Mr. D. N. Pritt and the Russian Trial (1936)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Pritt has written a pamphlet entitled “The Zinoviev Trial." The purpose of this pamphlet is to refute allegations that the Russian terrorist trial was not conducted fairly and urging that the sixteen executed were, in fact, guilty of the charges. In other words, it is Mr. Pritt's contention that the trial was not in any sense a frame-up.

We do not share Mr. Pritt's view, and there is nothing in his pamphlet that gives us sound reasons for doing so. On the first page he tells us he has studied the whole of the available material and has the advantage of professional training and he feels forgiving towards critics who have had to rely on the very condensed reports that have reached this country. He also adds that he was present at the trial. If by condensed reports Mr. Pritt signifies those like the Russian official report that has been issued, then we would point out that Mr. Pritt's pamphlet adds nothing to our information on the subject.

We will take some of Mr. Pritt's points and examine them as examples of the nature of his defence.

First of all he deals with the abjectness and eagerness of the confessions of Zinoviev and his associates. At the beginning he attempts to explain them on the ground of race. He argues that to us the confessions make curious reading only because we don't do those things. This is surely a curious argument and can just as well be used to defend any enormities committed by the Russian Government itself.

He informs us that his friends in Russia tell him that it is common for prisoners there to plead guilty when the evidence is overwhelming against them, and he adds:—

. . .  I am bound to say, as some confirmation of this assertion, that in conversations I have held in Soviet prisons with accused persons awaiting trial on substantial charges, I have not infrequently been struck by the readiness with which they have stated to me, in the presence of warders, that they are guilty and cannot complain if they are punished. (Page 6.) (Italics ours.)

The above statement in itself is sufficient to put out of court all Mr. Pritt’s psychological arguments (in spite of his professional training), and he evidently has no idea of what people will do when in fear. The suggestion is that prisoners are terrorised into making confessions and he replies that they confessed to him—in the presence of warders! What did he expect them to do?

There is a further point to be noted in Mr. Pritt’s statement. Why were warders present when he interviewed prisoners—was it that they could not trust him or them? Perhaps they were afraid the prisoners might not have confessed if left alone with Mr. Pritt! It would be interesting to know if any foreign journalist or Mr. Pritt had any private interviews with any of the Zinoviev group before or during the trial. And, if not, why not?

In reply to the criticism of the private nature of the preliminary investigations, Mr. Pritt points out that the same procedure is adopted in many European countries. Either he overlooks or does not understand the meaning of his statement on page 2 that Russia is a Socialist country. If this statement were true then Russian procedure should be ahead of the most democratic capitalist countries instead of being behind many of them.

Explaining the paucity of the evidence brought forward at the trial Mr. Pritt argues that as the prisoners pleaded guilty it was only necessary to decide upon the degree of their guilt and, hence, only evidence in this direction was considered. We have already dealt with this point in last month's Socialist Standard, and we only mention it here to bring in the following quotation from the pamphlet: —

One can well imagine that the Soviet Government, so far as concerns the point of view of properly informing foreign criticism, would much have preferred that all or most of the accused should have pleaded not guilty and contested the case. (Page 9.)

This is an excellent example of Mr. Pritt's reasoning. May we ask him what prevented the Soviet Government from giving the evidence in full for the benefit of foreign criticism? Surely it is not suggested that the prisoners would have objected ! Either the statement is a meaningless piece of bluff or else there were serious reasons preventing the bringing forward of the alleged evidence.

On page 10 we have another example of legal reasoning that is a jewel.

To give an example, it was part of the prosecution's case that two of the accused had had a conversation in which a highly incriminating phrase was used; the two accused in question, by no means friendly to one another, each admitted that such a conversation had taken place and that the incriminating words were used, but each of them said that the other was the actual author of the phrase. It does not require much experience in the weighing of evidence to realise that such a circumstance as that offers considerable evidence of the guilt, and considerable reinforcement to the plea of guilty, of either or both of the accused in question.

Surely the conclusion is absurd. Why did the accused admit that a conversation had taken place which only themselves knew about ? (What was the “weight of evidence" that forced this confession?) If the case was framed what better way to make it appear genuine than to introduce trumpery disagreements that did not affect the main charge? If they each said the other used the incriminating words then either or both may be liars. As the accused were alleged to have examined the evidence before the case opened they all knew what was coming forward at the trial. Finally, if it is not known who used the incriminating phrase it is no evidence of the guilt of either.

Yet another example of Mr, Pritt's reasoning powers is contained in the following two quotations. It will be noticed that in the first quotation he asserts that it would be impossible to procure a confession from, or to trick into confessing, men of the calibre of the defendants. In the second quotation he says it would be easy to do so!

If it were the practice of the People’s Commissariat for Home Affairs, which has taken over the staff and the functions of the G.P.U., to extract confessions by false promises of lenient treatment . . . surely no one would be better able to estimate the complete worthlessness of such a promise under the circumstances of this case than the experienced revolutionaries whom I saw in the dock. If, again, it were the practice of this department to attempt to extract confessions by violence . . . no one would be better able than these men to support the violence, and subsequently to expose it before the world in the sure hope of discrediting their enemies and gaining sympathy for themselves. If any trickery or deceit, simple or complicated, were employed in an effort to entrap any of these men into confession, surely they would be better fitted than anyone else on earth to detect and circumvent the plot. (Page 12.)

Such men as the critics suggest that Stalin is, would not have hesitated for a moment; they would have procured a confession, a simple enough task. It only involved a promise of leniency; or some simple trick like telling each of them that the other has confessed. (Page 18.)

In the first quotation it is stated that no one would be better able to withstand violence than the accused. This may be true, but there are forms of torture well known to the Bolsheviks (such as what is called the Chinese and the Ukrainian) which it is doubtful whether anyone could withstand. The threat of the continuance of either would make the present writer confess anything and yearn for the shooting party. Further, if the violence is sufficiently effective to extract a confession, then it is almost certain that the threat of its continuance would be enough to deter any attempts at exposure. Anyhow, to whom would the exposure be made? There were only some foreign journalists, some young Communists and safe Government supporters present at the trial. As Mr. Pritt does not say anything about having interviewed the prisoners we take it that this was not possible. If it was possible, and he did not attempt to interview them, then he is wrong when he says he examined all the available evidence. Mr. Pritt is evidently quite blind to the influence of violence and hence makes such statements as the following: —

Why are we not to assume, of such men as these, that if they said nothing against the Government and against the investigators, and nothing in favour of themselves, it was because there was nothing to be said? (Page 16.)

It is just because they said nothing against the Government, and so forth, that the business points strongly to a frame-up. There are people who, on Mr. Pritt's own admission, held to their policy to the last, and were only forced at the very end to admit complicity in a terrorist attack on officials of a Government they were denouncing. As they had confessed two or three times before, they could hardly be considered “of contrite heart," and yet they give fulsome praise to the opponents who, they know, are going to shoot them! It will take more than Mr. Pritt’s simple views on racial differences to explain that.

On page 17, Mr. Pritt asks indignantly, referring to this "Socialist ” country: —

Is it part of the duty of the judicial authorities to publish reports showing exactly how they have conducted preliminary investigations of which the persons who are at once most interested and best informed, viz., the accused, make no complaint?

But why not publish such reports? Particularly when there is so much suspicion. Further, may we ask if Mr. Pritt knows anything about the methods employed in getting confessions? It is surely a strange thing that there are so many abject confessions, so much purging in Russia, and that when it is suggested that Bukharin, Rakovsky and Radek were implicated, that all of them should so anxiously have screamed for the death penalty on the prisoners. What develops this fearful apprehension in men who were not afraid of methods of the Czarist police? On page 20, Mr. Pritt says that the confessions were the prudent course of clear-headed men. Where does the prudence lie in clearing the path to the grave ?

On page 24, Mr. Pritt speaks of the “genuinely corroborative evidence which . . . can be deduced from the indictment and from such evidence as was brought into court.” Why does he not give us some of it? If the arguments in the pamphlet are intended as such then they do nothing to clear the air.

Referring to a suggestion that a lawyer sometimes might not “pull his weight” for an accused out of fear of the Government, Mr. Pritt writes as follows: —

Whether there is anything in it in the U.S.S.R. or not is, of course, not easy to say; all that I can contribute to its elucidation is that I investigated it with care four years ago, and came to the conclusion that a political defendant had as good a chance of getting reliable council in the U.S.S.R., as anywhere else. . . . I may, of course, have been wrong, although I do not think I was. (Page 32.) (Italics ours.)

Again, this is supposed to be a “Socialist" country, and they stood, at best, no better chance —but he is not sure—he only thinks so!

He also adds that he does not know where in the world a counsel could be found with a command over Russian sufficient to follow such a fast trial full of cross-questioning, etc. Yet, in spite of the difficulties and speed of the trial, Mr. Pritt, who is not a Russian scholar, claims to have been able to follow it closely enough to be convinced of its genuineness!

Towards the end of the pamphlet he makes some remarks on the Russian judicial system, designed to suggest that prisoners have as much chance in a Soviet court as elsewhere: —

The independence of judges and advocates is being constantly increased, and already compares favourably with that prevailing in many European countries. (Page 29-30.) (Italics ours.)

This statement is significant in a sense not intended. Does it mean that now the position compares favourably with, say, Italy, Germany, Poland and Austria?

Every foreign critic who has studied the Soviet legal system has reported that, taken as a whole, it is good and fair; everyone who studies it at all knows that year by year it progresses steadily towards greater facilities for the prisoner, greater independence of judges and counsel, and greater technical efficiency. (Page 30.)

Now let us compare the above with the remarks on the same subject of one who spent years in Russia, wrote considerably about it when there, and was always regarded as a sympathetic observer. The remarks are contained in an article entitled, "Paradise Imagined,” by W. H. Chamberlin, published in The American Mercury for September, 1936. The quotation is a long one, but we think is too interesting to cut:—

But no sketch of the position of the Soviet lawyer is remotely adequate if it fails to show that he is definitely inhibited from performing one of his most useful and honourable functions; the protection of the individual against the injustice of the State. In democratic countries, even in Czarist Russia, lawyers have always been able to undertake this duty.

It would be impossible to point to a single case in recent years in the Soviet Union where a lawyer has offered an outspoken, vigorous defence of a political prisoner. Yet this is not because evidence of grotesque injustice has been lacking. One need only recall the Ramzin sabotage trial of 1930, when two men, Ryabushinsky and Vishnegradsky, were solemnly indicted for conspiring to set up a counter-revolutionary government in Russia years after they had been dead and buried. The outside world roared with laughter when it learned of this illuminating slip. But neither the attorneys for the defence in the farcical trial nor anyone else in the Soviet Courtroom saw fit to mention it.

. . . But it would be simply unthinkable for a Soviet lawyer, assigned to “defend” a political prisoner, to emphasise damaging weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, or to publish in a legal journal a vigorous denunciation of the frequent practice of arbitrary arrest and exile without trial. The immense force for individual security and common decency, the vast bulwark against personal spite and bureaucratic tyranny, represented by an independent judiciary and by lawyers who can put forth their best efforts on behalf of political defendants without fear of being sent to concentration camps, simply do not exist in the Soviet Union. (Page 11.)

This is a far different picture from that presented by Mr. Pritt!

Mr. Pritt claims to have studied all the available evidence, to have been present at the trial, and to be peculiarly fitted by legal training to understand this case, and yet, on page 19, when going over the previous history of the accused, he only mentions one previous occasion on which they were concerned in a terrorist trial, Kameneff is reported as saying: —

I am now before the court for the third time, accused of terrorist intentions. (Final Statement.)

Why has Mr. Pritt failed to mention this third trial ? A letter appeared in the Manchester Guardian of October 7th, which gives us some information on this point. The writer is Anton Ciliga, at one time a member of the Politburo, who left Russia at the end of last year. The following extract from his letter deals with the matter in question: —

Nor was there any mention of a trial which took place between that of the murderer of Kiroff and the recent Moscow trial, at the beginning of the summer of 1936. Not a word about this trial had been allowed, at the time, to appear in the Soviet Press. The charge was of attempted assassination of Stalin; Zinovieff and Kameneff were among the defendants. The case ended with the shooting of two of the defendants, a G.P.U. official and an officer of the Kremlin guard; 36 men were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Kameneff’s term was prolonged to five years, (Zinovieff was acquitted. This whole affair was also left entirely unmentioned in the recent trial. The only indirect reference to it—Kameneff’s statement that he was appearing for the third time, in a proletarion court of justice, on a charge of terrorism—was carefully cut out of the foreign Communist reports.

There is still a host of questionable statements and frail reasoning in Mr. Pritt’s pamphlet, but what we have dealt with should be sufficient to give the reader an idea of the weakness of Mr. Pritt’s case.

Gilmac.

Letters: Crypto-Leninistic? (1970)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crypto-Leninistic?

It is difficult to avoid the impression that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is Crypto-Leninistic when it claims that capitalism was necessary to build up the organization of production until it could be replaced by democratic control of society. If people are inadequate to develop their economy communally and co-operatively, then by what means does competence magically descend on them after elitist-controlled growth. It takes blindness to ignore the achievements in voluntary collectivization (free sharing of talents and resources) of the Spanish anarchists in the 1930’s and to disregard the potential of the Mahknovites in the Russian Revolution. Again on what grounds does the SPGB condemn the Bolshevik usurpations when it alleges that capitalism is necessary in primitive countries (see p.45 Russia 1917-1967). I am very disappointed in the Companion Parties (WSP. SPGB. et al). This lack of faith in the ability of the people to control their own destiny was certainly not shared by Rosa Luxemburg who is otherwise favourably regarded by the WSP. 1 regret having to be so critical and I hope this disagreement is based on a misunderstanding.

Yours for Socialism.

Roger Lee.

Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.

Reply: 

Roger Lee will be pleased to know that he has misunderstood us. When we say that the development of capitalism was necessary before Socialism could be established, we are thinking in world terms. By the end of the last century capitalism had performed this task of building up the material basis for Socialism. From then on it has been a reactionary system everywhere. We reject the view that the coming of capitalism to the backward countries now (or to backward Russia after 1917) is necessary before Socialism can be established.

When we wrote on page 45 of our pamphlet Russia 1917-1967: “That Russia had to follow the capitalist road and employ capitalist methods was inevitable”, we meant this to be understood in the context of the conditions then existing, i.e., that Russia was economically backward and that a majority of the workers both there and in other countries of the world did not want or understand Socialism. In fact we specially spelt this out on the previous page of the same pamphlet:

  . . . in the conditions that existed in Russia and the absence of a strong world socialist movement no other development was possible. Russia had to go through the stage of capitalism (emphasis added).

The land area of Russia and its people could have formed part of a world socialist community after 1917 had there been a majority of Socialists in the industrialised parts of the world. The brutal Bolshevik industrialisation of Russia was not historically necessary, whatever “crypto-Leninists" might say (if that is what they do say).

We are aware that throughout the history of capitalism there have been examples of workers (and peasants) organising themselves democratically to produce wealth. These however were not examples of Socialism but they do confirm that ordinary people can run society's affairs without a boss class — an argument we have always put forward.

Editorial Committee.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money may not grow on trees, but according to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), it appears to be growing exceptionally well for a tiny fraction of Americans. In a recent post on X, Sanders renewed his long-running criticism of wealth concentration in the U.S. ‘Never before have we had so much income inequality’, he wrote. ‘Last year, the bottom 50% saw their income go down by $27, on average, while the top 0.01% gained $2.9 million’, Sanders continued. ‘And the top 0.001%? They saw their income go up by $20 million. In a single year. “Yes. We must tax the rich,”’ 

[Yahoo]

‘“Democratic Socialist” is to the Communist what “National Socialist” was to the Nazi’, reality TV star and former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt [sic] posted on X. 

[Fox News]

Zinn expressed the source of his motivations. ‘I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel – let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing’, he said. ‘I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers’. 

[Portside]

… Petrograd’s local Soviet government and Bolshevik Party organizations struggled to implement the Bolshevik Party program, fight domestic and foreign counterrevolutionaries, quiet labor unrest, and provide food, fuel, and education to the local population. The methods and strategies used by the government and party organizations to organize public life and fight enemies, domestic and foreign, not only preserved the infant Soviet regime but proved to be the first manifestation of what would become the one-party authoritarian Soviet political system. 

[The Bolsheviks Survive. Petrograd 1919. By Alexander Rabinowitch]

We emphasized, with Marx, that the proletarian revolution is not only necessary to overthrow capitalist rule but also to change the proletarians, so that they become fit to transform the world. Through the experience of prolonged collective struggle and being forced to reinvent their social practices to survive, proletarians throw off ‘the muck of ages’ as Marx put it, the weight of capitalist and pre-capitalist ideology and practices. Fredo thinks it is utopian to put that much ‘faith in revolutionary transformation of attitudes’. But isn’t it utopian to think that the revolution can succeed without attitudes and social practices being thoroughly transformed? 

[Internationalist Perspective]

The fear of acting incorrectly, of causing harm, or of being criticized by others can become politically paralyzing. One interviewee captured this dynamic succinctly when she explained that she would rather refrain from acting than risk doing something wrong. Such statements reveal an important contradiction. The ethical demand to act responsibly can, under certain conditions, undermine political action itself. This is not because ethical concerns are inherently conservative. Nor is it because criticism lacks political value. The problem is rather that individualized responsibility offers a weak response to problems that are fundamentally collective.

[Jacobin]

(These links are provided for information, target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Socialist Forum: The Programme of the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader at St. John, New Brunswick, asks the following questions :—

What was the programme, or principles, in brief, of the Mensheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, now under a ban in Russia? Have these extinct organisations much in common with the S.P.G.B. ?

Yours, etc., M. Wasson.

Reply.

In order to make our comments on these Russian organisations understandable we must first give some facts about them. The “Russian Social Democratic Party,” which later split into two separate bodies, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, was formed in 1898. Its aim was declared to be Socialism. Its energies were largely taken up with problems of organisation, with the struggle for immediate demands (such as the right to organise in trade unions, the shorter working day) and with resisting the efforts of the Czarist Government to suppress its propaganda. From the first there were two wings in the Party, and in 1903 at the Party Congress at Geneva a split developed. The following statement concerning the split is taken from “The Labour International Handbook,” published in May, 1921, by the Labour Publishing Co., Ltd., London. The Editor, R. Palme Dutt, is a well-known Communist.

“It is important to note that there was no disagreement on the programme, which was adopted unanimously. The difference was one of tactics, and concerned (1) the importance to be attached to illegal work; and as the difference developed (2) the question of co-operating with bourgeois parties of the left.” (P. 286.)

A Unity Congress was held in 1906, but the two sections continued to keep their separate organisations and journals. In 1912 they ran candidates against one another in the elections for the Fourth Duma (“Handbook,” p. 287).

Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks claim (and still claim) to be Marxists.

The “Socialist Revolutionary Party, ” formed in 1901 did not claim to accept Marxist principles. They advocated and practised political association, which both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks condemned.

“In their social theory they looked above all to the peasants and the development of agricultural communes with a large local autonomy” (“Handbook,” p. 288.)

The “Socialist Revolutionary Party,” with a predominantly peasant membership, was much larger than the other parties, whose members were chiefly in the towns. The Mensheviks were less numerous than the Bolsheviks.

The “Left Socialist Revolutionaries” were a wing led by Spiridonova and Kamkov, who gave general support to the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power in 1917. They had seven seats on the Council of Commissaries until early in 1918, when they resigned as a protest against the Bolshevik policy of making peace with Germany.

The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries still have organisations and journals, with headquarters in Berlin.

In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).

If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.

The S.R. declaration, on the other hand, contains little about principles, and is not in any real sense a Socialist declaration at all. It is merely a propaganda effort to justify the tactics of the S.R. Party and to blacken the Bolsheviks.

The important thing is that the Menshevik document referred to above, although issued by the Central Committee of the Party, does not give anything like a full and true picture. Rather it represents the views of certain individuals on Socialist principles, completely divorced from the actions of the Party. This characteristic of the Mensheviks is one often found in the Labour Parties of Western Europe and elsewhere.

Let us look at certain of their actions.

The Mensheviks permitted their members  to support the war—-in flat contradiction of’ the Socialist principles they were supposed to understand and accept.

The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (and the Bolsheviks) belonged to the Second International before the war. They accepted the absurd claim that that body and its affiliated parties were Socialist.

The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries are still affiliated to the “Labour and Socialist International ” and still push the reforms which make up the only stock-in-trade of that non-Socialist body.

It will be seen, therefore, that the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries have no more in common with the S.P.G.B. than any of the other reformist parties which find it convenient to cover over their reformist programmes with a gloss of Marxian phrases and ideas.  

Ed. Comm.

The Russian Revolution (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924. By Robert Service ISBN 9781529065855

Continuing his popular histories of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Robert Service seeks to look more broadly at events, rather than through personalities and political decisions alone. Rather, he seeks to ‘explore […] how ‘ordinary’ people coped – or failed to cope – with the shattering dislocation of Russian and global affairs’ during the revolutionary period.

He utilises the diaries of the likes of Alexei Shtukaturov, a worker who was conscripted into the Imperial Army, and Alexander Zamaraev, a peasant, too old to be conscripted. Embedded within the stories of events, their own words reveal frustrations and aspirations. In part, this helps unveil the political sophistication of those often dismissed as ignorant peasants (as Service notes, ‘peasant’ was a legal, rather than an economic category). Nonetheless, the frustrations of the peasants form a significant backdrop to the events of the revolution.

Zamaraev lived in Totma district, Vologda, where 92 percent of agricultural land belonged to the state, church, and Imperial family. His diaries reveal concern over conscription, support for the Tsar and for the war, and over access to food as the war continued.

Service effectively brings home the conditions under Tsarism during the war, and helps show how common people were far from passive objects during these great events. At this time, one-third of European Russia was placed under martial law, and 13 million men went through the army (Service notes its harsh discipline.) Many others also laboured in the civilian economy. This fact, and the way that previously toothless local government bodies took on increasing responsibility for welfare provision, such as food and medicine, in a co-ordinated fashion (later to be joined by industrial committees) prefigured the kind of state that was to come out of the war.

Service is critical of Tsar Nicholas, especially his war aim of trying to gain Istanbul (or Tsargrad, as they referred to it) for the Russian empire. Service also notes the racist suppression of Jews and Poles within the Empire, the Tsar’s failure to grapple with its massive structural problems, and the way he vigorously resisted the changes needed to fight a modern mechanised war.

He notes that the Bolsheviks did not expect or want the specific revolution that they found themselves involved in, but that the line of party discipline and a one-party state were part of their core ideas from the very beginning: ‘They opted for force over persuasion; for central authority over democratic accountability’. They had no more legitimacy than the provisional government of Kerensky, but they were more prepared to use force to get their way.

The book draws out the role of the peasants, economically, politically and legally, and the way their frustrations formed a significant part of the backdrop to the drama against which the political leaders played their parts. In his assessments, though, Service does not look at whether there was any alternative path available which could have led to a different outcome.

Pik Smeet

A third force (1996)

Book Review from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays by Nestor Makhno. (AK Press 1996. £7.95.)

The civil war in Russia following the November 1917 revolution involved the Bolshevik-controlled Red Army and the “Whites" (Monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks supported by foreign armies). What is generally less well known is that there was a third force in the struggle—the anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. This peasant-based army, led by Nestor Makhno, held much of the Ukraine and briefly larger parts of Russia as the three sides won and lost ground in an increasingly bitter conflict. Eventually the Red Army won out and, by the time of the suppression of the Krondstadt Revolt in 1921, Makhno had fled to the West.

Before his death in exile in 1934 Makhno wrote a series of essays, collected here, defending the anarchist part in the Russian revolution. The anarchists wanted to smash the state; the Bolsheviks wanted to build a state; neither side required majority support for their objective. Both are dictatorial. Democracy requires that a majority understand, approve and participate in bringing about change. And this is the process which will bring about world socialism and sustain it.

Lew Higgins

Seeing through the Russian myth (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

The Bolshevik leaders told us that the workers of the world were ripe for revolution and their support of Bolshevism was expected and depended upon. Now that it is plain that workers do not understand socialism and fight for it, Lenin is pandering to the ignorance of the world’s workers. In defence he says that by supporting the pro-capitalist Labour Party and helping to establish a Labour Party government, the workers will learn the uselessness of the Labour parties. If that policy is to be adopted, then it is necessary for the workers to follow every false road, to support every reactionary measure, and to join every movement and learn from their mistakes—in other words, exhaust every possible evil before they try the right road. If this policy is right why did not Lenin support Kerensky’s policy of capitalism for Russia and let the workers painfully learn its uselessness? Such nonsense as supporting parties and Governments to gain power to learn their misdeeds is not the road to Socialism, it is the path to apathy and despair, and lengthens capitalism’s life.

[From “The Super-Opportunists. A Criticism of Bolshevik Policy”, Socialist Standard, August 1920]

Letter: Structured party (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Structured party

Dear Editors,

I am a bona fide socialist and I will never be anything else. I am totally opposed to inequality, exploitation, oppression, poverty, hunger, war and everything associated with capitalism. However I do find fault with your outlook. I can’t see how we can challenge capitalism without being organised in a structured socialist party with an elected leadership. I believe that the leadership should have no special privileges , but to vigorously pursue party policy which would be decided at conference.

You criticise Lenin and Trotsky in your ideas, but I think the Bolsheviks’, with Lenin and Trotsky, was the most correct that the Russian revolution could have been in organising socialism in that era. So I would like you to educate me by explaining a better way of achieving socialism.

C. Dobson, 

Wigan

Reply:

We do stand for a “structured socialist party” but on quite different lines from Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Starting from the view that, left to themselves, the working class can only develop a trade union consciousness, they stood for organising as a vanguard party to lead the workers. They also said that this party should be organised on a top-down basis with a “leadership” which, while perhaps formally elected, had the power to make policy and order other members what to do. Such a structure may have been necessary to overthrow Tsarism but not to establish socialism – which they didn’t anyway, only a form of state capitalism.

We say that the socialist political party should be organised on a quite different basis: the power to make policy should lie with the membership through delegate conferences and referendums; there should be no party leadership, only an executive or administrative committee charged with arranging for the policies decided by the membership to be implemented. We also say, contrary to Lenin, that workers can advance beyond trade unionism and can understand socialism. When a sufficient majority of them have, and have organised themselves democratically, ready to take over and run society, they can send mandated delegates to parliament to take control of political power and use it to end capitalism and coordinate the change-over to socialism – Editors.

Marxism: Past and Present – pt.2 (1955)

Book Review from the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Marxism: Past and Present by R. N. Carew Hunt. (Published by Geoffrey Bles)

Nothing more crucially establishes contrast between Marx and Lenin than their views on the nature and function of class-consciousness. Marx saw it as a development of class-awareness of the true position in a system based on antagonistic productive relations. Lenin viewed it as the intellectual prerogative of a political intelligentsia. Marx and Engels never tired of proclaiming that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. Lenin never tired of denying it. Marx and Engels came to hold that long and patient work was necessary to fit the workers for the task of social transformation. Lenin lived in the hectic expectation of “imminent revolution” and “the psychological moment.”

Lenin, like many “intellectuals” and certainly all dictators, had a naively sublime faith in the powers of leadership. It was the Bolsheviks, in fact, who classically taught the “leader principle” which later produced star pupils like Mussolini and Hitler. While Lenin in his more expansive moods spoke of the masses being the historic instrument for the achieving of Socialism, he never relaxed his iron belief that only an élite could provide the intellectual and organizational means for its accomplishment. To the workers he never conceded more than a trade-union consciousness as the upper limit of their mental development. “The mass,” he contended, “have no independent movement of their own.” (Collected Works, Vol. IV. Part III pp. 222 and 235.) He also said: “Left to themselves, the masses become enslaved to bourgeois ideology.”

Marx and Engels saw the working class as the representatives of a new and larger aspect of mankind. Lenin regarded them as political raw material which the Bolsheviks would work up into the finished article. Docile acceptance of Bolshevik plans Lenin taught as the cardinal virtue for the workers. When they demurred, the Kronstadt incident, among others, was a reminder that Bolshevik authority was not something to be lightly disregarded. “Lenin knows best” was the phrase he wanted to hear lisped most from the lips of the infant Russian working class.

Not even so accomplished a literary ventriloquist as Mr. Carew Hunt can make Lenin a convincing mouthpiece of Marxism. Actually he was a mouthpiece, but a mouthpiece of certain social forces in Russia making for a bourgeois revolution. Politically Lenin was not a Marxist but a Jacobin revolution-monger. Not unjustly did a contemporary dub him “the Russian Marat.” It is not surprising, then, that he so earnestly studied “the Jacobinic dictatorship” of the great “French bourgeois revolution” in order to discover techniques for his own. That he veiled his Jacobinic pretensions with Marxist phraseology has deceived shrewder observers than Mr. Carew Hunt.

Essentially Lenin’s dictatorship theory was an inflexible belief in the dictatorship of a party or a State. In spite of his dialectical pose, this constituted an absolute political principle applicable at all times and all phases of economic development. This is in flagrant contrast to the principles of the Communist Manifesto, which states: “the practical application of the principles will depend everywhere and at all times on existing historical conditions.” This political premise of Lenin is still enshrined in Communist doctrine, for we are asked to: believe that everywhere Russian domination extends “Socialism” has come into existence.

Little wonder that Lenin declared: “Majority rule is a constitutional myth.” (“Constitutional Illusions,” Aug. 1917, Collected Works, Vol. XXI, Book I.) At the first All-Russian Soviet Congress, where his party was but a fraction, he announced their readiness to take over immediately. He added: “Maybe we shall hold power a few weeks and then die at the barricades”—a whimsical notion, for Lenin, intended to be no martyr à la Thomas Müntzer. Power at all costs was writ large in Bolshevik belief.

Many, out of piety to Lenin, believe he forsook Marxism when he thought the end of the first world war would see the end of capitalism and that a Socialist, not a bourgeois, revolution, would be the order of the day. But such a view was always implicit in Lenin’s political theory, as we have seen, even if at times it conflicted with assumptions derived from Marx’s economic doctrines. In line with his Jacobinic assumptions, he had always held that it was possible to seize power during the course of a bourgeois revolution in Russia and by holding it control its corresponding economic phase and “steer” it in a Socialist direction. Even as far back as 1908 he said: “The victory of the bourgeois revolution will as a victory for the bourgeoisie be impossible.” (Collected Works, Vol. XII, p. 252. Quoted from Bolshevism. R. Sprengler, International Review Publishers.)

It might also seem that when Lenin identified State Capitalism with Socialism he sought to hide from himself the cruel historic truth of the limits of his own revolution. Yet again this identification was always implicit in the views he held as to the role his party would play in the Russian scene, culminating in a bourgeois revolution. When he said “State capitalism run in the interests of the whole people is nothing but Socialism” The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it (Sept. 1917), it was Lenin who first perpetrated the myth of “Socialism in one country.” He thus finally revealed himself as the anti-Marxist adherent of that Bolshevik prototype, the Narodnik. It was these old Russian national revolutionaries who maintained that Russia would bypass capitalism and achieve a uniquely Russian Socialism. Stalin’s formulation of “Socialism in one country” via Lenin’s state capitalism, itself a by-product of Narodnik political influence, was under its ideological trappings but Russian nationalism come to ripe maturity.

Ironically enough the Russian “February Revolution” caught the Bolshevik élite on the wrong foot. It was the workers who took the initiative, not they; just as it was the ordinary soldiers who encompassed the fall of the reactionary Miliukov government. But the small, relatively backward working class of Russia could not decide or direct the course of the revolution where 80 per cent. of the population were peasants. It was the upsurge of the black discontent of the latter, coupled with the adroitly unscrupulous tactics of the Bolsheviks, which swept Lenin into power.

The Bolsheviks did not and could not represent the interests of the Russian working class. Even if they had vainly sought to do so, Engels had a word for them in envisaging a situation much more favourable than the Bolshevik seizure of power. In The Peasant War in Germany he expressed himself thus: “The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to take over a government in an epoch where the situation is not ripe for the domination of the class he represents … in the interests of the movement itself he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class . . . with the assertion that the interests of an alien class are their interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.”

While Marx’s and Engels’s writings show apprehension as to the reactions of the ruling class to any threat to their social privileges, to darkly hint, as the author does, that they were ruthless politicos incipiently formulating the techniques of modern dictatorships seems to show that the edge to his criticism can only be sharpened on the whetstone of malice. Yet even a cursory acquaintance with the works of Marx and Engels reveals a social vista incomparably superior to the motley crowd of purblind politicians and ideologists who clutter the band-wagon of “Western Democracy.”

The author assumes that Marx and Engels held that Socialism would automatically, even naturally, convert the Capitalists into a depressed minority. We have found no evidence for this in their writings. Mr. Carew Hunt might do well to ponder on capitalism’s own long and odious record of minority treatment.

The author refers to the role of force in Marx’s political doctrine, but only in so far as to vaguely equate it with insurrection and civil war, leading possibly to political terrorism. Marx and Engels certainly saw their “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a force—not, however, a destructive physical force but a socially organized power of a politically mature working class. If they argue that an enforcement of that power may be needed to implement a majority decision, this is not inconsistent with democratic precept.

Moreover, Mr. Carew Hunt’s objection to the force of socially organized power is inconsistent with his support of capitalism. Capitalism as a system of private property relations generates class conflicts which require the force of the State, with its control of the armed forces to provide the physical sanction for its continuance. Are we to conclude that the author’s acceptance of this makes him anti-democratic? Again, the present order produces the most pernicious form of force in the shape of the organized violence of war (latent in re-armament; actual in war itself). If Mr. Carew Hunt’s ideological defence of western capitalism is extended to military defence as well, must we rate him as a ruthless ideologue? And if he supported the last war and consequently “our glorious ally Russia,” was not he, even if for the period of war only, a supporter of Stalinism? We do not suggest this: it is merely a sample of the author’s own logic.

The rest of Mr. Carew Hunt’s book is pointless pin-pricking. This is his second book on Marxism. We wonder why. Cold print often produces chilling doubts. He may yet try again on the assumption “third time lucky”!

Ted Wilmott

(Concluded)

Marxism: Past and Present – pt.1 (1955)

Book Review from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism: Past and Present by R. N. Carew Hunt. (Published by Geoffrey Bles)

This book is a mine of reference on Marxism. While the author may have diligently quarried for his treasure, precious little has been brought to the surface that materially adds to existing stocks of knowledge on the subject. The book in fact is not so much a solo as a sound track for a massed anti-Marxist choir: so much so, that the author’s voice seems but the sotto voce of a “whispering baritone.” In addition, he attempts to decant the whole quart of Marxism into the half-pint bottle of 175 pages, thus making impossible any systematic treatment of the many issues raised.

The author essays to show that the totalitarian empire of Russia is the melancholy sequel to Marx’s doctrine of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Presumably, had there been no Marx there would have been no Lenin, no October Revolution. The sequence of events in Russia might then have told a happier story. Once again, then, Marx takes on the legendary role of history’s “wicked uncle,”

One of the author’s contentions, then—the one we shall deal with—is that both Leninism and Stalinism are rooted in Marx’s doctrine of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The author adopts, however, the dubious procedure of interpretation rather than testimony, of inference in lieu of evidence. He selects passages from Marx and Engels compares them with statements of Lenin and stress similarities. He never selects passages which reveal differences.

Yet those differences are of an order to show not a crucial connection but antithetical relations between Marxism and Leninism. While Marx and Engels were never specific as to what they meant by “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” they were always consistent with the generally accepted notion of democracy. Lenin’s political doctrine did not characterize democracy but only caricatured it in a debased Soviet form. Marx’s political theory carried no suggestion of a one-party device for the capture of political power. On the contrary, it presupposed “free elections” via the polling-booth. That was the method of the Paris Commune—and that, said Engels in his most vigorous statement on the subject, was “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Engels, in the Critique of the Erfurt Programme, declared : “Our party and the working class can only gain political supremacy under the political regime of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form the dictatorship of the proletariat as the great French revolution has already shown.” (Marx Engels Correspondence, p.486)

For Lenin the organizational form of the proletarian dictatorship was political centralism, with its military dictatorship and denial of any right of appeal from decisions made by the ruling body. The sinister sequel to this was dramatically summed-up by Lenin himself when he stated:

“The Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way incompatible with the rule and dictatorship of one person . . . this was explained to and accepted by the Central Executive Committee a long time ago ” (Socialist Party of Canada Pamphlet The Russian Revolution, p. 14).

Mr. Carew Hunt’s arrangement of quotations serves to conceal, not reveal, the antithetical views of Marx and Lenin. Thus, Lenin is quoted: “The transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class is identical with democracy,” While this in the letter agrees with the Communist Manifesto’s statement “The constitution of the proletariat into the ruling class is the conquest of democracy,” in the spirit it is utterly at variance.

In fact, Lenin’s notion of the conquest of political power by a class-conscious proletariat was perfectly consistent with his anti-democratic outlook. By giving the term “proletarian” an ideological twist, Lenin was able to include in the term his own Bolsheviks, who by and large had no working-class origin but had sprung from the Russian bourgeois intelligentsia. These for Lenin were not only “proletarians” but formed in the main his “class-conscious proletarians.” That is why Lenin made a decisive distinction between “the class-conscious proletarians” and “the masses.” While he often adroitly manipulated the term “proletarian” for demagogic purposes, he always made the capture of political power by the class-conscious proletariat synonymous with the supremacy of an élite.

Yet Mr. Carew Hunt blandly informs us that this is all perfectly in line with Engels’s statement in the preface to Class Struggles in France “that in a complete social transformation the masses themselves have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for body and soul. The history of the last 50 years has taught us that.” The author is able to say that because he never informs us as to the real content of Bolshevik doctrine. He only misinforms us of its relation with Marxism. Because the author’s proofs of most of his assertions are so constricted, he stretches his imagination to the point of rupture.

The Bolshevik seizure of power is paralleled also with Engels’s statement in his article On Authority, February, 1873, that “a revolution is an act where one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by rifles, bayonets and cannon.” (Selected Works, p.578) But in this particular instance Engels specifically cites, as an example of the armed authority of the people, the Paris Commune, which was no Leninist usurping of power by a minority but authority democratically conceived and arrived at.

Also the Communist Manifesto’s statement, “The Communists are the most resolute section which pushes on all other sections,” the author suggests, is the originating idea of Lenin’s professional élite. Undoubtedly his penchant for reading between the lines of Marxist literature has given him a bad squint.

The authority of the Communist League (1850) is cited as good Marxist paternity for Leninism. Marx then advised workers to agitate on behalf of the Democrats, who represented the German lower-middle class; and, in the event of their forming a government, to foist on them “revolutionary demands,” thus weakening the power of the upper bourgeoisie and strengthening the revolutionary potential of the workers. This political immaturity of Marx was never repeated. Afterwards, he made working class political maturity the measure of working-class development. All the essential features of Leninism, however, were missing from the Communist League. There was no separation of intellectuals from workers, no proscribing of working-class activity, no envisaging seizure of power by a political Junta.

Ted Wilmott

(To be concluded)

Russian Imperialism (1948)

From the April 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

If, in 1918, the words and deeds of the Bolsheviks inside Russia stirred the imaginations of workers everywhere, so also did their abrupt reversal of foreign policy. They preached “no annexations, no indemnities," called on all workers to repudiate the aggressive policies of their governments, and demanded the ending of the war. They published the sordid treaties in which the Allied Governments had secretly agreed to dismember Turkey and divide up the rest of the spoils of war. They renounced Czarist Russia's century-old aim of controlling the Dardanelles, and voluntarily gave up the Russian “spheres of interest” in China and Persia extorted by force from governments too weak to resist. They proclaimed the right of "self-determination" and allowed Finns, Poles, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to secede and become independent states. They denounced the annexations of territory and demands for reparations imposed on the defeated countries under the Versailles Treaty, and vigorously attacked the whole idea of backward peoples being exploited as colonies and protectorates by the imperialist powers. They preached internationalism, opposed militarism, and encouraged their followers in all countries to seek the reduction or abolition of armies, navies and air forces.

All of that was 30 years ago. Now Russia stands forth as a great imperialist power, armed to the teeth, trying to overtake America in atom bomb production, glorifying nationalism and militarism, and entering into the competitive struggle with the same plundering aim as the other imperialist powers.

How far Soviet Russia has departed from the earlier anti-imperialist proclamations of the Bolshevik party can be seen by comparing its present actions and attitude in foreign affairs with the views of Lenin in his work “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," written in 1916. (See Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 5, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1936.) Lenin condemned the imperialism of all the powers, but because of the Russian censorship he had to illustrate his case by avoiding reference to Russia and mentioning only Japan. Writing a year later in the 1917 Preface Lenin explained this:—"I was forced to quote as an example—Japan! The careful reader will easily substitute Russia for Japan, and Finland, Poland, Courland, the Ukraine, Khiva, Bokhara, Esthonia and other regions peopled by non-great Russians, for Korea." (1917 Preface, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 6.) He instanced Japanese imperialism in Korea. Now by an ironical turn of events Northern Korea is occupied, not by the Chinese from whom Japan annexed it, but by Russian troops (while Americans hold the southern half). Now also Russia has a base on Finnish territory; has annexed about a third of Poland (while Poland has compensated itself by taking territory formerly in Germany); and has incorporated the Ukraine as a Republic in the Soviet Union. Esthonia has been annexed—the vote endorsing this being taken with Russian troops in occupation; likewise Courland, part of what, between the wars, was independent Latvia. Khiva and Bokhara, conquered by Czarist Russia and reduced to vassal states in 1873 are now republics in the Soviet Union.

Lenin's statement that "the war of 1914-18 was imperialistic (that is, an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies, ‘spheres of influence' of finance—capita), etc." (1920 Preface) can as truly be applied to World War II, Russia again being one of the predatory powers, but this time with greater success than then fell to the lot of the Czarist regime. Examples in great number could be quoted showing the many regions in which the Russian expansionist drive is operating, by methods reminiscent of Russia's Czarist past and of British, Japanese and German imperialisms in their heyday.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945 and again in August, 1946 (see Daily Telegraph, August 13th, 1946, and Daily Worker, August 14th, 1946), the Russian Government revived the old Czarist demand to have a base on Turkish territory from which to control the Dardanelles. This had been preceded some months earlier by a campaign in the Russian Press for the annexation of large areas of Northern Turkey. Part of this territory had been ceded by Russia to Turkey in 1921 after a plebiscite had been taken. No one can reasonably quarrel with the Communist argument (Daily Worker, January 12th, 1946) that the vote was a farce because taken whilst Turkish troops were in occupation, but exactly the same can be said of Russia's annexation of the three Baltic Republics in 1940.

As has been mentioned it was the Bolsheviks who exposed the secret treaties of the first world war. In the second world war it was the Russian Government which had its imperialist claims embodied in a secret agreement signed by America and Britain at the Yalta Conference in 1945. As a condition of entering the war against Japan Russia was to be allowed annexations and spheres of influence at the expense not only of Japan but also of China, Russia’s ally! Under the agreement, which was made without the knowledge of the Chinese Government and was not published until a year later, Russia not only received the strategically important Kurile Islands and Southern Sakhalin, rich in timber, minerals and oil, but also received recognition of Manchuria as a Russian sphere of influence though it was Chinese territory until annexed by Japan in 1931.

The agreement was subsequently published by the British Government (Command Paper 6735, 1946). The relevant clauses read as follows: —

1. The status quo in Outer Mongolia—the Mongolian People’s Republic—shall be preserved.

2. The former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904 shall be restored —namely,

   (a) The southern part of Sakhalin as well as all the islands adjacent to it shall he returned to the Soviet Union.

   (b) The commercial port of Dairen shall be internationalised, the pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union in this port be safeguarded, and the lease of Port Arthur as a naval base of the Soviet Union restored.

   (c) The Chinese Eastern railway and the South Manchurian railway, which provide an outlet to Dairen, shall be jointly operated by the establishment of a joint Soviet-Chinese company, it being understood that the pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union shall be safeguarded and that China shall retain full sovereignty in Manchuria.

3. The Kuriles shall be handed over to the Soviet Union.

Clause 1, referring to Outer Mongolia, meant that the Government of China would be expected to confirm recognition of the independence of this formerly Chinese territory. The required recognition was given in January, 1946. Outer Mongolia, nominally independent, is now in close military and economic dependence on Russia.

The Kuriles and Sakhalin had been objects of the rival Japanese and Russian imperialists since 1875, Russia being forced to leave the former and the southern half of the latter after her defeat by Japan in 1904-5.

The granting of the Russian claim to Port Arthur is described as a “restoration"—so it was, but not to the original owners. After the Chino-Japanese war, 1894-5. Japan annexed it from China but was expelled by Russia, France and Germany on the plea that the occupation threatened the independence of Peking; in spite of which China was then forced to lease it to Russia. Dairen likewise was, under pressure, leased by China to Japan in 1915.

Members of the Chinese Government were quick to protest against the Yalta secret agreement as being “contrary to the Atlantic Charter." (Times, February 25th. 1946). and the following news, item indicates that some of the Chinese are still not prepared to accept it: —

“The Chinese People’s Political Council yesterday adopted a resolution urging the Chinese Government to demand the return to China of Port Arthur and Dairen, which have been occupied by Soviet forces since the collapse of Japan.’’ (Sunday Despatch, March 14th, 1948.)

The fact that the Yalta Agreement contained the face-saving clause about China retaining “ full sovereignty in iManchuria” deceived nobody, least of all the Chinese Government, and the following shamefaced comment was made by the London Observer (February 17th, 1946); —

“The surrender at Yalta of China’s rights in Manchuria to Russia as the price of the latter’s entry into the war on Japan was no matter for pride, whatever the gain in speeding victory . . . . the fact remains that China’s rights in a region more important to her than any disappeared. Dr. T. V. Soong obtained some modifications of the Yalta terms in the subsequent Russo-Chinese Treaty. But since then Russia has stripped Manchurian factories of machinery and still fails to withdraw her troops. Urgent diplomatic pressure in Moscow is our immediate due to China.’’

On coming to power in 1917 the Bolsheviks relinquished all the Czarist claims and rights to spheres of influence and oil concessions in Northern Iran (then known as Persia). In 1946, with Russian troops in occupation, the Iran Government was forced to agree to the re-imposition of much the same Russian privileges. The form taken by this new Bolshevik imperialism was the setting up of a joint Russian-Iran company to exploit the oilfields for 50 years, the important point being, however, that majority control would be in Russian hands for 25 years. For the next 25 years the control would nominally be equal but not until the expiry of 50 years would the Iran Government have the right to buy out the Russian half of the shares. The text of the clause relating to the first period reads: “In the course of the first 25 years of the activity of the company 49 per cent. of the shares will belong to the Iranian side, and 51 per cent. to the Soviet side . . . " (Published in “Soviet Weekly,’’ September 18th, 1947.) When Russian troops left (after complaint had been made to the United Nations) the Iran Government, backed by the American and British interests, which have their own oil concessions in other parts of Iran, repudiated the agreement with Russia. Doubtless Russia’s claim will be revived when the Russian Government considers the moment opportune.

Another example of Russian imperialism was the treaty imposed on Finland which ceded to Russia the province of Petsamo and leased “territory and waters for the establishment of a Soviet naval base in the area of Porkkala-Udd.” (News Chronicle, July 23rd, 1946.) In March, 1948, further demands were being made.

During the lifetime of the League of Nations the Russian Government never failed to point out that the so-called League of Nation's mandates were only another name for the old avowed annexations of colonial territory. When the United Nations replaced the League, and the Italian colonies came up for disposal, the Russian Government promptly made a proposal “for international control of two parts of Libya, with a Russian administrator in Tripolitania and a British or U.S. one in Cyrenaica." (Daily Worker, April 30th, 1946.) The claim was, however, not favoured by the other powers and was withdrawn.

Forgetting the early Bolshevik arguments against the stupidities and dangers of reparations, the Russian Government pressed its claim for 10,000 million dollars as reparations from Germany.

Another aspect of Russian imperialism has been the setting up of subservient governments in the countries on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe. This was defended by Premier Stalin in a statement to the Moscow “Pravda’’ in 1946 (reproduced in the Manchester Guardian, March 14th, 1946). Speaking of the East European countries through which Germany had attacked Russia he said: “Is it to be wondered that the Soviet Union, in its desire to safeguard itself in future, is making an effort to secure in these countries governments loyal to the Soviet Union? How can one, unless one is mad, qualify these steps and aspirations of the Soviet Union as expansionist tendencies in our State? ”

It may seem a plausible argument, but it is precisely the one used by every expanding Empire as an excuse for “protecting its frontiers”; as for example by British imperialism in India and Egypt, by Japan, mid by Czarist Russia itself.

A last illustration of Russian imperialism strikingly shows the gulf that separates the outlook of the present regime from its own early proclamations. In January, 1948, the American Government published German documents, captured in 1945, which purported to disclose the secret agreements between Russia and Germany after the Pact of 1939 was signed by the two Governments. According to the Daily Herald (January 22nd, 1948) these secret agreements “ divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, gave the Baltic Republics to Russia and provided for the partition of Poland . . . Russia's claim to naval and military bases on the Dardanelles as part of the ‘carve up ’ . is recorded."

In 1918 in a somewhat similar situation the Bolshevik Government was able to make the most devastating of all answers, it answered the secret treaties of the Czar’s Government by renouncing them. It showed the sincerity of its protestations against imperialism by giving up all claims and by evacuating all territories seized against the wishes of the inhabitants. The Bolshevik regime was held in high esteem by workers in all countries because it could show clean hands to contrast with the loot-laden talons of all the governments powerful enough to enforce their claim to spoils.

Not so in 1948! Now the Russian protests against the imperialism of other governments have a hollow ring because the Russian Government is itself gorged with loot. Instead it had to combat the secret documents published in U.S.A. by producing a parallel volume purporting to expose the secret negotiations between the British and German Governments in 1939. “These negotiations were designed to secure a broad political agreement with Hitler, Including the division of spheres of influence throughout the world. Germany was to be given the predominant influence in South-East Europe.” (Daily Worker, February 16th, 1948.)

Unable to show by deeds that their hands are clean the Bolsheviks have perforce to fall back on the cynical plea—for that is what it means—that they are no worse than the other brigands of predatory capitalism.

And that will be the verdict of history on the melancholy decline from the idealist principles of 1918 to the sordid practice of thirty years after. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Lenin the man (2002)

Book Review from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lenin: A Biography By Robert Service, Macmillan, London, 2001.

A good, single volume on Lenin is difficult to find; forgive the truism, but the man has tended to be portrayed either as a secular saint or as a vicious, evil psychopath, a sort of left-wing Prince of Darkness. Ten years on from the disintegration of the Soviet bloc through popular revolution and economic stagnation perhaps a cooler assessment of Lenin can be undertaken. The historiography of the Revolutionary and Soviet periods during these ten years – at least in the West and in English, with which the current reviewer is most familiar – have been dominated by right-wing reactionaries, American cold warriors and the descendants of those Russian social classes who were dispossessed by the March and November revolutions. Robert Service, by no means sympathetic to revolutionary socialism, sets himself the task of striking a balance. He is one of the first Western historians to have access to newly opened personal archives of the Ulianov family held in Moscow, and the book deserves attention because of this. The resulting biography is interesting and useful, but at the same time demonstrates the inherent weakness of the form.

Indeed, both the reader with little prior knowledge of Lenin’s life and thought, as well as the historical trivia junkie, will find much to please them. Service vividly recreates Lenin’s childhood, early life and pre-1917 exile, demonstrating well the factors that influenced his social and intellectual development. Vladimir Illich was from a comfortable family of bourgeois outsiders with Tartar and Jewish as well as Russian origins. He grew up in Simbirsk on the Volga, and the Ulianov family were on the social and geographical periphery of the European Russian empire. Elder brother Alexander, a Revolutionary Populist, was executed after his role in actively supporting the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. This gave a personal ingredient to the burgeoning intellectual and political revolt of the precocious Vladimir. On the death of his father Illya in 1886 he became de facto head of the family. His mother, two sisters and younger brother remained close throughout their lives, all three siblings becoming dedicated Bolsheviks themselves. Service develops a fascinating profile of Lenin through his years of exile in Siberia and Western Europe, then later through the October Revolution and into power. He was prolific, intelligent, strong willed, totally dedicated to his cause – the model of the “Professional Revolutionary” he demanded of others. He was also prone to nervous exhaustion and stress, and his massive, self-imposed workload contributed to his lifelong ill health and early death at fifty four.

And so on. Perhaps more interesting, on a deeper level, is the formation of Lenin’s ideas and politics. Here Service correctly identifies Lenin’s enduring fascination with the tradition of Russian populist terrorism, and its influence on his praxis. In particular, Lenin was influenced by Peter Tkachev, the populist who in turn was influenced by the Jacobinism of the French Revolution. Tkachev called for an elite vanguard of revolutionaries, organised centrally, to violently seize power and create an authoritarian regime. As Service points out, in his own writings Lenin was fairly coy in admitting this, citing instead Marx, Engels and Plekhanov. Nevertheless, the influence is apparent in Lenin’s conception of how a revolutionary party should be organised, and what its relationship to the working class ought to be.

Service maintains a good balance between describing Lenin’s thought and preserving the overall chronological structure of the book. His accounts of polemics with other Russian (and foreign) Social Democrats, such as Plekhanov, Trotsky and Kautsky are useful and instructive. Perhaps one of the best instances of this is Service’s description of the disputations within the Bolshevik party over their actual task once they had come to power: that of building state capitalism. Lenin had been clear about this even before the October Revolution. Service points out how Lenin saw the essence of “socialism” as “account keeping and supervision”. One could also add the utter suppression of the working class and peasantry.

The major limitation of this volume, as with the vast majority of historical biography, is that it can fall into the “Great Man” theory of history. The importance of one person is inflated, thereby simplifying and sometimes distorting a description of the historical process. This is occasionally a problem with the present volume. Unlike Services earlier, 1979 classic study The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, 1917-23: A Study In Organisational Change, the Lenin biography tends to focus on the major personalities within the Russian Social Democratic movement. As a result, the description of pre-revolutionary feuds and disputes are superb, but the portions of the book describing events after Lenin’s return to Russia in April 1917 are flat, not putting the thoughts of individuals into any wider context. A working knowledge of the general background is therefore advantageous for the reader to glean the most from the book.

Having said that, such a wider context probably wasn’t in Service’s remit. This biography sets itself the tasks of humanising Lenin and freeing the story of his life from demonisers and sycophants. There can be no doubt it succeeds in this brilliantly. The best one-volume account of Lenin’s life the present reviewer has ever come across, and well worth any reader investigating further.

Robert Worden

Typical trot (2001)

First-edition cover

Pamphlet Review from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘I Know How, But I Don’t Know Why’: George Orwell’s Conception of Totalitarianism. By Paul Flewers.

Flewers’s pamphlet is an attempt to outline and criticise George Orwell’s political views on totalitarianism as revealed especially through 1984 and Animal Farm. As an explanation of why Orwell came to write his masterworks this is a good account. Flewers indicates the way Orwell’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War transformed his thinking, leading to a near-obsession with totalitarianism (particularly vis-à-vis Russia), and picks out his underlying motivation—the quest for “decency”.

As criticism however the work is deficient. In a nutshell, Flewers says that Orwell lacked a clear idea of how Russia became a totalitarian state because he could only observe without analysing. Since Orwell despised grand theories this is hardly surprising. But the deficiency lies not with Orwell but with Flewers. “Why was there no Lenin figure in Animal Farm?” he asks. Why overlook “the democratic features of Bolshevism?” (hack, cough) or view Lenin’s opportunism in 1917 as a “disingenuous and dishonest ruse to win support” (yessiree!). Besides the fact that Animal Farm is satire (I might just as pedantically ask “where’s Martov got to?” or “why doesn’t Makhno make a cameo?”), Orwell makes clear what his intentions were in Animal Farm: “You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself.” Flewers of course denies that “any leadership will inevitably become a ruling elite once it seizes power”. As a Trot he would, wouldn’t he?

Kaz.

Blast from the past (2024)

Book Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communist Dissidents in Early Soviet Russia. Five Documents translated and introduced by Simon Pirani. Matador, 2023.

When the state-capitalist one-party dictatorship in Russia finally collapsed in the early 1990s the state’s archives were opened to the public. Researchers have since dug out material from the period immediately after the end of the civil war in 1921 when working-class discontent was high and some freedom of discussion was still allowed inside the Communist Party,

None of the documents here have been translated into English before though one was published in Russian, outside Russia, in 1923. They reveal the personal and political disappointment of some Communists that the Russian revolution had not lived up to its claims and their expectations that it would bring about ‘the emancipation of the working class’ but had led, rather, to the emergence of a corrupt and self-serving ‘new bourgeoisie’ made up of full-time Communist Party officials.

The most interesting analysis here is that of the ‘Collectivists’, a group inspired by the ideas of the Old Bolshevik (and old opponent of Lenin) Alexander Bogdanov. Their basic position was that the working class had to have prepared itself ‘culturally’ to run a socialist society before it could be established. Starting from the position that the Russian revolution had been an attempted workers’ revolution they came to the conclusion that it could not have led to socialism since this condition for it was not present:

‘We accept that before the war the proletariat in its majority was not socialist, but began to change under the impact of the war. The socialist revolution began in the working class; the revolution arose in the formation of its consciousness of struggle; the proletariat found the will to overthrow the bourgeois order and to try to seize power. But that socialist revolution in the proletariat is far from complete. Not all of it has a consciousness of struggle. And the organisational consciousness of the whole proletariat has not been formed. New organisational methods, the entirety of which is a product of proletarian culture, still have to be worked out and integrated into working-class consciousness. Without this and before this, a socialist revolution in society is in our opinion impossible’.

Basically, no socialism without socialists. This was part of a wider argument that classical capitalism was collapsing and that the world was heading for a state capitalism ruled by a technical intelligentsia (what was later called ‘the managerial revolution’). This, they said, was what was happening in Russia under the Communist Party. Socialists there should personally take part in developing or implementing modern technology, another essential precondition for socialism.

The two other groups whose views are presented here — the Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Party and Workers’ Truth (Workers’ Pravda)— made the same analysis, though in a less worked-out form, that Russia was developing towards a state capitalism ruled by a new bourgeoisie.

The two personal views are only interesting as providing some context. It is striking how many of those mentioned in the book were, according to the footnotes, murdered by the Stalin government in the 1930s.

It’s a pity that such criticisms from inside Russia were not widely available during the time when ‘the nature of the USSR’ was a burning issue; they were way ahead of Trotskyism. Today they are only of historical interest. Pirani, in his introduction, hints at this when he writes that ‘social revolutions in this century may have as little in common with the Russian revolution as it had with the French Revolution of 1789.’

Adam Buick