20

LENIN’S TIME AND WORLDS

In the Introduction, it was pointed out that the polarization of opinion and the powerful impact of Cold War propaganda had squeezed out the ‘contextual reflection’ indispensable to historical inquiry in favour of other objectives and priorities, to the benefit of the media, ideology, and emotion.

Scholarly work on the Soviet Union has to confront widely held and fervently defended opinions – a highly structured ‘public discourse’ that does not exist in other fields of knowledge. This discourse rests upon a series of methodological errors that are paraded in the various media as obvious verities. The first error consists in focusing on leaders, actors and ideology, depicted as independent agents abstracted from their historical context. Neither the circumstances that shaped and conditioned them, nor the past, nor the surrounding world are taken into account. For many, everything began in 1917 – the moment of the ‘original sin’. For others, it occurred even earlier, in 1902–3, with the publication of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? Thereafter, events unfolded as if they had been genetically programmed, and the sequence Leninism–Bolshevism–Communism is constructed as a fatality. I exaggerate somewhat, but the irony is justified when we recall that What Is to Be Done? was written at a time when Russian Social-Democracy in its entirety, Lenin included, was absolutely convinced that the coming revolution in Russia would be a liberal one (‘bourgeois-democratic’ was their term) – something that precluded the Left taking power. In those years, Lenin regarded Russian capitalism as a triumphant force, rushing full steam ahead and already visible under every bush …

Whenever a determinist perspective is adopted, historical research takes a back seat; and whenever a ‘party line’ (left, right or centre) is adopted in historical research, one only gets out of the piggy-bank what has already been put in it – not a penny more.

In the case of historiography about the Soviet Union, an additional impediment is the common tendency to discount the social changes it actually underwent. The failure to study the society over the longer durée, and the almost exclusive focus instead on the power structure, is sometimes justified by the formula ‘There was no society, only a regime’: the Kremlin, the Staraia Ploshchad, the Lubianka – three addresses, and nothing else. More recently, the term nomenklatura has been presented as a great discovery, without noticing that in the absence of a detailed study of what it denoted, it is only another word.

This is just one example among many of the propensity of numerous commentators for not noticing the obvious gaps in our knowledge of the country. Knowing that such gaps exist and wanting to fill them stems from an old piece of epistemological advice: scio ut nescio.

The ‘contextual’ approach also requires paying attention to the general European scene, its dramas and their aftermath. There the situation changed rapidly, with one crisis following another. From 1914 to 1953 we witness a veritable cascade of cataclysmic events, which impacted very heavily on Russia’s population. And the leaders, before engaging in any action, had to confront this series of crises – many of them not of their making. Lenin did not cause the First World War, or engineer the fall of Tsarism, or even the failure of democratic forces to control the chaos in Russia in 1917. Action or inaction, folly or reason – these cannot be understood without taking account of a period that was confused, crisis-ridden, and laden with the past: it engulfed people and set their agendas. A political strategist par excellence, Lenin was only reacting to what he perceived and understood of the crises he was living through. It is therefore imperative that we broaden the canvas and situate people and movements on it.

Historical complexity is composed of countless factors that can converge, diverge, or collide. It is always much more than the action of a leader, a ruling group, a dominant class, an elite. To arrive at a better understanding of these factors, broader parameters are indispensable. Even the history of a regime as brutal as Stalin’s is not one-dimensional. We have to pose its whys and wherefores, distinguish between its different phases, and determine when it was in – and when it was out of – touch with reality.

Whatever the regime’s degree of isolation and autarky, the external environment cannot be ignored. Not only were foreign radio broadcasts monitored, but systematic studies of Western economic performance landed on the desks of Soviet leaders. The intelligence services, diplomats, and officials from the Foreign Trade Ministry were so many sources of information about what happened abroad, even though it was reserved for the elite. As to the broader Soviet public, we should not underestimate the importance of foreign literary works in translation. However selective, they were numerous: they included many masterpieces of world culture and the quality of the translations was excellent. Soviet citizens became renowned for being great readers of quality works, not to mention their passion for poetry and its specific political role. Today, these qualities have almost entirely vanished.

I have already alluded to another set of problems, which are just as complex and difficult to disentangle. The Soviet and Western systems impacted on and influenced one another, the repercussions varying in form and intensity with the fluctuating international situation. The image the USSR wished to project of itself – as a country building socialism – was at the heart of this process. A closer look at this theme will allow us to clarify some of its aspects, both in the history of Soviet ideology and in its interaction with the outside world – notably in the images and self-images of ‘socialism versus capitalism’ that the two camps projected at one another at different historical stages. How and why so many left-wing critics of the Western world were led to see in the Soviet Union something it was not, and could not have been, is a complicated issue that belongs here. At the same time, we must not forget the use made by the Right of the Soviet Union’s claim to be what it was not, in order to strengthen its grip on Western societies and try to undermine democratic institutions.

The Soviet claim to represent a counter-model and alternative to capitalism helped the USSR mobilize not only its own people, but also considerable external support. It was used after the war to justify the existence of a ‘socialist camp’ and to deck it out in what seemed like natural finery. But if the voice was Jacob’s, the hands were Esau’s. Looked at more closely, the reality had nothing idyllic about it, but was a phenomenon in its own right – much like the Chinese system, which today is a power to be reckoned with.

The last of the impediments worth mentioning here is the massive use of concepts like ‘totalitarianism’ (I shall return to it) that have greatly contributed to ignorance of the significant changes which occurred in the Soviet system. The blatant disregard for the social dimension was proof positive of the conceptual inadequacy of the ideology of totalitarianism. Its concentration on the regime, as if society was by definition so much putty, contributed to the neglect of the deep structural changes in society that were crucial for understanding the regime’s achievements, internal changes, crises and downfall.

These omissions, encouraged by the aridity of ideological confrontation and propaganda warfare, are themselves legitimate subjects for historical inquiry, as of course is the damage the Soviet regime inflicted on itself by banning free inquiry and debate. Ideological arguments and postulates, wherever they come from, cannot be a guide in research; they can only be one of its topics, with a view to unpicking unwarranted claims and understanding their source and purpose. But the important task is to fashion conceptual tools and research strategies in order to clarify what the Soviet system really was, how it evolved (ideology included), and where it is to be situated on the map of political systems.

Let us reiterate the point: the past – in fact, several pasts – were (and are) active, because in Russia realities (not merely relics) inherited from earlier centuries coexisted simultaneously. Unlike periods when the pace of change is slow, in crisis-ridden periods social strata and phenomena pertaining to different epochs collide violently, and in the utmost confusion they shape and reshape political behaviour and institutions. Tsarist Russia experienced its fair share of upheavals in the twentieth century, and these continued well into the Soviet period, exhibiting a whole range of phenomena bound up with political and social changes: ‘crises’, ‘revolutions’, ‘civil war’, upswings, ‘decline’, and then collapse. This spectacle is not necessarily tedious, even if it is somewhat depressing. We also need to hit upon the right terms for each phenomenon, because we cannot use the same ones for the prewar Stalinist phase of breakneck industrialization, combining social development and a ‘cancerous’ political pathology, and the postwar Stalinist period of rapid economic recovery and retrograde political and ideological campaigns. Finally, we must not lose sight of the swing of the pendulum specific to Russia. An important European power in 1913, it was a devastated country by 1920. Mobilized in an impressive war effort from 1941 to 1945, it was a victorious superpower in 1945 and yet once again ravaged. Ten or so years later, it was a superpower with Sputniks and intercontinental missiles, and the sequel was no less surprising. This is a very dense set of hectic historical processes – and a vast field for students of social change.

We are not going to play the role of counsel for the prosecution or for the defence. Any historical study deserving of the name strives to state what was the case. Where there is something positive – progress – it should emerge clearly; and where there is a pathology (history is full of them), it too should emerge.

We have seen that widespread opinions in political circles, the media and popular perception are so many obstacles to serious study of the USSR. The scholarly works devoted to this country and its system belong in another category altogether; they must be approached quite differently, even if some academics contributed to the confection of a standard ‘public discourse’ on the Soviet Union. Spread over many countries, academic research has generated a wide variety of studies that certainly reflected the biases of the ‘great contest’ in some respects, but which were nevertheless the product of serious, sometimes impressive work. In the absence of access to Soviet sources, they adopted a multiplicity of approaches and formed into various schools of thought. Today, given easier access to the archives, but perhaps also in view of the sad state of contemporary Russia, many colleagues would probably concur that a more balanced approach to the Soviet era, warts and all, is not only possible, but indispensable.

The Soviet Union was an integral and intricate part of the twentieth century. It cannot be ‘decoded’ without a clear grasp of the role it played in that century’s dramas. This brings us back to a virtual truism: the impact of world events on Russia was constant and formative.

The 1905 revolution and the First World War strongly influenced the programme of the Russian Social-Democrats, including the tendency led by Lenin (it was established as a party in 1912), and guided their expectations and strategies. Let us reiterate that this political movement had been created with a view not to exercising power or leading a revolution in the short term, but to participating in it and propelling it in the direction of the prescribed historical stage. However, when the attempt at a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution in 1905–7 failed, Lenin began to doubt the validity of his own and the Social-Democratic Party’s assessment of the extent of capitalist development and its impact on Russia. He had hitherto seen capitalism at work everywhere; now he discovered that the leading force ready to topple the Tsarist regime was not the liberals, but rather the peasantry. Accordingly, Lenin began, rather tentatively, to search for a new perspective and a new strategy. And it was only during the First World War that his initial conception of the coming revolution (in fact formulated by Plekhanov) began to change, although it remained valid for most members of his party.

It is important to stress that many members of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, including Lenin himself, had lived in the West and participated in the activities of Western social-democratic parties, while continuing to follow Russian affairs very closely. It might be said that they possessed political ‘dual nationality’ or, more precisely, that they lived in two different worlds politically. Lenin was a case in point. He was a Russian-German social-democrat and a member of the Executive Committee of the Second International. There is no reason to doubt his commitment to that side of the equation; and as with so many others, it was where he had acquired the conceptual tools he used to think about the world. However – and it was no secret to anyone – he was also moulded by Russia, which remained at the centre of his concerns. But this Russian universe was quite distinct from the West. As Lenin had discovered, notably by reading historians of Tsarist Russia, it was a multi-faceted conglomeration, whose components coexisted in the same space without moving at the same pace. Both his worlds were now entering into a long period of turmoil, beginning with the First World War and continuing in crises and revolutions. These events overtook the whole of Central and Eastern Europe – an economically underdeveloped, largely agrarian region, run or about to be run by dictatorial or deeply authoritarian regimes (with the exception of Germany and Czechoslovakia, whose democracy was actually more stable than the Weimar Republic). All these factors have to be encompassed in the matrix of the Soviet system. A further crucial point should not be forgotten: German Social-Democracy (in a sense, Lenin’s ideological alma mater) had rallied to its country’s war effort and aims, as had other socialist parties in their respective countries. The Second International, seemingly so powerful in 1914, split apart – a disaster from which European socialism never really recovered. The unprecedented slaughter and economic devastation produced by the war created expectations in many left-wing circles that it would be followed by a revolutionary crisis throughout Europe. They threw themselves into a search for prognoses and strategies that would lead to a revolutionary government in Europe. The role of Russia, and its own historical potential (as a backward country), was deemed of secondary importance.

An exchange of letters in 1915 between two Bolshevik emigres, Lenin and Bukharin, in which they argued about revolutionary prospects and strategy, offers a flavour of their high hopes and their thinking. At the time, Lenin, like Bukharin (a young, romantic revolutionary ten years his junior), was completely immersed in the prospect of a future revolution in Europe or even on a world scale. Often young, the Bolsheviks were preparing to play a decisive role in it. In all seriousness, Lenin and Bukharin discussed the possibility of resorting to a ‘revolutionary invasion’ of Germany to defend the revolution, but disagreed as to whether the backing of the German Left should be sought. Bukharin considered it indispensable: otherwise, he argued, there was a risk of nationalist unity being created in Germany and ‘our invasion’ failing. In this European revolutionary perspective, revolution in Russia seemed a secondary issue to Lenin, and Bukharin’s ‘our invasion’ referred to any revolutionary force in Europe – not some invasion from Russia. Lenin and Bukharin wondered whether the impossibility of establishing socialism in Russia (a hitherto commonly accepted idea) was still a problem. According to Bukharin, that would be the case if only some countries were affected by revolution. But if the revolution was to be pan-European, Russia would become just one part of a much broader entity; and in any case, national identities would dissolve.1

It emerges from this exchange that revolutionary strategy, and not just in Russia, would be imposed by … ‘Bolsheviks’ – a term that now seems to refer to European revolutionary parties, united in a new international organization, since the Second International was dead and its leaders bankrupt. What was occurring was a shift to the Left, with such ‘Bolsheviks’ taking the lead.

The thinking here is rather utopian and might seem to imply a ‘red imperialism’. But since the stage of current and future events was global, it was not about Russia (which, as everyone agreed, had no socialist potential), and certainly did not situate Russia at the centre of events and speculate about any expansionist advantages it might draw from them. Lenin’s orientation towards the revolutionary potential of Europe was to persist until the launch of the NEP in the Soviet Union. With the recession of revolutionary prospects in Europe, the feverish search for allies in some crisis-torn country, which was motivated not by the strength but by the extreme vulnerability of the new Russian regime, was abandoned. A very different Leninism then took the place of its predecessor.

1917: THE MAIN CAMPS

With all this in mind, we may jump forward to 1917 – a year that experienced a glorious spring, but a very harsh autumn. The brevity and intensity of these two seasons, and the contrasts between them, are striking, though there were of course more than two chapters in this highly compressed slice of history.

The exhilarating revolution that broke out in Russia in February-March 1917 was full of unusual features. Tsarist autocracy was not actually overthrown by anyone: it faded from the scene in the middle of a war, without any obvious alternative to take its place. The Duma, which enjoyed zero prestige, was incapable of taking over. It simply produced a provisional government and then retired from the public political stage. The government was not accountable to it and did not last. Thereafter, a new government was formed every two months. Since we are only concerned here with the bare essentials, we must underline the appearance – and then the disappearance – of three main players. First, there were the soviets, whose leaders – Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks – became (with or without the liberals) the central figures in successive provisional governments from May 1917 onwards. Next came the Bolsheviks, who initially played a merely subsidiary role in the soviets, but whose strength grew rapidly. Finally the future ‘Whites’, almost entirely absent at the outset, began to assemble their forces and soon became the third central protagonist. As for the liberals, they had their own agenda and switched allies accordingly.

The soviets – a unique phenomenon that had first emerged in 1905 – were in fact the only structure resembling something like state power. However, their leaders did not push them to assume power because, according to their analysis and ideology, the future regime was to be a liberal one. The two socialist parties gained a place in government thanks to the soviets, but were almost embarrassed by the fact. For example, the Mensheviks – most of them orthodox Marxists – based their whole strategy on the impossibility of socialism in Russia. For them, the only route ahead was capitalism and democracy; hence the sole indispensable ally was the propertied classes (the middle classes in current terminology). As Ziva Galili has shown, the Mensheviks were divided into various currents. Once in government, some of them revised their pre-revolutionary positions. Others worked in the soviets or stuck with their earlier views. There was also a minority led by Martov – the ‘internationalists’ – that preferred a purely socialist government supported by the soviets. It was opposed to socialist participation in the Provisional Government, which it considered too heavy a price to pay.2

The Constitutional Democrats (the Cadets), led by the historian and politician Pavel Miliukov, initially wanted to preserve the monarchy in order to avoid a revolution. From May onwards, however, they ‘withdrew’ (as Miliukov put it) – renounced any responsibility for developments as a party and sympathized with General Kornilov when he attempted a coup against Kerensky’s government. They longed for a strong government capable of containing the chaos that threatened to engulf the country. Miliukov stressed that this should not be a military dictatorship, but proposed that Kornilov should take the place of Kerensky, whom he deemed ineffectual. Thus the Cadets banked on a monarchist general to restore order and proceed to a democratic republic when circumstances permitted. The key point here is that the liberals (or at least those who shared Miliukov’s views) believed a strong hand was required – but not, of course, from the Left. They did cooperate with the Provisional Government in lukewarm fashion, not as a party but in the shape of individuals accepting ministerial portfolios in order to counter the Left, which was linked to the soviets. The latter represented the only force the Provisional Government could count on. But because they sought the support of the Cadets, the democratic left-wing parties had to pay the price of participating in the government and forsaking the support of the soviets. Such were the contradictions in which, on account of their political and ideological orientation, the Cadets on the one hand and the leaders of the soviets on the other found themselves trapped. These issues must be treated in more detail, since they allow us to understand the kaleidoscope of events that filled the first ten months of 1917.

The political opinions and options of Miliukov and his supporters among the Cadets are highly illuminating. The most heavily criticized aspect of Lenin’s revolution – his programme for a one-party dictatorial regime – started out from a sense of what was possible and what was inevitable that was shared by other forces in the political arena. It is scarcely a revelation to indicate that the Whites (mainly monarchists) intended to install a military dictatorship which would restore an autocracy. They loathed such institutions as the Duma – even the fairly impotent one that existed under the Tsar. And there is no doubt that they were not fond of Miliukov’s party, even when, in response to their attacks, Miliukov insisted that he had done everything in his power to save Tsarism – it was not his fault if it had turned out to be irredeemable. But although they were supporters of a constitutional monarchy, the Cadets – the liberal party – believed that even that degree of liberalization was excluded in Russia for the time being; and for this reason, they defended a dictatorship. This was also the case with the third main actor: Lenin and the Bolsheviks. This unexpected parallel between Miliukov and Lenin in assessing the Russian situation may prove illuminating.

Miliukov’s description of the final days of the monarchy in his 1927 book, Rossia na Perelome (‘Russia at the Crossroads’), is as sombre as that subsequently offered by the Soviet historian Avrekh in a remarkably detailed volume on the twilight of Tsarism. Miliukov sets out his thesis of a lack of ‘cohesion’ between the various classes – peasantry, nobility, middle classes – and between Tsarism and the rest of society.3 Hence the enormous fragility of the Tsarist system, which found expression in the indolence of the state, a propensity for rebellion among popular strata, and the utopian thinking of the intelligentsia. Miliukov’s views – including his formulas about the primacy of the state over society (which amounted to making it the sole bulwark against the danger of fragmentation) – were influential in Russian historiography. Even if they used a different terminology, Lenin and Trotsky’s ideas about Russia’s social structure exhibit some affinity with Miliukov’s. His pessimism about the prospects for a democratic outcome to the events of 1917 onwards was grounded in a historical perspective: military dictatorship or chaos.

Some older, unpublished texts by Miliukov, recently discovered in the archives, explain why he hoped to save the monarchy.4 It is clear that it was the absence of any alternative acceptable to him, in circumstances where the door to democracy was barred, which justified this card in a game of historical poker, as far as he was concerned.

The ‘democratic forces’, which corresponded to the non-Bolshevik or, more precisely, anti-Bolshevik Left – the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries – were in principle committed to a democratic solution. Confronted, however, with the reality of a disintegrating country, some within their ranks, particularly ministers in the Provisional Government, were forced – hesitantly at first – to resort to measures associated with a state of emergency: price controls, rationing, compulsory grain purchases, dispatch of police and military units to quell unrest in the countryside. Inadvertently to start off with, but soon quite deliberately, many of them became champions of a strong state, in outright contradiction of their previous orientation and ideology. Moreover, although they approximated most closely to a genuine democratic outlook, and adamantly refused the diagnosis of Miliukov and Lenin, they never stopped ‘yearning for Miliukov’ – which was a mirage, given that Miliukov was yearning for the ‘iron fist’ of a monarchist: another mirage. No wonder nothing seemed feasible.

The government was headed for financial bankruptcy. The Finance Minister, Shingarev, depicted the approaching catastrophe as follows. Before the war, the money in circulation had amounted to 1.6 billion roubles in paper notes and 400 million in gold. During the war, however, instead of the projected 6 billion roubles, 12 billion had been printed – hence the very high inflation that he characterized as a ‘sweet poison’. The revolution had unleashed enormous expectations among the population. Everyone’s wages had been increased, as had pensions. Expenditure went on rising, but the state treasury was ‘empty’. Thirty million roubles were being printed daily (something that required 8,000 workers). How was this chaos to be brought to an end? It was impossible to print more than a billion roubles a month, and yet it cost 1.5 billion because of inflation. Ten million people were enrolled in the army: ‘Blood is flowing on the front, but in the rear we are having what might be called a feast during the plague. The country is on the verge of ruin. The fatherland is in danger!’5

Police reports coming in from all over the country attested to the growing unrest in the countryside, a deterioration in food supplies, and the piteous state of the army. In this sombre context, the Provisional Government, mainly composed of Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (with the symbolic participation of some property owners), realized that it was no longer in control of anything, that its legitimacy was dwindling with every passing day, and that it was running out of room for manoeuvre. The need for a new, reinvigorated coalition led it to convene on 14 September a ‘Democratic Assembly’, which was to elect an informal ‘pre-parliament’ charged with negotiating the makeup of a new, strengthened provisional government with (or so it was hoped) some prestige. But everyone observing the debates and manoeuvring within the pre-parliament elected by the Assembly had to conclude that the political will and ability to build a state were altogether absent from it. All it had to offer was interminable talk.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1917: THE PRE-PARLIAMENT

The reality of the pre-parliament is clearly described in the memoirs of Nikolai Avksentev, one of the leaders of the right wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries.6 From February 1917 he was president of the executive committee of peasant soviets; in July he was appointed Interior Minister; and in September he became president of the provisional soviet of the Russian Republic (the pre-parliament).

His narrative offers the impression of a solemn session in some luxurious palace – in fact, an utterly sterile gathering united only by hatred for the Bolsheviks – when on the outside a quite different system was already being conceived. With much bitterness, Avksentev vividly describes the internal divisions within each group (all the parties were fissiparous). The situation possessed the typical features of a case of stalemate and impotence, a glaring example of which had been the meeting in Nicholas II’s headquarters at the front a year earlier, when he had proved incapable of doing anything except endlessly reshuffling his government while everything around him was collapsing. Further examples of such paralysis could be cited. The screenplay is different on each occasion, but the spectacle is the same: the political impotence of the key players of the moment. The efforts in September-October 1917 to regain control of events are a classic of the genre.

Avksentev and his associates tried to stabilize the situation by calling on the representatives of the soviets to accept a minority position in the ‘pre-parliament’ that the Democratic Assembly was about to constitute. A majority position was offered to ‘property-owners’ – that is to say, the organizations and parties representing the middle classes. The Democratic Assembly met in mid-September in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, who participated at the outset, wanted to exclude the property-owners completely and to create a purely socialist government, which they declared themselves ready to support. This position was of interest only to a small left-wing group in the Menshevik Party, led by Martov. The Democratic Assembly proceeded to elect 250 members according to their party’s relative strength in the Assembly; and 250 other persons were added from various middle-class and business milieux. These representatives were supposed to provide political and moral support for the government. According to Avksentev, this was necessary because ‘the government enjoyed no other support whatsoever’.

The situation described by Avksentev is one paradox wrapped up in another. The democratic camp offered the property-owners a majority in order to secure legitimacy for the government, without seeing that the soviets (which they led) were the only source of legitimate support. Thus, they sought support from elements who possessed nothing like the power of the soviets. Avksentev understood this very well: he extolled the efforts made by the heads of the soviets to organize the bourgeoisie and bring it into the political fray, and yet he noted: ‘this only served to highlight the weakness of the bourgeoisie’ – something for which neither the Bolsheviks nor the democratic forces were responsible. In the coalition government, the democrats (i.e. the socialists) had mass support (in the soviets), while their bourgeois allies had none. Yet the democratic forces continued to offer parity – even a majority – in the Assembly to bourgeois elements who had nothing to offer except their weakness, but who demanded a high price for it.

Avksentev stresses the debilitating character of the whole process of trying to establish an utterly artificial coalition. It yielded only petty squabbles, failing to produce unity or the kind of succour the government needed.

The remaining Provisional Government ministers – Kerensky, Tereshchenko and others – then embarked on negotiations with different protagonists in the Winter Palace. All sides were aware that the country was on the road to ruin and that unity was urgently required. Yet each of them stuck to their sacrosanct ‘formula’, fearful lest the masses on the outside cry treason if their magical terms were abandoned. The bickering focused on minor questions of dogma, even simple points of grammar. While the nitpicking proceeded within the palace walls, outside a storm was brewing that would soon sweep them all away.

In the meantime, a coalition government was formed and another body – the Provisional Council of the Republic – set up. The latter was to be inaugurated at the beginning of October, to give the Cadets and property-owners enough time to select their representatives. Negotiations continued on the composition of its presidium. Avksentev recounts them in great detail and finally brings us to the solemn meeting of the Provisional Council on 7 October, at 3 PM, in the Marinsky Palace – the very hall where the Tsar convened his Grand State Council. The hall was full; the diplomatic corps was present in its loggias; applause greeted Kerensky, who opened the session. Yet as Avksentev recounts, ‘one did not sense any real conviction that a great new beginning was under way … A unitary institution had been created for the democrats and the bourgeoisie, but there was no unity in it … and the contradictions remained just as potent’. People were more concerned with words than deeds. The Left insisted on peace and the agrarian question, whereas these were things the Cadets would not countenance. Avksentev was in agreement with the latter, and sought to persuade the Mensheviks to exclude contentious items from the final document that was to be adopted. According to Avksentev, it was the soviets – in other words their Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders – who demonstrated their impotence at a critical moment and failed to support the government. So much for Avksentev’s account.

Avksentev accused the ‘democratic Left’ of programmatic inflexibility. In fact, it had no independent political programme corresponding to its actual strength. Its representatives placed all their hopes in the Cadets and other bourgeois elements, while the Cadets only had eyes for the monarchists. Like the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks were divided, and neither party could offer anything clear of their own or accept anything proposed by other forces. When Martov called for a purely socialist government based on the soviets, his position at least possessed the merit of clarity – but it commanded only a small minority of his party.

As everyone argued against the Bolsheviks, there was no prospect of socialism. Here the Mensheviks and others were perfectly right. However, while they already possessed considerable power, this did not fit their ‘formula’. The latter required that they persuade the middle classes to opt for a democratic system. But the bourgeoisie was in disarray and did not wish to participate in such a government. So this raises the question: What were the Mensheviks right about? As Miliukov clearly understood, the ‘middle classes’ whom everyone was counting on were a phantom army politically; and the liberals who should have been their political leaders dreamed only of taming the beast and finding someone with an iron fist. The country was falling apart and there was no central government available capable of averting total chaos.

The monarchist Right saw no other way of resolving matters than through military force and recourse to terror; and they made no secret of it. But what system were they planning to establish once the rioters had been hanged from the lampposts? Many of the White generals looked to the past for a model – a return to the monarchy that they still believed feasible. In the first months of 1917, these stalwarts of the old regime seemed to have been shown the door. Yet Kornilov’s abortive coup in August and the fact that the liberals supported him should have rung alarm bells. Kornilov’s target was not just the Bolsheviks but the whole of the Left, the Provisional Government, and the forces behind it. For the military and other right-wing circles, the leaders of the soviets were guilty of perpetrating a crime – the equivalent of what the German Right was to denounce after the defeat of 1918, or the myth of the ‘stab in the back’ by the enemy within. The introduction of soviets into the army on the initiative of the leaders of the civilian soviets was an affront to the officer corps and, in its view, undermined the troops’ fighting ability. The future White forces (including many ‘Black Hundreds’) needed time to regroup. They dreamt of then retaking Moscow, having the bells of its hundred of churches tolled, and then restoring the empire with a Tsar at its head.

For the time being, though, from September 1917 onwards the country was not governed and looked ungovernable. Only a movement that supported the construction of a strong state could save it. But one candidate for the task – the democratic Left – was in decline. It had no armed forces at its disposal and took no initiatives. Having been certain that the country was ready for a liberal democracy, and nothing else, and having failed to realize that the liberals themselves did not believe in this prospect, it refused to acknowledge its error or pose an obvious question: What was Russia ready for? For their part, the liberals were very weak and saw no alternative to making common cause with the Whites, for only an iron fist could save the country.

My intention is not to denigrate these people, most of them honourable men caught in a historical cul-de-sac. Many of the future victors would also crack their heads (sometimes literally) on all these problems, starting with the same dilemma: What was Russia ready for?

The pre-parliament’s inability to come up with anything was chronic. It offered a foretaste of what would happen in the Constituent Assembly after its inaugural session on 19 January 1918, under the presidency of V. Chernov, who was completely discredited even in his own party (Socialist Revolutionaries), let alone outside it. The forces that had supported the Provisional Government were no more capable of producing a new leadership team in January 1918 than they had been in September 1917. By then, their political potential was completely exhausted and they had also lost any support among the military, especially after the disastrous results of the July 1917 offensive ordered by Kerensky. When they convened the following January in the Constituent Assembly elected in October, they were already a spent force. Yet such an assembly, which was something completely novel in Russia, was incapable of effecting a historical turn without the combined support of the popular masses and the troops. It did not enjoy the support of the soviets (including the military soviets), and those who had elected it in October had already forgotten all about it by January, so fast did the scenery change on the stage of history. The Bolsheviks were not the only ones who wanted to send this Constituent Assembly packing. Had they represented a unified force at the time, the Whites would have done the same. And the Cadets, the supposedly quintessential ‘bourgeois-democratic’ party, had no use for it either: they held only 17 of the some 800 seats and the divided Left that dominated the Assembly was of no interest to them.7

In January 1918, the central committee of the Cadet party adopted a resolution stating that it was ‘neither necessary nor advisable’ to demand the restoration of the dissolved Constituent Assembly, because it was incapable of discharging the duties assigned it and hence of restoring order in Russia.8 Such was the logic of those who longed for a ‘strong hand’. The Cadets looked for such a figure among the right-wing military, because they did not believe in a democratic solution at this stage, at a time when Russia must continue to fight alongside her allies and in any event was not ready for real change. Thus their response to the actual needs of a country in danger of disintegrating was to set off in search of a promising general.

As has been indicated, the background to this analysis lay in Miliukov’s ideas about Russia’s structural weakness: its socially composite character made it prone to crisis, which threatened it with disintegration. But this analysis should have led its author to dwell on the causes of the fall of Tsarism and be more sceptical as to the potential of a right-wing military dictator. One of Miliukov’s reasons for trying to keep Nicholas II on his throne in 1917 was that ‘we cannot afford to change national symbols in times of turmoil’, but the Tsar had disappointed him. His subsequent decision to opt for a right-wing dictator was based on an incorrect socio-political analysis of what such a figure implied: dictators do not usually float above social reality for the duration of their restorative mission. The social forces behind each of the generals on whom Miliukov successively pinned his hopes were already basically spent. Miliukov later described the predicament his party found itself in when cooperating with the Whites: some of its members felt out of place, whereas others were perfectly at ease in this camp – an obvious reason for them to renounce their allegiances and split the party.

In September 1917, some Bolshevik leaders believed that the situation was desperate and that the Provisional Government was bankrupt. But the line of action to adopt was still a matter of debate. After some hesitation, in September 1917 Lenin adjudged that Russia was experiencing a ‘revolutionary situation’ which was not be missed. This concept – i.e. Lenin’s definition of this type of crisis – was crucial in his thinking. In the absence of visible symptoms of a revolutionary crisis, seeking to take power was sheer adventurism. Assessing such situations accurately is not easy, and Lenin had erred on several occasions: when the whole of Europe was tottering on its foundations, ‘revolutionary situations’ could be detected at will. But Lenin admitted his errors and sought to rectify them. In the autumn of 1917, things seemed clear in Russia: the formula for a revolutionary crisis – that is to say, a situation where the ruling classes can no longer rule and the popular classes will no longer tolerate their lot – obtained. The growing power vacuum could only be filled by a left-wing force or forces (a conclusion categorically rejected, as we have seen, by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries); otherwise, the monarchist Right might step in. A sizeable group of Bolshevik leaders, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, agreed with the characterization of the crisis, but was in favour of a coalition government containing the parties active in the soviets. For them, this was a sine qua non of any takeover of power by socialists. But they were no more successful in securing the cooperation of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries than the latter had been in their overtures to the elusive bourgeoisie.

Lenin and Trotsky did not believe that all they had to do to establish a post-capitalist regime was to proclaim a socialist revolution. The starting point of Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’ was the premise that Russia on its own was far from ripe for socialism. For Lenin too, the prospect of socialism could only be envisaged on a European scale. After October, he left open the issue of how to characterize the new regime and how it might – and should – evolve. At all events, what is certain is that following his initial disillusionment with the prospect of rapid capitalist development in Tsarist Russia, he switched to a much more sober thesis about Russia’s ‘combined development’ (Trotsky’s term), with the coexistence of ‘the most backward agriculture, the most uncouth countryside – and yet also the most advanced industrial and financial capitalism’.9 Obviously, this was not a good starting point for any socialist project: even after the bastions of financial and industrial capitalism had been seized, the bulk of the population would remain historically too remote from the first steps leading to post-capitalism. Lenin’s second, more realistic assessment of Russia’s socio-economic system as ‘multi-layered’, which may have been inspired by Miliukov’s historiography, did not make the task any less complicated: the prospect of socialism remained just as remote.

Thus the proclamation of a ‘socialist revolution’ in October meant above all that socialists were taking power and that they believed the international situation to be revolutionary. In the case of Russia, it was a statement of intent, referring to a distant future in a different international environment. Although utopian, the declaration possessed genuine political force: presenting the seizure of power as a socialist revolution (even if fraught with difficulties for the future) played a decisive role. It foregrounded the Leninist notion that backward Russia could serve as a trigger or catalyst on a very troubled international stage. The prognosis was not confirmed, but at the time there was nothing absurd about it.

The second crucial advantage of this utopian vision stemmed from the fact that ‘socialism’ signified a commitment to social justice and equal rights for the various nationalities: an essential ingredient in the credo, with a strong resonance among the latter. The absence of a Russian nationalist orientation proved a powerful weapon against the Whites, who espoused a traditional Great Russian domination – a fatal weakness in a multinational country.

The socialist vision also allowed for an appeal to the peasantry; class terms were familiar to them. Moreover, the slogan ‘Seize the land from the landowners and the rich’ was not an incitement to do it, but retrospective acceptance of the fact that peasants were already in the process of doing precisely that and that no one could stop them. The peasants thereby eliminated the landowners, who constituted a class, and the richer peasants – the kulaks – who were also regarded as a class (though this was not unproblematic in a more rigorous class analysis). The Bolshevik approach thus expressed a reality that was familiar to the peasants and contained demands for social justice that were very close to their basic interests. The term ‘socialist’ made sense to them, without having to read Marx. This was another considerable advantage over the Whites: in the territories they conquered, they restored the land to the nobility and landowners – a fatal but far from accidental blunder. However powerful militarily, the Whites were doomed to failure politically, as was Russian monarchism in general.

At any rate, a few months after October and the Bolshevik seizure of power, the alternative facing Russia was crystal-clear. On one side were the Reds, a radical camp with considerable appeal and the ability to fashion a state; on the other were the Whites, who knew how to fight but who were incapable of (re) constructing a state – precisely as Lenin had predicted.

Because it was oriented to the poor peasantry, soldiers and workers, this revolution that could not be socialist could be a distant relative of the same: a ‘plebeian’ revolution. And that was the key to its victory: it allowed the Bolsheviks to mobilize vast armies hailing from the popular classes. The composition of the Red Army is very revealing. The soldiers were mainly peasants and the NCOs workers who had served in the Tsarist army; others, like Khrushchev, had undergone rapid training courses for young commanders. Many members of the intelligentsia were in military or political-military positions. The picture was complicated by the presence of tens of thousands of former Tsarist officers, some of them issuing from the nobility. While some of the latter deserted to the Whites, a majority remained loyal to the soviets. It was a winning combination!

The revolutionary phase in the strict sense (late 1917–early 1918) saw little bloodshed. But the situation became ever more tense and when full-blown civil war broke out in July 1918, it was a savage, bloody confrontation for very high stakes. It would determine who was to hold power in a country that had been plunged into indescribable chaos. No compromise was possible between the two camps: it was a struggle to the death.

These events drastically changed the Bolshevik Party’s modus operandi, which no longer had anything in common with the pre-October situation. Not only was the organization completely remoulded, but membership was renewed by successive waves of adhesion – each of them bringing different ways of thinking and acting. With the approach of peace, there was a further influx of new members who wanted to contribute to a wholly novel task: constructing a state, administering a country, fashioning a strategy for the conduct of international relations. For a time, the principal cadres were recruited from among those who had joined the party during the Civil War, which had formed them politically. This explains why many of them were supporters of an authoritarian line even in peacetime. From 1924 onwards, a new recruitment would alter the membership once again, filling its ranks with what some of the old guard regarded as completely ‘raw’ elements – that is to say, people with no political experience who, unlike the Civil War veterans, had not demonstrated their commitment to the regime. For the old Bolsheviks, whose surviving number generally held high positions, the party was no longer recognizable: it was no longer a party of revolutionaries totally devoted to the cause of socialism. The newcomers shared neither their values nor their past. They would all now be moulded into an organization that was altogether different from the earlier one, even if was still called ‘the’ party.

Let us note that the broadly plebeian orientation of this recruitment remained a source of strength throughout the 1920s. The policy of comprehensive industrialization in the 1930s brought the party additional popular strata who had a stake in the regime and were also instrumental in the victory of 1945.

A clarification is in order here: there is all the difference in the world between a privileged person who acquires an additional privilege and someone at the bottom of the social ladder who suddenly has access to what was previously beyond her, however modest it might be. Although power did not belong to the ‘plebeians’ as a popular class, they and their children (many of them) now had the chance of attaining positions that had previously been out of their reach. For the regime, this influx of popular elements into the lower and middle levels of the bureaucracy and technical professions remained a constant source of strength and popular support. But because ‘plebeian’ meant low educational levels and a propensity for authoritarianism, an old Bolshevik, who was often highly educated and who had studied Das Kapital (frequently in a Tsarist prison), could feel swamped by a milieu where (to borrow a witticism from industrial Birmingham) they would not know the difference between Marx and Engels and Marks & Spencer.

In fact, this predominance of plebeian origins and attitudes, combined with the pride of place given ‘technicians’ (often trained on the job or crash courses), had a darker potential: it could serve as the social background for the politics and ideology of Stalinism, during the NEP to start off with and then massively during the subsequent decade. For those who had experienced such upward social mobility (and who had such attitudes), the power of the state and its head were not only acceptable but necessary. Even so, the social base of Stalinism, which accounts for the apparent mass support it enjoyed in the 1930s and thereafter, was not the only source of the phenomenon. As I argued in Part One, the seeds of Stalinism lay in the peculiar brand of ‘statist’ ideology that emerged in the ranks of Civil War combatants who gravitated towards Stalin as the NEP was unfolding.