
than what it really is, namely evidence of working class 
autonomy and collective struggle for what it considers <b>its</b> 
interests to be against a new master class. In fact, the
<i>"declassing"</i> argument is related to the vanguardist position
which, in turn, justifies the dictatorship of the party <b>over</b>
the class (see section H.5.3 -- <i><a href="secH5.html#sech53">"Why 
does vanguardism imply party power?"</a></i>).
<p>
So the <i>"declassing"</i> argument is not some neutral statement of
fact. It was developed as a weapon on the class struggle, to
justify Bolshevik repression of collective working class 
struggle. To justify the continuation of Bolshevik party
dictatorship <b>over</b> the working class. This in turn explains 
why working class struggle during this period generally fails 
to get mentioned by later day Bolsheviks -- it simply undermines 
their justifications for Bolshevik dictatorship. After all, 
how can they say that the working class could not exercise
<i>"collective power"</i> when it was conducting mass strikes 
throughout Russia during the period 1918 to 1923?
<p>
As such, it does not seem that strange that in most Leninist 
account of the revolution post-October rarely, if ever, mention 
what the working class was actually doing. We do get statistics 
on the drop of the numbers of industrial workers in the cities 
(usually Petrograd and Moscow), but any discussion on working 
class protest and strikes is generally, at best, mentioned in 
passing or, usually, ignored utterly. Given this was meant to 
be a <i>"proletarian"</i> dictatorship, it seems strange this silence. 
It could be argued that this silence is due to the working class 
being decimated in number and/or <i>"declassed"</i> in terms of itself
perspective. This, however, seems unlikely, as collective working 
class protest was common place in Bolshevik Russia. The silence 
can be better understood by the fact this protest was directed 
<b>against</b> the Bolsheviks.
<p>
Which shows the bankruptcy of what can be called the <i>"statistical
tendency"</i> of analysing the Russian working class. While statistics
can tell us how many workers remained in Russia in, say, 1921, 
it does not prove any idea of their combativeness or their 
ability to take collective decisions and action. If numbers alone 
indicated the ability of workers to take part in collective 
struggle, then the massive labour struggles in 1930s American 
would not have taken place. Millions had been made redundant. 
At the Ford Motor Company, 128,000 workers had been employed in 
the spring of 1929. There were only 37,000 by August of 1931 (only 
29% of the 1929 figure). By the end of 1930, almost half of the 
280,000 textile mill workers in New England were out of work. 
[Howard Zinn, <b>A People's History of the United States</b>, p. 378] 
Yet in the face of these massive redundancies, the workers organised 
themselves and fought back. As we will indicate, the reduction in
the number of Russian workers did not restrict their ability to
make collective decisions and act collectively on them -- Bolshevik
repression <b>did.</b>
<p>
Moreover, while Leninists usually point to the fall in population in 
Petrograd and Moscow during the civil war, concentrating on 
these cities can be misleading. <i>"Using the Petrograd figures,"</i> 
notes Daniel R. Bower, <i>"historians have painted a lurid picture of 
flight from the cities. In 1918 alone the former capital
lost 850,000 people and was by itself responsible for 
one-half of the total urban population decline of the
Civil War years. If one sets aside aggregate figures to
determine the trend characteristic of most cities, however,
the experiences of Petrograd appears exception. Only a
handful of cities . . . lost half their population between
1917 and 1920, and even Moscow, which declined by over
40 percent, was not typical of most towns in the northern,
food-importing areas. A study of all cities . . . found
that the average decline in the north (167 towns in all,
excluding the capital cities) amounted to 24 percent 
between 1917 and 1920. Among the towns in the food-producing
areas in the southern and eastern regions of the Russian
Republic (a total of 128), the average decline came to
only 14 percent."</i> [<i>"'The city in danger': The Civil War
and the Russian Urban Population,"</i> <b>Party, State, and 
Society in the Russian Civil War</b>, Diane P. Koenker, 
William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), 
p. 61] Does this mean that the possibility of soviet 
democracy declined less in these towns? Yet the Bolsheviks
applied their dictatorships even there, suggesting that
declining urban populations was not the source of their
authoritarianism.
<p>
Equally, what are we to make of towns and cities which 
increased their populations? Some towns and cites actually 
grew in size. For example, Minsk, Samara, Khar'kov, Tiflis, Baku, 
Rostov-on-don, Tsaritsyn and Perm all grew in population 
(often by significant amounts) between 1910 and 1920 while other
cities shrunk. [Diane Koenker, <i>"Urbanisation and Deurbanisation 
in the Russian Revolution and Civil War,"</i> pp. 424-450, <b>The 
Journal of Modern History</b>, vol. 57, no. 3, p. 425] Does that
mention soviet democracy was possible in those towns but not
in Petrograd or Moscow? Or does the fact that the industrial 
workforce grew by 14.8% between October 1920 and April 1921 
mean that the possibility for soviet democracy also grew by 
a similar percentage? [J. Aves, <b>Workers Against Lenin</b>, 
p. 159]
<p> 
Then there is the question of when the reduction of workers
makes soviet democracy impossible. After all, between May 1917 
and April 1918 the city of Moscow lost 300,000 of its two
million inhabitants. Was soviet democracy impossible in April
1918 because of this? During the civil war, Moscow lost 
another 700,000 by 1920 (which is basically the same amount
per year). [Diane Koenker, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 424] When did this 
fall in population mean that soviet democracy was impossible?
Simply put, comparing figures of one year to another simply
fails to understand the dynamics at work, such as the impact 
of <i>"reasons of state"</i> and working class resistance to Bolshevik
rule. It, in effect, turns the attention away from the state
of working class autonomy and onto number crunching. 
<p>
Ultimately, the question of whether the working class was too
<i>"atomised"</i> to govern can only be answered by looking at the
class struggle in Russia during this period, by looking at
the strikes, demonstrations and protests that occurred.
Something Leninists rarely do. Needless to say, certain 
strike waves just cannot be ignored. The most obvious case 
is in Petrograd just before the Kronstadt revolt in early 
1921. After all, the strikes (and subsequent Bolshevik 
repression) inspired the sailors to revolt in solidarity 
with them. Faced with such events, the scale of the protest 
and Bolshevik repression is understated and the subject quickly 
changed. As we noted in 
<a href="append42.html#app10">section 10</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>, John Rees states that 
Kronstadt was <i>"preceded by a wave of serious but quickly 
resolved strikes."</i> [Rees, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 61] Needless to say, 
he does not mention that the strikes were <i>"resolved"</i> by 
<i>"serious"</i> force. Nor does he explain how <i>"an atomised, 
individualised mass"</i> <b>could</b> conduct such <i>"serious"</i> strikes, 
strikes which required martial law to break. Little wonder, 
then, Rees does expound on the strikes and what they meant 
in terms of the revolution and his own argument. 
<p>
Similarly, we find Victor Serge arguing that the <i>"working class 
often fretted and cursed; sometimes it lent an ear to the Menshevik 
agitators, as in the great strikes at Petrograd in the spring of 
1919. But once the choice was posed as that between the dictatorship 
of the White Generals and the dictatorship of its own party -- and 
there was not and could not be any other choice -- every fit man 
. . . came to stand . . . before the windows of the local party 
offices."</i> [<b>Year One of the Russian Revolution</b>, pp. 365-6] An 
exhausted and atomised working class capable of <i>"great strikes"</i>? 
That seems unlikely. Significantly, Serge does not mention the 
Bolshevik acts of repression used against the rebel workers (see 
below). This omission cannot help distort any conclusions to be
drawn from his account.
<p>
Which, incidentally, shows that the civil war was not all bad news
for the Bolsheviks. Faced with working class protest, they could
play the <i>"White card"</i> -- unless the workers went back to work, the
Whites would win. This explains why the strikes of early 1921 
were larger than before and explains why they were so important.
As the <i>"White card"</i> could no longer be played, the Bolshevik 
repression could not be excused in terms of the civil war. Indeed,
given working class opposition to the party, it would be fair to 
say that civil war actually <b>helped</b> the Bolsheviks remain in power. 
Without the threat of the Whites, the working class would <b>not</b> have 
tolerated the Bolsheviks longer than the Autumn of 1918.
<p>
The fact is that working class collective struggle against the new
regime and, consequently, Bolshevik repression, started before the 
outbreak of the civil war. It continued throughout the civil war
period and reached a climax in the early months of 1921. Even the
repression of the Kronstadt rebellion did not stop it, with strikes
continuing into 1923 (and, to a lesser degree, afterward). Indeed,
the history of the <i>"workers' state"</i> is a history of the state 
repressing the revolt of the workers. 
<p>
Needless to say, it would be impossible to give a full account
of working class resistance to Bolshevism. All we can do here is
give a flavour of what was happening and the sources for further
information. What should be clear from our account is that the 
idea that the working class in this period was incapable of 
collective organisation and struggle is false. As such, the idea
that Bolshevik <i>"substitutionism"</i> can be explained in such term is
also false. In addition, it will become clear that Bolshevik 
repression explicitly aimed to break the ability of workers to
organise and exercise collective power. As such, it seems 
hypocritical for modern-day Leninists to blame Bolshevik power 
on the <i>"atomisation"</i> of the working class when Bolshevik power 
was dependent on smashing working class collective organisation 
and resistance. Simply put, to remain in power Bolshevism, from
the start, had to crush working class power. This is to be 
expected, given the centralised nature of the state and the
assumptions of vanguardism. If you like, October 1917 did not
see the end of <i>"dual power."</i> Rather the Bolshevik state replaced
the bourgeois state and working class power (as expressed in its
collective struggle) came into conflict with it.
<p>
This struggle of the <i>"workers' state"</i> against the workers started
early in 1918. <i>"By the early summer of 1918,"</i> records one historian, 
<i>"there were widespread anti-Bolshevik protests. Armed clashes 
occurred in the factory districts of Petrograd and other industrial 
centres. Under the aegis of the Conference of Factory and Plant
Representatives . . . a general strike was set for July 2."</i> 
[William Rosenberg, <i>"Russian labour and Bolshevik Power,"</i> 
pp. 98-131, <b>The Workers' revolution in Russia</b>, 1917, Daniel H. 
Kaiser (ed.), p. 107] According to another historian, economic 
factors <i>"were soon to erode the standing of the Bolsheviks 
among Petrograd workers . . .  These developments, in turn, 
led in short order to worker protests, which then precipitated 
violent repressions against hostile workers. Such treatment 
further intensified the disenchantment of significant segments 
of Petrograd labour with Bolshevik-dominated Soviet rule."</i> 
[Alexander Rabinowitch, <b>Early Disenchantment with Bolshevik 
Rule</b>, p. 37]
<p>
The reasons for these protest movement were both political and
economic. The deepening economic crisis combined with protests
against Bolshevik authoritarianism to produce a wave of strikes
aiming for political change. Feeling that the soviets were 
distant and unresponsive to their needs (with good reason, given
Bolshevik postponement of soviet elections and gerrymandering
of the soviets), workers turned to direct action and the 
initially Menshevik inspired <i>"Conference of Factory and Plant
Representatives"</i> (also known as the <i>"Extraordinary Assembly of 
Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants"</i>) to voice their 
concerns. At its peak, reports <i>"estimated that out of 146,000 
workers still in Petrograd, as many as 100,000 supported the 
conference's goals."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 127] The aim of the Conference
(as per Menshevik policy) was to reform the existing system 
<i>"from within"</i> and, as such, the Conference operated openly.
As Alexander Rabinowitch notes, <i>"[F]or the Soviet authorities 
in Petrograd, the rise of the Extraordinary Assembly of 
Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants was an ominous 
portent of worker defection."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 37]
<p>
The first wave of outrage and protests occurred after Bolshevik 
Red Guards opened fire on a demonstration for the Constituent 
Assembly in early January (killing 21, according to Bolshevik 
sources). This demonstration <i>"was notable as the first time 
workers came out actively against the new regime. More ominously, 
it was also the first time forces representing soviet power used
violence against workers."</i> [David Mandel, <b>The Petrograd Workers 
and the Soviet Seizure of Power</b>, p. 355] It would not be the
last -- indeed repression by the <i>"workers' state"</i> of working 
class protest became a recurring feature of Bolshevism. 
<p>
By April <i>"it appeared that the government was now ready to go to 
whatever extremes it deemed necessary (including sanctioning the 
arrest and even shooting of workers) to quell labour unrest. This 
in turn led to intimidation, apathy, lethargy and passivity of 
other workers. In these circumstances, growth in support of the 
Assembly slowed down."</i> [Rabinowitch, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 40] The Assembly
aborted its plans for a May Day demonstration to protest the
government's policies were cancelled because of workers did not
respond to the appeals to demonstrate (in part because of 
<i>"Bolshevik threats against 'protesters'"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 40-1]).
<p>
This apathy did not last long. After early May events <i>"served 
to reinvigorate and temporarily radicalise the Assembly. These 
developments included yet another drastic drop in food supplies, 
the shooting of protesting housewives and workers in the
Petrograd suburb of Kolpino, the arbitrary arrest and abuse of 
workers in another Petrograd suburb, Sestroresk, the closure of 
newspapers and the arrests of individuals who had denounced the 
Kolpino and Sestroresk events, the intensification of labour 
unrest and conflict with the authorities in the Obukhov plant 
and in other Petrograd factories and districts."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 41]
<p> 
So the next major protest wave occurred in early May, 1918, after 
armed guards opened fire on protesting workers in Kolpino -- 
<i>"while the incident was hardly the first of its kind, it 
triggered a massive wave of indignation."</i> Work temporarily 
stopped in a number of plants. Between Kolpino and early July, 
more than seventy incidents occurred in Petrograd, including 
strikes, demonstrations and anti-Bolshevik meetings. Many of 
these meetings <i>"were protests against some form of Bolshevik 
repression: shootings, incidents of 'terroristic activities,' 
and arrests."</i> In some forty incidents <i>"worker's protests 
focused on these issues, and the data is surely understate 
the actual number by a wide margin. There were as well some 
eighteen separate strikes or some other work stoppages with 
an explicitly anti-Bolshevik character."</i> [Rosenberg, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 123 and pp. 123-4] Then, <i>"[a]t the very end of May and the 
beginning of June, when a wave of strikes to protest at bread 
shortages broke out in the Nevskii district, a majority of 
Assembly delegates . . . resolved to call on striking Nevskii 
district workers to return to work and continue preparation 
for a general city-wide strike."</i> [Rabinowitch, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 42]
Unfortunately, for the Assembly postponing the strikes until
a <i>"better time"</i> rather than encouraging them gave the authorities
time to prepare.
<p>
Things came to a head during and after the soviet elections in
June. On June 20th the Obukhov works issued an appeal to the 
Conference of Factory and Plant Representatives <i>"to declare a 
one-day strike of protest on June 25th"</i> against Bolshevik 
reprisals for the assassination of a leading Bolshevik. <i>"The 
Bolsheviks responded by 'invading' the whole Nevskii district 
with troops and shutting down Obukhov completely. Meetings 
everywhere were forbidden."</i> The workers were not intimidated
and <i>"[i]n scores of additional factories and shops protests
mounted and rapidly spread along the railroads."</i> At the June
26th <i>"extraordinary session"</i> of the Conference a general strike
was declared for July 2nd. Faced with this, the Bolsheviks set up 
<i>"machine guns . . . at main points throughout the Petrograd and 
Moscow railroad junctions, and elsewhere in both cities as well. 
Controls were tightened in factories. Meetings were forcefully 
dispersed."</i> [Rosenberg, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 126-7 and p. 127] In
other words, <i>"as a result of extreme government intimidation, 
the response to the Assembly's strike call on 2 July was 
negligible."</i> [Rabinowitch, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 42] This repression
was not trivial:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Among other things, all newspapers were forced to print on
their front pages Petrograd soviet resolutions condemning the
Assembly as part of the domestic and foreign counter-revolution.
Factories participating in the strike were warned that they
would be shut down and individual strikers were threatened
with the loss of work -- threats that were subsequently made
good. Printing plants suspected of opposition sympathies were
sealed, the offices of hostile trade unions were raided, 
martial law declared on rail lines, and armed strike-breaking
patrols with authority to take whatever action was necessary
to prevent work stoppages were formed and put on 24-hour
duty at key points throughout Petrograd."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 45]
<p></blockquote>
Needless to say, <i>"the Petrograd authorities drew on the dubious 
mandate provided by the stacked soviet elections to justify 
banning the Extraordinary Assembly."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 42] While
the Bolsheviks had won around 50% of workplace votes, as we
note in <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix 
on <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> they had gerrymandered the soviet
making the election results irrelevant. The fact the civil
war had started undoubtedly aided the Bolsheviks during this
election and the fact that the Mensheviks and SRs had campaigned
on a platform to win the soviet elections as the means of
replacing soviet democracy by the Constituent Assembly. Many
workers still viewed the soviets are <b>their</b> organisations
and aimed for a functioning soviet system rather than its end.
<p>
The Bolsheviks turned on the Conference, both locally and 
nationally, and arrested its leading activists, so decapitating 
the only independent working class organisation left in Russia.
As Rabinowitch argues, <i>"the Soviet authorities were profoundly 
worried by the threat posed by the Assembly and fully aware if 
their growing isolation from workers (their only real social 
base) . . . Petrograd Bolsheviks developed a siege mentality 
and a corresponding disposition to consider any action -- from 
suppression of the opposition press and manipulation of
elections to terror even against workers -- to be justified
in the struggle to retain power until the start of the
imminent world revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 43-4]
<p>
Similar events happened in other cities. As we discuss in 
<a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, the Bolsheviks had disbanded soviets elected
with non-Bolshevik majorities all across Russia and suppressed 
the resulting working class protest. In Moscow, workers also
organised a <i>"Conference"</i> movement and <i>"[r]esentment against 
the Bolsheviks was expressed through strikes and disturbances, 
which the authorities treated as arising from supply 
difficulties, from 'lack of consciousness,' and because of 
the 'criminal demagogy' of certain elements. Lack of support 
for current Bolshevik practices was treated as the absence 
of worker consciousness altogether, but the causes of the 
unrest was more complicated. In 1917 political issues 
gradually came to be perceived through the lens of party 
affiliation, but by mid-1918 party consciousness was
reversed and a general consciousness of workers' needs
restored. By July 1918 the protest movement had lost its
momentum in the face of severe repression and was engulfed
by the civil war."</i> In the light of the fate of workers'
protest, the May 16th resolution by the Bogatyr' Chemical
Plant calling (among other things) for <i>"freedom of 
speech and meeting, and an end to the shooting of 
citizens and workers"</i> seems to the point. Unsurprisingly,
<i>"[f]aced with political opposition within the soviets
and worker dissatisfaction in the factories Bolshevik 
power increasingly came to reply on the party apparatus
itself."</i> [Richard Sakwa, <i>"The Commune State in Moscow in 
1918,"</i> pp. 429-449, <b>Slavic Review</b>, vol. 46, no. 3/4, 
p. 442-3, p. 442 and p. 443]
<p>
Repression occurred elsewhere: <i>"In June 1918 workers in
Tula protested a cut in rations by boycotting the local
soviet. The regime declared martial law and arrested
the protestors. Strikes followed and were suppressed by
violence. In Sormovo, when a Menshevik-Social Revolutionary
newspaper was closed, 5,000 workers went on strike. Again
firearms were used to break the strike."</i> Other techniques 
were used to break resistance. For example, the regime
often threatened rebellious factories with a lock out,
which involved numerous layouts, new rules of discipline,
purges of workers' organisations and the introduction of
piece work. [Thomas F. Remington, <b>Building Socialism in 
Bolshevik Russia</b>, p. 105 and p. 107]
<p>
Rather than the Civil War disrupting the relationship between 
the vanguard party and the class it claimed to lead, it was 
in fact the Bolsheviks who did so in face of rising working 
class dissent and disillusionment in the spring of 1918. In 
fact, <i>"after the initial weeks of 'triumph' . . . Bolshevik 
labour relations after October"</i> changed and <i>"soon lead to 
open conflict, repression, and the consolidation of Bolshevik 
dictatorship over the proletariat in place of proletarian 
dictatorship itself."</i> [Rosenberg, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 117]
<p>
Given this, the outbreak of the civil war consolidated workers
support for the Bolsheviks and saved it from even more 
damaging workers' unrest. As Thomas F. Remington puts it:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"At various times groups of workers rebelled against Bolshevik 
rule But for the most part, forced to choose between 'their'
regime and the unknown horrors of a White dictatorship, 
most willingly defended the Bolshevik cause. The effect of
this dilemma may be seen in the periodic swings in the
workers' political temper. When Soviet rule stood in peril,
the war simulated a spirit of solidarity and spared the 
regime the defection of its proletarian base. During lulls
in the fighting, strikes and demonstrations broke out."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 101]
<p></blockquote>
Which, as we will discuss, explains the increased repression
in 1921 and onwards. Without the Whites, the Bolsheviks had
to enforce their rule directly onto workers who did not want
it. Ironically, the Whites <b>helped</b> the Bolsheviks remain in 
power. Without the start of the civil war, labour protest
would have either ended Bolshevik rule or exposed it as a 
dictatorial regime.
<p>
This process of workers protest and state repression continued 
in 1919 and subsequent years. It followed a cyclical pattern.
There was a <i>"new outbreak of strikes in March 1919 after the
collapse of Germany and the Bolshevik re-conquest of the
Ukraine. The pattern of repression was also repeated. A strike
at a galosh factory in early 1919 was followed by the closing
of the factory, the firing of a number of workers, and
the supervised re-election of its factory committee. The
Soviet garrison at Astrakhan mutinied after its bread ration
was cut. A strike among the city's workers followed in support.
A meeting of 10,000 Astrakhan workers was suddenly surrounded
by loyal troops, who fired on the crowd with machine guns and
hand grenades, killing 2,000. Another 2,000, taken prisoner,
were subsequently executed. In Tula, when strikes at the defence
factories stopped production for five days, the government
responded by distributing more grain and arresting the strike
organisers . . . strikes at Putilov again broke out, at first
related to the food crisis . . . The government treated the
strike as an act of counter-revolution and responded with a
substantial political purge and re-organisation. An official
investigation . . . concluded that many shop committees were
led by [Left] Social Revolutionaries . . . These committees 
were abolished and management representatives were appointed 
in their stead."</i> [Remington, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 109-10]
<p>
The strikes in Petrograd centred around the Putilov shows the
response of the authorities to the <i>"atomised"</i> workers who
were taking collective action. <i>"In March fifteen factories
struck together (roughly 35,000 workers were involved) . . . 
workers at Putilov assembled and sent a delegation to the
works committee . .  .and put forward a number of demands
. . . On 12 March Putilov stopped work. Its workers called
to others to join them, and some of them came out in a
demonstration where they were fired upon by Cheka troops.
Strikes then broke out at fourteen other enterprises . . .
On Sunday 16 March an appeal was made to the Putilovtsy
to return to normal working the following day or . . . 
the sailors and soldiers would be brought in. After a
poor showing on the Monday, the sailor went in, and 
120 workers were arrested; the sailors remained until the
21st and by the 22nd normal work had been resumed."</i> In
July strikes broke out again in response to the cancellation
of holidays which involved 25,000 workers in 31 strikes. 
[Mary McAuley, <b>Bread and Justice</b>, pp. 251-253 and p. 254]
<p>
In the Moscow area, while it is <i>"impossible to say what proportion 
of workers were involved in the various disturbances,"</i> following 
the lull after the defeat of the workers' conference movement in 
mid-1918 <i>"each wave of unrest was more powerful than the last, 
culminating in the mass movement from late 1920."</i> For example, 
at the end of June 1919, <i>"a Moscow committee of defence (KOM) 
was formed to deal with the rising tide of disturbances . . . 
KOM concentrated emergency power in its hands, overriding the 
Moscow Soviet, and demanding obedience from the population. The 
disturbances died down under the pressure of repression."</i> 
[Richard Sakwa, <b>Soviet Communists in Power</b>, p. 94 and pp. 94-5] 
<p>
Vladimir Brovkin summarises the data he provides in his
essay <i>"Workers' Unrest and the Bolshevik Response in 1919"</i>
(reproduced along with data from other years in his book 
<b>Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War</b>) as follows:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Data on one strike in one city may be dismissed as incidental.
When, however, evidence is available from various sources on
simultaneous independent strikes in different cities and
overall picture begins to emerge . . . Workers' unrest took 
place in Russia's biggest and most important industrial 
centres: Moscow, Petrograd, Tver', Tula, Briansk, and Sormovo.
 Strikes affected the largest industries . . . Workers' 
demands reflected their grievances . .  . The greatest 
diversity was in workers' explicitly political demands or 
expression of political opinion . . . all workers' resolutions
demanded free and fair elections to the soviets . . . some
workers . . . demanded the Constituent Assembly . . . 
<p>
"The strikes of 1919 . . . fill an important gap in the 
development of the popular movement between October 1917
and February 1921. On the one hand, they should be seen as
antecedents of similar strikes in February 1921, which 
forced the Communists to abandon war communism. In the 
capitals, workers, just as the Kronstadt sailors had,
still wanted fairly elected soviets and not a party
dictatorship. On the other hand, the strikes continued
the protests that had began in the summer of 1918. The
variety of behavioural patterns displayed during the 
strikes points to a profound continuity. . .
<p>
"In all known cases the Bolsheviks' initial response to
strikes was to ban public meetings and rallies . . . In
several cities . . . the authorities confiscated strikers'
food rations in order to suppress the strike. In at least
five cities . . . the Bolsheviks occupied the striking
plant and dismissed the strikers en masse . . . In all 
known cases the Bolsheviks arrested strikers . . . In 
Petrograd, Briansk, and Astrakhan' the Bolsheviks executed
striking workers."</i> [<b>Slavic Review</b>, vol. 49, no. 3,
pp. 370-2]

<p></blockquote>
Nor was this collective struggle stop in 1919 -- <i>"strike action 
remained endemic in the first nine months of 1920"</i> and <i>"in the 
first six months of 1920 strikes had occurred in seventy-seven 
per cent of middle-sized and large works."</i> For the Petrograd 
province, soviet figures state that in 1919 there were 52 strikes 
with 65,625 participants and in 1920 73 strikes with 85,645, both 
high figures as according to one set of figures, which are by no 
means the lowest, there were 109,100 workers there. <i>"Strikes 
in 1920,"</i> recounts Aves, <i>"were frequently a direct protest 
against the intensification of War Communist labour policies, 
the militarisation of labour, the implementation of one-man 
management and the struggle against absenteeism, as well as 
food supply difficulties. The Communist Party press carried 
numerous articles attacking the slogan of 'free labour.'"</i> 
[J. Aves, <b>Workers Against Lenin</b>, p. 69 and p. 74]
<p>
The spring of 1920 <i>"saw discontent on the railways all over 
the country."</i> This continued throughout the year. For example, 
the Aleksansrovskii locomotive works at the end of August, 
workers sent three representatives to the works commissar 
who had them arrested. Three days later, the workers stopped 
work and demanded their release. The authorities locked the 
workers out of the works and a guard of 70 sailors were placed 
outside the enterprise. The Cheka arrested the workers' soviet 
delegates (who were from the SR (Minority) list) as well as 
thirty workers. <i>"The opportunity was taken to carry out a 
general round-up"</i> and arrests were made at other works. 
After the arrests, <i>"a meeting was held to elect new soviet 
delegates but the workers refused to co-operate and a 
further 150 were arrested and exiled to Murmansk or 
transferred to other workshops."</i> [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 44 
and pp. 46-7]
<p>
Strikes occurred in other places, such as Tula were the
workforce <i>"contained a high proportion of skilled, 
long-standing, hereditary workers."</i> The <i>"all-out strike"</i> 
started at the start of June and on 8 June the local
newspaper published a declaration from the Tula soviet
threatening the strikers with <i>"the most repressive measures,
including the application of the highest measure of
punishment"</i> (i.e. executions). The following day the 
city was declared to be under a <i>"state of siege"</i> by the
local military authorities. The strikers lost ration cards
and by 11 June there had been a return to work. Twenty-three
workers were sentenced to a forced labour camp until the
end of the war. However, the <i>"combined impact of these
measures did not prevent further unrest and the workers
put forward new demands."</i> On 19 June, the soviet approved
<i>"a programme for the suppression of counter-revolution"</i>
and <i>"the transfer of Tula to the position of an armed 
camp."</i> The Tula strike <i>"highlights the way in which workers,
particularly skilled workers who were products of 
long-standing shop-floor subcultures and hierarchies,
retained the capability as well as the will to defend
their interests."</i> [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 50-55]
<p>
While strike activity <i>"was most common in Petrograd,
where there had been 2.5 strikers for every workman,"</i>
the figure for Moscow was 1.75 and 1.5 in Kazan. In
early March <i>"a wave of strikes hit the Volga town of
Samara"</i> when a strike by printers in spread to other
enterprises. <i>"Strike action in Moscow did not just
include traditionally militant male metal workers."</i>
Textile workers, tram workers and printers all took
strike action. [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 69, p. 72 and 
pp. 77-8]
<p>
Thus strike action was a constant feature of civil war
Bolshevik Russia. Rather than being an <i>"atomised"</i> mass,
the workers repeatedly organised themselves, made their
demands and took collective action to achieve them. In
response, the Bolshevik regime used state repression to
break this collective activity. As such, <b>if</b> the rise
of Stalinism can, as modern-day Leninists argue, be 
explained by the <i>"atomisation"</i> of the working class
during the civil war then the Bolshevik regime and its
repression should be credited with ensuring this happened.
<p>
The end of the civil war did not see the end of working 
class protest. Quite the reverse. In February and March 1921 
<i>"industrial unrest broke out in a nation-wide wave of 
discontent . . . General strikes, or very widespread 
unrest, hit Petrograd, Moscow, Saratov and Ekaterinoslavl."</i> 
Only one major industrial region was unaffected. As noted
above, the Bolsheviks refused to call this movement a 
strike wave, preferring the term <b>volynka</b> (which means
"go-slow"</i>), yet <i>"the continued use of the term can be
justified not to hide its significance but to show that
workers' protest consisted not just of strikes but also 
of factory occupations, 'Italian strikes,' demonstrations,
mass meetings, the beating up of communists and so on."</i>
[Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 109 and p. 112]
<p>
In Petrograd in the beginning of February <i>"strikes were
becoming an everyday occurrence"</i> and by <i>"the third week
of February the situation rapidly deteriorated."</i> The city
was rocked by strikes, meetings and demonstrations. In 
response to the general strike the Bolsheviks replied 
with a <i>"military clamp-down, mass arrests and other coercive 
measures, such as the closure of enterprises, the purging of 
the workforce and stopping of rations which accompanied 
them."</i> As we discuss in <a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>, 
these strikes produced the Kronstadt revolt (and, as noted in 
<a href="append42.html#app10">section 10</a> of that appendix, the
Bolshevik repression ensured the Petrograd workers did not
act with the sailors). [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 113, p. 120]
<p>
A similar process of workers revolt and state repression 
occurred in Moscow at the same time. There <i>"industrial
unrest"</i> also <i>"turned into open confrontation and protest
spilled on to the streets."</i> Meetings were held, followed
by demonstrations and strikes. Over the next few days 
strikes spread to other districts. Workers demanded now
elections to the soviets be held. Striking railway workers
sent emissaries along the railway to spread the strike
and strikes spread to outside Moscow city itself and into
the surrounding provinces. Unsurprisingly, Moscow and
Moscow province were put under martial law and SR and
menshevik leaders were arrested. [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 130
pp. 139-144] However, <i>"military units called in"</i> against 
striking workers <i>"refused to open fire, and they were 
replaced by the armed communist detachments"</i> who did. 
<i>"The following day several factories went on strike"</i> 
and troops <i>"disarmed and locked in as a precaution"</i> by 
the government against possible fraternising. On February 
23rd, <i>"Moscow was placed under martial law with a 24-hour 
watch on factories by the communist detachments and 
trustworthy army units."</i> [Richard Sakwa, <b>Soviet 
Communists in Power</b>, p. 94 and pp. 94-5 and p. 245] The 
mixture of (economic) concessions and coercion broke the
will of the strikers.
<p>
Strikes and protests occurred all across Russia at this
time (see Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>). In Saratov, the strike started
on March 3 when railroad shop workers did not return to
their benches and instead rallied to discuss an anticipated
further reduction in food rations. <i>"Led by a former 
Communist, the railroad workers debated resolutions recently
carried by the Moscow proletariat . . . The next day the
strike spread to the metallurgical plants and to most other
large factories, as Saratov workers elected representatives
to an independent commission charged with evaluating the
functioning of all economic organs. When it convened, the
body called for the re-election of the soviets and immediate
release of political prisoners."</i> The ration cut <i>"represent[ed]
the catalyst, but not the cause, of the labour unrest."</i> 
While <i>"the turmoil touched all strata of the proletariat,
male and female alike, the initiative for the disturbances
came from the skilled stratum that the Communists normally
deemed the most conscious."</i> The Communists shut down the
commission and they <i>"expected workers to protest the
dissolution of their elected representatives"</i> and so they
<i>"set up a Provincial Revolutionary Committee . . . which
introduced martial law both in the city and the garrison.
It arrested the ringleaders of the workers' movement . . .
the police crackdown depressed the workers' movement and
the activities of the rival socialist parties."</i> The
Cheka sentenced 219 people to death. [Donald J. Raleigh,
<b>Experiencing Russia's Civil War</b>, p. 379, p. 387, p. 388, 
pp. 388-9]
<p>
A similar <i>"little Kronstadt"</i> broke out in the Ukrainian town
of Ekaterinoslavl at the end of May. The workers there
<i>"clearly had strong traditions of organisation"</i> and elected
a strike committee of fifteen which <i>"put out a series of
political ultimatums that were very similar in content to
the demands of the Kronstadt rebels."</i> On 1 June, <i>"by a 
pre-arranged signal"</i> workers went on strike throughout the
town, with workers joining a meeting of the railway workers.
The local Communist Party leader was instructed <i>"to put 
down the rebellion without mercy . . . Use Budennyi's 
cavalry."</i> The strikers prepared a train and its driver
instructed to spread the strike throughout the network.
Telegraph operators were told to send messages throughout
the Soviet Republic calling for <i>"free soviets"</i> and soon
an area up to fifty miles around the town was affected.
The Communists used the Cheka to crush the movement,
carrying out mass arrests and shooting 15 workers (and
dumping their bodies in the River Dnepr). [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
pp. 171-3]
<p>
So faced with an <i>"atomised"</i> working class during the period
of 1918 and 1921, the Bolsheviks had to respond with martial 
law, mass arrests and shootings:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"It is not possible to estimate with any degree of accuracy 
how many workers were shot by the Cheka during 1918-1921 for 
participation in labour protest. However, an examination of
individual cases suggests that shootings were employed to
inspire terror and were not simply used in the occasional
extreme case."</i> [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 35]
<p></blockquote>
Post-Kronstadt, similar Bolshevik responses to labour unrest 
continued. The economic crisis of 1921 which accompanied the 
introduction of the NEP saw unemployment rise yet <i>"[d]espite
the heavy toll of redundancies, the ability to organise strikes 
did not disappear. Strike statistics for 1921 continue to 
provide only a very rough indicator of the true scale of
industrial unrest and appear not to include the first half
of the year."</i> The spring of 1922 saw Soviet Russia <i>"hit by
a new strike wave"</i> and the strikes <i>"continued to reflect 
enterprise traditions."</i> That year saw 538 strikes with 
197,022 participants recorded. [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 183 and
p. 184]
<p>
The following year saw more strikes: <i>"In July 1923 more than 
100 enterprises employing a total of some 50,000 people were 
on strike. In August figures totalled some 140 enterprises 
and 80,00 workers. In September and November the strike
wave continued unabated."</i> As in the civil war, the managers 
shut down plants, fired the workers and rehired them on an
individual basis. In this way, trouble-makers were dismissed
and <i>"order"</i> restored. <i>"The pattern of workers' action and
Bolshevik reaction played itself out frequently in dozens of
other strikes. The Bolsheviks acted with the explicit purpose
of rooting out the possibility of further protest. They tried
to condition workers that labour protest was futile."</i> The
GPU <i>"used force to disperse workers demonstrating with the
arrested strike leaders."</i> [Vladimir Brovkin, <b>Russia 
After Lenin</b>, p. 174, pp. 174-5 and p. 175]
<p>
In Moscow, for example, <i>"[b]etween 1921 and 1926, all branches
of industry and transport . . . experienced wildcat strikes
or other spontaneous labour disturbances. Strike waves peaked
in the winter of 1920-21 . . . and in the summer and fall of
1922 and 1923 . . . during July-December 1922, for example,
65 strikes and 209 other industrial disturbances were recorded
in Moscow's state enterprises."</i> Metalworkers were arguably
the most active sector at this time while <i>"a number of large
strikes"</i> took place in the textile industry (where <i>"strikes
were sometimes co-ordinated by spontaneously organised strike
committees or 'parallel' factory committees"</i>). And in spite
of repression, <i>"politicisation continued to characterise many
labour struggles"</i> and, as before, <i>"spontaneous labour activism
hindered not only the party's economic program but also the
political and social stabilisation of the factories."</i> [John 
B. Hatch, <b>Labour Conflict in Moscow, 1921-1925</b>, p. 62, p. 63, 
p. 65, pp. 66-7 and p. 67]
<p>
Given this collective rebellion all across the industrial centres 
of Russia throughout the Civil War and after, it hard to take 
seriously claims that Bolshevik authoritarian was the product
of an <i>"atomisation"</i> or <i>"declassing"</i> of the working class or
that it had ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Clearly it 
had and was capable of collective action and organisation -- 
until it was repressed by the Bolsheviks and even then it keep
returning. This implies that a key factor in rise of Bolshevik 
authoritarian was political -- the simple fact that the workers 
would not vote Bolshevik in free soviet and union elections and 
so they were not allowed to. As one Soviet Historian put it, 
<i>"taking the account of the mood of the workers, the demand for 
free elections to the soviets [raised in early 1921] meant the 
implementation in practice of the infamous slogan of soviets 
without communists,"</i> although there is little evidence that the 
strikers actually raised that <i>"infamous"</i> slogan. [quoted by Aves, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 123] It should also be noted that Bolshevik orthodoxy 
at the time stressed the necessity of Party dictatorship <b>over</b>
the workers (see <a href="secH1.html#sech12">section H.1.2</a> for details). 
<p>
Nor can it be said that this struggle can be blamed on <i>"declassed"</i>
elements within the working class itself. In her study of this
question, Diane Koenker notes that 90% of the change in the number 
of workers in Moscow <i>"is accounted for by men. Working women did
not leave the city,"</i> their numbers dropping from 90,000 in 1918
to 80,000 in 1920. Why these 80,000 women workers should be denied
a say in their own revolution is not clear, given the arguments of
the pro-Bolshevik left. After all, the same workers remained in
roughly the same numbers. Looking at the male worker population, 
their numbers fell from 215,000 to 124,000 during the same period.
However, <i>"the skilled workers whose class consciousness and 
revolutionary zeal had helped win the October revolution did not
entirely disappear, and the women who remained were likely to 
be family members of these veterans of 1917."</i> It was <i>"the loss
of young activists rather than all skilled and class conscious
urban workers that caused the level of Bolshevik support to
decline during the civil war."</i> Indeed <i>"the workers who remained
in the city were among the most urbanised elements."</i> In summary,
<i>"the deurbanisation of those years represented a change in
quantity but not entirely in quality in the cities. The proletariat
declined in the city, but it did not wither away . . . a core
of the city's working class remained."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 440, p. 442, 
p. 447 and p. 449] 
<p>
As Russian anarchist Ida Mett argued decades before in relation 
to the strikes in early 1921:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"The population was drifting away from the capital. All who had 
relatives in the country had rejoined them. The authentic
proletariat remained till the end, having the most slender 
connections with the countryside.
<p>
"This fact must be emphasised, in order to nail the official lies 
seeking to attribute the Petrograd strikes that were soon to break
out to peasant elements, 'insufficiently steeled in proletarian 
ideas.' The real situation was the very opposite. A few workers
were seeking refuge in the countryside. The bulk remained. There 
was certainly no exodus of peasants into the starving towns! . . .
It was the famous Petrograd proletariat, the proletariat which had 
played such a leading role in both previous revolutions, that was 
finally to resort to the classical weapon of the class struggle: 
the strike."</i> [<b>The Kronstadt Uprising</b>, p. 36]
<p></blockquote>
In terms of struggle, links between the events in 1917 and
those during the civil war also exist. For example Jonathan
Aves writes that there were <i>"distinct elements of continuity
between the industrial unrest in 1920 and 1917. This is not
surprising since the form of industrial unrest in 1920, as
in the pre-revolutionary period and in 1917, was closely
bound up with enterprise traditions and shop-floor 
sub-cultures. The size of the Russian industrial workforce
had declined steeply during the Civil War but where enterprises
stayed open . . . their traditions of industrial unrest in
1920 shows that such sub-cultures were still capable of 
providing the leaders and shared values on which resistance
to labour policies based on coercion and Communist Party
enthusiasm could be organised. As might be anticipated,
the leaders of unrest were often to be found amongst the
skilled male workers who enjoyed positions of authority
in the informal shop-floor hierarchies."</i> Moreover, <i>"despite
intense repression, small groups of politicised activists
were also important in initiating protest and some enterprises
developed traditions of opposition to the communists."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 39]
<p>
Looking at the strike wave of early 1921 in Petrograd, the 
<i>"strongest reason for accepting the idea that it was established 
workers who were behind the <b>volynka</b> [i.e. the strike wave] is 
the form and course of protest. Traditions of protest reaching 
back through the spring of 1918 to 1917 and beyond were an 
important factor in the organisation of the <b>volynka.</b> . . . 
There was also a degree of organisation . . . which belies the 
impression of a spontaneous outburst."</i> [Aves, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 126]
<p>
Clearly, then, the idea that the Russian working class was 
atomised or declassed cannot be defended given this series of
struggles and state repression. In fact, as noted, the notion
that the workers were <i>"declassed"</i> was used to justify state 
repression of collective working class struggle. <i>"The thought 
oppressed me,"</i> wrote Emma Goldman, <i>"that what [the Bolsheviks] 
called 'defence of the Revolution' was really only the defence 
of [their] party in power."</i> [<b>My Disillusionment in Russia</b>, 
p. 57] She was right -- the class struggle in Bolshevik Russia 
did not stop, it continued except the ruling class had changed
from bourgeoisie to Bolshevik dictatorship.
<p>
Faced with this collective resistance to Bolshevism, the Leninist
could argue that while the working class was capable of collective
decision making and action, the nature of that action was suspect.
This arguments rests on the premise that the <i>"advanced"</i> workers
(i.e. party members) left the workplace for the front or for 
government posts, leaving the <i>"backward"</i> workers behind. This 
argument is often used, particularly in regard to the Kronstadt
revolt of 1921 (see <a href="append42.html#app8">section 8</a> of the
appendix on <a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>). 
<p>
Of course, this argument raises more problems that its solves.
In <b>any</b> revolution the <i>"most politically consciousness"</i> tend 
to volunteer to go to the front first and, of course, tend to
be elected as delegates to committees of various kinds (local, 
regional and national). There is little that can be done about it.
Needless to say, if <i>"soviet democracy"</i> depends on the <i>"advanced"</i>
workers being there in order for it to work, then it suggests that 
the commitment to democracy is lacking in those who argue along
these lines. It suggests that if the <i>"backward"</i> masses reject 
the <i>"advanced"</i> ones then the latter have the right, even the
duty, to impose their will on the former. And it also begs the 
question of who determines what constitutes <i>"backward"</i> -- if it 
means <i>"does not support the party"</i> then it becomes little more 
than a rationale for party dictatorship (as it did under Lenin 
and Trotsky).
<p>
Writing in 1938, Trotsky inadvertently exposes the logic of
this position. Asserting that a <i>"revolution is 'made' directly
by a <b>minority</b>,"</i> he argued that the <i>"success"</i> of a revolution 
is <i>"possible"</i> when <i>"this minority finds more or less support, or 
at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority."</i> So
what happens if the majority expresses opposition to the party?
Unfortunately Trotsky does not raise this question, but he does
answer it indirectly. As we discuss in 
<a href="append42.html#app15">section 15</a> of the appendix on 
<a href=append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>, Trotsky
argues that <i>"to free the soviets from the leadership [sic!] of 
the Bolsheviks would have meant within a short time to demolish 
the soviets themselves. The experience of the Russian soviets 
during the period of Menshevik and SR domination and, even more 
clearly, the experience of the German and Austrian soviets under 
the domination of the Social Democrats, proved this. Social 
Revolutionary-anarchist soviets could only serve as a bridge 
from the proletarian dictatorship. They could play no other role, 
regardless of the 'ideas' of their participants."</i> [Lenin and 
Trotsky, <b>Kronstadt</b>, p. 85 and p. 90]
<p>
Thus to let the working masses (the <i>"majority"</i>) have free soviet
elections and reject the vanguard (the <i>"minority"</i>) would mean the 
end of soviet power. Thus allowing the proletariat a say in 
progress of the revolution means the end of the <i>"proletarian 
dictatorship"</i>! Which, of course, is interesting logic. The
authoritarian core of the Bolshevik vision of revolution is
thus exposed.
<p>
Victor Serge also presents an insight into the Bolshevik 
perspective on the revolution. He states that <i>"[a]gitation 
conducted by the SRs and Mensheviks called demonstrations 
in the streets and prepared for a general strike. The 
demands were: free trade, wage increases, payment of wages 
one, two or three months in advance and 'democracy.' The 
intention was to incite the working class itself against 
the revolution."</i> Which only makes sense once you realise 
that by <i>"the revolution"</i> Serge simply meant <i>"the Bolsheviks"</i> 
and the obvious truth that the working class was <b>not</b> 
managing the revolution at all, was <b>not,</b> in any sense, 
"in power." <i>"The best elements among the workers,"</i> explains 
Serge, <i>"were away fighting; those in the factories were 
precisely the less energetic, less revolutionary sections, 
along with the petty folk, yesterday's small shopkeepers 
and artisans, who had come there to find refuge. This 
proletariat of the reserve often allowed itself to fall 
under the sway of Menshevik propaganda."</i> [<b>Year One of the 
Russian Revolution</b>, p. 229] 
<p>
Given that Serge is discussing the period <b>before</b> the
Czechoslovak revolt, a greater indictment of Bolshevism
cannot be found. After all, what does <i>"workers' democracy"</i> 
mean unless the proletariat can vote for its own delegates?
Little wonder Daniel Guerin described Serge's book as 
<i>"largely a justification of the liquidation of the soviets 
by Bolshevism."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 97] After all, what point 
is there having genuine soviet elections if the <i>"less 
revolutionary sections"</i> (i.e. Trotsky's <i>"majority"</i>) will 
not vote for the vanguard? And can socialism exist without 
democracy? Can we expect an unaccountable vanguard to 
govern in the interests of anyone but its own? Of course 
not!
<p>
Thus the Bolsheviks did not solve the answer the questions 
Malatesta raised in 1891, namely <i>"if you consider these 
worthy electors as unable to look after their own interests 
themselves, how is it that they will know how to choose for 
themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how will 
they be able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of
producing the election of a genius from the votes of a 
mass of fools?"</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 53]
<p>
Given this, is it surprising that the Bolsheviks revised 
the Marxist theory of the state to justify elite rule? As 
discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>, once in power Lenin and Trotsky
stressed that the "workers' state" had to be independent of
the working class in order to overcome the <i>"wavering"</i> and
<i>"vacillation of the masses themselves."</i> Or, to quote Serge,
the <i>"party of the proletariat must know, at hours of decision, 
how to break the resistance of the backward elements among the 
masses; it must know how to stand firm sometimes against the 
masses . . . it must know how to go against the current, and 
cause proletarian consciousness to prevail against lack of
consciousness and against alien class influences."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 218] Of course, by definition, <b>every</b> group is <i>"backward"</i> 
compared to the vanguard and so Serge's argument amounts to 
little more than a justification for party dictatorship 
<b>over</b> the proletariat.
<p>
The reason why such a system would not result in socialism does 
not take long to discover. For anarchists, freedom is not just 
a goal, a noble end to be achieved, but rather a necessary 
part of the process of creating socialism. Eliminate freedom 
(and, as a necessary result, workplace and community 
self-management) and the end result will be anything <b>but</b> 
socialism. Ultimately, as Malatesta argued, <i>"the only way that 
the masses can raise themselves"</i> is by freedom <i>"for it is only 
through freedom that one educates oneself to be free."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 52] Ironically, by using state repression to combat <i>"backward"</i>
elements, the Bolsheviks ensured that they stayed that way and,
more importantly, disempowered the <b>whole</b> working class so
ensuring that Bolshevik dictatorship came into constant conflict
with it and its continuing struggle for autonomy. Rather than
base itself on the creative powers of the masses, Bolshevism 
crushed it as a threat to its power and so ensured that the
economic and social problems affecting Russia increased.
<p>
And need it be pointed out that <i>"low"</i> culture and/or <i>"backward"</i> 
social life have been used by numerous imperialist and authoritarian
states to justify their rule over a given population? It matters 
little whether the population are of the same nationality of the
rulers or from a subjugated people, the arguments and the logic are
the same. Whether dressed up in racist or classist clothing, the 
same elitist pedigree lies behind the pro-Bolshevik argument that
democracy would have brought <i>"chaos"</i> or <i>"capitalist restoration."</i> 
The implicit assumption that working class people are not fit for 
self-government is clear from these rationales. Equally obvious
is the idea that the party knows better than working class people
what is best for them. 
<p>
Sounding like Bolshevik Henry Kissingers, the Leninists argue that
Lenin and Trotsky had to enforce their dictatorship <b>over</b> the 
proletariat to stop a <i>"capitalist restoration"</i> (Kissinger was the 
US state's liaison with the Chilean military when it helped their 
coup in 1973 and infamously stated that the country should not be 
allowed to turn communist due to the stupidity of its own people). 
Needless to say, anarchists argue that even if the Bolshevik 
regime had not already need capitalist (specifically, <b>state</b> 
capitalist) this logic simply represents an elitist position
based on <i>"socialism from above."</i> Yes, soviet democracy <b>may</b> have
resulted in the return of (private) capitalism but by maintaining 
party dictatorship the possibility of socialism was automatically 
nullified. Simply put, the pro-Leninist argument implies that 
socialism can be implemented from above as long as the right 
people are in power. The authoritarian core of Leninism is 
exposed by these arguments and the repression of working class 
revolt which they justified. 
<p>
Given this, it seems incredulous for Leninists like Chris Harman
to argue that it was the <i>"decimation of the working class"</i> which
caused (by <i>"necessity"</i>) the <i>"Soviet institutions"</i> to take <i>"on a 
life independently of the class they had arisen from. Those workers 
and peasants who fought the Civil War could not govern themselves 
collectively from their places in the factories."</i> [<b>How the 
revolution was lost</b>] Given that this <i>"independent"</i> life is
required to allow the party to <i>"go against the current,"</i> Harman
simply fails to understand the dynamics of the revolution, the
position of the vanguard and the resistance of the working class
subject to it. Moreover, the reason <b>why</b> the <i>"workers and peasants"</i>
could not govern themselves collectively was because the party
had seized power for itself and systematically destroyed soviet,
workplace and military democracy to remain there. Then there is 
the way the Bolsheviks reacted to such collective unrest. Simply 
put, they sought to break the workers as a collective force. The 
use of lockouts, re-registration was typical, as was the arresting 
of <i>"ringleaders."</i> It seems ironic, therefore, to blame <i>"objective
factors"</i> for the <i>"atomisation"</i> of the working class when, in fact,
this was a key aim of Bolshevik repression of labour protest.
<p>
Little wonder, then, that the role of the masses in the Russian 
Revolution after October 1917 is rarely discussed by pro-Bolshevik 
writers. Indeed, the conclusion to be reached is simply that their 
role is to support the party, get it into power and then do what 
it tells them. Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, the Russian 
working class refused to do this. Instead they practised collective
struggle in defence of their economic <b>and</b> political interests,
struggle which inevitably brought them into conflict both with
the "workers' state" and their role in Bolshevik ideology. Faced
with this collective action, the Bolshevik leaders (starting with
Lenin) started to talk about the <i>"declassing"</i> of the proletariat
to justify their repression of (and power <b>over</b>) the working class.
Ironically, it was the aim of Bolshevik repression to <i>"atomise"</i>
the working class as, fundamentally, their rule depended on it.
While Bolshevik repression did, in the end, win out it cannot be
said that the working class in Russia did not resist the usurpation
of power by the Bolshevik party. As such, rather than <i>"atomisation"</i>
or <i>"declassing"</i> being the cause for Bolshevik power and repression,
it was, in fact, one of <b>results</b> of them.
<p>
<a name="app6"><h2>6 Did the Bolsheviks blame <i>"objective factors"</i> for their actions?</h2>
<p>
In a word, no. At the time of the revolution and for some period
afterwards, the idea that <i>"objective factors"</i> were responsible for
their policies was one which few, if any, Bolshevik leaders 
expressed. As we discussed in <a href="append43.html#app2">section 2</a>, Bolsheviks like 
Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin argued that <b>any</b> revolution would
face civil war and economic crisis. Lenin <b>did</b> talk about the
<i>"declassing"</i> of the proletariat from 1920 onwards, but that did 
not seem to affect the proletarian and socialist character of his 
regime (as we noted in <a href="append43.html#app5">section 5</a>, Lenin's argument was developed
in the context of <b>increasing</b> working class collective action,
<b>not</b> its absence).
<p>
This is not to say that the Bolshevik leaders were 100% happy with
the state of their revolution. Lenin, for example, expressed concern
about the rising bureaucratic deformations he saw in the soviet state
(particularly after the end of the civil war). Yet Lenin, while 
concerned about the bureaucracy, was not concerned about the Party's 
monopoly of power. Unsurprisingly, he fought the bureaucracy by 
"top-down" and, ironically, bureaucratic methods, the only ones left 
to him. A similar position was held by Trotsky, who was quite explicit 
in supporting the party dictatorship throughout the 1920s (and, indeed,
the 1930s). Needless to say, both failed to understand how bureaucracy 
arises and how it could be effectively fought.
<p>
This position started to change, however, as the 1920s drew on and
Trotsky was increasingly sidelined from power. Then, faced with the 
rise of Stalinism, Trotsky had to find a theory which allowed him 
to explain the degeneration of the revolution and, at the same time, 
absolve Bolshevik ideology (and his own actions and ideas!) from 
all responsibility for it. He did so by invoking the objective
factors facing the revolution. Since then, his various followers
have utilised this argument, with various changes in emphasis, to 
attack Stalinism while defending Bolshevism.
<p>
The problem with this type of argument is that all the major evils
usually associated with Stalinism already existed under Lenin and
Trotsky. Party dictatorship, one-man management, repression of 
opposition groups and working class protest, state bureaucracy 
and so on all existed before Stalin manoeuvred himself into 
absolute power. And with the exception of state bureaucracy, none
of the mainstream Bolshevik leaders found anything to complain 
about. Indeed, the reverse. Whether it is Lenin or Trotsky, the 
sad fact of the matter is that a party dictatorship presiding 
over an essentially state capitalism economy was not considered
a bad thing. Which, of course, causes problems for those who 
seek to distance Lenin and Trotsky from Stalinism and claim that
Bolshevism is fundamentally <i>"democratic"</i> in nature.
<p>
The knots Leninists get into to do this can be ludicrous. A
particularly crazy example of this can be seen from the UK's
Socialist Workers' Party. For John Rees, it is a truism that 
<i>"it was overwhelmingly the force of circumstance which obliged 
the Bolsheviks to retreat so far from their own goals. They 
travelled this route in opposition to their own theory, not 
because of it -- no matter what rhetorical justifications were 
given at the time."</i> [<i>"In Defence of October,"</i> pp. 3-82, 
<b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52, p. 70]
<p>
However, this sort of position has little substance to it.
It is both logically and factually flawed. Logically, it
simply makes little sense as anything but an attempt to
narrow political discussion and whitewash Bolshevik practice
and politics. Rees, in effect, is saying that not only are 
we <b>not</b> to judge the Bolsheviks by their actions, we must 
also discount what they said -- unless it was something modern 
day Leninists approve of! Given that Leninists constantly
quote from Lenin's (and Trotsky's) post-1918 works, it seems
strange that they try to stop others so doing! Strange, but
not surprising, given their task is to perpetuate the Bolshevik
Myth. Where that leaves revolutionary politics is left unsaid,
but it seems to involve worshipping at the shrine of October
and treating as a heretic anyone who dares suggest we analysis
it in any depth and perhaps learn lessons from it and the
Bolshevism that dominated it. 
<p>
Of course Rees' comments are little more than assertions. Given
that he dismisses the idea that we can actually take what any
Bolshevik says at face value, we are left with little more than
a mind reading operation in trying to find out what the likes
of Lenin and Trotsky <i>"really"</i> thought. Perhaps the root explanation
of Rees' position is the awkward fact that there are no quotes
from any of the leading Bolsheviks which support it? After all,
if they were quotes from the hallowed texts expounding the position
Rees says the Bolshevik leaders <i>"really"</i> held then he would have
provided them. The simple fact is that Lenin and Trotsky, like 
all the Bolshevik leaders, considered a one-party dictatorship 
ruling over a state capitalist economy as some form of <i>"socialism."</i>
That was certainly Trotsky's position and he was <b>not</b> shy in 
expressing. But, of course, we can dismiss this simply as 
<i>"rhetorical justifications"</i> rather than an expression of
<i>"their own theory"</i>! We will never know, as they never expressed
<i>"their own theory"</i> and instead made do with the <i>"rhetorical 
justifications"</i> Rees is at such pains for us to ignore!
<p>
Which shows that a major problem in discussing the failure of the
Russian Revolution is the attitude of modern day Leninists. Rees
presents us with another example when he asserts that <i>"what is 
required of historians, particularly Marxists, is to separate 
phrase from substance."</i> The Bolsheviks, Rees argues, were
<i>"inclined to make a virtue of necessity, to claim that the harsh
measures of the civil war were the epitome of socialism."</i> Thus the
Bolsheviks cannot be blamed either for what they did or what they
said. Indeed, he states that non-Leninists <i>"take Lenin or Trotsky's
shouts of command in the midst of battle and portray them as 
considered analyses of events."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 46]
<p>
This argument is simply incredulous. After all, neither Lenin nor
Trotsky could be said to be anything <b>but</b> political activists 
who took the time to consider events and analyse them in detail. 
Moreover, they defended their arguments in terms of Marxism. Would
Rees consider Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> as an unimportant work?
After all, this was produced in the midst of the events of 1917, in
often difficult circumstances. If so, then why not his other, less
appealing, political proclamations (never mind actions)? Moreover, 
looking at some of the works produced in this period it is clear 
that they are anything <b>but</b> <i>"shouts of command in the midst of
battle."</i> Trotsky's <b>Terrorism and Communism</b> is a substantial book, 
for example It was not an ad hoc comment made during a conference 
or <i>"in the midst of battle."</i> Quite the reverse, it was a detailed,
substantial and thought-out reply to the criticism by the influential
German social democrat Karl Kaustky (and, before Lenin, the most 
internationally respected Marxist thinker). Indeed, Trotsky 
explicitly asks the question <i>"[i]s there still theoretical 
necessity to justify revolutionary terrorism?"</i> and answers yes, 
his <i>"book must serve the ends of an irreconcilable struggle against 
the cowardice, half-measures, and hypocrisy of Kautskianism in all 
countries."</i> [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. 9 and p. 10] 
<p>
Therefore, on the face of it, Rees's comments are hard to take
seriously. It is even harder to take when it becomes clear that
Rees does not apply his comments consistently or logically. He
does not object to quoting Lenin and Trotsky during this period
when they say something he <b>approves</b> of, regardless of how well
it fits into their actions. It would be no exaggeration to say
that his <i>"argument"</i> is simply an attempt to narrow the area of
debate, marking off limits any comments by his heroes which would
place his ideology in a bad light. It is hardly convincing, 
particularly when their <i>"good"</i> quotes are so at odds with their
practice and their <i>"bad"</i> quotes so in line with them. And as
Marx argued, we should judge people by what they do, <b>not</b> by
what they say. This seems a basic principle of scientific 
analysis and it is significant, if not surprising, that Leninists
like Rees want to reject it.
<p>
Ultimately, the theoretical problem with this position is that
it denies the importance of implementing ideas. After all, even
if it where true that the <i>"theory"</i> of Bolshevism was different
to its practice and the justifications for that practice, it
would leave us with the conclusion that this <i>"theory"</i> was not
sufficient when faced with the rigours of reality. In other
words, that it is impractical. A conclusion that Leninists do
not want to draw, hence the stress on <i>"objective factors"</i> to
explain the failure of Bolshevism. As Marx said, judge people 
by what they do, not what they say (unless, of course, as with
the Bolsheviks post-October, what they said reflects what they 
did!)
<p>
Similarly, there seems to be an idealist tint to Leninist 
accounts of the Russian Revolution. After all, they seem to
think that the Lenin of 1921 was, essentially, the same person
as the Lenin of 1917! That seems to violate the basic ideas
of materialism. As Herbert Read points out, <i>"the phrase 'the 
dictatorship of the proletariat' . . . became fatal through the 
interventions of two political expedients -- the identification 
of the proletariat with the Bolshevik Party, and the use of the 
State as an instrument of revolution. Expedients and compromises
may have been necessary for the defeat of the reactionary 
forces; but there is no doubt whatsoever that what took place
was a progressive brutalisation of Lenin's own mind under the
corrupting influence of the exercise of power."</i> [<b>A One-Man
Manifesto</b>, p. 51] It seems common sense that if a political 
strategy exposes its followers to the corrupting effects of 
power we should factor this into any evaluation of it. Sadly,
Leninists fail to do this -- even worse, they attempt to 
whitewash the post-October Lenin (and Trotsky) by excluding
the "bad" quotes which reflect their practice, a practice 
which they are at pains to downplay (or ignore)!
<p>
Then, of course, there is the attitude of the Bolshevik leaders 
themselves to these so-called <i>"shouts of command in the midst of
battle."</i> Rather than dismiss them as irrelevant, they continued
to subscribe to them years later. For example, Trotsky was still
in favour of party dictatorship in the late 1930s (see 
<a href="secH1.html#sech12">section H.1.2</a>). Looking at his justly infamous <b>Terrorism and Communism</b>,
we discover Trotsky in the 1930s reiterating his support for his 
arguments of 1920. His preface to the 1936 French edition sees 
him state that it was <i>"devoted to a clarification of the methods 
of the proletariat's revolutionary policy in our epoch."</i> He 
concluded as follows: <i>"Victory is conceivable only on the 
basis of Bolshevik methods, to the defence of which the present 
work is devoted."</i> The previous year, in his introduction to 
the second English edition, he was equally unrepentant. <i>"The
British proletariat,"</i> he argued, <i>"will enter upon a period of 
political crisis and theoretical criticism . . . The teachings
of Marx and Lenin for the first time will find the masses as 
their audience. Such being the case, it may be also that the
present book will turn out to be not without its use."</i> He 
dismissed the <i>"consoling illusion"</i> that <i>"the arguments of this
book [were] true for backward Russia"</i> but <i>"utterly without
application to advanced lands."</i> The <i>"wave of Fascist or 
militarised police dictatorships"</i> in the 1920s and 1930s was 
the reason. It seems ironic that Trotsky's self-proclaimed 
followers are now repeating the arguments of what he termed 
"incurable Fabians."</i> [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. xix, 
p. xxxv, p. xlvii and p. xxxix] 
<p>
Rather than distance himself from the authoritarian and state 
capitalist policies modern day Leninists claim were thrust upon
an unwilling Bolshevik party by <i>"objective factors,"</i> Trotsky 
defends them! Moreover, as we noted in 
<a href="append42.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>, Trotsky
himself argues that these <i>"objective factors"</i> would face <b>every</b>
revolution. As it is, he argues that it was only the <i>"slow
development of the revolution in the West"</i> which stopped <i>"a 
direct passage from military Communism to a Socialistic system
of production."</i> Rather than admit to <i>"illusions"</i> caused by the
"iron necessity"</i> of willing the civil war, he talks about <i>"those
economic hopes which were bound up with the development of the
world revolution."</i> He even links Bolshevik practice with Stalinism,
noting that the <i>"idea of five-year plans was not only formulated 
in that period [1918-1920], but in some economic departments it
was also technically worked out."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. xliii]
<p>
Even his essay outlining what he considers the differences between
Stalinism and Bolshevism does not see him fundamentally distancing
himself from the positions modern day Leninists like to explain by
"objective factors." He stated that the <i>"Bolshevik party achieved 
in the civil war the correct combination of military art and Marxist 
politics."</i> What did that involve? Immediately before making that
claim he argued that the <i>"Bolshevik party has shown the entire world 
how to carry out armed insurrection and the seizure of power. 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."</i> Thus the <i>"party dictatorship"</i> is 
seen as being an example of <i>"Marxist politics"</i> being successfully
applied and not something to be opposed. Moreover, <i>"the Bolshevik 
party was able to carry on its magnificent 'practical' work only 
because it illuminated all its steps with theory."</i> [<b>Stalinism and 
Bolshevism</b>] Clearly, rather than denounce the power of the party
as being against Bolshevik theory, as Rees claims, for Trotsky it
represented its application. While he excuses some Bolshevik actions
(such as the banning of opposition groups) as a product of <i>"objective
factors,"</i> he clearly sees the degeneration of the revolution coming 
<b>after</b> the civil war and its <i>"correct combination"</i> of <i>"Marxist 
politics"</i> and <i>"military art,"</i> which included <i>"party dictatorship"</i>
over the soviets. 
<p>
This lack of distancing is to be expected. After, the idea that
"objective factors" caused the degeneration of the Russian 
Revolution was first developed by Trotsky to explain, after his
fall from power) the rise of Stalinism. While <b>he</b> was head of 
the Soviet state no such "objective" factors seemed to be 
required to "explain" the party dictatorship over the working 
class. Indeed, quite the reverse. As he argued in 1923 <i>"[i]f 
there is one question which basically not only does not require 
revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision, 
it is the question of the dictatorship of the Party."</i> [<b>Leon 
Trotsky Speaks</b>, p. 158] 
<p>
Trotsky was just stating mainstream Bolshevik ideology, echoing 
a statement made in March 1923 by the Central Committee (of 
which he and Lenin were members) to mark the 25th anniversary 
of the founding of the Communist Party. It sums up the lessons 
gained from the revolution and states that <i>"the party of the 
Bolsheviks proved able to stand out fearlessly against the 
vacillations within its own class, vacillations which, with 
the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an
unprecedented defeat for the proletariat."</i> Vacillations, of 
course, are expressed by workers' democracy. Little wonder the
statement rejects it: <i>"The dictatorship of the working class 
finds its expression in the dictatorship of the party."</i> [<i>"To 
the Workers of the USSR"</i> in G. Zinoviev, <b>History of the 
Bolshevik Party</b>, p. 213, p. 214] It should be noted that
Trotsky had made identical comments before and immediately
after the civil war -- as well as long after (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>
for details).
<p>
So, as with all the leading Bolsheviks, he considered the party 
dictatorship as an inevitable result of any proletarian revolution 
Moreover, he did not question the social relationships within 
production either. One-man management held no fears for him 
and he called the state capitalist regime under himself and 
Lenin as <i>"socialist"</i> and defended it as such. He was fully 
supportive of one-man management. Writing in 1923, he argued 
that the <i>"system of actual one-man management must be applied 
in the organisation of industry from top to bottom. For leading 
economic organs of industry to really direct industry and to 
bear responsibility for its fate, it is essential for them to 
have authority over the selection of functionaries and their 
transfer and removal."</i> These economic organs must <i>"in actual 
practice have full freedom of selection and appointment."</i> 
[quoted by Robert V. Daniels, <b>A Documentary History of 
Communism</b>, vol. 1, p. 237] 
<p>
All of these post-civil war opinions of course, fit in well
with his civil war opinions on the matter. Which, incidentally,
explains why, to quote a Leninist, Trotsky <i>"continued to 
his death to harbour the illusion that somehow, despite the 
lack of workers' democracy, Russia was a 'workers' state.'"</i> 
Simply put, there had been no workers' democracy under
Lenin and Trotsky and he considered that regime a <i>"workers'
state."</i> The question arises why Harman thinks Lenin's Russia
was some kind of "workers' state" if workers' democracy is the
criteria by which such things are to be judged. But, then 
again, he thinks Trotsky's <b>Left Opposition</b> <i>"framed a policy
along [the] lines"</i> of <i>"returning to genuine workers' democracy"</i>!
[Chris Harman,<b>Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe</b>, 
p. 20 and p. 19]
<p>
Now, it seems strange that rather than present what he <i>"really"</i> 
thought, Trotsky expounded what presumably is the <b>opposite</b> of 
it. Surely the simplistic conclusion to draw is that Trotsky said 
what he really did think and that this was identical to his 
so-called <i>"shouts of command"</i> made during the civil war? But, 
of course, all these comments can be dismissed as <i>"rhetorical 
justifications"</i> and not reflective of Trotsky's real <i>"theory."</i> Or
can they? Ultimately, either you subscribe to the idea that Lenin
and Trotsky were able to express their ideas themselves or you 
subscribe to the notion that they hid their <i>"real"</i> politics and
only modern-day Leninists can determine what they, in fact, <i>"really"</i>
meant to say and what they "really" stood for. And as for all those
"awkward" quotes which express the <b>opposite</b> of the divined true
faith, well, they can be ignored.
<p>
Which is, of course, hardly a convincing position to take. 
Particularly as Lenin and Trotsky were hardly shy in justifying 
their authoritarian policies and expressing a distinct lack of 
concern over the fate of any <b>meaningful</b> working class conquest 
of the revolution like, say, soviet democracy. As Samuel Farber 
notes that <i>"there is no evidence indicating that Lenin or any of 
the mainstream Bolshevik leaders lamented the loss of workers' 
control or of democracy in the soviets, or at least referred to 
these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with the replacement 
of War Communism by NEP in 1921."</i> [<b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 44]
<p>
The sad fact is that the inter-party conflicts of the 1920s 
were <b>not</b> about <i>"workers' democracy,"</i> rather party democracy.
The Bolsheviks simply relabelled <i>"party democracy"</i> as <i>"workers'
democracy."</i> Little wonder in 1925 that Max Eastman, one of 
Trotsky's main supporters at the time, stated <i>"this programme of 
democracy within the party [was] called 'Workers' Democracy' by 
Lenin"</i> and that <i>"Trotsky merely revived this original plea."</i> 
[<b>Since Lenin Died</b>, p. 35] Trotsky held this position throughout 
the 1920s and 1930s. As we noted in 
<a href="append42.html#app13">section 13</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>, the 1927
<b>Platform of the Opposition</b> restated its belief in party 
dictatorship and argued that Stalin was undermining it in 
favour of rule by the bureaucracy. Ironically, Trotskyists
in soviet prisons in the early 1930s <i>"continued to consider
that 'Freedom to choose one's party -- that is Menshevism'"</i>
and this was their <i>"final verdict."</i> [Ante Ciliga, <b>The Russian
Enigma</b>, p. 280] No wonder they seemed surprised to be there!
<p>
Trotsky's issue with Stalinism was not based on <b>real</b> socialist
principles, such as meaningful working class freedoms and power.
Rather it was a case of <i>"the political centre of gravity ha[ving]
shifted from the proletarian vanguard to the bureaucracy"</i> and
this caused <i>"the party"</i> to change <i>"its social structure as 
well as in its ideology."</i> [<b>Stalinism and Bolshevism</b>] The
party dictatorship had been replaced by the dictatorship of
the state bureaucracy, in other words. Once this happened, 
Trotsky sought to explain it. As analysing the impact of 
Bolshevik ideology and practice were, by definition, out 
of the question, that left the various objective factors 
Trotsky turned to to explain developments after 1923. Now the 
concern for <i>"objective factors"</i> appeared, to explain Stalinism
while keeping true to Bolshevik ideology <b>and</b> practice.
<p>
So, in summary, the leading Bolsheviks did not view "objective
factors" as explaining the failure of the revolution. Indeed,
until Trotsky was squeezed out of power they did not think that
the revolution <b>had</b> failed. Party dictatorship and one-man
management were <b>not</b> considered as expressions of a failed 
revolution, rather a successful one. Trotsky's issue with 
Stalinism was simply that the bureaucracy had replaced the
<i>"the proletarian vanguard"</i> (i.e. himself and his followers) 
as the dominant force in the Soviet State and it had started
to use the techniques of political repression developed against
opposition parties and groups against him. The idea that 
"objective factors" caused the failure of the revolution was 
not used until the late 1920s and even then not used to explain
the party dictatorship but rather the usurpation of <b>its</b>
power by the bureaucracy.
<p>
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