Red Fascism Ascendant
Power in "soviet" Russia went from being concentrated in the Sovnarkom, to the central committee, to the politburo. A centralized one-party dictatorship came about. In 1920 Lenin described the structure of this new regime:
"the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the figures of the latest Party Congress (April 1920), has a membership of 611,000. The Party, which holds annual congresses (the most recent on the basis of one delegate per 1,000 members), is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen elected at the Congress, while the current work in Moscow has to be carried on by still smaller bodies, known as the Organising Bureau and the Political Bureau, which are elected at plenary meetings of the Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee to each bureau. This, it would appear, is a full-fledged "oligarchy". No important political or organisational question is decided by any state institution in our republic without the guidance of the Party's Central Committee."1
This was not the rule of the working class (and/or peasants) as Leninists claim; it was the rule of the 19 people on the central committee. If no major decision is made without the approval of the central committee then it is the central committee that rules, not the proletariat.
Along with this centralization of power, the ideology of the Bolsheviks changed to match their practice. Whereas prior to the revolution most Bolsheviks favored a highly democratic state after coming to power they came to believe in a one-party state. The party was a very effective means of organizing the ruling class & controlling society and was already available to them as they consolidated their power. At first this one-party state was viewed as just being particular to Russia under their present circumstances but eventually they came to the conclusion that workers' rule would take this form in all societies. Zinoviev is not unusual in this regard:
"Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the working class can be achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party ... All questions of economic reconstruction, military organisation, education, food supply -- all these questions, on which the fate if the proletarian revolution depends absolutely, are decided in Russia before all other matters and mostly in the framework of the party organisations Control by the party over soviet organs, over the trade unions, is the single durable guarantee that any measures taken will serve not special interests, but the interests of the entire proletariat."2
In 1919 Lenin said, "When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party we say, 'Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position."3 A year later he generalized this:
"In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation which takes in all industrial workers. What happens is that the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard"4
Lenin claimed that "The mere presentation of the question'dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class; dictatorship (party) of the leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?' testifies to most incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking."5 In 1921 he said, "After two and a half years of the Soviet power we came out in the Communist International and told the world that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not work except through the Communist Party."6
Trotsky came to the same conclusions. In 1920 he said, "the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. In this "substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class."7 He continued to argue this even after being exiled from Stalin. In 1937 he claimed that, "The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution ... abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions."8 In the same year he also said:
"A revolutionary party, even having seized power is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society. The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. In itself the necessity for state power arises from the insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity. In the revolutionary vanguard, organised in a party, is crystallized the aspiration of the masses to obtain their freedom. Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of power. In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard. The Soviets are the only organised form of the tie between the vanguard and the class. A revolutionary content can be given this form only by the party. Those who propose the abstraction of the Soviets from the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat."9
Note the new justification here: workers are too stupid ("lack the political development" "divided and corrupted") to rule themselves. The main justification used for the state prior to the revolution had been that it would be necessary in order to defeat counter-revolutionaries. Most Bolsheviks believed that what they had created was not the rule of a new bureaucrat-capitalist ruling class but the rule of the workers & peasants. They equated their own rule with the rule of the peasants & workers. This new justification fit well with their new position as ruling class - since workers opposed their rule (which they confused with worker's rule) the workers were not fit to govern themselves. They needed a vanguard to stand over them and defeat "wavering" elements of the working class that wanted to rule itself. This transformation in Marxist ideology is consistent with Bakunin's description of how concentrations of power affect those who wield it:
"Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralization; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one's own merits. "The masses" a man says to himself, " recognizing their incapacity to govern on their own account, have elected me their chief. By that act they have publicly proclaimed their inferiority and my superiority. Among this crowd of men, recognizing hardly any equals of myself, I am alone capable of directing public affairs. The people have need of me; they cannot do without my services, while I, on the contrary, can get along all right by myself; they, therefore, must obey me for their own security, and in condescending to obey them, I am doing them a good turn. " It is thus that power and the habit of command become for even the most intelligent and virtuous men, a source of aberration, both intellectual and moral."10
Along with inequalities of power came inequalities of wealth. Economic inequality skyrocketed. In early 1921 the Bolshevik leader Alexandra Kollontai complained that:
"so far the problems of hygiene, sanitation, improving conditions of labour in the shops - in other words, the betterment of the workers' lot has occupied the last place in our policy. To our shame, in the heart of the Republic, in Moscow itself, working people are still living in filthy, overcrowded and unhygienic quarters, one visit to which makes one think that there has been no revolution at all. We all know that the housing problem cannot be solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty, its solution is faced with the serious difficulties. But the facts of ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers breed and nourish the dissatisfaction. The rank and file worker sees how the Soviet official and the practical man lives and how he lives during the revolution, the life and health of the workers in the shops commanded the least attention "We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military front. '' And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs in any of the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions, they were able to find both the materials and the labour."11
By 1921 there were twice as many bureaucrats as workers. The bureaucracy consumed ninety percent of the paper made in Russia during the first four years of "Soviet" rule. One historian describes the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by the new ruling class:
"In early 1918 Lenin himself had backed a plan to organize a special closed restaurant for the Bolsheviks in Petrograd on the grounds that they could not be expected to lead a revolution on an empty stomach. ... Since then the principle had been gradually extended so that, by the end of the civil war, it was also deemed that party members needed higher salaries and special rations, subsidized housing in apartments and hotels, access to exclusive shops and hospitals, private dachas, chauffeured cars, first-class railway travel and holidays abroad, not to mention countless other privileges once reserved for the tsarist elite.
Five thousand Bolsheviks and their families lived in the Kremlin and the special party hotels, such as the National and the Metropole, in the center of Moscow. The Kremlin's domestic quarters had over 2,000 service staff and it's own complex of shops, including a hairdresser and a sauna, a hospital and a nursery, and three vast restaurants with cooks trained in France. Its domestic budget in 1920, when all these services were declared free, was higher than that spent on social welfare for the whole of Moscow. In Petrograd the top party bosses lived in the Astoria Hotel, recently restored to its formal splendor, after the devastation's of the revolution, as the First House of the Soviets. From their suites, they could call for room service from the 'comrade waiters', who were taught to click their heels and call them 'comrade master'. Long-forgotten luxuries, such as champagne and caviar, perfume and toothbrushes, were supplied in abundance. The hotel was sealed to the public by a gang of burly guards in black leather jackets. In the evening government cars were lined up by the entrance waiting to take the elite residents off to the opera or to the Smolny for a banquet. ...
The top party leaders had their own landed estates requisitioned from the tsarist elite. Trotsky had one of the most resplendent estates in the country: it had once belonged to the Yusupovs. As for Stalin, he settled into the country mansion of a former oil magnate. There were dozens of estates dotted around the capital which the Soviet Executive turned over to the party leaders for their private used. Each had its own vast retinue of servants, as in the old days."12
This was at a time when ordinary Russians were literally starving to death.
Along with the solidification of a new ruling class came imperialist policies. Before the Bolsheviks seized power they were in favor of national self-determination and opposed imperialism. In June 1917 Lenin declared, "The Russian Republic does not want to oppress any nation, either in the new or in the old way, and does not want to force any nation, either Finland or Ukraine, with both of whom the War Minister is trying so hard to find fault and with whom impermissible and intolerable conflicts are being created."13
Once in power this opposition to imperialism was only applied to other countries, not to "Soviet" Russia. During the revolution and civil war many countries broke away from Russia and became independent, usually setting up independent nation-states. This included Finland, Poland, Georgia, Armenia and others. The Bolsheviks invaded many of them and installed client states. In April 1920 Azerbaijan was conquered and the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, a Bolshevik client state, proclaimed. In November Armenia was conquered and the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic declared. These "soviet socialist republics" were modeled after Bolshevik Russia, with a party dictatorship, grain requisitions, nationalized industry, a Sovnarkom, and "soviets" that rubber-stamped the decisions of the party. On December 30, 1922 the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and its client states, these "soviet socialist republics" it had installed, merged into one big state to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.14
In most cases these break away states were very conservative governments; some were basically ultra-rightist dictatorships. Some also had their own imperialist ambitions and fought border wars with each other. In Finland right-wing capitalists massacred thousands of left-wing workers. There were two major exceptions to this: Ukraine, which went anarchist, and Georgia, where the Mensheviks came to power. Georgia was officially neutral in the civil war but unofficially preferred the Whites win, a position that the Russian Mensheviks criticized. They implemented a progressive capitalist system very similar to the New Economic Policy the Bolsheviks would later implement in Russia. Most industry was nationalized and land reform was implemented.15 The Bolsheviks invaded in February 1921; on February 25th Tiflis was captured and the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, a Russian client state, was declared.16 "A campaign of terror was unloosed against Socialists, workers, [and] peasants with the meaningless cruelty characteristic of the Bolsheviks."17
The Bolsheviks modified their support for national self-determination to "self-determination for workers" as a justification of their imperialism. This meant countries had self-determination so long as they "determined" to do what the Russian Bolsheviks wanted creating a "soviet" state similar to Russia and subordinated to Moscow. This change came about as a result of the creation of a new ruling class. Imperialism is the result of the state and class society. In a society ruled by a small elite (which all statist/class societies are) that elite can often gain benefits for itself by attacking other peoples. This can include resources, territory, labor and other things. The elite who decides whether or not to invade other countries are not the same people who have to fight and die in those wars. Statist/class societies thus encourage war and imperialism because the individuals who decide whether to launch wars are not the ones who have to pay most of the costs of war but they gain most of the potential benefits. The rulers of the world send the workers of the world to slaughter each other while keeping the spoils of victory for themselves. Bolshevik imperialism arose from the creation of a new elite, which now found it beneficial to conquer other countries even though their ideology prior to coming to power was opposed to it.
During the civil war, although most were opposed to both the Reds and the Whites, a substantial portion of the population considered the Reds the 'lesser of two evils.' As a result many people who would otherwise have taken up arms against the Bolsheviks did not do so, for fear that this would lead to the victory of the Whites. With the end of the civil war this was no longer a possibility and so massive rebellions erupted throughout Russia against the Bolsheviks. The threat of the Whites could no longer be used as an excuse to justify Bolshevik tyranny. The rebellions started in late 1920, peaked in February and March 1921 and then declined afterwards. According to Cheka sources there were 118 anti-Bolshevik uprisings in February 1921 alone.18 This occurred at the same time Makhno was fighting a guerilla war against the Bolsheviks' final assault on the Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were able to defeat the rebellions through a combination of brutal repression and granting concessions, especially the end of the grain requisitions. Most of the rebellions were not from the right but were anti-capitalist. Demands of the rebellions ranged from the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly to the restoration of Soviet Democracy to full-fledged anarchy.
The grain requisitions resulted in many peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks demanding the end of the grain monopoly among other things. Peasant insurgents surged across the land in a showdown between the Reds and Greens. Peasant uprising in Armenia provoked by grain requisitions and Bolshevik imperialism nearly succeeded in toppling the "soviet" client state; Russian troops had to be called in to suppress the rebellion.19 "In western Siberia the tide of rebellion engulfed nearly the entire Tiumen region and much of the neighboring provinces"20 as many who had formerly rebelled against the Whites now turned their guns on the Reds. "The Siberian irregulars were for free soviets and free federations."21 The largest and best known of these rebellions was in Tambov province, where A.S. Antonov's Green partisans waged a guerilla war against the Bolsheviks from August 1920 until June 1921, when it was defeated. "The Tambov revolt was a genuine peasant movement, led by radical populists and supported by a broad band of the Russian working peasantry provoked especially by the continued armed requisitioning of August 1920."22 Most of these rebellions sought to defend the peasant revolution against the Bolshevik counter-revolution.
The cities were engulfed by a wave of strikes and worker unrest. "Soviet" historians labeled this the "Volynka," which means "go slow." By using this term, instead of calling it a strike wave, they made this working class anti-Bolshevik unrest seem less serious and lighter. Strikes erupted in the Donbass, Saratov, Aleksandrovsk, the Urals and elsewhere. Strikes in Saratov peaked on March 3rd and had been defeated by March 6th. The strikes in Moscow reached their peak in late February. On February 25th Bolshevik forces opened fire on demonstrators; on the 25th they declared martial law and made mass arrests of opposition anti-capitalists. On March 3rd the leaders of the railway strike was arrested. By March 6th the strike wave in Moscow had been mostly defeated. In Petrograd the strike wave reached it's peak on February 26th. One observer described the situation as "strikingly akin to the scenes of the March Revolution of 1917. The same cry for bread, the same demand for liberty of speech and the press, only this time the banners read 'Down with the Soviet.' Children running around merrily sang popular songs satirizing the government."23 On February 24th the Bolsheviks declared martial law and imposed a curfew banning movement after 11pm. On the 26th they launched mass arrests and a military clampdown on the city. By February 28th the high point had passed and by March 8th the strike wave in Petrograd was basically over. Most of these strikes followed forms very similar to the traditional forms of worker protest in Russia.24
On February 26th rank and file sailors at the Kronstadt naval base, about twenty miles west of Petrograd, decided to send a delegation to Petrograd to find out what was happening. On the 28th they returned and told of the Bolshevik's suppression of the strikers. Many of the sailors were already unhappy with the Bolsheviks and the suppression of the Petrograd strikes prompted them to rebel. At a general assembly on March 1st the sailors unanimously voted to rebel (with two abstentions) and put forth these demands:
"(I) In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot, the pre-election campaign to have full freedom of agitation among the workers and peasants;
(2) To establish freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for Anarchists and Left Socialist parties;
(3) To secure freedom of assembly for labor unions and peasant organizations;
(4) To call a non-partisan Conference of the workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and of Petrograd Province, no later than March 19, 1921;
(5) To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well as all workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors imprisoned in connection with the labor and peasant movements;
(6) To elect a Commission to review the cases of those held in prison and concentration camps;
(7) To abolish all politodeli (political bureaus) because no party should be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or receive the financial support of the Government for such purposes. Instead there should be established educational and cultural commissions, locally elected and financed by the Government;
(8) To abolish immediately all zagraditelniye otryadi (Armed units organized by the Bolsheviki for the purpose of suppressing traffic and confiscating foodstuffs and other products. The irresponsibility and arbitrariness of their methods were proverbial throughout the country).
(9) To equalize the rations of all who work, with the exception of those employed in trades detrimental to health
(10) To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all branches of the Army, as well as the Communist guards kept on duty in mills and factories. Should such guards or military detachments be found necessary, they are to be appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in the factories according to the judgment of the workers;
(11) To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means; that is, without employing hired labor;
(12) To request all branches of the Army, as well as our comrades, the military kursanti, to concur in our resolutions [to endorse this resolution];
(13) To demand for the latter publicity in the press;
(14) To appoint a Traveling Commission of Control;
(15) To permit free kustarnoye (individual small scale) production by one's own efforts."25
Originally the Kronstadt rebels hoped to get the Bolsheviks to agree to their demands without bloodshed, but when Trotsky ordered them "shot like partridges" they had no choice but to defend themselves. Complaining that "The Communists hope to renew their despotic rule at the price of the blood of toilers"26 and that "They shoot workers and peasants right and left" they called for a Third Revolution to "destroy the commissarocracy."27 They rejected the Constituent Assembly and instead called for Soviet Democracy. They stood "for power of Soviets, and not parties. for freely elected representatives of laborers. The current Soviets, seized and subverted by the Communists, have always been deaf to all our needs and demands. In answer we received only executions."28 Their newspaper proclaimed, "The dawn of the 3rd Revolution is rising. The bright sun of freedom shines here in Kronstadt. The oppressors power tumbled down like a house of cards, and we, free, are building our Revolutionary Soviet. power to Soviets, and not parties."29 They accused the Bolsheviks of betraying the revolution:
"Carrying out the October Revolution, the working class hoped to achieve its emancipation. The result, however, was the creation of a still greater enslavement of the human personality. The power of police-gendarme monarchism passed into the hands of usurpers, the Communists, who brought to the laborers, instead of freedom, the fear every minute of falling into the torture chamber of the Cheka. The Communist authorities have replaced the hammer and sickle, glorious arms of the laboring state, in fact with the bayonet and prison bars. They have done this for the sake of preserving a calm, unsaddened life for the new bureaucracy of Communist commissars and bureaucrats. To protests by peasants, expressed in spontaneous uprisings, and by workers, forced into strikes by the very condition of life, they answer with mass executions, and with such bloodthirstiness that they don't have to borrow any from the tsarist generals. the [Communist Party] is not defender of the laborers, as it has presented itself. Rather, the interests of the laboring mass are foreign to it. Having achieved power, it fears only to lose it, and for this end all means are allowable: slander, violence, fraud, murder, and revenge on the families of rebels."30
In their newspaper they printed an article titled "Socialism in Quotes" which complained that under Bolshevik rule:
"From a slave of the capitalist, the worker became a slave of the bureaucratic institutions. Even that became too little. They planned to bring in the Taylor sweat shop system The entire laboring peasantry was counted with the kulaks, declared an enemy of the people. [Kronstadt] is fighting for a laboring Soviet Republic, where the producer will find himself the fully empowered master and commander of the produce of his own labor."31
The rebellion caused mass resignations from the Communist Party who sided with Kronstadt. One said made an appeal to his fellow party members to rebel and overthrow the leaders of the party:
"Rank and file Communist comrades! we are caught in a terrible bind. We have been led into it by a handful of bureaucratic "Communists" who, under cover of being Communists, have feathered themselves very comfortable nests in our Republic. As a Communist, I beseech you: dump these phony "Communists" who are herding you in the direction of fratricide. Do not let yourselves be taken in by these bureaucratic "Communists" who are provoking and inciting you into carnage. Show them the door!"32
Kronstadt was long a center of revolutionary ideology and activism. They played major roles in the 1905 revolution, in the July days, in October and other rebellions. They were at the forefront of the revolutionary movement and helped put the Bolsheviks in power. Trotsky called them the "pride and glory of the Revolution."33 That they came out against the Bolsheviks, accusing them of betraying the revolution, is a damning indictment of the Bolsheviks. The same revolutionaries who put the Bolsheviks now denounced the Bolsheviks for destroying the gains of the revolution.
The Bolsheviks spread all sorts of lies about Kronstadt (and other rebellions) in order to justify the suppression of the rebellions and to prevent them from spreading. They claimed the Kronstadt rebels were Whites led by former Tsarist General Kozlovsky. General Kozlovsky was actually one of the many ex-Tsarist officers employed by the Red army; he was a Red general not a White general. Trotsky stationed him in Kronstadt. During the rebellion he offered his advice to the rebels and drew up military plans, which the rebels rejected and chose not to implement. Every non-Leninist account of the Kronstadt rebellion agrees that Kozlovsky did not play a significant role in the revolt. The newspaper, resolutions and propaganda of the rebellion all explicitly opposed the Whites and call for Soviet Democracy. There is no evidence that Kronstadt was a White plot. Another lie was the claim that the Kronstadt rebels demanded privileges for themselves. In fact they explicitly called for the end of privileges and point nine of their program demanded the equalization of rations. It was the Bolsheviks who defended privileges (for party members), the Kronstadt rebels demanded equality. Another Leninist lie was the claim that the sailors who rebelled in 1921 were not the same revolutionary sailors who had helped make the October revolution in 1917. Peasant conscripts who no longer had the same revolutionary spirit as the original Kronstadt revolutionaries had allegedly replaced them. Historian Israel Geltzer researched this claim and found that 75.5% of the sailors in Kronstadt during the revolt had been recruited before 1918, disproving this Bolshevik lie. This claim was invented to justify the suppression of the rebellion; before the rebellion erupted the Bolsheviks were still calling Kronstadt the "backbone of the revolution" even in the period when new recruits had allegedly replaced Kronstadt's revolutionary sailors. In his memoirs the Bolshevik Victor Serge, who considered the suppression of the rebellion an unfortunate necessity, admitted that all these claims were lies.34
The Bolshevik's brutal suppression of Kronstadt, the "pride and glory" of the revolution, further shows their counter-revolutionary nature. Using airplanes and artillery, the final defeat of the rebels occurred on March 17th. Trotsky authorized the use of chemical warfare if the final assault failed to defeat the rebels. "Among the dead, more than a few were massacred in the final stages of the struggle. A measure of the hatred which had built up during the assault was the regret expressed by one soldier that airplanes had not been used to machine gun the rebels fleeing across the ice."35 Many of the survivors were put in concentration camps and executed as "counter-revolutionaries." Similar brutality was used against Tambov, the Volynka and the other anti-Bolshevik rebellions.
Although these attempts at a Third Revolution were defeated, they did force the Bolsheviks to grant concessions and make a major change in the economic system of "Soviet" Russia (and it's client states). The tenth congress of the Communist party met in early March, at the same time as the Kronstadt rebellion. At the congress there were several proposals for reform, including two groups within the Communist party opposed to the mainstream leadership of the Communist party. One opposition group was the Democratic Centralists; they criticized the increasing centralization within the Communist party and called for greater party democracy.36 The other, larger, group was the Workers' Opposition. They criticized the increasing bureaucratization of Russian and advocated having the economy run by the trade unions that would organize an All-Russian Congress of Producers to centrally plan the economy. They were (incorrectly) accused of 'syndicalism.' One of their leaders, Shliapnikov, advocated a separation of powers between the Soviets, Trade Unions and party.37 The leadership of the Workers' Opposition also included Alexandra Kollontai, who was the only senior Bolshevik leader to support Lenin's "April Theses" from the very beginning. Neither of these groups challenged the dictatorship of the Communist party and both supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion.
Trotsky took a position on the unions opposite from the Workers' Opposition, arguing that the unions should be completely subordinated to the state. Trotsky accused the Workers' Opposition of having
"come out with dangerous slogans, making a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes. The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy."38
Lenin took a position on the trade unions that seemed to be in-between the Workers' Opposition and Trotsky but in actual practice was not that far removed from Trotsky's position. He opposed Trotsky's idea of directly subordinating the unions to the state, claiming that they should have their own autonomy from the state. In practice this was not that different from Trotsky's position because the party dictatorship ensured that the party would always have control of the unions and the party also controlled the state. Thus they would in practice be subordinated to the same people running the state, even if they officially had some autonomy. Lenin also opposed the Workers' Opposition. He said of their program:
"What is this "All- Russia Congress of Producers"? Are we going to waste more time on that sort of opposition in the Party? I think we have had enough of this discussion! All the arguments about freedom of speech and freedom to criticize, of which the pamphlet is full and which run through all the speeches of the Workers' Opposition, constitute nine-tenths of the meaning of these speeches, which have no particular meaning at all. They are all words of the same order. After all, comrades, we ought to discuss not only words, but also their meaning. You can't fool us with words like "freedom to criticize". this is no time to have an opposition. Either you're on this side, or on the other"39
Lenin's position won a majority of the votes at the Tenth party congress. A resolution was passed condemning the Workers' Opposition as a 'syndicalist' deviation, which the Democratic Centralists voted in favor of.40 A resolution banning factions (including the Workers' Opposition and Democratic Centralists) within the party was passed, marking the beginning of the end of (representative) democracy within the party.
Instead of the left-wing proposals for reform advocated by the Workers' Opposition and Democratic Centralists a right-wing proposal called the New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented. The grain requisitions were abolished and replaced by a tax in kind. Instead of taking all the peasant's surplus grain the state only took part of their grain. The remainder they were allowed to sell on the open market. The NEP allowed a limited amount of free enterprise although most industry, the "commanding heights" of the economy, stayed under state ownership. Lenin characterized the NEP as "state-capitalism," the previous system was now called War Communism. Most Bolshevik leaders viewed the NEP as a retreat compared to War Communism, but a necessary one given the circumstances. The NEP succeeded in decreasing anti-Bolshevik rebellions and in getting the economy back on its feet. The end of grain requisitions probably played a role in defeating the post-Civil War peasant uprisings since that was the peasants' number one grievance. In the years that followed the economy gradually recovered to it's pre-World War One levels.
The NEP was basically a variation of the Menshevik's economic program. This did not prevent the Bolsheviks from continuing to suppress and execute Mensheviks, in fact the suppression of opposition groups increased in this period. Lenin implemented Menshevism while shooting the Mensheviks. His justification of this was:
"The Mensheviks and SRs who advocate such views wonder when we tell them that we are going to shoot them for saying such things. They are amazed at it, but the question is clear: when an army is in retreat, it stands in need of discipline a hundred times more severe than when it advances because in the later case everyone is eager to rush ahead. But if now everyone is just as eager to rush back, the result will be a catastrophe. And when a Menshevik says: 'you are now retreating but I was always favoring a retreat, am in full accord with you, I am one of your people, let us retreat together,' we tell them in reply: an avowal of Menshevik views should be punished by our revolutionary courts with shooting, otherwise the latter are not courts but God knows what. if you don't refrain from openly enunciating such [Menshevik and SR] views, you will be put against the wall"41
This shows a link between the economic retreat to the NEP and the greater repression of the time period. The period after the defeat of Kronstadt and the other rebellions saw massive repression against all opposition groups. Before this period the Mensheviks, anarchists, left SRs and other opposition groups had been severely persecuted but at least managed to survive. The early twenties saw systemic assaults on all these groups, which succeeded in annihilating them. In the situation the Bolsheviks found themselves, with the immense majority of the population completely opposed to them, the only way they could stay in power was through Red Fascism, suppressing all opposition. They had even support than previously because they could no longer use the White boogeyman to scare everyone into submission and the NEP discredited their ideology, since they were no longer even defending something remotely resembling socialism. The opposition groups were now eliminated from society.
Inside the ruling party there was also a clampdown. During the civil war the Communist party had maintained a certain degree of internal democracy. This was a highly centralized, representative democracy but there were still different factions within the Communist party who openly debated and competed with each other. Outside the party all opposition was repressed, but within the party (ruling class) a limited degree of democracy survived. The tenth party congress ended this with its ban on factions. Lenin, and several other Bolshevik leaders, was very afraid of a split within the party. Such an eventuality would probably have lead to the fall of the "soviet" state because the vast majority of the population was opposed to it and would take advantage of such a split to overthrow it. In the kind of precarious situation the ruling class found itself in the only way it could be sure of staying in power was to completely suppress all dissent, both inside and outside the party.42
The tenth party congress should be considered the beginning of Russia's long Thermidor. What followed afterwards, Stalinism, was the logical outcome of the way the system was set up at that congress. Had the congress made different decisions things may have gone differently but the rise of Stalinism was made the most likely outcome by the decisions made at this congress. The ban on factions led to a closing of party democracy and the consolidation of power into the hands of one man, Joseph Stalin. Purging and repression against party members began in the last years of Lenin's life, including the purging of Miasnikov,43 but reached massive proportions under Stalin. The ban on factions made organizing against Stalin almost impossible, allowing him to solidify his rule.
A power struggle arose between Trotsky and Stalin, each fighting for leadership of the party. One of the controversies in the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky was the issue of "Socialism in One Country." Trotsky defended the original view of the Bolsheviks that a worldwide revolution was necessary in order to build real socialism in Russia while Stalin argued that since the world revolution had been defeated they should attempt to build socialism in Russia by itself. "Socialism in one country" entailed abandoning the goal of a global revolution, instead seeking what was best for the Russia, and taking a less hostile stance towards bourgeois governments. By the time of Lenin's death Russia had already started moving towards a de-facto "socialism in one country." They signed a friendship treaty with Turkey even after the Turkish government carried out massacres of Turkish Communists.44
Stalin formed a Troika with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky that dominated the party for several years. Later that broke up and Stalin allied with more right-wing elements against Trotsky. Trotsky led the "Left Opposition" against Stalin. Trotsky accused Stalin of replacing "the party by its own apparatus" and of therefore violating the "Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realized only through the dictatorship of the party"45 by replacing the dictatorship of the party with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy. In 1927 Trotsky and the Left Opposition were defeated and expelled from the party. Trotsky was sent into exile and murdered by a Stalinist agent with an ice pick in 1940.
In the context of this many Bolshevik leaders were starting to become aware of the increasing bureaucratization of "Soviet" society. The Workers' Opposition was among the first of the Bolsheviks to realize this. Even Lenin realized it in the later years of his life. He proposed to combat it in a top-down fashion that would have been completely ineffective because they were top-down and did not truly combat the source of the bureaucracy's power. He advocated greatly increasing the size of the Central Committee (and other organs) but this would not have combated bureaucratization because the bureaucrats would just appoint people who were loyal to them and, once in power, they would just become more bureaucrats. Bureaucratization was the natural outcome of the Bolshevik program, even though they did not intend it. In a situation where a modern state has complete control over almost every aspect of society it should come as no surprise that the state bureaucracy would acquire great power.
The NEP contained within it the seeds of it's own destruction. "Soviet" Russia underwent a series of "scissors crises." Agriculture was able to recover from the wars and revolution faster than industry. Workers were unable to produce enough goods for the peasants to buy (in addition to giving the elite a huge share of the economic pie), leading to economic crisis. In the first scissors crisis Trotsky proposed a state-driven program of crash industrialization designed to rapidly build up Russian industry. This was rejected and instead they used price fixing to end the crisis. This proved to be only a temporary fix, because they faced further scissors crises. They could have continued manipulating prices (and other economic interventions) in order to keep the NEP going, but this would have resulted in lower industrial growth. This was unacceptable to the elite because of their Marxist ideology (which was very much in favor of industrialization), the need to build an industrial infrastructure to defend against foreign invaders, and because it would require the ruling class to accept the extraction of a smaller surplus. In 1928 Stalin ended the NEP and opted for a variant of Trotsky's proposal of rapid industrialization (of course Trotsky was not given credit and had already been expelled by this time). This came in the form of a series of five-year plans made by central planners. This system of five year plans, a new one being drawn up every five years, continued with small variations for decades until Gorbachev.
Along with the five-year plans the state launched a war on the peasants in the form of forced collectivization. The Mir was destroyed and peasants coerced into joining state-run agricultural collectives. The collectives employed wage-labor and had a very authoritarian structure. It brought about mass famine and the death of millions. This class war on the peasants allowed the state to extract agricultural surpluses with which to fuel industrialization. In addition, it smashed the section of society most hostile to the ruling class and over which it had the least control, the peasants:
"The collective farm was to be an instrument of control: it would enable the state to exact a tribute from the peasantry in the form of grain and other produce and extend political and administrative domination to the countryside. the party aimed at nothing less than the eradication of peasant culture and independence. It launched a wholesale campaign against peasant institutions Peasants lost control of their means of production and economic destiny. Collectivization was an all-out attack against the peasantry, its culture, and way of life."46
Peasant resistance to collectivization was enormous, at one point bringing the country close to civil war. Peasants called collectivization a "second serfdom" and believed they were in the middle of Armageddon, with Stalin being the anti-Christ. In 1930 alone more than two million peasants participated in 13,754 mass rebellions.
In the end these rebellions failed to stop collectivization. The peasants were proletarianized turned from peasants into workers. Every society transitioning from an agrarian peasant society into a capitalist society has undergone a period of proletarianization like this, although Russia's proletarianization was much faster and had it's own peculiarities. Capitalism is an economic system based on wage-labor, in which the majority of the population (the working class) has to sell their labor to a minority of the population (the capitalist class) in order to make a living. In order to establish capitalism a capitalist class must establish a monopoly (or near monopoly) over the means of production, including arable land. If the average person can make a living off the land they will not have to sell their labor to the capitalists in order to survive, which impedes the development of capitalism and negatively impacts their profits. Although the USSR claimed to be socialist, it actually practiced state monopoly capitalism. The five-year plan system begun in 1928 was a centrally planned form of capitalism. Most of the population had to sell their labor, to the state, in order to survive. The capitalist class was made up of high-level bureaucrats and party members who controlled the state and exploited the workers. There is little difference between Stalinist-style central planning and having a single corporation monopolize the entire economy. Marxism is the ultimate capitalist monopoly. The NEP was also state-capitalist (as the Bolsheviks admitted), but of a different kind, and War Communism was a kind of state monopoly capitalism combined with elements of "agrarian despotism."
Stalin had already killed millions through the collectivization of agriculture but in the mid-thirties he launched a series of purges that slaughtered millions more, including most of the original revolutionaries who had helped build the "soviet" state. "From the beginning of the thirties Stalin relied more and more on young Party officials, hand-picked by himself, and slighted many veterans of the Revolution."47 In late 1934 the great terror began, lasting through 1938. Stalin had Kirov, the second most powerful man in the country, assassinated and then framed his enemies for the assassination. A bloody hurricane of death swept across the country, as paranoid witch-hunts demonizing "Trotskyite terrorists" and other boogeymen killed thousands. "In 1936, the right to carry weapons was taken away from Communist Party members. Preparing for mass terror against the Party, Stalin feared some kind of active response."48 In that same year a new constitution was adopted. The height of the Great Terror occurred in 1937-38, when many members of the Communist party were liquidated. Dissidents were forced (through torture or other means) to "confess" to being Nazi agents, terrorists or some other absurd charge. Show trials and executions were used not only against dissidents and ordinary people but also against many leaders of the Bolshevik revolution.
The Great Terror was a sort of coup-without-a-coup, in which the bureaucracy liquidated the original revolutionary leaders. It was "the culmination of the counter-revolution."49 The Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" created an extremely powerful bureaucracy that established its rule over the country. In the Great Terror that bureaucracy killed the original revolutionaries who created it and solidified it's rule. "Almost all the most outstanding Red Army commanders who had risen to prominence during the Civil War perished."50 The rise of Stalin was part of the triumph of the bureaucracy. Stalin was not a major revolutionary leader but basically a bureaucrat who monopolized administrative positions (including the position of General Secretary of the party). When the bureaucracy launched its "coup" against the revolutionary leaders it did not need to actually overthrow the state because it already controlled most of the state, including it's coercive machinery. Major victims of the terror "were hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file party members." The "soviet" secret police "arrested and killed, within two years, more Communists than had been lost in all the years of the underground struggle, the three revolutions, and the Civil War."51 At the 17th congress of the Communist Party 80 percent of representatives had joined the party before 1920, at the next (18th) party congress only 19 percent of the representatives had joined the party before 1920. The bureaucracy succeeded in eliminating the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution and solidifying its rule, thereby completing Russia's long Thermidor.
The early stages of the French Revolution saw popular organs of self-management, such as the Sans-Culottes' sectional assemblies, come into being just as the early part of the Russian Revolution saw popular organs of self-management such as the soviets and factory committees. The Jacobins used these to attain power for themselves, just as the Bolsheviks did. However, the institutions the Jacobins advocated (capitalism and representative government) are inherently systems of elite rule and are incompatible with non-hierarchical (anarchist) ways of running society like the sectional assemblies. This brought about a counter-revolution that destroyed the sectional assemblies and brought about Jacobin dictatorship and the reign of terror. The institutions the Bolsheviks advocated (centralism, "proletarian" dictatorship) are also inherently systems of elite rule and are incompatible with non-hierarchical (anarchist) ways of running society like the soviets and factory committees. This also brought about a counter-revolution that the destroyed the soviets, factory committees, etc. and brought about Bolshevik dictatorship and the reign of terror. In the French Revolution after this new elite had succeeded in holding off its enemies and establishing its rule it overthrew the revolutionaries who created it Thermidor. In the Russian Revolution after the new elite succeeded in hold off its enemies and firmly establishing its rule it overthrew the revolutionaries who created it Stalinism. Just as Robespierre was killed with his own guillotine, Stalinism used the same repressive machine developed by Lenin and company to eliminate the revolutionaries who built it. There were quite a few differences between the French and Russian Revolutions, but they underwent similar processes because they both established the rule of a new elite through similar mechanisms (popular social revolution). Thermidor/Stalinism constituted a kind of 'second counter-revolution' in both cases.
Stalinism, Russia's long Thermidor, was not the outcome of Stalin's personality but of the structure of the state and society created in the early twenties. Had another individual been in power more or less the same things would have occurred. Preventing Stalinism or something similar to Stalinism would have required either a different outcome of the tenth party congress or an event that drastically changed things, like another revolution, another civil war, or a meteor destroying Moscow. Stalinism was the logical outcome of the way things were set up in the early twenties. Most of the things attributed to Stalinism had their precursors in the first years of Bolshevik rule:
-state farms/"collectives" first established in 1918
-war on the peasants - grain requisitions under Lenin / forced collectivization under Stalin
-using torture to extract "confessions" was first used against striking workers in 1919
-One party state established in the first half of 1918
-persecution of dissident party members began in 1921 with the decree banning factions
-suppression of independent socialist and labor organizations began in 1918
Of course Stalin took these things to an extreme beyond that of Lenin and Trotsky, but the precursors were there. There is more continuity between Lenin and Stalin than most anti-Stalin Leninists would have us believe. Stalin used the same strategies and repressive machinery (systemic lying, repression of all opposition, etc.) Lenin used against the left SRs, anarchists, Mensheviks, etc. against his opponents.
What existed in the USSR was not communism or even socialism, but Red Fascism. The USSR was a totalitarian state that murdered millions and suppressed all opposition, even other revolutionaries. This form of government was very similar to that established by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Franco in Spain. These classical Fascist states also implemented state-capitalism with a high degree of central planning, like the USSR. Just as Leninists pretend to be socialists, Nazis also call themselves socialists (neither are). Hitler claimed to be a 'national socialist.' Nazi Germany nationalized several industries and instituted a series of three-year plans similar to the five-year plans in the USSR. Mussolini implemented a form of joint state-corporate central planning. Most fascist states have historically used some form of central planning, and not only the classical fascist states. The biggest difference between Red Fascism (Leninism) and Brown Fascism (Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, etc.) lies in the philosophy and rhetoric they use to justify their policies. The policies themselves are very similar. Brown Fascists tend to be more favorable towards private property and never completely eliminate it (although they usually place some restrictions on it) whereas Red Fascists seek to completely replace private property with state (public) property. Brown Fascism, when it is not imposed by a foreign power, comes about as a defense of the presently existing state and ruling class, as a way of warding off revolution. Red Fascism, when it is not imposed by a foreign power, comes to power by overthrowing the old ruling class and establishing a new one. The new elite, created by the attempt to implement Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat," implements Red Fascism to insure it stays in power. Other than that, Brown and Red Fascisms are very similar. Marxist-Leninism is the left-wing version of Fascism.
Notes:
1 Lenin, Left-Wing Communism ch. 7
2 quoted in Anweiller, p. 239-240
3 Lenin, Speech at the Congress of Workers in Education and Socialist Culture
4 Lenin, The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes
5 Lenin, Left-Wing Communism Ch. 5
6 Lenin, 10th Party Congress, section 3
7 Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, ch. 7
8 Breitman, p. 514
9 Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism
10 Bakunin, Power Corrupts
11 Kollontai, section one, part 6
12 Figes, People's Tragedy p. 683-684
13 Quoted on Palij, p. 27
14 Lincoln, p. 450-461; Carr vol. 1, p. 286-409
15 Farber, p. 203-204
16 Lincoln, p. 460-461; Carr vol. 1 p. 339-350
17 Maximoff, Guillotine p. 171
18 Read, p. 266
19 Carr, vol. 1 p. 348
20 Avrich, Kronstadt p. 14
21 Maximoff, Guillotine p. 177
22 Read, p. 271
23 Aves, p. 116
24 Aves, p. 112-155
25 Berkman, Bolshevik Myth ch. 38
26 Krondsadt Izvesta, no. 5
27 Kronstadt Izvesta, no. 8
28 Kronstadt Izvesta, no. 4
29 Kronstadt Izvesta, no. 14
30 Krondsradt Izvesta, no. 6
31 Kronstadt Izvesta, no. 14
32 Guerin, No Gods p. 189
33 Goldman, Disillusionment ch. 27
34 For more detailed refutation of these Bolshevik lies see Getzler, Kronstadt; Mett, Kronstadt; Avrich, Kronstadt; Anarchist FAQ section H.5, Goldman, Further Disillusionment ch. 6; Berkman, Bolshevik Myth ch. 38; Farber p. 189-195
35 Avrich, Kronstadt p. 211
36 Farber, p. 173-174
37 Farber, p. 174-175
38 Quoted on Farber, p. 209
39 Lenin, 10th Party Congress, section 3
40 Farber, p. 175-176
41 quoted on Maximoff, Guillotine p. 204
42 Farber, 28, 99-104, 113-143; Maximoff, Guillotine, p. 144-241
43 Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin
44 Farber, 199
45 Trotsky, Platform of the Opposition, ch. 7
46 Viola, p. vii
47 Medvedev, p. 154
48 Medvedev, p. 167
49 Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom p. 227
50 Medvedev, p. 210
51 Medvedev, p. 234
