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The Rise of Communism in Russia
Unless we accept the claim that Lenin's coup that gave birth to
an entirely new state, and indeed to a new era in the history of mankind,
we must recognize in today's Soviet Union the old empire of the Russians --
the only empire that survived into the mid 1980s (Luttwak, 1).
In their Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of socialism in which
all class differences would disappear and humankind would live in harmony.
Marx and Engels claimed to have discovered a scientific approach to
socialism based on the laws of history. They declared that the course of
history was determined by the clash of opposing forces rooted in the
economic system and the ownership of property. Just as the feudal system
had given way to capitalism, so in time capitalism would give way to
socialism. The class struggle of the future would be between the
bourgeoisie, who were the capitalist employers, and the proletariat, who
were the workers. The struggle would end, according to Marx, in the
socialist revolution and the attainment of full communism (Groilers
Encyclopedia).
Socialism, of which Marxism-Leninism is a takeoff, originated in
the West. Designed in France and Germany, it was brought into Russia in
the middle of the nineteenth century and promptly attracted support among
the country's educated, public-minded elite, who at that time were called
intelligentsia (Pipes, 21). After Revolution broke out over Europe in
1848 the modern working class appeared on the scene as a major historical
force. However, Russia remained out of the changes that Europe was
experiencing. As a socialist movement and inclination, the Russian Social-
Democratic Party continued the traditions of all the Russian Revolutions
of the past, with the goal of conquering political freedom (Daniels 7).
As early as 1894, when he was twenty-four, Lenin had become a
revolutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He exhibited his new
faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the
peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N.K. Mikhiaiovsky (Wren,
3).
While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian
revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, a claimed
Marxist party was bit organized until 1898. In that year a congress of
nine men met at Minsk to proclaim the establishment of the Russian Social
Democratic Workers Party. The Manifesto issued in the name of the
congress after the police broke it up was drawn up by the economist Peter
Struve, a member of the moderate Legal Marxist group who soon afterward
left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto is indicative of the
way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions, and of the special role for
the proletariat (Pipes, 11).
The first true congress of the Russian Social Democratic workers
Party was the Second. It convened in Brussels in the summer of 1903, but
was forced by the interference of the Belgian authorities to move to London,
where the proceedings were concluded. The Second Congress was the
occasion for bitter wrangling among the representatives of various Russian
Marxist Factions, and ended in a deep split that was mainly caused by
Lenin -- his personality, his drive for power in the movement, and his hard
philosophy of the disciplined party organization. At the close of the
congress Lenin commanded a temporary majority for his faction and seized
upon the label 0Bolshevik (Russian for Majority), while his opponents who
inclined to the soft or more democratic position became known as the
Mensheviks or minority (Daniels, 19).
Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading place among
the Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the Second party Congress in
1903. He represented ultra-radical sentiment that could not reconcile
itself to Lenin's stress on the party organization. Trotsky stayed with
the Menshevik faction until he joined Lenin in 1917. From that point on,
he accommodated himself in large measure to Lenin's philosophy of party
dictatorship, but his reservations came to the surface again in the years
after his fall from power (Stoessinger, 13).
In the months after the Second Congress of the Social Democratic
Party Lenin lost his majority and began organizing a rebellious group of
Bolsheviks. This was to be in opposition of the new majority of the
congress, the Menshiviks, led by Trotsky. Twenty-two Bolsheviks, including
Lenin, met in Geneva in August of 1904 to promote the idea of the highly
disciplined party and to urge the reorganization of the whole Social-
Democratic movement on Leninist lines (Stoessinger, 33).
The differences between Lenin and the Bogdanov group of
revolutionary romantics came to its peak in 1909. Lenin denounced the
otzovists, also known as the recallists, who wanted to recall the Bolshevik
deputies in the Duma, and the ultimatists who demanded that the deputies
take a more radical stand -- both for their philosophical vagaries which
he rejected as idealism, and for the utopian purism of their refusal to
take tactical advantage of the Duma. The real issue was Lenin's control
of the faction and the enforcement of his brand of Marxist orthodoxy.
Lenin demonstrated his grip of the Bolshevik faction at a meeting in Paris
of the editors of the Bolsheviks factional paper, which had become the
headquarters of the faction. Bogdanov and his followers were expelled
from the Bolshevik faction, though they remained within the Social-
Democratic fold (Wren, 95).
On March 8 of 1917 a severe food shortage cause riots in Petrograd.
The crowds demanded food and the step down of Tsar. When the troops were
called in to disperse the crowds, they refused to fire their weapons and
joined in the rioting. The army generals reported that it would be
pointless to send in any more troops, because they would only join in with
the other rioters. The frustrated tsar responded by stepping down from
power, ending the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty (Farah, 580).
With the tsar out of power, a new provisional government took
over made up of middle-class Duma representatives. Also rising to power
was a rival government called the Petrograd Soviet of workers and Soldiers
Deputies consisting of workers and peasants of socialist and revolutionary
groups. Other soviets formed in towns and villages all across the country.
All of the soviets worked to push a three-point program which called for
an immediate peas, the transfer of land to peasants, and control of
factories to workers. But the provisional government stood in conflict
with the other smaller governments and the hardships of war hit the
country. The provisional government was so busy fighting the war that they
neglected the social problems it faced, losing much needed support (Farah,
580).
The Bolsheviks in Russia were confused and divided about how to
regard the Provisional Government, but most of them, including Stalin,
were inclined to accept it for the time being on condition that it work
for an end to the war. When Lenin reached Russia in April after his
famous sealed car trip across Germany, he quickly denounced his Bolshevik
colleagues for failing to take a sufficiently revolutionary stand (Daniels,
88).
In August of 1917, while Lenin was in hiding and the party had
been basically outlawed by the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks
managed to hold their first party congress since 1907 regardless. The
most significant part of the debate turned on the possibility for
immediate revolutionary action in Russia and the relation of this to the
international upheaval. The separation between the utopian
internationalists and the more practical Russia-oriented people was already
apparent (Pipes, 127).
The Bolsheviks hope of seizing power was hardly secret. Bold
refusal of the provisional Government was one of their major ideals.
Three weeks before the revolt they decided to stage a demonstrative
walkout from the advisory assembly. When the walkout was staged, Trotsky
denounced the Provisional Government for its alleged counterrevolutionary
objectives and called on the people of Russia to support the Bolsheviks
(Daniels, 110).
On October 10 of 1917, Lenin made the decision to take power. He
came secretly to Petrograd to try and disperse any hesitancies the
Bolshevik leadership had over his demand for armed revolt. Against the
opposition of two of Lenin's long-time lieutenants, Zinovieiv and Kamenev,
the Central Committee accepted Lenin's resolution which formally
instructed the party organizations to prepare for the seizure of power.
Finally, of October 25 the Bolshevik revolution took place to
overthrow the provisional government. They did so through the agency of
the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. They
forcibly overthrew the provisional government by taking over all of the
government buildings, such as the post office, and big corporations, such
as the power companies, the shipyard, the telephone company. The
endorsement of the coup was secured from the Second All-Russian Congress of
Soviets, which was concurrently in session. This was known as the October
revolution (Luttwak, 74) Through this, control of Russia was shifted to
Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
IN a quick series of decrees, the new soviet government instituted
a number of sweeping reforms, some long overdue and some quite
revolutionary. They ranged from democratic reforms, such as the
disestablishment of the church and equality for the national minorities, to
the recognition of the peasants land seizures and to openly socialist
steps such as the nationalization of banks. The Provisional Governments
commitment to the war effort was denounced. Four decrees were put into
action. The first four from the Bolshevik Revolutionary Legislation were a
decree on peace, a decree on land, a decree on the suppression of hostile
newspapers, and a declaration of the rights of the peoples of Russia
(Stossenger, 130).
By early 1918 the Bolshevik critics individually made their peace
with Lenin, and were accepted back into the party and governmental
leadership. At the same time, the Left and Soviet administration thus
acquired the exclusively Communist character which it has had ever since.
The Left SR's like the right SR's and the Mensheviks, continued to
function in the soviets as a more or less legal opposition until the
outbreak of large-scale civil war in the middle of 1918. At that point the
opposition parties took positions which were either equally vocal or
openly anti-Bolshevik, and one after another, they were suppressed.
The Eastern Front had been relatively quiet during 1917, and
shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution a temporary armistice was agreed
upon. Peace negotiations were then begun at the Polish town of Brest-
Litovsk, behind the German lines. In agreement with their earlier anti-
imperialist line, the Bolshevik negotiators, headed by Trotsky, used the
talks as a discussion for revolutionary propaganda, while most of the
party expected the eventual return of war in the name of revolution. Lenin
startled his followers in January of 1918 by explicitly demanding that the
Soviet republic meet the German conditions and conclude a formal peace in
order to win what he regarded as an indispensable breathing spell, instead
of shallowly risking the future of the revolution (Daniels, 135).
Trotsky resigned as Foreign Commissar during the Brest-Litovsk
crisis, but he was immediately appointed Commissar of Military Affairs and
entrusted with the creation of a new Red Army to replace the old Russian
army which had dissolved during the revolution. Many Communists wanted to
new military force to be built up on strictly revolutionary principles,
with guerrilla tactics, the election of officers, and the abolition of
traditional discipline. Trotsky set himself emphatically against this
attitude and demanded an army organized in the conventional way and
employing military specialists -- experienced officers from the old army.
Hostilities between the Communists and the Whites, who were the
groups opposed to the Bolsheviks, reached a decisive climax in 1919.
Intervention by the allied powers on the side of the Whites almost brought
them victory. Facing the most serious White threat led by General Denikin
in Southern Russia, Lenin appealed to his followers for a supreme effort,
and threatened ruthless repression of any opposition behind the lines. By
early 1920 the principal White forces were defeated (Wren, 151). For three
years the rivalry went on with the Whites capturing areas and killing
anyone suspected of Communist practices. Even though the Whites had more
soldiers in their army, they were not nearly as organized nor as efficient
as the Reds, and therefore were unable to rise up (Farah, 582).
Police action by the Bolsheviks to combat political opposition
commenced with the creation of the Cheka. Under the direction of Felix
Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka became the prototype of totalitarian secret police
systems, enjoying at critical times the right the right of unlimited arrest
and summary execution of suspects and hostages. The principle of such
police surveillance over the political leanings of the Soviet population
has remained in effect ever since, despite the varying intensity of
repression and the organizational changes of the police -- from Cheka to
GPU (The State Political Administration) to NKVD (people's Commissariat of
Internal Affairs) to MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) to the now well-
known KGB (Committee for State Security) (Pipes, 140).
Lenin used his secret police in his plans to use terror to achieve
his goals and as a political weapon against his enemies. Anyone opposed
to the communist state was arrested. Many socialists who had backed Lenin's
revolution at first now had second thoughts. To escape punishment, they
fled. By 1921 Lenin had strengthened his control and the White armies and
their allies had been defeated (Farah, 582).
Communism had now been established and Russia had become a
socialist country. Russia was also given a new name: The Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. This in theory meant that the means of production
was in the hands of the state. The state, in turn, would build the future,
classless society. But still, the power was in the hands of the party
(Farah, 583). The next decade was ruled by a collective dictatorship of
the top party leaders. At the top level individuals still spoke for
themselves, and considerable freedom for factional controversy remained
despite the principles of unity laid down in 1921.
Works Cited
Daniels, Robert V., A Documentary History of Communism. New York:
Random House Publishing, 1960.
Farah, Mounir, The Human Experience. Columbus: Bell & Howess Co.,
1990.
Luttwak, Edward N., The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union. New
York: St. Martins Press, 1983.
Pipes, Richard, Survival is Not Enough. New York: S&S Publishing,
1975.
Stoessinger, John G., Nations in Darkness. Boston: Howard Books,
1985.
Wren, Christopher S., The End of the Line. San Francisco:
Blackhawk Publishing, 1988.
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