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

Bulgakov's 'Flight' (1998)

Theatre Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Flight, National Theatre, Olivier.

Flight, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a knockout. For sheer exuberant theatricality, high octane ensemble playing, and dramatic frisson, I have seen nothing like it for years. And the text is so dense and rewarding that a second visit revealed much that in the excitement of the first occasion we had missed. Rarely does a play provide such a whirligig of different emotions which sit so comfortably together. Through the evening the audience is presented with moments of terror, hope, apprehension, side-splitting humour, poignancy and despair, through all of which shines an indomitable will to survive.

The play, which is set in Russia, Turkey and France in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is a biting commentary on the tragedy and absurdity of civil war. It follows the chaotic journey of two refugees caught in the war between the White Russian Army of the Ukraine and the advancing Red Army, whose fates become enmeshed with the Ukrainians. Called a play in dreams the first act dramatises the bitterness of losing; the second act describes what Lesley Milne calls, “the wish-fulfilment dream of winning”. The style is reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht. Just when you think you have grasped the narrative—the essentials of the plot—Bulgakov throws sand in your eyes. Given the world in which we live, he seems to be saying life is unpredictable.

And Bulgakov, who was born in Kiev in 1891, seems to have enjoyed (or, perhaps more properly, endured) the kind of chaotic existence so typical of many of the characters in Flight. In 1919 he qualified as a doctor and was forcibly recruited into the Ukrainian Republican Arms. He escaped, returned to Kiev and was immediately mobilised by the White Army and sent to the Caucasus. Discharged the next year he began a career in literature, writing a string of novels and plays, many of which were banned or censored.

Small wonder then that Flight, written between 1926 and 1928, was not performed in his lifetime. It is a damning critique of Soviet revolutionary politics; a heart-rending account of the way in which most of the Russian population were little more than pawns in a cruel struggle for power between the emerging Soviet state and the residual White Russian Army. And to think that as recently as the last decade there were so-called communists living in Britain who thought that what happened in Russia in 1917 and the following 70-odd years, had something to do with the triumph of socialism.

As a socialist I loved the final moments. In the last dream one of the White Russians, having won a fortune in a French gambling salon, invests it all on a horse. Standing centre-stage, arms outstretched, Charnota's words end the play. "Put everything on Shooting Star to win!" Occasionally, like Charnota, we need to dream if we are to fight the good fight.

Michael Gill

Oil and War. (1940)

From the April 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since man found a motive force, other than the energy of his own body, for operating machinery, fuel for power production has had to be an important consideration. With the development of the internal combustion engine and its application to road, sea and air transport, petroleum has assumed a position of outstanding importance among the products of the world.

The machinery and instruments for producing petroleum, like all other means of production in a capitalist world, are privately owned. Likewise, the tankers, pipe lines and other things necessary for the transport and distribution of the oil, together with the laboratories and machinery for its distillation and refinement—all this is privately owned and operated with a view to the production of profit. The profits that have been derived from the exploitation of the oil workers have been, and still are, stupendous.

The various oil companies of the world have struggled desperately with one another for control of the oilfields and for markets for the disposal of their produce. Capitalist governments, recognising the vital necessity of ensuring adequate supplies of oil, especially in war-time, have placed state resources at the disposal of their respective national companies. Governments invariably give official backing to their national companies in their struggles for concession lands and their endeavours to oust rivals and competitors. The strained relations that have existed between different capitalist governments during the last thirty years have frequently been the direct result of the conflict between their respective oil groups. More than once troops have gone into action to settle disputes over oil lands.

There is the possibility that one of the campaigns of the present war will be fought for the control of the world’s most prolific oilfield, the Russian Caucasian field. The British Government is prepared for large-scale military operations in the Near East. Military men and journalists have been emphasising the strategical importance of these Russian Caucasian oilfields for weeks past.

Brigadier-General C. F. Aspinal-Oglander, C.B., C.M.G., in the Evening News, March 5th : —

“In this connection the news of large German troop movements in the direction of the Caucasus assumes considerable significance; and this potential threat may account for the presence of strong allied forces in Syria and Palestine.”

Then “Scrutator” in The Sunday Times, March 10th: —

“The deadliest blow we can deal to Germany is to cut off her supplies of oil for which, if she is to undertake large-scale military operations, she must be dependent on Russia. Nor are the chances of success in such an operation by any means hopeless. Turkey would give us access to the Black Sea from which we might defend the Roumanian wells against German appropriation, or, if the war is extended, attack the Russian wells at the eastern end. Even if there were difficulties about the use of the Black Sea we have a way of access from Syria and Mosul.”

The Evening Standard, on March 15th, reports what are claimed to be plans for “an immediate counter-attack on Russia’s rich Caucasian oilfields” in the event of a Russian attack on Roumania. The report adds : —

“Then General Weygand’s Near-East army, soon expected to be 1,000,000 strong, was expected to attack across the Turkish-Russian frontier with the Turkish army of nearly 2,000,000 men.

Supported by battleships of the tri-Power fleet, one army would move on the port of Batum, only ten miles from the Turkish frontier.

Another starting from Kars, in Turkey, would move on Alexandropol, in the Soviet Republic of Armenia, the observers said. A third would strike across the frontier near the junction of the Turkish-Iranian-Russian frontiers toward the city of Eriwan.

The extreme Eastern army, after capturing Eriwan, would wheel north-east to Baku and the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The western army, after seizing Batum, would advance up the coast, under the protection of battleship guns, to the Caucasus mountains. A further coastal push towards the oilfields of Maikop, in the province of Adyghai, might be ordered.”

So many young workers from Empire countries who are now in the Army may find themselves transported to the East to endure the inconveniences of a military campaign there. If so, they will march and fight in the company of those same Turks who, a few years ago, they were taught to regard as infidels, slaughterers of Armenian Christians, perpetrators of the vilest atrocities.

The British Government’s statement, “We seek no material advantage for ourselves,” will be worth remembering whilst watching the events in this part of the world. The claim that the Caucasian oil wells must be seized for strategical purposes has a vaguely familiar sound. The expedition under Major-General Dunsterville, which occupied Baku during the last war, set out from Persia to prevent a supposed German march on India. When, on the signing of the armistice, and after an intervening German-Turk occupation, the General Thompson expedition entered the district, the British set about making themselves at home. They took over the banks, the post and telegraph offices, and assumed the function of policing the country. Louis Fischer, in his “Oil Imperialism,” quotes an article by Arthur Moore in the London Times of July 10th, 1922, dealing with the reasons for the subsequent withdrawal of British troops from the Caucasus: —

“. . . . we announced we had come to keep the Bolshevists away. But as soon as the Bolshevist menace began to materialise, it was we who faded away. Why, then, did we go there at all ? Islam knows the answer. We went to try to get hold of the Baku oil-fields, but we were not prepared to fight for them.”

When the Russians re-occupied the district in 1920 (the British garrison withdrew from Batum on July 7th, 1920) the Bolshevik Government proceeded to nationalise the oil industry.

The British statesmen at the peace conference in Paris wished to have Batum set up as a free state under the League of Nations, but failed in their effort. Whilst the states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijhan were anti-Bolshevik there was hope for the foreign oil concerns. These states were officially recognised by the British Government and White Russian generals received support to commence operations from Georgia against the Bolshevik Government.

Opposition to the Russian nationalisation of the oil industry was the keynote at the Geneva and Hague conferences. Whilst the statesmen met and wrangled in one part of the towns, the oil magnates met in another part and fought over the Russian oilfields. Davenport and Cooke, in their “The Oil Trusts and Anglo-American Relationships,” suggest that “this was the Hague Conference which really mattered.” The Russian Government would not relinquish its control of its oilfields but it was prepared to grant some generous concessions. The conferences came to a standstill mainly because the different oil companies wanted monopoly concessions and none would give in to the others.

After the conferences a general blockade and boycott of Russian oil was agreed upon. But the rival oil companies were so anxious to get a foothold in the Caucasus that they were soon double-crossing one another and defeating their own boycott efforts. The boycott forced the Russian Government to set up its own distributing agencies and Russian Oil Products (R.O.P.) came into existence. A price war ensued. The Royal Dutch-Shell Group, under Sir Henri Deterding, took up the war in earnest.

After a period of price-cutting both the Russian Government and the Royal Dutch Company were financially embarrassed. The Russians hoped to barter oil-land concessions for recognition by other governments and loans from foreign finance houses. A London bank had arranged a loan for Russia. The day following the bank’s decision the offices of the Anglo-Russian Trading Co. in London were raided by the police on the plea of seeking espionage documents. The raid was wrapped in mystery. The Home Office denied having given instructions, but the British Government found it necessary to break off negotiations with the Russian Government and to forbid the loan.

Of late years the struggle for Russian oil has been carried on mainly between the Royal Dutch-Shell and the American Standard oil companies. Each has bought Russian oil in large quantities, striving for monopolies, and then carried the struggle to India, where they have competed for the market for the disposal of the spoils.

In the preparations for the present war the British Government’s manoeuvres in South-east Europe have been carried on also with an eye to safeguarding its own oil supplies : the recent Anglo-Turkish arrangement is an example. Mr. S. W. Alexander, City Editor of the Daily Express, pointed out in that paper on October 24th, 1939, that—

“Turkey’s decision to come in with Britain and France leaves the sea route open for the transport of oil.”

The recent attempts to placate the Arabs by limiting the purchase of land by Jews indicates an attempt to win them to a support of a British Near-East campaign.

The Allied Powers distributed the Mesopotamian oil lands amongst themselves during the last war and fell to quarrelling about the division after the armistice.

Now oil is once more playing a great part in the rivalries of the Powers. It should serve to remind us that wars are not fought for “moral” reasons but are caused by the conflict of material interests inherent in the capitalist system of society.

W. Waters

Don’t Be Futile. (1920)

From the September 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the latter days of last July, a body of people calling themselves The No-Conscription Fellowship, appointed a committee to organise the “Widest Possible Resistance” by people who objected to rendering war service against Russia.

That committee drafted a manifesto calling upon those who objected to performing military service against Russia, or making and transporting munitions, or who would resist all military preparations and the imposition of conscription, to forward their names with the object of strengthening their resistance by being formed into an organised body.

The committee were, according to themselves, “overwhelmed with replies, a very large proportion of them from ex-service men who are most vigorous in their expression of determination not to fight in the new war should it come.”

We must class both leaders and supporters of such a movement as being illogical, shortsighted, and utterly void of understanding of the conditions which govern them, which, of course, connotes the fact that they do not know the cause of their condition.

We claim to know the cause of this condition.

We know that, as the effect of that cause, wars are inevitable. We know that, as a result of their condition, the workers generally are not in a position to resist conscription.

We know the cause of the general poverty, want, and degradation, the insecurity of life, that is the lot of the workers.

When we speak of workers we do not differentiate between nigger drivers, quill drivers, bus drivers, and cattle drivers. Whether you are a manager, clerk, navvy, or soldier matters not. If you sell your services in order that you may live, you are a worker; your services are sold to an employer in precisely the same way as a pound of cheese is sold over the counter, and that very fact abolishes the consideration of “classes” among the workers. There is another “class,” we grant—the non-workers or capitalists ; the employing class ; the people who own the means of life.

We do not differentiate between capitalists, either. It is immaterial to us whether a capitalist drops his aitches, came over with William the Conk, gets his money from a pickle factory, or has blue blood in his veins. We are only concerned with the fact that the capitalists have appropriated to themselves the means of life over the whole of the earth.

And it is the workers, who are in the vast majority, who have GIVEN THEM THE OPPORTUNITY of appropriating the earth.

It is the workers who, in their abysmal ignorance, continually keep on giving away their chances of recovering that ownership of the earth, who continually place in the hands of the capitalists and their agents fresh accretions of power.

Capitalism is the name of the system under which we are living now.

It is a system in which the only place for the workers (who, after all, are the only USEFUL human beings on earth) is at the bottom. That is their right place in such a system, AND THE WORKERS MUST LIKE IT, or they would never put up with it.

We know differently, though. We know that the things which prevent the workers from regaining the power of enjoying to the full all that the earth and their own capabilities could give them are pitifully profound ignorance and deadly apathy.

The capitalists and their agents who compose our governments know only too well that where numbers are concerned they are nowhere against the workers and so by subtlety, cunning, and absolute unscrupulousness they lead the workers by the nose and get them to give them power, and with that power make the workers do all that the capitalists require of them.

Everything that is done in the world to-day, from managing a mine to sweeping a road, is done by the worker. The capitalist does nothing useful, yet he enjoys the best of everything.

To protect the property of the capitalists and to gain fresh property for them, their agents (whom the workers elect to Parliament) have the power to send fighting forces to any part of the world, and also have the power, incredible as it may seem, to gull the worker into believing that it is being done for his benefit.

If the standing army is insufficient, the agents of the capitalists bring in “conscription.”

Some few of the workers decided to stand out of the last great war our masters had. As a consequence of the SYSTEM that the majority of them had never dreamed of abolishing, they had a hell of a time—and some died.

Now we have the No-Conscription Fellowship advocating that the workers should ask for more trouble. What they are actually doing is leading the workers from the only path that will finally lead to the abolition of wars.

The doings of the armed forces of government are, in the final analysis, ordered by the majority of the members of Parliament, who, we have pointed out are capitalist agents.

While the workers keep voting “So-and-So candidate” into Parliament without having studied the matter at all, M.P.s will continue to be agents of the master class. That being the case, how can the workers expect that government will be in the interest of the workers ?

The government of the workers in the interest of the capitalist class will go on just the same, and when the next great war comes the conscientious objectors will again fill vacancies in H.M. goals or special settlements.

Your condition when the next great war comes will be precisely the same as it was when the last war came, whether you join the No-Conscription Fellowship or not.

The cure for the evils suffered by the workers under the present system is—SOCIALISM.

Don’t be afraid of the word, as your grandmother taught you to be.

Don’t put your thinking out for a man on a platform to do for you—do it yourself.

CAPITALISM, a system of private ownership and control of the things necessary for you to live by, leaves you, the actual producer of all that is useful in the world, at the bottom of things—never sure of to-morrow’s food, without any security of right to live.

SOCIALISM, a system of common ownership and control of the means of life, would put you on your proper plane in life, without a “superior,” still an actual worker, sure of food, clothing, shelter, and the very minimum of hours of labour.

When the means of life are commonly owned, do you think for a moment that you will fight each other for oil wells, or for wheat fields, or for anything else ?

In the words of Bernard Shaw’s puppet, NOT SO BLOODY LIKELY!

Get acquainted with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the only party in this country expounding Socialism.

Selim.

The Thieves' Kitchen Records. (1920)

From the March 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Giveth His Only Son."

As usual, the old farce of the Kings' Speech to Parliament was carried out with mock solemnity and cobwebs, a la Dirty Dick and King Solomon. Considering that it is now some sixteen month's since the war actually ceased— the war which was to inaugurate a "beautiful new world" for the workers of this country, the Speech offers nothing but flap-doodle touching on this point, and precious little even of that. In fact, the only indication of anything tangible, in connection with this matter of "everything for nothing" for the working class, has to be read into, or got out of, the royal announcement that He (G. Wettin) has "had great pleasure in assenting to the proposal that the Prince of Wales should visit Australia and New Zealand and should take the opportunity on his return voyage of seeing some of My West Indian possessions." So it seems that the King gives his only begotten (if he hadn't begotten any others) son in order that the workers may enjoy by proxy all the delights that the "beautiful new world" has to offer, what time they are slogging into the task of increasing production to enable the pound sterling to "look the dollar in the face." May the thought sustain them in their monotonous and wearisome labours, until the young man returns and his father finds him a job of work to take some of the weight off Ole Bill's shoulder, and enable Tom Smith to let go long enough to spit on his hand— may the reflection sustain and refresh them, I say, and revive their drooping spirits, and renew their ebbing strength, and soothe their aching limbs, and charm away the pains of their cramped and pitiless occupations, for nothing else in King Capital's Gracious speech will. 

The New Forty Thieves.

In the Thieves Kitchen there were prior to the war, in addition to the old hands at the game, who had been in the business donkey's years before Blueskin and Jack Shepherd were thought of, a new  group of approximately forty, of whom it may be said that, though they were only minors in the matter of golloping up the swag, were the most active and assiduous in supporting and forwarding any scheme afoot for the robbery of the human bees, possibly for the same reason that the petty sneak thief is the most active member of other thieves' kitchens—he has to do a big business to keep up his fat. Of these forty many a year or so ago got soused in boiling oil—which is no loss to public life. But some have survived even unto this day, and their reception of the Speech was characteristic. 

More pay for lickspittles.

Mr. Adamson, the leader of the Lib-Labs, in his comic-opera role of leader of the Opposition, opened: "I desire to offer my congratulations to the mover and seconder for the excellent speeches . . ." et so on ad vomitum. That was about the limit of his "opposition." He was glad to note that the mover of the Address had "struck a very optimistic vein, and thought we would be able to overcome these difficulties [the "aftermath of the war"] in the manner in which we have been able to overcome the difficulties of the past. This is a welcoming and supporting of smug capitalist complacency which should be noted by all workers who are satisfied with the way in which "the difficulties of the past" have been overcome, and especially those workers who elected Mr. Adamson to represent THEM.

Once Bit Twice Shy.

In the debate on the Address the question of Russia arose, and in replying Mr. Liar George became really funny. "The horrors of Bolshevism have revolted the consciences of mankind," said he who has taken no step to purge British Authority of the dastardly massacre of Amritsar, "The first war on opinion was made by the Bolsheviks when they dissolved the National Assembly," wailed he who for five years has tyranised under that garrotter's outfit of noose and bludgeon and pitch-plaster — D.O.R.A. "We were bound to give the anti-Bolsheviks their chance to recover Russia. . . . We were bound by considerations of honour," cried he whose considerations of honour never prevented him breaking pledges given to his working-class dupes. "There is no government in Russia which can speak for any defined area. It is perfectly true that the Bolsheviks have over-run the Ukraine and part of the Cossack land, but they have only been there a few weeks and they have been there before. I do not say that General Denikin will drive them out, but no one can tell whether the Ukranians will tolerate them. No one can say whether the Cossacks will tolerate them in their country." So again spoke the spokesman of the Thieves' Kitchen. And it is strikingly strange how every one of his arguments might have been used with even greater force to deter him and his gang from conceding to Denikin and —what's his name, Coldchuck ?—the right to speak for, not only people of territories it was doubtful if they could hold, but of territories they did not occupy.

Of course, no member of the "Labour" Opposition had the courage to open his mouth to say these things, notwithstanding the professed Bolshevik sympathies of many of them. They, grateful dogs, respect the hand that feeds them.

Hands off Profits !

On the second day of the Debate on the Address Mr. Brace moved an amendment regretting "the absence of any proposal to nationalise the mines of the country . ." He had a pretty good turn before three o'clock, and he carried on well after four, but he contributed nothing to the cause of the workers, but something to the cause of the masters. Here are samples of his arguments:

  "An hon. Member asks me, 'Suppose it does not pay ?' But it must pay ! . . . In addition to paying interest on the Bonds it must find money towards a sinking fund to redeem the Bonds. Indeed it must find profit for national purposes. For the mines are to be worked not to produce profit for a few people, but for the whole."

So the capitalist Shylock is to have his pound of flesh —the Labour Party will see to that. The mines are to be run for profit to pay capitalist State expenses ; and to provide interest on capitalist Bonds; and to redeem those Bonds so the mines shall become the property of the whole of the capitalists instead of of a few of them. The capitalists will lose nothing—the Labour Party will see to that.

On the other hand, Mr. Brace and those for whom he spoke were thoughtful enough to provide additional shackles for the miners, for he embraced the following from the Sankey Report:

  The contracts of employment of workmen shall embody an undertaking . . . that no workman will, in consequence of any dispute, join in giving notice to determine his contract, nor will he combine to cease work, unless and until the question in dispute has been before the Local Mining Council and the District Mining Council and those Councils have failed to settle the dispute. 

That is the sort of strangle hold the Labour Party are ready to get fixed on the workers—the treacherous hounds! We have only to consider how long we have been kept in the shackles of D.O.R.A., under the pretence that the war is not yet finished, to imagine what tricks the ruling class could play with that phrase "failed to settle the dispute."

Welsh Humbug again.

The Prime Minister butted in in due course, and as usual indulged in cant so open and shameless as to suggest an utter lack of the sense of humour on his part. He wanted an illustration, and turned, of course, to the workers of Russia, who, he said "are to be told [by the State] where they are to work—not in what particular factory, but in what particular town or locality. The State is to say to them 'You are no use here ; you must go to another village, which is 100 miles away.'"

This the speaker called labour conscription. But one would think that he, Mr. Lloyd George, would be the last to drag that in, when one remembers how many thousands ol men were sent, under his tyranny, not one hundred miles but three hundred, not only to certain districts but to particular factories. He did not call that labour conscription, the canting hypocrite !

The Straight Griffin.

In the debate on Supplies on Feb. 10th Mr. Lloyd George received the lie direct regarding the whole tissue of falsehoods with which he has supported his sneak-thief, under-hand, shame-faced policy of British intervention in Russia. Lieut.-Colonel Malone, taking the Government to task for treacherously supplying arms, munitions, and forces against a people who are still technically their allies, had many things to say which no member of the Government, nor any supporter of their policy, had the courage to attempt to controvert. Here are some of Lieut -Colonel Malone's remarks :

  "I see that General Knox declared publicly a short time ago that it is no use keeping Bolsheviks in prison ; that it is much the better plan to shoot them without trial. . . Yesterday General Knox was granted the K.C.B. Was it for that he was granted the K.C.B., or was it for organising the Koltchak regime? Who were the men who surrounded Admiral Koltchak? Unelected, unnominated, unconstitutionally elected people, who had no connection with the Russian people. . ."
  "I now pass to General Denikin. I will not burden the House by repeating the terrible list of atrocities which have been reported concerning territories occupied by Gen. Denikin. I will only mention one or two." 

The Picture Reversed.

The speaker then gave details of massacres, rape, branding and other villainies committed by the Denikinites which all the elaboration of capitalist hatred, could not surpass in their charges against the Bolsheviks. He then showed, from the evidence of correspondents serving with Denikin, what sort of man the "saviour of Russia" is, and drew attention to the case of the G.O.C., North Command parading his officers and men to "listen to one of these propaganda lectures by a certain reverend gentleman, a member of the Church of England, . . which is intended to stir up hate against the Soviet population." Later the speaker squarely challenged Lr. George on his statement that the Bolsheviks had sold guns to the Germans to be used against the British. The cowards who followed wisely changed the subject. 

A. E. Jacomb

After Tsarism (2018)

Book Review from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921’. By Eric Lee. (Zed Books, 2017)

Georgia is a country located south of the Caucasus mountains and between Russia and Turkey. A hundred years ago this May, Georgia declared itself independent as did a number of other former Russian territories. Eric Lee’s book, looks at the short-lived ‘democratic socialist’republic and its wider context, including its smaller scale predecessor the ‘Gurian Republic’.

Lee writes: ‘Between the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and the Russian Revolution in 1917, there were only two examples of socialists seizing political power and attempting to realise their vision of a new society. One was the Paris Commune of 1871 . . . the other was the Gurian Republic of 1902-6, widely known at the time but largely forgotten today.’

Georgia was a remote outpost of the Russian empire, and the vast majority of its inhabitants lived in poor rural communities. Guria was a desperately poor district in Western Georgia. What happened in Guria foreshadowed the later triumph of ‘democratic socialists’throughout Georgia.

‘The Gurian Republic, led by an orthodox Marxist party, instead of a few weeks, lasted for several years.’ ‘The Gurians helped to solve the land problem by redistributing land directly to the peasants, and curtailed the power of the tsarist state and the church. They instituted a kind of direct democracy in their villages. These were no small accomplishments –most happened, before 1905, when Tsarism was strong.’

Perhaps this was why Georgia returned Mensheviks by a landslide in 1905 elections to the Russian Duma. Although ‘Social Democrats’in Russia had split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—from then on ‘Social Democrats’ in Georgia meant Menshevism and the author uses the two terms interchangeably. Heads of the Social Democratic faction in the Duma, Noe Zhordania followed by Irakli Tsereteli, were both from Georgia. The Social Democrats were the only mass party in Georgia. When Soviets were formed across Russia in 1917, Social Democrats dominated the Soviets in Georgia too, so the Bolshevik slogan ‘All power to the Soviets!’ made no sense. The Georgian Bolsheviks remained a tiny and ineffectual force.

Lee explains that no  party claiming to be Marxist had yet come to power anywhere in the world, but by the summer of 1914, it seemed like that day was not far off. The Social Democrats  were the largest party in the German parliament, and the second largest party in France, even in the United States, so they seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough.

When Tsarism collapsed, Georgian Social Democrats had no intention of seceding from Russia; independence was not on the agenda. It was only after the ‘October revolution’(the Bolshevik coup) in Russia, that Georgia took matters into its own hands. Georgian military forces raided the arsenal in the capital Tiflis, Russian soldiers stationed there surrendered and Lenin was reportedly extremely displeased.

In the Russian Constituent Assembly elections in November 1917, Georgia again returned representatives who were overwhelmingly Mensheviks. This did not translate into a Menshevik majority in the Russian Constituent Assembly where the ‘Socialist-Revolutionary’ party won a comfortable majority over the second-placed Bolsheviks with Mensheviks a distant fourth. It was this result that prompted the Bolsheviks to dissolve the assembly by force

On May 26 1918, Georgia proclaimed its independence. Elections in 1919 (where suffrage was universal, equal and secret), returned even bigger landslides for Social Democrats, even under proportional representation. Trotsky railed, falsely portraying a powerful Georgian Bolshevik party ready at any moment. Kautsky countered this, and the archives bear out Kautsky. Trotsky and other Bolshevik propagandists then tried portraying Georgia as colluding with Anton Denikin’s White Army. Again, this is contradicted—this time by British dismay that the Georgians were repelling Denikin contrary to British orders.

Lee writes the most important action was their agrarian reform, selling state land to peasants. In this they were following Plekhanov’s municipalisation of land model and rejecting Lenin’s nationalisation of land which was thought to  lead to back to ‘a semi-Asiatic order’.

Georgia was developing a strong civil society with trade unions at its core, it enshrined the right for trade unions to strike long before most countries even legalised the right to join a trade union.

In Chapter 9 on co-operatives Lee describes the French Social Democrat leader Jules Guesde’s politics as purist and fanatical ultra-leftism. He writes that Guesde gave an example of his Marxist fundamentalism in July 1910, it is impossible to attach any socialist value to co-operation in itself. Anyone who suggested otherwise, he considered utopian.・ This is unfair to Guesde who wasn’t arguing that cooperatives were useless, only that on their own (‘in itself’) there was nothing socialist about them, as their subsequent history has shown. His views can be found here.

In 1920, three participants from the Second International, Kautsky and two Belgian Social Democrats, Vandervelde and Huysmans,visited what they saw as ‘the most perfect Socialism in Europe’–not Russia under Lenin, but the provincial backwater known as the Georgian Social Democratic Republic.

The British Labour Party delegation drew just as stark comparisons between the countries; Ethel Snowden’s criticisms of Bolshevik Russia were later published in a book Through Bolshevik Russia (to the annoyance of the Left in Britain), and Labour Party leader Ramsay Macdonald claimed the Georgian republic shared the aims of the Independent Labour Party.

Georgia was undoubtedly, as Lee says, ‘a vision of a new society radically different from the one Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were creating’. It was a pluralist, multi-party democracy of free elections, where the constitution guaranteed universal suffrage, a free press, separation of church and state and abolished the death penalty.

The Mensheviks correctly observed that impoverished, backward societies cannot skip historical stages and proceed to create socialism. Bolsheviks wrongly claimed they had done otherwise in Russia.

Russian Bolsheviks (re)conquered Georgia in 1921 despite fierce resistance and rebellions (the biggest of which was suppressed and whitewashed by German Communist leader Clara Zetkin). Heartening though was the reception Stalin’s return to Georgia got, on addressing a crowd of 5,000 workers. He congratulated them on ‘overthrowing the Menshevik yoke’, whereupon audience members heckled ‘Lies! There was no Menshevik yoke here! There was no Communist [Bolshevik] revolution in Georgia! Your troops have removed our freedom!’.

DJW

"Ten Days That Shook The World." (1919)

1919 Boni & Liveright first edition.

Book Review from the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a correspondent in America. 

Under the above title John Reed has written his experience in Russia during the Bolshevist rise to power in November, 1917. It is to be followed by another called “From Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” covering a later period.

We are flooded with books on the Russian uprising, but still lack a story of the events in Russia written by a Socialist. In other words, we have no book written with an understanding of the relation of actions and movements in Russia to the principles and policy of Socialism.

Apart from a number of war correspondents’ pictures of the rise of Kerensky, we have several so-called radical works on the subject. John wife, a Suffragette (Louise Bryant), went to Russia for a capitalist Press syndicate and wrote a series of articles which appeared in all the leading newspapers of America. These are now reprinted under the title of “Six Red Months in Russia." It is a typical journalistic effort, being some descriptive sketches of people she met and things she encountered. There is no appreciation of the economic or historical value of the actions she describes, and her fulsome praise of Bolshevism is based upon enthusiasm unlit by understanding. Although the lady knows nothing of Socialism she is routed all over the States at high fees and worshipped by every Bolshevik.

Bessie Beatty, of the “San Francisco Bulletin,” a capitalist daily, also took a journalist's trip into Russia. She wrote a series of articles for the magazines now published as “The Red Heart of Russia.” Like Louise Bryant she was toured all through the country by the Socialist Party and others. Her book adds little to our knowledge, giving the usual story of the coup d' etat of Bolshevism and the break-up of the Constituent Assembly. There is no examination of the strength of Bolshevism compared with other parties, no enquiry into the truth of so-called reasons for abolishing the Constituent Assembly and the volte-face of Lenin and Trotsky on this subject, and we miss any study of the state of Socialist knowledge in Russia in the alleged Bolshevist book.

Now we come to the present book. John Reed is beat known as a war correspondent and the author of a book on the Eastern Front. He has been connected with “The Masses” and “The Liberator”—Max Eastman’s weeklies.

John Reed voted for President Wilson in 1916 and his articles betrayed no Socialist knowledge. Since his return from “Bolshevist Russia," however, he has been connected with the left wing of the Socialist Party, but his work for Socialism is nil. Like his fellow war correspondent, Arthur Rhys Williams, he capitalised his Bolshevism by speaking everywhere to enormous crowds at enormous fees.

His book purports to be a detailed account of the November Revolution. In a fragmentary fashion he tells the story of the starvation and chaos of the armies at the front and the delegations of soldiers coming to Petrograd in October 1917 demanding something to be done for them. Kerensky's Government were demanding that Russia should stick to the Allies, but internal disorder was drawing the Provisional Government to its fall. Peasants, tired of waiting for the promised land, were burning manor houses and massacring landholders. Korniloff's advance on Petrograd and his capture by loyal forces cemented the union for the time being against counter revolution. Kaledine's Don Cossacks were plotting against the capital, and on October 23rd a naval battle took place with a German squadron in the Gulf of Riga.

On the pretense that the capital was in danger plans were drawn up to evacuate Petrograd.

The Bolshevists saw in this move a plan to kill rising by removing the Government from the Red centre.

The Bolsheviks called a National Congress of Soviets far November 2nd. This was opposed by the supporters of the Government as being too near the date for the convening of a Constituent Assembly. In the midst of chaotic local election conditions the delegates came to the National Soviets. Judging from the inevitably unsettled conditions it is difficult to know who they represented and what support they had. But this was the Soviet Congress which captured the Government for Bolshevism.

Before the Congress met, Reed tells us, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd were considering an insurrection. Lenin and Trotsky alone favoured it, but their scheme was defeated. Then a “rough workman" and a few soldiers appealed for insurrection and Lenin and Trotsky won. In such a sentimental fashion were the Bolshevik Executive Committee swayed to change their attitude in a few minutes.

The right wing of the Bolsheviki continued to campaign against an armed rising. These were led by Kameniev and Zinoviev. The success of Bolshevik propaganda drove the Kerensky Government to formulate laws for giving the land temporarily to the peasants and for pushing a foreign policy of peace.

In the meantime the question of withdrawing the “Red" troops from Petrograd and sending them to the front had caused the Petrograd soldiers' soviet to appoint a military revolutionary committee, and this acted as the instrument of insurrection and organised the coup which took control of the Government

On the fateful day—November 7—the Ministry of War and other Government offices were seized by the soldiers and many Ministers ware arrested. Kerensky escaped.

The All Russian Congress of Soviets at Petrograd on November 7th, 1917, controlled by Lenin and Trotsky, issued an appeal to the working people of Russia claiming that it would “ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the proper date."

The first decree read by Lenin was one on land ownership transferring it to the township land committees and district soviets to be dealt with "until the Constituent Assembly meets."

"The peasant delegates wild with joy" is Reed's description of the result of the enactment of the decree.

A further decree was on the Constitution of Power:

  "Until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, a provisional Workers’ and Peasants' Government is formed, which shall be named the Council of People's Commissars."

Within a few days Moscow Red Guards took charge of the Kremlin and controlled the city for the Bolsheviki The battle between the Committee of Public Safety and the soldiers under the military revolutionary committee lasted six days. In a scrappy fashion Reed tells the story of the control of the cities by the Bolshevik faction, and it reads more like a conspiracy than a proletarian revolution.

On the night of November 17th, 1917, opposition to Lenin's policy grew.

   “Larin (Bolshevik) declared that the moment of elections to the Constituent Assembly approached, and it was time to do away with 'political terrorism.'
   “The measures taken against the freedom of the Press should be modified. They had their reason during the struggle, but now they had no further excuse. The Press should be free, except for appeals to riot and insurrection." (Page 267.)

Contradictory statements in opposition to this ware made by Trotsky and Lenin. Oh the one hand they said “The victory over our enemies is not yet achieved, and the newspapers are arms in their hands" (p. 269), and they further said that the bourgeois parties “are in the minority." But how can we explain Lenin’s statement (p. 271) that “the immense majority of the people is with us" if they were forced to close down all opposition papers to prevent the workers being influenced.

The vast majority claimed by the Bolsheviks must have been very wavering to be influenced by the anti-Government Press.

Five members of the Council of People’s Commissars resigned declaring:

   We are in favour of a Socialist Government composed of all the parties in the Soviets. We consider that only the creation of such a Government can possibly guarantee the results of the heroic, struggle of the working class and the revolutionary army. Outside of that, there remains only one way: the constitution of a purely Bolshevik Government by means of political terrorism. This last is the road taken by the Council of People's Commissars. We cannot and will not follow it. We see that this leads directly to the elimination from political life of many proletarian organisations, to the establishment of an irresponsible regime, and to the destruction of the revolution and the country. We cannot take the responsibility for such a policy, and we renounce before the Tsay-ee-kah (Central Executive Committee of National Congress of Soviets) our function of People's Commissars.

Five others signed without resigning. At the same time Kameniev, Rykov, Miliutin, Zinoviev and Nogin resigned from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party making public their reasons:

   The constitution of such a Government (composed of all the parties of the Soviets) is indispensable to prevent a new flow of blood, the coming famine, the destruction of the revolution by the Kaledinists, to assure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the proper time, and to apply effectively the programme adopted by the Congress of Soviets.
   We cannot accept the responsibility for the disastrous policy of the Central Committee, carried on against the will of an enormous majority of the proletariat and the soldiers, who are eager to see the rapid end of the bloodshed between the different political parties of the democracy. . . . We renounce our title as members of the Central Committee, in order to be able to say openly our opinion to the masses of workers and soldiers. . . . We leave the Central Committee at the moment of victory; we cannot calmly look on while the policy of the chiefs of the Central Committee leads towards the loss of the fruits of victory and the crushing of the proletariat.  . . . 

The old officials continued to sabotage the Government and strikes of technical functionaries took place, especially in halting the transportation of food. Banks, railroads, posts and telegraphs were jeopardised by this walk out. The armies at the front were dying of hunger.

The Peasant’s Congress on November 27th was a stormy affair ending in the Bolsheviks adopting the land platform of their opponents, the Social Revolutionaries. At the outset of the Convention, Kolchinsky, for the left Social Revolutionaries pointed out (p. 302)

    the Council of People's Commissars abolished private property in land, but the regulations drawn up by the land Committee are based on private property. . . .  However, no harm has been done by that, for the Land Committee are paying no attention to the Soviet decrees, but are putting into operation their own practical decisions—decisions based on the will of the vast majority of the peasants.  . . .

Reed promises to tell us in his coming book why the Constituent Assembly was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. In the meantime it may be well to note that in his “Letter to the Comrades” (326) written a few days before the insurrection of November 7th 1917, Lenin says: 

   Since September the Bolshevik party has been discussing the question of insurrection. Refusing to rise means to trust our hopes in the faith of the Bourgeoisie, who have “promised" to call the Constituent Assembly. When the Soviets have all power, the calling of the Constituent is guaranteed, and its success assured.

E. S.

About Books (1953)

 Book Reviews from the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russian novelists have a knack of cramming their stories with such a large number of characters that the majority of their non-Russian leaders get lost in the crowd. Adding to the confusion is the similarity of male and female Christian names and the addition of a suffix to the surname to denote the female. Again, it appears that the name by which a person is addressed depends on the relationship with the person who is addressing him. A stranger or a remote acquaintance will use the surname, a friend or close acquaintance will use the first Christian name whilst relatives and very close friends will address a person by his or her second Christian name. This use of different names to denote the same person becomes mystifying to most English readers.

Although Sholokov's books are constructed similarly, when we read them we do not experience the same confusion that attends the reading of other Russian authors. He so presents his characters that we are able to distinguish one from the others right from the word "Go."

Sholokov's two earliest books, "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "The Don Flows Home to the Sea" are now world famous, and justly so. The first of these books was originally published in Russia in 1929 and the second in 1940. A recent reprint in English has been published by Putnam and Co., Ltd., and the two volumes are available at 12s. 6d. each.

The story, which is continuous through the two books, is enthralling. It presents us with a history of the Don Cossack peasant farmers from the early years of the present century up to the early nineteen-twenties and takes us through the latter part of the Czarist regime, the 1914-1918 war, the Bolshevik seizure of power and the counter-revolutionary war in the Cossack regions.

The Cossack farmers had little interest in the theories and aspirations of either side in the counter-revolutionary war. They desired little more than to be left alone to till their land and enjoy the fruits of their work. When they took up arms it was with the intent of driving out one bunch of oppressors or the other, which accounts for the fact that some of them not infrequently changed sides. It also accounts for one theme in Sholokov's story where intimate friends and even relatives fight one another from opposite ranks.

The great lesson to be learned from this story of the Don Cossacks is that revolutionary social changes cannot be brought about merely by the passing of laws or the issuing of decrees. The Bolshevik idea, that a political party with the support of a small minority of workers should seize political power and then start to ram revolutionary changes down the throats of a vast majority of peasants, is pathetically false. They found that, in order to impose the mildest of their measures for collectivisation, they had to resort to armed force and precipitate a civil war. The Cossacks, with the big landowners, enrolled under the banners of the White Russian Generals. Many of them fought in insurgent bands attached to neither side.

The peasant farmer makes his own home, builds his own farmhouses, breeds his own cattle and grows his own crops. Everything around him is individually, or family produced. The idea that the fruit of his individual effort should be socially appropriated is foreign to him. His highest political aspiration is to increase his individual farm holding, not to surrender all he has to a collective farm community of which he is an unwilling member. Even when the Bolsheviks had militarily subdued the Don Cossack region they were not able to enforce their instructions. They passed from compromise to compromise until their original proposals were lost to sight.

The fratricidal war the Cossacks fought was grim and brutal and Sholokov's story is in keeping with the time about which he writes. If he has a bias in favour of either party in that war he hides it well. His story is thrilling, exciting and tragic. It's great.

Mikhail Sholokov has written a third book entitled, "Virgin Soil Upturned" (same publishers, same price). In this he takes up the story of the collectivisation of the Cossack farms from the year 1930. The story is good but does not compare with the earlier two works. One could almost imagine it was written by a different author.

By a combination of propaganda and compulsion the Bolshevik Government was still trying to build its collective farms. The opposition from the wealthy farmers was fierce; from the poor ones it was sullen. The overall results were most discouraging to the men who were sent to the Cossack region to carry out the Communists' instructions.

Although the story in this book is not continued on from the other two, and although it is not such a splendid tale, it is worth reading in order to follow up the history of the Cossack farmers to a more recent date.

W. Waters

The Twilight of Bolshevism (1937)

Book Review from the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

From "Lenin to Stalin," by Victor Serge. (Pioneer Publishers, New York.)

The above volume, of one hundred pages or so, presents in brief the views given in greater detail in the author's larger work, "The Fate of the Revolution," $2.00.

In a note about Serge, we are told that his parents were émigrés in Tsarist days, one member of the family having been hanged after the assassination of Alexander II. Serge appears to have moved in anarchistic circles until 1917 in France and Spain, but joined the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1919.

"He became a member of the Russian Communist Party and a colleague of Zinoviev on the E.C. of the Communist International during the Civil War. He then became a gunner in a special battalion, a member of the military defence staff, and a commissar of the archives in the secret police under Krassin in 1919  . . . He spent considerable time in Germany (during the preparation of the 1923 uprising) and in Austria. Since then he has been a member of the Opposition. Expelled from the party and imprisoned in 1928 . . . deported to Orenburg in 1933, he was banished from the U.S.S.R. . . . in 1936."

The author's theme is the change, real or supposed, which has come over the Soviet Government since Lenin's time. He might have entitled it, "From Heroism to Cowardice." The careful reader who has studied the progress of events will fail to be convinced by such an over-simple presentation of the case. For example, compare the recent slaughter of Russian military leader with an incident in the Civil War, quoted by Serge on page 30:—

"The first Red troops retreat on every occasion. Kazan, the key to the Volga, is lost. Trotsky, Ivan Smirnov, and a group of militants arrive by special train in the midst of this débâcle . . . The  morale of the troops recovered. Trotsky signed this order:— 

'The soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army are not a cowardly rabble. They want to fight for the liberty and happiness of the working people. If they retreat or fight badly it is the fault of the commanders and commissars.
  

'I serve notice that if a unit gives ground, the political commissar will first be shot. Then the commander . . . For this I assume responsibility before the Red Army.'

"Many Revolutionists disapproved this speech and action, but Lenin approved it heartily."

This typically anarchist view of the responsibilities and powers of  individuals appears to have infected Bolshevism at an early date. The full fruits of the superstition are only now being reaped. When Serge deals with the confessions of people like Kamenev and Zinoviev the same semi-mystical streak appears. On page 81 he says: "Such confessions are made out of utter devotion and there is also an element of calculation about them. Smilga, an Oppositionist 'capitulator,' who has been in prison since 1933, once said: 'We must retreat, surrender for the present, and when the masses awaken, we shall put ourselves at their head.'"

Serge adopts a similar attitude to the defeat of Stalin's policy on the international field. Whether it be China or Germany, Serge evidently fails to realise the fantastic character of the proposition that a different "leadership" would have led to substantially different results. Like Trotskyists generally, he appears to imagine that the workers and peasants of the entire world are only waiting for genuine revolutionary messiahs to effect their deliverance. The tame slogan of "Socialism in one country" only expresses the belated recognition by the ruling clique of the Russian Communist Party of their limited influence outside Russia.

Lenin was by no means exempt from the pressure of external forces, as Serge's own pages bear witness. For instance, on page 29, we read: "Lenin and his co-workers did not contemplate the total nationalisation of heavy industry, but rather an effective workers' control and the growing participation of the Socialist state in mixed trusts in which the capitalists would retain some place."

Dealing with the civil war, on page 32, however, he says: "To an ever-increasing extent the economy must be directed with a view to war and stringent measures of nationalisation are extended to the whole of production. Factory-owners ask to be nationalised, as they cannot live otherwise."

Finally, when the civil war over: "The Poles are driven from Kiev. Lenin at once conceives the project of an offensive against Warsaw to make Poland a Soviet State . . . The workers and peasants of Poland fail to rise, and this, once again, proves that the revolution cannot be brought into a foreign country at the point of a gun."

The peasant risings in Russia itself (Serge instances the region of Tambov, where the peasant force reached 80,000 men), coupled with what he describes as the "useless massacre" of the Kronstadt sailors (rebelling against a Central Government, which had suppressed democracy), forced Lenin to put forward a new economic policy. "War communism" went by the board. Requisitions of grain were abandoned, peasants and others were allowed to trade, and all the feature of small-scale capitalism reasserted themselves. Even the ties between the State and its industrial trusts were slackened, and these began to participate in buying and selling in the ordinary market.

If we are to regard Lenin's régime as one of heroism, we are also compelled to recognise the magnitude of the illusions from the results of which many of his followers have had to suffer.

Serge's account of the war on the Opposition makes dismal reading: "The purge of the population of Leningrad (by imprisonment and deportation) includes between 80,000 and 100,000 victims. And that is in 1935, a year of economic recovery." (Page 77.)

Lenin changed the name of his party from "Social-Democrat" to "Communist." In Spain, Stalin's followers become "Socialists" in order to hound down expelled members of the Communist International. More treacherous than the Fascists, Serge shows that they denounce the P.O.U.M. militia as "the agents of Franco-Hitler-Mussolini," in a word of those who bid fair to reverse Lenin's famous slogan and turn a civil war into an imperial one.

Eric Boden