~corti-nico/ubuntu/vivid/anarchism/fix1426015 : revision 5

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H.6 Why did the Russian Revolution fail?

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The greatest myth of Marxism must surely be the idea that the Russian

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Revolution failed solely due to the impact of objective factors. While

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the date Leninists consider the revolution to have become beyond reform

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varies (over time it has moved backwards towards 1917 as the

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authoritarianism under Lenin and Trotsky has become better known), the

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actual reasons are common. For Leninists, the failure of the revolution

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was the product of such things as civil war, foreign intervention,

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economic collapse and the isolation and backwardness of Russia and not

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Bolshevik ideology. Bolshevik authoritarianism, then, was forced upon

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the party by difficult objective circumstances. It follows that there

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are no fundamental problems with Leninism and so it is a case of simply

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applying it again, hopefully in more fortuitous circumstances.

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Anarchists are not impressed by this argument and we will show why by

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refuting common Leninist explanations for the failure of the

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revolution. For anarchists, Bolshevik ideology played its part,

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creating social structures (a new state and centralised economic

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organisations) which not only disempowered the masses but also made the

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objective circumstances being faced much worse. Moreover, we argue,

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vanguardism could not help turn the rebels of 1917 into the ruling

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elite of 1918. We explore these arguments and the evidence for them in

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this section.

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For those who argue that the civil war provoked Bolshevik policies, the

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awkward fact is that many of the features of war communism, such as the

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imposition of one-man management and centralised state control of the

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economy, were already apparent before war communism. As one historian

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argues, "[f]rom the first days of Bolshevik power there was only a weak

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correlation between the extent of 'peace' and the mildness or severity

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of Bolshevik rule, between the intensity of the war and the intensity

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of proto-war communist measures . . . Considered in ideological terms

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there was little to distinguish the 'breathing space' (April-May 1918)

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from the war communism that followed." Unsurprisingly, then, "the

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breathing space of the first months of 1920 after the victories over

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Kolchak and Denikin . . . saw their intensification and the

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militarisation of labour" and, in fact, "no serious attempt was made to

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review the aptness of war communist policies." Ideology "constantly

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impinged on the choices made at various points of the civil war . . .

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Bolshevik authoritarianism cannot be ascribed simply to the Tsarist

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legacy or to adverse circumstances." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists

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in Power, p. 24, p. 27 and p. 30] The inherent tendencies of Bolshevism

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were revealed by the civil war, a war which only accelerated the

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development of what was implicit (and, often, not so implicit) in

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Bolshevik ideology and its vision of socialism, the state and the role

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of the party.

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Thus "the effective conclusion of the Civil War at the beginning of

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1920 was followed by a more determined and comprehensive attempt to

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apply these so-called War Communism policies rather than their

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relaxation" and so the "apogee of the War Communism economy occurred

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after the Civil War was effectively over." With the fighting over Lenin

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"forcefully raised the introduction of one-man management . . . Often

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commissars fresh from the Red Army were drafted into management

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positions in the factories." By the autumn of 1920, one-man management

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was in 82% of surveyed workplaces. This "intensification of War

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Communism labour policies would not have been a significant development

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if they had continued to be applied in the same haphazard manner as in

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1919, but in early 1920 the Communist Party leadership was no longer

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distracted by the Civil War from concentrating its thoughts and efforts

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on the formulation and implementation of its labour policies." While

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the " experience of the Civil War was one factor predisposing

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communists towards applying military methods" to the economy in early

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1920, "ideological considerations were also important." [Jonathan Aves,

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Workers Against Lenin, p. 2, p. 17, p. 15, p. 30, p. 17 and p. 11]

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So it seems incredulous for Leninist John Rees to assert, for example,

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that "[w]ith the civil war came the need for stricter labour discipline

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and for . . . 'one man management'. Both these processes developed lock

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step with the war." ["In Defence of October," pp. 3-82, International

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Socialism, no. 52, p. 43] As we discuss in the [1]next section, Lenin

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was advocating both of these before the outbreak of civil war in May

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1918 and after it was effectively over. Indeed he explicitly, both

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before and after the civil war, stressed that these policies were being

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implemented because the lack of fighting meant that the Bolsheviks

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could turn their full attention to building socialism. How these facts

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can be reconciled with claims of policies being in "lock step" with the

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civil war is hard to fathom.

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Part of the problem is the rampant confusion within Leninist circles as

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to when the practices condemned as Stalinism actually started. For

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example, Chris Harman (of the UK's SWP) in his summary of the rise

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Stalinism asserted that after "Lenin's illness and subsequent death"

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the "principles of October were abandoned one by one." Yet the practice

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of, and ideological commitment to, party dictatorship, one-man

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management in industry, banning opposition groups/parties (as well as

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factions within the Communist Party), censorship, state repression of

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strikes and protests, piece-work, Taylorism, the end of independent

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trade unions and a host of other crimes against socialism were all

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implemented under Lenin and normal practice at the time of his death.

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In other words, the "principles of October" were abandoned under, and

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by, Lenin. Which, incidentally, explains why, Trotsky "continued to his

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death to harbour the illusion that somehow, despite the lack of

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workers' democracy, Russia was a 'workers' state.'" [Bureaucracy and

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Revolution in Eastern Europe, p. 14 and p. 20] Simply put, there had

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been no workers' democracy when Trotsky held state power and he

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considered that regime a "workers' state". The question arises why

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Harman thinks Lenin's Russia was some kind of "workers' state" if

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workers' democracy is the criteria by which such things are to be

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judged.

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From this it follows that, unlike Leninists, anarchists do not judge a

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regime by who happens to be in office. A capitalist state does not

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become less capitalist just because a social democrat happens to be

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prime minister or president. Similarly, a regime does not become state

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capitalist just because Stalin is in power rather than Lenin. While the

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Marxist analysis concentrates on the transfer of state power from one

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regime to another, the anarchist one focuses on the transfer of power

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from the state and bosses to working class people. What makes a regime

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socialist is the social relationships it has, not the personal opinions

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of those in power. Thus if the social relationships under Lenin are

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similar to those under Stalin, then the nature of the regime is

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similar. That Stalin's regime was far more brutal, oppressive and

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exploitative than Lenin's does not change the underlying nature of the

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regime. As such, Chomsky is right to point to "the techniques of use of

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terminology to delude" with respect to the Bolshevik revolution. Under

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Lenin and Trotsky, "a popular revolution was taken over by a managerial

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elite who immediately dismantled all the socialist institutions." They

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used state power to "create a properly managed society, run by smart

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intellectuals, where everybody does his job and does what he's told . .

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. That's Leninism. That's the exact opposite of socialism. If socialism

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means anything, it means workers' control of production and then on

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from there. That's the first thing they destroyed. So why do we call it

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socialism?" [Language and Politics, p. 537]

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To refute in advance one obvious objection to our argument, the

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anarchist criticism of the Bolsheviks is not based on the utopian

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notion that they did not create a fully functioning (libertarian)

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communist society. As we discussed [2]section H.2.5, anarchists have

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never thought a revolution would immediately produce such an outcome.

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As Emma Goldman argued, she had not come to Russia "expecting to find

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Anarchism realised" nor did she "expect Anarchism to follow in the

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immediate footsteps of centuries of despotism and submission." Rather,

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she "hope[d] to find in Russia at least the beginnings of the social

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changes for which the Revolution had been fought" and that "the Russian

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workers and peasants as a whole had derived essential social betterment

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as a result of the Bolshevik regime." Both hopes were dashed. [My

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Disillusionment in Russia, p. xlvii] Equally, anarchists were, and are,

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well aware of the problems facing the revolution, the impact of the

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civil war and economic blockade. Indeed, both Goldman and Berkman used

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these (as Leninists still do) to rationalise their support for the

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Bolsheviks, in spite of their authoritarianism (for Berkman's account

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see The Bolshevik Myth [pp. 328-31]). Their experiences in Russia,

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particularly after the end of the civil war, opened their eyes to the

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impact of Bolshevik ideology on its outcome.

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Nor is it a case that anarchists have no solutions to the problems

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facing the Russian Revolution. As well as the negative critique that

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statist structures are unsuitable for creating socialism, particularly

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in the difficult economic circumstances that affects every revolution,

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anarchists stressed that genuine social construction had to be based on

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the people's own organisations and self-activity. This was because, as

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Goldman concluded, the state is a "menace to the constructive

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development of the new social structure" and "would become a dead

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weight upon the growth of the new forms of life." Therefore, she

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argued, only the "industrial power of the masses, expressed through

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their libertarian associations - Anarchosyndicalism - is alone able to

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organise successfully the economic life and carry on production" If the

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revolution had been made a la Bakunin rather than a la Marx "the result

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would have been different and more satisfactory" as (echoing Kropotkin)

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Bolshevik methods "conclusively demonstrated how a revolution should

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not be made." [Op. Cit., pp. 253-4 and p. liv]

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It should also be mentioned that the standard Leninist justification

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for party dictatorship is that the opposition groups supported the

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counter-revolution or took part in armed rebellions against "soviet

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power" (i.e., the Bolsheviks). Rees, for example, asserts that some

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Mensheviks "joined the Whites. The rest alternated between accepting

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the legitimacy of the government and agitating for its overthrow. The

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Bolsheviks treated them accordingly." [Op. Cit., p. 65] However, this

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is far from the truth. As one historian noted, while the "charge of

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violent opposition would be made again and again" by the Bolsheviks,

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along with being "active supporters of intervention and of

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counter-revolution", in fact this "charge was untrue in relation to the

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Mensheviks, and the Communists, if they ever believed it, never

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succeeded in establishing it." A few individuals did reject the

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Menshevik "official policy of confining opposition to strictly

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constitutional means" and they were "expelled from the party, for they

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had acted without its knowledge." [Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the

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Communist Autocracy, p. 193] Significantly, the Bolsheviks annulled

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their June 14th expulsion of the Mensheviks from the soviets on the

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30th of November of the same year, 1918. [E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik

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Revolution, vol. 1, p. 180]

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By "agitating" for the "overthrow" of the Bolshevik government, Rees is

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referring to the Menshevik tactic of standing for election to soviets

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with the aim of securing a majority and so forming a new government!

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Unsurprisingly, the sole piece of evidence presented by Rees is a quote

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from historian E.H. Carr: "If it was true that the Bolshevik regime was

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not prepared after the first few months to tolerate an organised

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opposition, it was equally true that no opposition party was prepared

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to remain within legal limits. The premise of dictatorship was common

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to both sides of the argument." [Op. Cit., p. 190] Yet this "judgment

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ignores" the Mensheviks whose policy of legal opposition: "The charge

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that the Mensheviks were not prepared to remain within legal limits is

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part of the Bolsheviks case; it does not survive an examination of the

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facts." [Schapiro, Op. Cit., p. 355fn]

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As regards the SRs, this issue is more complicated. The right-SRs

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welcomed and utilised the rebellion of the Czech Legion in May 1918 to

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reconvene the Constituent Assembly (within which they had an

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overwhelming majority and which the Bolsheviks had dissolved). After

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the White General Kolchak overthrew this government in November 1918

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(and so turned the civil war into a Red against White one), most

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right-SRs sided with the Bolsheviks and, in return, the Bolsheviks

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restated them to the soviets in February 1919. [Carr, Op. Cit., p. 356

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and p. 180] It must be stressed that, contra Carr, the SRs aimed for a

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democratically elected government, not a dictatorship (and definitely

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not a White one). With the Left-SRs, it was the Bolsheviks who denied

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them their majority at the Fifth All-Congress of Soviets. Their

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rebellion was not an attempted coup but rather an attempt to force the

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end of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with the Germans by restarting the war

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(as Alexander Rabinowitch proves beyond doubt in his The Bolsheviks in

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Power). It would be fair to say that the anarchists, most SRs, the Left

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SRs and Mensheviks were not opposed to the revolution, they were

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opposed to Bolshevik policy.

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Ultimately, as Emma Goldman came to conclude, "what [the Bolsheviks]

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called 'defence of the Revolution' was really only the defence of

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[their] party in power." [Op. Cit., p. 57]

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At best it could be argued that the Bolsheviks had no alternative but

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to impose their dictatorship, as the other socialist parties would have

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succumbed to the Whites and so, eventually, a White dictatorship would

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have replaced the Red one. This was why, for example, Victor Serge

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claimed he sided with the Communists against the Kronstadt sailors even

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though the latter had right on their side for "the country was

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exhausted, and production practically at a standstill; there was no

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reserves of any kind . . . The working-class elite that had been

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moulded in the struggle against the old regime was literally decimated.

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. . . If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to

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chaos . . . and in the end, through the sheer force of events, another

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dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian." [Memoirs of a Revolutionary,

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pp. 128-9]

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This, however, is shear elitism and utterly violates the notion that

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socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class. Moreover, it

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places immense faith on the goodwill of those in power - a utopian

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position. Equally, it should not be forgotten that both the Reds and

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Whites were anti-working class. At best it could be argued that the Red

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repression of working class protests and strikes as well as opposition

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socialists would not have been as terrible as that of the Whites, but

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that is hardly a good rationale for betraying the principles of

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socialism. Yes, libertarians can agree with Serge that embracing

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socialist principles may not work. Every revolution is a gamble and may

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fail. As libertarian socialist Ante Ciliga correctly argued:

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"Let us consider, finally, one last accusation which is commonly

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circulated: that action such as that at Kronstadt could have

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indirectly let loose the forces of the counter-revolution. It is

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possible indeed that even by placing itself on a footing of workers'

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democracy the revolution might have been overthrown; but what is

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certain is that it has perished, and that it has perished on account

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of the policy of its leaders. The repression of Kronstadt, the

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suppression of the democracy of workers and soviets by the Russian

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Communist party, the elimination of the proletariat from the

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management of industry, and the introduction of the NEP, already

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signified the death of the Revolution." ["The Kronstadt Revolt", pp.

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330-7, The Raven, no, 8, p. 333 p. 335]

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So it should be stressed that no anarchist would argue that if an

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anarchist path had been followed then success would have automatically

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followed. It is possible that the revolution would have failed but one

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thing is sure: by following the Bolshevik path it did fail. While the

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Bolsheviks may have remained in power at the end of the civil war, the

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regime was a party dictatorship preceding over a state capitalist

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economy. In such circumstances, there could no further development

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towards socialism and, unsurprisingly, there was none. Ultimately, as

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the rise of Stalin showed, the notion that socialism could be

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constructed without basic working class freedom and self-government was

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a baseless illusion.

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As we will show, the notion that objective circumstances (civil war,

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economic collapse, and so on) cannot fully explain the failure of the

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Russian Revolution. This becomes clear once the awkward fact that

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Bolshevik authoritarianism and state capitalist policies started before

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the outbreak of civil war is recognised (see [3]section H.6.1); that

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their ideology inspired and shaped the policies they implemented and

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these policies themselves made the objective circumstances worse (see

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[4]section H.6.2); and that the Bolsheviks had to repress working class

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protest and strikes against them throughout the civil war, so

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suggesting a social base existed for a genuinely socialist approach

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(see [5]section H.6.3).

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Finally, there is a counter-example which, anarchists argue, show the

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impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of the revolution. This is the

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anarchist influenced Makhnovist movement (see Peter Arshinov's The

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History of the Makhnovist Movement or Alexandre Skirda's Nestor Makhno

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Anarchy's Cossack for more details). Defending the revolution in the

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Ukraine against all groups aiming to impose their will on the masses,

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the Makhnovists were operating in the same objective conditions facing

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the Bolsheviks - civil war, economic disruption, isolation and so

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forth. However, the policies the Makhnovists implemented were radically

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different than those of the Bolsheviks. While the Makhnovists called

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soviet congresses, the Bolsheviks disbanded them. The former encouraged

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free speech and organisation, the latter crushed both. While the

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Bolsheviks raised party dictatorship and one-man management to

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ideological truisms, the Makhnovists stood for and implemented

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workplace, army, village and soviet self-management. As one historian

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suggests, far from being necessary or even functional, Bolshevik

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policies "might even have made the war more difficult and more costly.

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If the counter-example of Makhno is anything to go by then [they]

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certainly did." [Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets, p. 265]

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Anarchists argue that it shows the failure of Bolshevism cannot be put

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down to purely objective factors like the civil war: the politics of

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Leninism played their part.

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Needless to say, this section can only be a summary of the arguments

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and evidence. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of the

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revolution or civil war. It concentrates on the key rationales by

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modern day Leninists to justify Bolshevik actions and policies. We do

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so simply because it would be impossible to cover every aspect of the

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revolution and because these rationales are one of the main reasons why

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Leninist ideology has not been placed in the dustbin of history where

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it belongs. For further discussion, see [6]the appendix on the Russian

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Revolution or Voline's The Unknown Revolution, Alexander Berkman's The

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Russian Tragedy and The Bolshevik Myth, Emma Goldman's My

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Disillusionment in Russia or Maurice Brinton's essential The Bolsheviks

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and Workers' Control.

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H.6.1 Can objective factors explain the failure of the Russian Revolution?

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Leninist John Rees recounts the standard argument, namely that the

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objective conditions in Russia meant that the "subjective factor" of

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Bolshevik ideology "was reduced to a choice between capitulation to the

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Whites or defending the revolution with whatever means were at hands.

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Within these limits Bolshevik policy was decisive. But it could not

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wish away the limits and start with a clean sheet." From this

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perspective, the key factor was the "vice-like pressure of the civil

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war" which "transformed the state" as well as the "Bolshevik Party

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itself." Industry was "reduced . . . to rubble" and the "bureaucracy of

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the workers' state was left suspended in mid-air, its class based

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eroded and demoralised." ["In Defence of October," pp. 3-82,

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International Socialism, no. 52, p. 30, p. 70, p. 66 and p. 65]

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Due to these factors, argue Leninists, the Bolsheviks became dictators

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over the working class and not due to their political ideas. Anarchists

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are not convinced by this analysis, arguing that is factually and

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logically flawed.

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The first problem is factual. Bolshevik authoritarianism started before

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the start of the civil war and major economic collapse. Whether it is

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soviet democracy, workers' economic self-management, democracy in the

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armed forces or working class power and freedom generally, the fact is

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the Bolsheviks had systematically attacked and undermined it from the

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start. They also, as we indicate in [7]section H.6.3 repressed working

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class protests and strikes along with opposition groups and parties. As

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such, it is difficult to blame something which had not started yet for

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causing Bolshevik policies.

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Although the Bolsheviks had seized power under the slogan "All Power to

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the Soviets," as we noted in [8]section H.3.11 the facts are the

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Bolsheviks aimed for party power and only supported soviets as long as

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they controlled them. To maintain party power, they had to undermine

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the soviets and they did. This onslaught on the soviets started

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quickly, in fact overnight when the first act of the Bolsheviks was to

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create an executive body, the the Council of People's Commissars (or

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Sovnarkon), over and above the soviets. This was in direct

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contradiction to Lenin's The State and Revolution, where he had used

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the example of the Paris Commune to argue for the merging of executive

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and legislative powers. Then, a mere four days after this seizure of

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power by the Bolsheviks, the Sovnarkom unilaterally took for itself

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legislative power simply by issuing a decree to this effect: "This was,

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effectively, a Bolshevik coup d�tat that made clear the government's

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(and party's) pre-eminence over the soviets and their executive organ.

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Increasingly, the Bolsheviks relied upon the appointment from above of

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commissars with plenipotentiary powers, and they split up and

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reconstituted fractious Soviets and intimidated political opponents."

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[Neil Harding, Leninism, p. 253]

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The highest organ of soviet power, the Central Executive Committee

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(VTsIK) was turned into little more than a rubber stamp, with its

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Bolshevik dominated presidium using its power to control the body.

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Under the Bolsheviks, the presidium was converted "into the de facto

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centre of power within VTsIK." It "began to award representations to

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groups and factions which supported the government. With the VTsIK

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becoming ever more unwieldy in size by the day, the presidium began to

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expand its activities" and was used "to circumvent general meetings."

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Thus the Bolsheviks were able "to increase the power of the presidium,

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postpone regular sessions, and present VTsIK with policies which had

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already been implemented by the Sovnarkon. Even in the presidium itself

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very few people determined policy." [Charles Duval, "Yakov M. Sverdlov

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and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK)",

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pp. 3-22, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXI, no. 1, p.7, p. 8 and p. 18]

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At the grassroots, a similar process was at work with oligarchic

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tendencies in the soviets increasing post-October and "[e]ffective

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power in the local soviets relentlessly gravitated to the executive

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committees, and especially their presidia. Plenary sessions became

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increasingly symbolic and ineffectual." The party was "successful in

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gaining control of soviet executives in the cities and at uezd and

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guberniya levels. These executive bodies were usually able to control

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soviet congresses, though the party often disbanded congresses that

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opposed major aspects of current policies." Local soviets "had little

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input into the formation of national policy" and "[e]ven at higher

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levels, institutional power shifted away from the soviets." [Carmen

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Sirianni, Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy, p. 204 and p. 203]

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In Moscow, for example, power in the soviet "moved away from the plenum

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to ever smaller groups at the apex." The presidium, created in November

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1917, "rapidly accrued massive powers." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet

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Communists in Power, p. 166]

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The Bolshevik dominated soviet executives used this power to maintain a

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Bolshevik majority, by any means possible, in the face of popular

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disillusionment with their regime. In Saratov, for example, "as early

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as the spring of 1918 . . . workers clashed with the soviet" while in

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the April soviet elections, as elsewhere, the Bolsheviks' "powerful

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majority in the Soviet began to erode" as moderate socialists

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"criticised the nondemocratic turn Bolshevik power has taken and the

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soviet's loss of their independence." [Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing

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Russia's Civil War, p. 366 and p. 368] While the influence of the

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Mensheviks "had sunk to insignificance by October 1917", the

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"unpopularity of government policy" changed that and by the "middle of

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1918 the Mensheviks could claim with some justification that large

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numbers of the industrial working class were now behind them, and that

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but for the systematic dispersal and packing of the soviets, and the

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mass arrests at workers' meeting and congresses, their party could have

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one power by its policy of constitutional opposition." The soviet

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elections in the spring of 1918 across Russia saw "arrests, military

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dispersal, even shootings" whenever Mensheviks "succeeded in winning

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majorities or a substantial representation." [Leonard Schapiro, The

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Origin of the Communist Autocracy, p. 191]

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One such technique to maintain power was to postpone new soviet

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elections, another was to gerrymander the soviets to ensure their

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majority. The Bolsheviks in Petrograd, for example, faced "demands from

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below for the immediate re-election" of the Soviet. However, before the

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election, the Bolshevik Soviet confirmed new regulations "to help

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offset possible weaknesses" in their "electoral strength in factories."

431

The "most significant change in the makeup of the new soviet was that

432

numerically decisive representation was given to agencies in which the

433

Bolsheviks had overwhelming strength, among them the Petrograd Trade

434

Union Council, individual trade unions, factory committees in closed

435

enterprises, district soviets, and district non-party workers'

436

conferences." This ensured that "[o]nly 260 of roughly 700 deputies in

437

the new soviet were to be elected in factories, which guaranteed a

438

large Bolshevik majority in advance" and so the Bolsheviks "contrived a

439

majority" in the new Soviet long before gaining 127 of the 260 factory

440

delegates. Then there is "the nagging question of how many Bolshevik

441

deputies from factories were elected instead of the opposition because

442

of press restrictions, voter intimidation, vote fraud, or the short

443

duration of the campaign." The SR and Menshevik press, for example,

444

were reopened "only a couple of days before the start of voting."

445

Moreover, "Factory Committees from closed factories could and did elect

446

soviet deputies (the so-called dead souls), one deputy for each factory

447

with more than one thousand workers at the time of shutdown" while the

448

electoral assemblies for unemployed workers "were organised through

449

Bolshevik-dominated trade union election commissions." Overall, then,

450

the Bolshevik election victory "was highly suspect, even on the shop

451

floor." [Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power, pp. 248-9, p.

452

251 and p. 252] This meant that it was "possible for one worker to be

453

represented in the soviet five times . . . without voting once." Thus

454

the soviet "was no longer a popularly elected assembly: it had been

455

turned into an assembly of Bolshevik functionaries." [Vladimir N.

456

Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October, p. 240]

457

458

When postponing and gerrymandering failed, the Bolsheviks turned to

459

state repression to remain in power. For all the provincial soviet

460

elections in the spring and summer of 1918 for which data is available,

461

there was an "impressive success of the Menshevik-SR block" followed by

462

"the Bolshevik practice of disbanding soviets that came under

463

Menshevik-SR control." The "subsequent wave of anti-Bolshevik

464

uprisings" were repressed by force. [Brovkin, Op. Cit., p. 159] Another

465

historian also notes that by the spring of 1918 "Menshevik newspapers

466

and activists in the trade unions, the Soviets, and the factories had

467

made a considerable impact on a working class which was becoming

468

increasingly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime, so much so that

469

in many places the Bolsheviks felt constrained to dissolve Soviets or

470

prevent re-elections where Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had

471

gained majorities." [Israel Getzler, Martov, p. 179]

472

473

When the opposition parties raised such issues at the VTsIK, it had no

474

impact. In April 1918, one deputy "protested that non-Bolshevik

475

controlled soviets were being dispersed by armed force, and wanted to

476

discuss the issue." The chairman "refus[ed] to include it in the agenda

477

because of lack of supporting material" and requested such information

478

be submitted to the presidium of the soviet. The majority (i.e. the

479

Bolsheviks) "supported their chairman" and the facts were "submitted .

480

. . to the presidium, where they apparently remained." [Charles Duval,

481

Op. Cit., pp. 13-14] Given that the VTsIK was meant to be the highest

482

soviet body between congresses, this lack of concern clearly shows the

483

Bolshevik contempt for soviet democracy.

484

485

The Bolsheviks also organised rural poor committees, opposed to by all

486

other parties (particularly the Left-SRs). The Bolshevik leadership

487

"was well aware that the labouring peasantry, largely represented in

488

the countryside by the Left Socialist-Revolutionary party, would be

489

excluded from participation." These committees were "subordinated to

490

central policy and thus willing to implement a policy opposing the

491

interests of the mass of the peasants" and were also used for the

492

"disbandment of the peasants' soviets in which Bolshevik representation

493

was low or nil". It should be noted that between March and August 1918

494

"the Bolsheviks were losing power not only in favour of the Left

495

Socialist-Revolutionaries" but also "in favour of non-party people."

496

[Silvana Malle, The Economic Organisation of War Communism, 1918-1921,

497

pp. 366-7]

498

499

Unsurprisingly, the same contempt was expressed at the fifth

500

All-Russian Soviet Congress in July 1918 when the Bolshevik

501

gerrymandered it to maintain their majority. The Bolsheviks banned the

502

Mensheviks in the context of political loses before the Civil War,

503

which gave the Bolsheviks an excuse and they "drove them underground,

504

just on the eve of the elections to the Fifth Congress of Soviets in

505

which the Mensheviks were expected to make significant gains". While

506

the Bolsheviks "offered some formidable fictions to justify the

507

expulsions" there was "of course no substance in the charge that the

508

Mensheviks had been mixed in counter-revolutionary activities on the

509

Don, in the Urals, in Siberia, with the Czechoslovaks, or that they had

510

joined the worst Black Hundreds." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 181]

511

512

With the Mensheviks and Right-SRs banned from the soviets, popular

513

disenchantment with Bolshevik rule was expressed by voting Left-SR. The

514

Bolsheviks ensured their majority in the congress and, therefore, a

515

Bolshevik government by gerrymandering it has they had the Petrograd

516

soviet. Thus "electoral fraud gave the Bolsheviks a huge majority of

517

congress delegates". In reality, "the number of legitimately elected

518

Left SR delegates was roughly equal to that of the Bolsheviks." The

519

Left-SRs expected a majority but did not include "roughly 399

520

Bolsheviks delegates whose right to be seated was challenged by the

521

Left SR minority in the congress's credentials commission." Without

522

these dubious delegates, the Left SRs and SR Maximalists would have

523

outnumbered the Bolsheviks by around 30 delegates. This ensured "the

524

Bolshevik's successful fabrication of a large majority in the Fifth

525

All-Russian Congress of Soviets." [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 396, p.

526

288, p. 442 and p. 308] Moreover, the Bolsheviks also "allowed

527

so-called committees of poor peasants to be represented at the

528

congress. . . This blatant gerrymandering ensured a Bolshevik majority

529

. . . Deprived of their democratic majority the Left SRs resorted to

530

terror and assassinated the German ambassador Mirbach." [Geoffrey

531

Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War, p. 176] The Bolsheviks

532

falsely labelled this an uprising against the soviets and the Left-SRs

533

joined the Mensheviks and Right-SRs in being made illegal. It is hard

534

not to agree with Rabinowitch when he comments that "however

535

understandable framed against the fraudulent composition of the Fifth

536

All-Russian Congress of Soviets and the ominous developments at the

537

congresses's start" this act "offered Lenin a better excuse than he

538

could possibly have hoped for to eliminate the Left SRs as a

539

significant political rival." [Op. Cit., p. 308]

540

541

So before the start of the civil war all opposition groups, bar the

542

Left-SRs, had suffered some form of state repression by the hands of

543

the Bolshevik regime (the Bolsheviks had attacked the anarchist

544

movement in April, 1918 [Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, pp.

545

184-5]). Within six weeks of it starting every opposition group had

546

been excluded from the soviets. Significantly, in spite of being,

547

effectively, a one-party state Lenin later proclaimed that soviet power

548

"is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois

549

republic" and pointed to the 6th Congress of Soviets in November with

550

its 97% of Bolsheviks! [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 248 and p. 303]

551

552

A similar authoritarian agenda was aimed at the armed forces and

553

industry. Trotsky simply abolished the soldier's committees and elected

554

officers, stating that "the principle of election is politically

555

purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice,

556

abolished by decree." [How the Revolution Armed, vol. 1, p. 47] The

557

death penalty for disobedience was restored, along with, more

558

gradually, saluting, special forms of address, separate living quarters

559

and other privileges for officers. Somewhat ironically, nearly 20 years

560

later, Trotsky himself lamented how the "demobilisation of the Red Army

561

of five million played no small role in the formation of the

562

bureaucracy. The victorious commanders assumed leading posts in the

563

local Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persistently

564

introduced everywhere that regime which had ensured success in the

565

civil war." For some reason he failed to mention who had introduced

566

that very regime, although he felt able to state, without shame, that

567

the "commanding staff needs democratic control. The organisers of the

568

Red Army were aware of this from the beginning, and considered it

569

necessary to prepare for such a measure as the election of commanding

570

staff." [The Revolution Betrayed, p. 90 and p. 211] So it would be

571

churlish to note that "the root of the problem lay in the very

572

organisation of the army on traditional lines, for which Trotsky

573

himself had been responsible, and against which the Left Communists in

574

1918 had warned." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 231]

575

576

In industry, Lenin, as we discussed in [9]section H.3.14, started to

577

champion one-man management armed with "dictatorial" powers in April,

578

1918. Significantly, he argued that his new policies were not driven by

579

the civil war for "[i]n the main . . . the task of suppressing the

580

resistance of the exploiters was fulfilled" (since "(approximately)

581

February 1918."). The task "now coming to the fore" was that of

582

"organising [the] administration of Russia." It "has become the main

583

and central task" precisely because of "the peace which has been

584

achieved - despite its extremely onerous character and extreme

585

instability" and so "the Russian Soviet Republic has gained an

586

opportunity to concentrate its efforts for a while on the most

587

important and most difficult aspect of the socialist revolution,

588

namely, the task of organisation." This would involve imposing one-man

589

management, that is "individual executives" with "dictatorial powers

590

(or 'unlimited' powers)" as there was "absolutely no contradiction in

591

principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the

592

exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals." [Op. Cit., vol. 27, p.

593

242, p. 237, p. 267 and p. 268]

594

595

Trotsky concurred, arguing in the same speech which announced the

596

destruction of military democracy that workplace democracy "is not the

597

last word in the economic constructive work of the proletariat". The

598

"next step must consist in self-limitation of the collegiate principle"

599

and its replacement by "[p]olitical collegiate control by the Soviets",

600

i.e. the state control Lenin had repeatedly advocated in 1917. However

601

"for executive functions we must appoint technical specialists." He

602

ironically called this the working class "throwing off the one-man

603

management principles of its masters of yesterday" and failed to

604

recognise it was imposing the one-man management principles of new

605

masters. As with Lenin, the destruction of workers' power at the point

606

of production was of little concern for what mattered was that "with

607

power in our hands, we, the representatives of the working class" would

608

introduce socialism. [How the Revolution Armed, vol. 1, p. 37 and p.

609

38]

610

611

In reality, the Bolshevik vision of socialism simply replaced private

612

capitalism with state capitalism, taking control of the economy out of

613

the hands of the workers and placing it into the hands of the state

614

bureaucracy. As one historian correctly summarises the s-called

615

workers' state "oversaw the reimposition of alienated labour and

616

hierarchical social relations. It carried out this function in the

617

absence of a ruling class, and them played a central role in ushering

618

that class into existence - a class which subsequently ruled not

619

through its ownership of private property but through its 'ownership'

620

of the state. That state was antagonistic to the forces that could have

621

best resisted the retreat of the revolution, i.e. the working class."

622

[Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24, p. 240]

623

624

Whether it is in regards to soviet, workplace or army democracy or the

625

rights of the opposition to organise freely and gather support, the

626

facts are the Bolsheviks had systematically eliminated them before the

627

start of the civil war. So when Trotsky asserted that "[i]n the

628

beginning, the party had wished and hoped to preserve freedom of

629

political struggle within the framework of the Soviets" but that it was

630

civil war which "introduced stern amendments into this calculation," he

631

was rewriting history. Rather than being "regarded not as a principle,

632

but as an episodic act of self-defence" the opposite is the case. As we

633

note in [10]section H.3.8 from roughly October 1918 onwards, the

634

Bolsheviks did raise party dictatorship to a "principle" and did not

635

care that this was "obviously in conflict with the spirit of Soviet

636

democracy." Trotsky was right to state that "on all sides the masses

637

were pushed away gradually from actual participation in the leadership

638

of the country." [The Revolution Betrayed, p. 96 and p. 90] He was just

639

utterly wrong to imply that this process happened after the end of the

640

civil war rather than before its start and that the Bolsheviks did not

641

play a key role in so doing. Thus, "in the soviets and in economic

642

management the embryo of centralised and bureaucratic state forms had

643

already emerged by mid-1918." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., pp. 96-7]

644

645

It may be argued in objection to this analysis that the Bolsheviks

646

faced resistance from the start and, consequently, civil war existed

647

from the moment Lenin seized power and to focus attention on the events

648

of late May 1918 gives a misleading picture of the pressures they were

649

facing. After all, the Bolsheviks had the threat of German Imperialism

650

and there were a few (small) White Armies in existence as well as

651

conspiracies to combat. However, this is unconvincing as Lenin himself

652

pointed to the ease of Bolshevik success post-October. On March 14th,

653

1918, Lenin had proclaimed that "the civil war was one continuous

654

triumph for Soviet power" and in June argued that "the Russian

655

bourgeoisie was defeated in open conflict . . . in the period from

656

October 1917 to February and March 1918". [Collected Works, vol. 27, p.

657

174 and p. 428] It can be concluded that the period up until March 1918

658

was not considered by the Bolsheviks themselves as being so bad as

659

requiring the adjustment of their politics. This explains why, as one

660

historian notes, that the "revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion on 25 May

661

1918 is often considered to be the beginning of full-scale military

662

activity. There followed a succession of campaigns." This is reflected

663

in Bolshevik policy as well, with war communism "lasting from about

664

mid-1918 to March 1921." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 22 and p. 19]

665

666

Significantly, the introduction of one-man management was seen not as

667

an emergency measure forced upon the Bolsheviks by dire circumstances

668

of civil war but rather as a natural aspect of building socialism

669

itself. In March, 1918, for example, Lenin argued that civil war

670

"became a fact" on October, 25, 1917 and "[i]n this civil war . . .

671

victory was achieved with . . . extraordinary ease . . . The Russia

672

revolution was a continuous triumphal march in the first months." [Op.

673

Cit., pp. 88-9] Looking back at this time from April 1920, Lenin

674

reiterated his position ("Dictatorial powers and one-man management are

675

not contradictory to socialist democracy.") while also stressing that

676

this was not forced upon the Bolsheviks by civil war. Discussing how,

677

again, the civil war was ended and it was time to build socialism he

678

argued that the "whole attention of the Communist Party and the Soviet

679

government is centred on peaceful economic development, on problems of

680

the dictatorship and of one-man management . . . When we tackled them

681

for the first time in 1918, there was no civil war and no experience to

682

speak of." So it was "not only experience" of civil war, argued Lenin

683

"but something more profound . . . that has induced us now, as it did

684

two years ago, to concentrate all our attention on labour discipline."

685

[Op. Cit., vol. 30, p. 503 and p. 504] Trotsky also argued that

686

Bolshevik policy was not conditioned by the civil war (see [11]section

687

H.3.14).

688

689

As historian Jonathan Aves notes, "the Communist Party took victory as

690

a sign of the correctness of its ideological approach and set about the

691

task of economic construction on the basis of an intensification of War

692

Communism policies." [Workers Against Lenin, p. 37] In addition, this

693

perspective flowed, as we argue in the [12]next section, from the

694

Bolshevik ideology, from its vision of socialism, rather than some

695

alien system imposed upon an otherwise healthy set of ideas.

696

697

Of course, this can be ignored in favour of the argument that party

698

rule was required for the revolution to succeed. That would be a

699

defendable, if utterly incorrect, position to take. It would, however,

700

also necessitate ripping up Lenin's State and Revolution as it is

701

clearly not relevant to a socialist revolution nor can it be considered

702

as the definitive guide of what Leninism really stands for, as

703

Leninists like to portray it to this day. Given that this is extremely

704

unlikely to happen, it is fair to suggest that claims that the

705

Bolsheviks faced "civil war" from the start, so justifying their

706

authoritarianism, can be dismissed as particularly unconvincing special

707

pleading. Much the same can be said for the "objective conditions"

708

produced by the May 1918 to October 1920 civil war argument in general.

709

710

Then there is the logical problem. Leninists say that they are

711

revolutionaries. As we noted in [13]section H.2.1, they inaccurately

712

mock anarchists for not believing that a revolution needs to defend

713

itself. Yet, ironically, their whole defence of Bolshevism rests on the

714

"exceptional circumstances" produced by the civil war they claim is

715

inevitable. If Leninism cannot handle the problems associated with

716

actually conducting a revolution then, surely, it should be avoided at

717

all costs. This is particularly the case as leading Bolsheviks all

718

argued that the specific problems their latter day followers blame for

719

their authoritarianism were natural results of any revolution and,

720

consequently, unavoidable. Lenin, for example, in 1917 mocked those who

721

opposed revolution because "the situation is exceptionally

722

complicated." He noted "the development of the revolution itself always

723

creates an exceptionally complicated situation" and that it was an

724

"incredibly complicated and painful process." In fact, it was "the most

725

intense, furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a single great

726

revolution in history has taken place without civil war. And only a

727

'man in a muffler' can think that civil war is conceivable without an

728

'exceptionally complicated situation.'" "If the situation were not

729

exceptionally complicated there would be no revolution." [Op. Cit.,

730

vol. 26, pp. 118-9]

731

732

He reiterated this in 1918, arguing that "every great revolution, and a

733

socialist revolution in particular, even if there is no external war,

734

is inconceivable without internal war, i.e., civil war, which is even

735

more devastating than external war, and involves thousands and millions

736

of cases of wavering and desertion from one side to another, implies a

737

state of extreme indefiniteness, lack of equilibrium and chaos." [Op.

738

Cit., vol. 27, p. 264] He even argued that revolution in an advanced

739

capitalist nations would be far more devastating and ruinous than in

740

Russia. [Op. Cit., vol. 28, p. 298]

741

742

Therefore, Lenin stressed, "it will never be possible to build

743

socialism at a time when everything is running smoothly and tranquilly;

744

it will never be possible to realise socialism without the landowners

745

and capitalists putting up a furious resistance." Those "who believe

746

that socialism can be built at a time of peace and tranquillity are

747

profoundly mistaken: it will be everywhere built at a time of

748

disruption, at a time of famine. That is how it must be." Moreover,

749

"not one of the great revolutions of history has taken place" without

750

civil war and "without which not a single serious Marxist has conceived

751

the transition from capitalism to socialism." Obviously, "there can be

752

no civil war - the inevitable condition and concomitant of socialist

753

revolution - without disruption." [Op. Cit., vol. 27, p. 520, p. 517,

754

p. 496 and p. 497]

755

756

Moreover, anarchists had long argued that a revolution would be

757

associated with economic disruption, isolation and civil war and,

758

consequently, had developed their ideas to take these into account. For

759

example, Kropotkin was "certain that the coming Revolution . . . will

760

burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial crisis . . . There

761

are millions of unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It will be

762

worse when Revolution has burst upon us . . . The number of the

763

out-of-works will be doubled as soon as barricades are erected in

764

Europe and the United States . . . we know that in time of Revolution

765

exchange and industry suffer most from the general upheaval . . . A

766

Revolution in Europe means, then, the unavoidable stoppage of at least

767

half the factories and workshops." The "smallest attack upon property

768

will bring in its train the complete disorganisation" of the capitalist

769

economy. This meant that society "itself will be forced to take

770

production in hand . . . and to reorganise it to meet the needs of the

771

whole people." [The Conquest of Bread, pp. 69-70] This prediction was a

772

common feature of Kropotkin's politics (as can be seen from, say, his

773

"The First Work of the Revolution" [Act for Yourselves, pp. 56-60]).

774

775

Revolutionary anarchism, then, is based on a clear understanding of the

776

nature of a social revolution, the objective problems it will face and

777

the need for mass participation and free initiative to solve them. So

778

it must, therefore, be stressed that the very "objective factors"

779

supporters of Bolshevism use to justify the actions of Lenin and

780

Trotsky were predicted correctly by anarchists decades beforehand and

781

integrated into our politics. Moreover, anarchists had developed their

782

ideas on social revolution to make sure that these inevitable

783

disruptions would be minimised. By stressing the need for

784

self-management, mass participation, self-organisation and free

785

federation, anarchism showed how a free people could deal with the

786

difficult problems they would face (as we discuss in the [14]section

787

H.6.2 there is substantial evidence to show that Bolshevik ideology and

788

practice made the problems facing the Russian revolution much worse

789

than they had to be).

790

791

It should also be noted that every revolution has confirmed the

792

anarchist analysis. For example, the German Revolution after 1918 faced

793

an economic collapse which was, relatively, just as bad as that facing

794

Russia the year before. The near revolution produced extensive

795

political conflict, including civil war, which was matched by economic

796

turmoil. Taking 1928 as the base year, the index of industrial

797

production in Germany was slightly lower in 1913, namely 98 in 1913 to

798

100 in 1928. In 1917, the index was 63 and by 1918, it was 61 (i.e.

799

industrial production had dropped by nearly 40%). In 1919, it fell

800

again to 37, rising to 54 in 1920 and 65 in 1921. Thus, in 1919, the

801

"industrial production reached an all-time low" and it "took until the

802

late 1920s for [food] production to recover its 1912 level." [V. R.

803

Berghahn, Modern Germany, p. 258, pp. 67-8 and p. 71] In Russia, the

804

index for large scale industry fell to 77 in 1917 from 100 in 1913,

805

falling again to 35 in 1918, 26 in 1919 and 18 in 1920. [Tony Cliff,

806

Lenin, vol. 3, p. 86]

807

808

Strangely, Leninists do not doubt that the spread of the Russian

809

Revolution to Germany would have allowed the Bolsheviks more leeway to

810

avoid authoritarianism and so save the Revolution. Yet this does not

811

seem likely given the state of the German economy. Comparing the two

812

countries, there is a similar picture of economic collapse. In the year

813

the revolution started, production had fallen by 23% in Russia (from

814

1913 to 1917) and by 43% in Germany (from 1913 to 1918). Once

815

revolution had effectively started, production fell even more. In

816

Russia, it fell to 65% of its pre-war level in 1918, in Germany it fell

817

to 62% of its pre-war level in 1919. However, no Leninist argues that

818

the German Revolution was impossible or doomed to failure. Similarly,

819

no Leninist denies that a socialist revolution was possible during the

820

depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s or to post-world war two

821

Europe, marked as it was by economic collapse. This was the case in

822

1917 as well, when economic crisis had been a fact of Russian life

823

throughout the year. This did not stop the Bolsheviks calling for

824

revolution and seizing power. Nor did this crisis stop the creation of

825

democratic working class organisations, such as soviets, trade unions

826

and factory committees being formed nor did it stop mass collective

827

action. It appears, therefore, that while the economic crisis of 1917

828

did not stop the development of socialist tendencies to combat it, the

829

seizure of power by a socialist party did.

830

831

To conclude, it seems hypocritical in the extreme for Leninists to

832

blame difficult circumstances for the failure of the Russian

833

Revolution. As Lenin himself argued, the Bolsheviks "never said that

834

the transition from capitalism to socialism would be easy. It will

835

invoke a whole period of violent civil war, it will involve painful

836

measures." They knew "that the transition from capitalism to socialism

837

is a struggle of an extremely difficult kind" and so "[i]f there ever

838

existed a revolutionary who hoped that we could pass to the socialist

839

system without difficulties, such a revolutionary, such a socialist,

840

would not be worth a brass farthing." [Op. Cit., p. 431, p. 433 and pp.

841

432-3] He would have been surprised to discover that many of his own

842

followers would be "such a socialist"!

843

844

Consequently, it is not hard to conclude that for Leninists difficult

845

objective circumstances place socialism off the agenda only when they

846

are holding power. So even if we ignore the extensive evidence that

847

Bolshevik authoritarianism started before the civil war, the logic of

848

the Leninist argument is hardly convincing. Yet it does have

849

advantages, for by focusing attention on the civil war, Leninists also

850

draw attention away from Bolshevik ideology and tactics. As Peter

851

Kropotkin recounted to Emma Goldman this simply cannot be done:

852

853

"the Communists are a political party firmly adhering to the idea of

854

a centralised State, and that as such they were bound to misdirect

855

the course of the Revolution . . . [Their policies] have paralysed

856

the energies of the masses and have terrorised the people. Yet

857

without the direct participation of the masses in the reconstruction

858

of the country, nothing essential could be accomplished . . . They

859

created a bureaucracy and officialdom . . . [which were] parasites

860

on the social body . . . It was not the fault of any particular

861

individual: rather it was the State they had created, which

862

discredits every revolutionary ideal, stifles all initiative, and

863

sets a premium on incompetence and waste . . . Intervention and

864

blockade were bleeding Russia to death, and were preventing the

865

people from understanding the real nature of the Bolshevik regime."

866

[My Disillusionment in Russia, p. 99]

867

868

Obviously, if the "objective" factors do not explain Bolshevik

869

authoritarianism and the failure of the revolution we are left with the

870

question of which aspects of Bolshevik ideology impacted negatively on

871

the revolution. As Kropotkin's comments indicate, anarchists have good

872

reason to argue that one of the greatest myths of state socialism is

873

the idea that Bolshevik ideology played no role in the fate of the

874

Russian Revolution. We turn to this in the [15]next section.

875

876

H.6.2 Did Bolshevik ideology influence the outcome of the Russian Revolution?

877

878

As we discussed in the [16]last section, anarchists reject the Leninist

879

argument that the failure of Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution can

880

be blamed purely on the difficult objective circumstances they faced.

881

As Noam Chomsky summarises:

882

883

"In the stages leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917,

884

there were incipient socialist institutions developing in Russia -

885

workers' councils, collectives, things like that. And they survived

886

to an extent once the Bolsheviks took over - but not for very long;

887

Lenin and Trotsky pretty much eliminated them as they consolidated

888

their power. I mean, you can argue about the justification for

889

eliminating them, but the fact is that the socialist initiatives

890

were pretty quickly eliminated.

891

892

"Now, people who want to justify it say, 'The Bolsheviks had to do

893

it' - that's the standard justification: Lenin and Trotsky had to do

894

it, because of the contingencies of the civil war, for survival,

895

there wouldn't have been food otherwise, this and that. Well,

896

obviously the question is, was that true. To answer that, you've got

897

to look at the historical facts: I don't think it was true. In fact,

898

I think the incipient socialist structures in Russia were dismantled

899

before the really dire conditions arose . . . But reading their own

900

writings, my feeling is that Lenin and Trotsky knew what they were

901

doing, it was conscious and understandable."

902

[Understanding Power, p. 226]

903

904

Chomsky is right on both counts. The attack on the basic building

905

blocks of genuine socialism started before the civil war. Moreover, it

906

did not happen by accident. The attacks were rooted in the Bolshevik

907

vision of socialism. As Maurice Brinton concluded:

908

909

"there is a clear-cut and incontrovertible link between what

910

happened under Lenin and Trotsky and the later practices of

911

Stalinism . . . The more one unearths about this period the more

912

difficult it becomes to define - or even to see - the 'gulf'

913

allegedly separating what happened in Lenin's time from what

914

happened later. Real knowledge of the facts also makes it impossible

915

to accept . . . that the whole course of events was 'historically

916

inevitable' and 'objectively determined'. Bolshevik ideology and

917

practice were themselves important and sometimes decisive factors in

918

the equation, at every critical stage of this critical period." [The

919

Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 84]

920

921

This is not to suggest that the circumstances played no role in the

922

development of the revolution. It is simply to indicate that Bolshevik

923

ideology played its part as well by not only shaping the policies

924

implemented but also how the results of those policies themselves

925

contributed to the circumstances being faced. This is to be expected,

926

given that the Bolsheviks were the ruling party and, consequently,

927

state power was utilised to implement their policies, policies which,

928

in turn, were influenced by their ideological preferences and

929

prejudices. Ultimately, to maintain (as Leninists do) that the ideology

930

of the ruling party played no (or, at best, a minor) part hardly makes

931

sense logically nor, equally importantly, can it be supported once even

932

a basic awareness of the development of the Russian Revolution is

933

known.

934

935

A key issue is the Bolsheviks support for centralisation. Long before

936

the revolution, Lenin had argued that within the party it was a case of

937

"the transformation of the power of ideas into the power of authority,

938

the subordination of lower Party bodies to higher ones." [Collected

939

Works, vol. 7, p. 367] Such visions of centralised organisation were

940

the model for the revolutionary state and, once in power, they did not

941

disappoint. Thus, "for the leadership, the principle of maximum

942

centralisation of authority served more than expedience. It

943

consistently resurfaced as the image of a peacetime political system as

944

well." [Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p.

945

91]

946

947

However, by its very nature centralism places power into a few hands

948

and effectively eliminates the popular participation required for any

949

successful revolution to develop. The power placed into the hands of

950

the Bolshevik government was automatically no longer in the hands of

951

the working class. So when Leninists argue that "objective"

952

circumstances forced the Bolsheviks to substitute their power for that

953

of the masses, anarchists reply that this substitution had occurred the

954

moment the Bolsheviks centralised power and placed it into their own

955

hands. As a result, popular participation and institutions began to

956

wither and die. Moreover, once in power, the Bolsheviks were shaped by

957

their new position and the social relationships it created and,

958

consequently, implemented policies influenced and constrained by the

959

hierarchical and centralised structures they had created.

960

961

This was not the only negative impact of Bolshevik centralism. It also

962

spawned a bureaucracy. As we noted in [17]section H.1.7, the rise of a

963

state bureaucracy started immediately with the seizure of power. Thus

964

"red tape and vast administrative offices typified Soviet reality" as

965

the Bolsheviks "rapidly created their own [state] apparatus to wage the

966

political and economic offensive against the bourgeoisie and

967

capitalism. As the functions of the state expanded, so did the

968

bureaucracy" and so "following the revolution the process of

969

institutional proliferation reached unprecedented heights . . . a mass

970

of economic organisations [were] created or expanded." [Richard Sakwa,

971

Soviet Communists in Power, p. 190 and p. 191] This was a striking

972

confirmation of the anarchist analysis which argued that a new

973

bureaucratic class develops around any centralised body. This body

974

would soon become riddled with personal influences and favours, so

975

ensuring that members could be sheltered from popular control while, at

976

the same time, exploiting its power to feather their own nest.

977

Overtime, this permanent collection of bodies would become the real

978

power in the state, with the party members nominally in charge really

979

under the control of an unelected and uncontrolled officialdom. This

980

was recognised by Lenin in 1922:

981

982

"If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Communists in responsible

983

positions, and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that

984

gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much

985

whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing

986

that heap. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being

987

directed." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 527]

988

989

By the end of 1920, there were five times more state officials than

990

industrial workers (5,880,000 were members of the state bureaucracy).

991

However, the bureaucracy had existed since the start. In Moscow, in

992

August 1918, state officials represented 30 per cent of the workforce

993

there and by 1920 the general number of office workers "still

994

represented about a third of those employed in the city" (200,000 in

995

November, 1920, rising to 228,000 in July, 1921 and, by October 1922,

996

to 243,000). [Sakwa, Op. Cit., pp. 191-3] And with bureaucracy came the

997

abuse of it simply because it held real power:

998

999

"The prevalence of bureaucracy, of committees and commissions . . .

1000

permitted, and indeed encouraged, endless permutations of corrupt

1001

practices. These raged from the style of living of communist

1002

functionaries to bribe-taking by officials. With the power of

1003

allocation of scare resources, such as housing, there was an

1004

inordinate potential for corruption." [Op. Cit., p. 193]

1005

1006

The growth in power of the bureaucracy should not, therefore, come as a

1007

major surprise given that it had existed from the start in sizeable

1008

numbers. Yet, for the Bolsheviks "the development of a bureaucracy" was

1009

a puzzle, "whose emergence and properties mystified them." It should be

1010

noted that, "[f]or the Bolsheviks, bureaucratism signified the escape

1011

of this bureaucracy from the will of the party as it took on a life of

1012

its own." [Op. Cit., p. 182 and p. 190] This was the key. They did not

1013

object the usurpation of power by the party (indeed they placed party

1014

dictatorship at the core of their politics and universalised it to a

1015

general principle for all "socialist" revolutions). Nor did they object

1016

to the centralisation of power and activity (and so the

1017

bureaucratisation of life). As such, the Bolsheviks failed to

1018

understand how their own politics helped the rise of this new ruling

1019

class. They failed to understand the links between centralism and

1020

bureaucracy. Bolshevik nationalisation and centralism (as well as being

1021

extremely inefficient) also ensured that the control of society,

1022

economic activity and its product would be in the hands of the state

1023

and, so, class society would continue. Unsurprisingly, complaints by

1024

working class people about the privileges enjoyed by Communist Party

1025

and state officials were widespread.

1026

1027

Another problem was the Bolshevik vision of (centralised) democracy.

1028

Trotsky is typical. In April 1918 he argued that once elected the

1029

government was to be given total power to make decisions and appoint

1030

people as required as it is "better able to judge in the matter than"

1031

the masses. The sovereign people were expected to simply obey their

1032

public servants until such time as they "dismiss that government and

1033

appoint another." Trotsky raised the question of whether it was

1034

possible for the government to act "against the interests of the

1035

labouring and peasant masses?" And answered no! Yet it is obvious that

1036

Trotsky's claim that "there can be no antagonism between the government

1037

and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the

1038

administration of the union and the general assembly of its members" is

1039

just nonsense. [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 113] The history of trade

1040

unionism is full of examples of committees betraying their membership.

1041

Needless to say, the subsequent history Lenin's government shows that

1042

there can be "antagonism" between rulers and ruled and that

1043

appointments are always a key way to further elite interests.

1044

1045

This vision of top-down "democracy" can, of course, be traced back to

1046

Marx and Lenin (see sections [18]H.3.2 and [19]H.3.3). By equating

1047

centralised, top-down decision making by an elected government with

1048

"democracy," the Bolsheviks had the ideological justification to

1049

eliminate the functional democracy associated with the soviets, factory

1050

committees and soldiers committees. The Bolshevik vision of democracy

1051

became the means by which real democracy was eliminated in area after

1052

area of Russian working class life. Needless to say, a state which

1053

eliminates functional democracy in the grassroots will not stay

1054

democratic in any meaningful sense for long.

1055

1056

Nor does it come as too great a surprise to discover that a government

1057

which considers itself as "better able to judge" things than the people

1058

finally decides to annul any election results it dislikes. As we

1059

discussed in [20]section H.5, this perspective is at the heart of

1060

vanguardism, for in Bolshevik ideology the party, not the class, is in

1061

the final analysis the repository of class consciousness. This means

1062

that once in power it has a built-in tendency to override the decisions

1063

of the masses it claimed to represent and justify this in terms of the

1064

advanced position of the party (as historian Richard Sakwa notes a

1065

"lack of identification with the Bolshevik party was treated as the

1066

absence of political consciousness altogether" [Op. Cit., p. 94]).

1067

Combine this with a vision of "democracy" which is highly centralised

1068

and which undermines local participation then we have the necessary

1069

foundations for the turning of party power into party dictatorship.

1070

1071

Which brings us to the next issue, namely the Bolshevik idea that the

1072

party should seize power, not the working class as a whole, equating

1073

party power with popular power. The question instantly arises of what

1074

happens if the masses turn against the party? The gerrymandering,

1075

disbanding and marginalisation of the soviets in the spring and summer

1076

of 1918 answers that question (see [21]last section). It is not a great

1077

step to party dictatorship over the proletariat from the premises of

1078

Bolshevism. In a clash between soviet democracy and party power, the

1079

Bolsheviks consistently favoured the latter - as would be expected

1080

given their ideology.

1081

1082

This can be seen from the Bolsheviks' negative response to the soviets

1083

of 1905. At one stage the Bolsheviks demanded the St. Petersburg soviet

1084

accept the Bolshevik political programme and then disband. The

1085

rationale for these attacks is significant. The St. Petersburg

1086

Bolsheviks were convinced that "only a strong party along class lines

1087

can guide the proletarian political movement and preserve the integrity

1088

of its program, rather than a political mixture of this kind, an

1089

indeterminate and vacillating political organisation such as the

1090

workers council represents and cannot help but represent." [quoted by

1091

Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 77] In other words, the soviets could not

1092

reflect workers' interests because they were elected by the workers!

1093

The implications of this perspective became clear in 1918, as are its

1094

obvious roots in Lenin's arguments in What is to be Done?. As one

1095

historian argues, the 1905 position on the soviets "is of particular

1096

significance in understanding the Bolshevik's mentality, political

1097

ambitions and modus operandi." The Bolshevik campaign "was repeated in

1098

a number of provincial soviets" and "reveals that from the outset the

1099

Bolsheviks were distrustful of, if not hostile towards the Soviets, to

1100

which they had at best an instrumental and always party-minded

1101

attitude." The Bolsheviks actions showed an "ultimate aim of

1102

controlling [the soviets] and turning them into one-party

1103

organisations, or, failing that, of destroying them." [Israel Getzler,

1104

"The Bolshevik Onslaught on the Non-Party 'Political Profile' of the

1105

Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies October-November 1905",

1106

Revolutionary History, pp. 123-146, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 124-5]

1107

1108

That the mainstream of Bolshevism expressed this perspective once in

1109

power goes without saying, but even dissident Communists expressed

1110

identical views. Left-Communist V. Sorin argued in 1918 that the "party

1111

is in every case and everywhere superior to the soviets . . . The

1112

soviets represent labouring democracy in general; and its interest, and

1113

in particular the interests of the petty bourgeois peasantry, do not

1114

always coincide with the interests of the proletariat." [quoted by

1115

Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 182] As one historian notes, "[a]ccording to the

1116

Left Communists . . . the party was the custodian of an interest higher

1117

than that of the soviets." Unsurprisingly, in the party there was "a

1118

general consensus over the principles of party dictatorship for the

1119

greater part of the [civil] war. But the way in which these principles

1120

were applied roused increasing opposition." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 182

1121

and p. 30] This consensus existed in all the so-called opposition

1122

(including the Workers' Opposition and Trotsky's Left Opposition in the

1123

1920s). The ease with which the Bolsheviks embraced party dictatorship

1124

is suggestive of a fundamental flaw in their political perspective

1125

which the problems of the revolution, combined with lost of popular

1126

support, simply exposed.

1127

1128

Then there is the Bolshevik vision of socialism. As we discussed in

1129

[22]section H.3.12, the Bolsheviks, like other Marxists at the time,

1130

saw the socialist economy as being built upon the centralised

1131

organisations created by capitalism. They confused state capitalism

1132

with socialism. The former, Lenin wrote in May 1917, "is a complete

1133

material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism" and so

1134

socialism "is nothing but the next step forward from state capitalist

1135

monopoly." It is "merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to

1136

serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased

1137

to be capitalist monopoly." [Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 359 and p.

1138

358] A few months later, he was talking about how the institutions of

1139

state capitalism could be taken over and used to create socialism.

1140

Unsurprisingly, when defending the need for state capitalism in the

1141

spring of 1918 against the "Left Communists," Lenin stressed that he

1142

gave his "'high' appreciation of state capitalism . . . before the

1143

Bolsheviks seized power." And, as Lenin noted, his praise for state

1144

capitalism can be found in his State and Revolution and so it was

1145

"significant that [his opponents] did not emphasise this" aspect of his

1146

1917 ideas. [Op. Cit., vol. 27, p. 341 and p. 354] Unsurprisingly,

1147

modern-day Leninists do not emphasise that element of Lenin's ideas

1148

either.

1149

1150

Given this perspective, it is unsurprising that workers' control was

1151

not given a high priority once the Bolsheviks seized power. While in

1152

order to gain support the Bolsheviks had paid lip-service to the idea

1153

of workers' control, as we noted in [23]section H.3.14 the party had

1154

always given that slogan a radically different interpretation than the

1155

factory committees had. While the factory committees had seen workers'

1156

control as being exercised directly by the workers and their class

1157

organisations, the Bolshevik leadership saw it in terms of state

1158

control in which the factory committees would play, at best, a minor

1159

role. Given who held actual power in the new regime, it is unsurprising

1160

to discover which vision was actually introduced:

1161

1162

"On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the

1163

[factory] committee leaders sought to bring their model into being.

1164

At each point the party leadership overruled them. The result was to

1165

vest both managerial and control powers in organs of the state which

1166

were subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them."

1167

[Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. 38]

1168

1169

Given his vision of socialism, Lenin's rejection of the factory

1170

committee's model comes as no surprise. As Lenin put it in 1920, the

1171

"domination of the proletariat consists in the fact that the landowners

1172

and capitalists have been deprived of their property . . . The

1173

victorious proletariat has abolished property . . . and therein lies

1174

its domination as a class. The prime thing is the question of

1175

property." [Op. Cit., vol. 30, p. 456] As we proved in [24]section

1176

H.3.13, the Bolsheviks had no notion that socialism required workers'

1177

self-management of production and, unsurprisingly, they, as Lenin had

1178

promised, built from the top-down their system of unified

1179

administration based on the Tsarist system of central bodies which

1180

governed and regulated certain industries during the war. The Supreme

1181

Economic Council (Vesenka) was set up in December of 1917, and "was

1182

widely acknowledged by the Bolsheviks as a move towards 'statisation'

1183

(ogosudarstvleniye) of economic authority." During the early months of

1184

1918, the Bolsheviks began implementing their vision of "socialism" and

1185

the Vesenka began "to build, from the top, its 'unified administration'

1186

of particular industries. The pattern is informative" as it "gradually

1187

took over" the Tsarist state agencies such as the Glakvi (as Lenin had

1188

promised) "and converted them . . . into administrative organs subject

1189

to [its] direction and control." The Bolsheviks "clearly opted" for the

1190

taking over of "the institutions of bourgeois economic power and use[d]

1191

them to their own ends." This system "necessarily implies the

1192

perpetuation of hierarchical relations within production itself, and

1193

therefore the perpetuation of class society." [Brinton, Op. Cit., p.

1194

22, p. 36 and p. 22] Thus the Supreme Council of the National Economy

1195

"was an expression of the principle of centralisation and control from

1196

above which was peculiar to the Marxist ideology." In fact, it is

1197

"likely that the arguments for centralisation in economic policy, which

1198

were prevalent among Marxists, determined the short life of the

1199

All-Russian Council of Workers' Control." [Silvana Malle, The Economic

1200

Organisation of War Communism, 1918-1921, p. 95 and p. 94]

1201

1202

Moreover, the Bolsheviks had systematically stopped the factory

1203

committee organising together, using their controlled unions to come

1204

"out firmly against the attempt of the Factory Committees to form a

1205

national organisation." The unions "prevented the convocation of a

1206

planned All-Russian Congress of Factory Committees. [I. Deutscher,

1207

quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 19] Given that one of the key

1208

criticisms of the factory committees by leading Bolsheviks was their

1209

"localism", this blocking of co-ordination is doubly damning.

1210

1211

At this time Lenin "envisaged a period during which, in a workers'

1212

state, the bourgeoisie would still retain the formal ownership and

1213

effective management of most of the productive apparatus" and workers'

1214

control "was seen as the instrument" by which the "capitalists would be

1215

coerced into co-operation." [Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 13] The Bolsheviks

1216

turned to one-management in April, 1918 (it was applied first on the

1217

railway workers). As the capitalists refused to co-operate, with many

1218

closing down their workplaces, the Bolsheviks were forced to

1219

nationalise industry and place it fully under state control in late

1220

June 1918. This saw state-appointed "dictatorial" managers replacing

1221

the remaining capitalists (when it was not simply a case of the old

1222

boss being turned into a state manager). The Bolshevik vision of

1223

socialism as nationalised property replacing capitalist property was at

1224

the root of the creation of state capitalism within Russia. This was

1225

very centralised and very inefficient:

1226

1227

"it seems apparent that many workers themselves . . . had now come

1228

to believe . . . that confusion and anarchy [sic!] at the top were

1229

the major causes of their difficulties, and with some justification.

1230

The fact was that Bolshevik administration was chaotic . . . Scores

1231

of competitive and conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities

1232

issued contradictory orders, often brought to factories by armed

1233

Chekists. The Supreme Economic Council. . . issu[ed] dozens of

1234

orders and pass[ed] countless directives with virtually no real

1235

knowledge of affairs." [William G. Rosenberg, Russian Labour and

1236

Bolshevik Power, p. 116]

1237

1238

Faced with the chaos that their own politics, in part, had created,

1239

like all bosses, the Bolsheviks blamed the workers. Yet abolishing the

1240

workers' committees resulted in "a terrifying proliferation of

1241

competitive and contradictory Bolshevik authorities, each with a claim

1242

of life or death importance . . . Railroad journals argued plaintively

1243

about the correlation between failing labour productivity and the

1244

proliferation of competing Bolshevik authorities." Rather than

1245

improving things, Lenin's one-man management did the opposite, "leading

1246

in many places . . . to a greater degree of confusion and indecision"

1247

and "this problem of contradictory authorities clearly intensified,

1248

rather than lessened." Indeed, the "result of replacing workers'

1249

committees with one man rule . . . on the railways . . . was not

1250

directiveness, but distance, and increasing inability to make decisions

1251

appropriate to local conditions. Despite coercion, orders on the

1252

railroads were often ignored as unworkable." It got so bad that "a

1253

number of local Bolshevik officials . . . began in the fall of 1918 to

1254

call for the restoration of workers' control, not for ideological

1255

reasons, but because workers themselves knew best how to run the line

1256

efficiently, and might obey their own central committee's directives if

1257

they were not being constantly countermanded." [William G. Rosenberg,

1258

Workers' Control on the Railroads, p. D1208, p. D1207, p. D1213 and pp.

1259

D1208-9]

1260

1261

That it was Bolshevik policies and not workers' control which was to

1262

blame for the state of the economy can be seen from what happened after

1263

Lenin's one-man management was imposed. The centralised Bolshevik

1264

economic system quickly demonstrated how to really mismanage an

1265

economy. The Bolshevik onslaught against workers' control in favour of

1266

a centralised, top-down economic regime ensured that the economy was

1267

handicapped by an unresponsive system which wasted the local knowledge

1268

in the grassroots in favour of orders from above which were issued in

1269

ignorance of local conditions. Thus the glavki "did not know the true

1270

number of enterprises in their branch" of industry. To ensure

1271

centralism, customers had to go via a central orders committee, which

1272

would then past the details to the appropriate glavki and,

1273

unsurprisingly, it was "unable to cope with these enormous tasks". As a

1274

result, workplaces often "endeavoured to find less bureaucratic

1275

channels" to get resources and, in fact, the "comparative efficiency of

1276

factories remaining outside the glavki sphere increased." In summary,

1277

the "shortcomings of the central administrations and glavki increased

1278

together with the number of enterprises under their control". [Malle,

1279

Op. Cit., p. 232, p. 233 and p. 250] In summary:

1280

1281

"The most evident shortcoming . . . was that it did not ensure

1282

central allocation of resources and central distribution of output,

1283

in accordance with any priority ranking . . . materials were

1284

provided to factories in arbitrary proportions: in some places they

1285

accumulated, whereas in others there was a shortage. Moreover, the

1286

length of the procedure needed to release the products increased

1287

scarcity at given moments, since products remained stored until the

1288

centre issued a purchase order on behalf of a centrally defined

1289

customer. Unused stock coexisted with acute scarcity. The centre was

1290

unable to determine the correct proportions among necessary

1291

materials and eventually to enforce implementation of the orders for

1292

their total quantity. The gap between theory and practice was

1293

significant." [Op. Cit., p. 233]

1294

1295

Thus there was a clear "gulf between the abstraction of the principles

1296

on centralisation and its reality." This was recognised at the time

1297

and, unsuccessfully, challenged. Provincial delegates argued that

1298

"[w]aste of time was . . . the effect of strict compliance of vertical

1299

administration . . . semi-finished products [were] transferred to other

1300

provinces for further processing, while local factories operating in

1301

the field were shut down" (and given the state of the transport

1302

network, this was a doubly inefficient). The local bodies, knowing the

1303

grassroots situation, "had proved to be more far-sighted than the

1304

centre." For example, flax had been substituted for cotton long before

1305

the centre had issued instructions for this. Arguments reversing the

1306

logic centralisation were raised: "there was a lot of talk about

1307

scarcity of raw materials, while small factories and mills were stuffed

1308

with them in some provinces: what's better, to let work go on, or to

1309

make plans?" These "expressed feelings . . . about the inefficiency of

1310

the glavk system and the waste which was visible locally." Indeed, "the

1311

inefficiency of central financing seriously jeopardised local

1312

activity." While "the centre had displayed a great deal of conservatism

1313

and routine thinking," the localities "had already found ways of

1314

rationing raw materials, a measure which had not yet been decided upon

1315

at the centre." [Op. Cit., p.269, p. 270 and pp. 272-3]

1316

1317

This did not result in changes as such demands "challenged . . . the

1318

central directives of the party" which "approved the principles on

1319

which the glavk system was based" and "the maximum centralisation of

1320

production." Even the "admission that some of the largest works had

1321

been closed down, owning to the scarcity of raw materials and fuel, did

1322

not induce the economists of the party to question the validity of

1323

concentration, although in Russia at the time impediments due to lack

1324

of transport jeopardised the whole idea of convergence of all

1325

productive activity in a few centres." The party leadership "decided to

1326

concentrate the tasks of economic reconstruction in the hands of the

1327

higher organs of the state." Sadly, "the glavk system in Russia did not

1328

work . . . Confronted with production problems, the central managers

1329

needed the collaboration of local organs, which they could not obtain

1330

both because of reciprocal suspicion and because of a lack of an

1331

efficient system of information, communications and transport. But the

1332

failure of glavkism did not bring about a reconsideration of the

1333

problems of economic organisation . . . On the contrary, the ideology

1334

of centralisation was reinforced." [Op. Cit., p. 271 and p. 275]

1335

1336

The failings of centralisation can be seen from the fact that in

1337

September 1918, the Supreme Economic Council (SEC) chairman reported

1338

that "approximately eight hundred enterprises were known to have been

1339

nationalised and another two hundred or so were presumed to be

1340

nationalised but were not registered as such. In fact, well over two

1341

thousand enterprises had been taken over by this time." The "centre's

1342

information was sketchy at best" and "efforts by the centre to exert

1343

its power more effectively would provoke resistance from local

1344

authorities." [Thomas F. Remington, Op. Cit., pp. 58-9] This kind of

1345

clashing could not help but occur when the centre had no real knowledge

1346

nor understanding of local conditions:

1347

1348

"Organisations with independent claims to power frequently ignored

1349

it. It was deluged with work of an ad hoc character . . . Demands

1350

for fuel and supplies piled up. Factories demanded instructions on

1351

demobilisation and conversion. Its presidium . . . scarcely knew

1352

what its tasks were, other than to direct the nationalisation of

1353

industry. Control over nationalisation was hard to obtain, however.

1354

Although the SEC intended to plan branch-wide nationalisations, it

1355

was overwhelmed with requests to order the nationalisation of

1356

individual enterprises. Generally it resorted to the method, for

1357

want of a better one, of appointing a commissar to carry out each

1358

act of nationalisation. These commissars, who worked closely with

1359

the Cheka, had almost unlimited powers over both workers and owners,

1360

and acted largely on their own discretion." [Op. Cit., p. 61-2]

1361

1362

Unsurprisingly, "[r]esentment of the glavki was strongest where local

1363

authorities had attained a high level of competence in co-ordinating

1364

local production. They were understandably distressed when orders from

1365

central organs disrupted local production plans." Particularly given

1366

that the centre "drew up plans for developing or reorganising the

1367

economy of a region, either in ignorance, or against the will, of the

1368

local authorities." "Hypercentralisation", ironically, "multiplied the

1369

lines of command and accountability, which ultimately reduced central

1370

control." For example, one small condensed milk plan, employing fewer

1371

than 15 workers, "became the object of a months-long competition among

1372

six organisations." Moreover, the glavki "were filled with former

1373

owners." Yet "throughout 1919, as the economic crisis grew worse and

1374

the war emergency sharper the leadership strengthened the powers of the

1375

glavki in the interests of centralisation." [Op. Cit., p. 68, p. 69, p.

1376

70 and p. 69]

1377

1378

A clearer example of the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of

1379

the revolution would be hard to find. While the situation was pretty

1380

chaotic in early 1918, this does not prove that the factory committees'

1381

socialism was not the most efficient way of running things under the

1382

(difficult) circumstances. Unless of course, like the Bolsheviks, you

1383

have a dogmatic belief that centralisation is always more efficient.

1384

That favouring the factory committees, as anarchists stressed then and

1385

now, could have been a possible solution to the economic problems being

1386

faced is not utopian. After all rates of "output and productivity began

1387

to climb steadily after" January 1918 and "[i]n some factories,

1388

production doubled or tripled in the early months of 1918 . . . Many of

1389

the reports explicitly credited the factory committees for these

1390

increases." [Carmen Sirianni, Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy,

1391

p. 109] Another expert notes that there is "evidence that until late

1392

1919, some factory committees performed managerial tasks successfully.

1393

In some regions factories were still active thanks to their workers'

1394

initiatives in securing raw materials." [Malle, Op. Cit., p. 101]

1395

1396

Moreover, given how inefficient the Bolshevik system was, it was only

1397

the autonomous self-activity at the base which keep it going. Thus the

1398

Commissariat of Finance was "not only bureaucratically cumbersome, but

1399

[it] involved mountainous accounting problems" and "with the various

1400

offices of the Sovnarkhoz and commissariat structure literally swamped

1401

with 'urgent' delegations and submerged in paperwork, even the most

1402

committed supporters of the revolution - perhaps one should say

1403

especially the most committed - felt impelled to act independently to

1404

get what workers and factories needed, even if this circumvented party

1405

directives." [William G. Rosenberg, "The Social Background to

1406

Tsektran," pp. 349-373, Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil

1407

War, Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny

1408

(eds.), p. 357] "Requisition and confiscation of resources," as Malle

1409

notes, "largely undertaken by the glavki, worked against any possible

1410

territorial network of complementary industries which might have been

1411

more efficient in reducing delays resulting from central financing,

1412

central ordering, central supply and delivery." By integrating the

1413

factory committees into a centralised state structure, this kind of

1414

activity became harder to do and, moreover, came up against official

1415

resistance and opposition. Significantly, due to "the run-down of

1416

large-scale industry and the bureaucratic methods applied to production

1417

orders" the Red Army turned to small-scale workplaces to supply

1418

personal equipment. These workplaces "largely escaped the glavk

1419

administration" and "allowed the Bolsheviks to support a well equipped

1420

army amidst general distress and disorganisation." [Op. Cit., p. 251,

1421

p. 477 and p. 502]

1422

1423

Needless to say, Lenin never wavered in his support for one-man

1424

management nor in his belief in the efficiency of centralism to solve

1425

all problems, particularly the problems it itself created in abundance.

1426

Nor did his explicit call to reproduce capitalist social relations in

1427

production cause him any concern for, if the primary issue were

1428

property and not who manages the means of production, then factory

1429

committees are irrelevant in determining the socialist nature of the

1430

economy. Equally, if (as with Engels) all forms of organisation are

1431

inherently authoritarian then it does not fundamentally matter whether

1432

that authority is exercised by an elected factory committee or an

1433

appointed dictatorial manager (see [25]section H.4). And it must be

1434

noted that the politics of the leading members of the factory committee

1435

movement also played its part. While the committees expressed a

1436

spontaneous anarchism, almost instinctively moving towards libertarian

1437

ideas, the actual influence of conscious anarchists was limited. Most

1438

of the leaders of the movement were, or became, Bolsheviks and, as

1439

such, shared many of the statist and centralistic assumptions of the

1440

party leadership as well as accepting party discipline. As such, they

1441

did not have the theoretical accruement to resist their leadership's

1442

assault on the factory committees and, as a result, did integrate them

1443

into the trade unions when demanded.

1444

1445

As well as advocating one-man management, Lenin's proposals also struck

1446

at the heart of workers' power in other ways. For example, he argued

1447

that "we must raise the question of piece-work and apply it and test in

1448

practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is

1449

scientific and progressive in the Taylor system". [Op. Cit., vol. 27,

1450

p. 258] As Leninist Tony Cliff noted, "the employers have at their

1451

disposal a number of effective methods of disrupting th[e] unity [of

1452

workers as a class]. One of the most important of these is the

1453

fostering of competition between workers by means of piece-work

1454

systems." He added that these were used by the Nazis and the Stalinists

1455

"for the same purpose." [State Capitalism in Russia, pp. 18-9]

1456

Obviously piece-work is different when Lenin introduces it!

1457

1458

Other policies undermined working class collectivity. Banning trade

1459

helped undermine a collective response to the problems of exchange

1460

between city and country. For example, a delegation of workers from the

1461

Main Workshops of the Nikolaev Railroad to Moscow reported to a

1462

well-attended meeting that "the government had rejected their request

1463

[to obtain permission to buy food collectively] arguing that to permit

1464

the free purchase of food would destroy its efforts to come to grips

1465

with hunger by establishing a 'food dictatorship.'" [David Mandel, The

1466

Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power, p. 392] Bolshevik

1467

ideology replaced collective working class action with an abstract

1468

"collective" response via the state, which turned the workers into

1469

isolated and atomised individuals. As such, the Bolsheviks provided a

1470

good example to support Malatesta's argument that "if . . . one means

1471

government action when one talks of social action, then this is still

1472

the resultant of individual forces, but only of those individuals who

1473

form the government . . . it follows. . . that far from resulting in an

1474

increase in the productive, organising and protective forces in

1475

society, it would greatly reduce them, limiting initiative to a few,

1476

and giving them the right to do everything without, of course, being

1477

able to provide them with the gift of being all-knowing." [Anarchy, pp.

1478

38-9] Can it be surprising, then, that Bolshevik policies aided the

1479

atomisation of the working class by replacing collective organisation

1480

and action by state bureaucracy?

1481

1482

The negative impact of Bolshevik ideology showed up in other areas of

1483

the economy as well. For example, the Leninist fetish that bigger was

1484

better resulted in the "waste of scare resources" as the "general

1485

shortage of fuel and materials in the city took its greatest toll on

1486

the largest enterprises, whose overhead expenditures for heating the

1487

plant and firing the furnaces were proportionately greater than those

1488

for smaller enterprises. This point . . . was recognised later. Not

1489

until 1919 were the regime's leaders prepared to acknowledge that small

1490

enterprises, under the conditions of the time, might be more efficient

1491

in using resources; and not until 1921 did a few Bolsheviks theorists

1492

grasp the economic reasons for this apparent violation of their

1493

standing assumption that larger units were inherently more productive."

1494

[Remington, Op. Cit., p. 106] Given how disrupted transport was and how

1495

scare supplies were, this kind of ideologically generated mistake could

1496

not fail to have substantial impact.

1497

1498

Post-October Bolshevik policy is a striking confirmation of the

1499

anarchist argument that a centralised structure would stifle the

1500

initiative of the masses and their own organs of self-management. Not

1501

only was it disastrous from a revolutionary perspective, it was

1502

hopelessly inefficient. The constructive self-activity of the people

1503

was replaced by the bureaucratic machinery of the state. The Bolshevik

1504

onslaught on workers' control, like their attacks on soviet democracy

1505

and workers' protest, undoubtedly engendered apathy and cynicism in the

1506

workforce, alienating even more the positive participation required for

1507

building socialism which the Bolshevik mania for centralisation had

1508

already marginalised. The negative results of Bolshevik economic policy

1509

confirmed Kropotkin's prediction that a revolution which "establish[ed]

1510

a strongly centralised Government", leaving it to "draw up a statement

1511

of all the produce" in a country and "then command that a prescribed

1512

quantity" of some good "be sent to such a place on such a day" and

1513

"stored in particular warehouses" would "not merely" be "undesirable,

1514

but it never could by any possibility be put into practice." "In any

1515

case," Kropotkin stressed, "a system which springs up spontaneously,

1516

under stress of immediate need, will be infinitely preferable to

1517

anything invented between four-walls by hide-bound theorists sitting on

1518

any number of committees." [The Conquest of Bread, pp. 82-3 and p. 75]

1519

1520

Some Bolsheviks were aware of the problems. One left-wing Communist,

1521

Osinskii, concluded that "his six weeks in the provinces had taught him

1522

that the centre must rely on strong regional and provincial councils,

1523

since they were more capable than was the centre of managing the

1524

nationalised sector." [Remington, Op. Cit., p. 71] However, Marxist

1525

ideology seemed to preclude even finding the words to describe a

1526

possible solution to the problems faced by the regime: "I stand not for

1527

a local point of view and not for bureaucratic centralism, but for

1528

organised centralism, - I cannot seem to find the actual word just now,

1529

- a more balanced centralism." [Osinskii, quoted by Remington, Op.

1530

Cit., p. 71] Any anarchist would know that the word he was struggling

1531

to find was federalism! Little wonder Goldman concluded that

1532

anarcho-syndicalism, not nationalisation, could solve the problems

1533

facing Russia:

1534

1535

"Only free initiative and popular participation in the affairs of

1536

the revolution can prevent the terrible blunders committed in

1537

Russia. For instance, with fuel only a hundred versts [about

1538

sixty-six miles] from Petrograd there would have been no necessity

1539

for that city to suffer from cold had the workers' economic

1540

organisations of Petrograd been free to exercise their initiative

1541

for the common good. The peasants of the Ukraina would not have been

1542

hampered in the cultivation of their land had they had access to the

1543

farm implements stacked up in the warehouses of Kharkov and other

1544

industrial centres awaiting orders from Moscow for their

1545

distribution. These are characteristic examples of Bolshevik

1546

governmentalism and centralisation, which should serve as a warning

1547

to the workers of Europe and America of the destructive effects of

1548

Statism." [My Disillusionment in Russia, p. 253]

1549

1550

If Bolshevik industrial policy reflected a basic ignorance of local

1551

conditions and the nature of industry, their agricultural policies were

1552

even worse. Part of the problem was that the Bolsheviks were simply

1553

ignorant of peasant life (as one historian put it, "the deeply held

1554

views of the party on class struggle had overcome the need for

1555

evidence." [Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviet, p. 225]). Lenin, for

1556

example, thought that inequality in the villages was much, much higher

1557

than it actually was, a mistaken assumption which drove the unpopular

1558

and counter-productive "Committees of Poor Peasants" (kombedy) policy

1559

of 1918. Rather than a countryside dominated by a few rich kulaks

1560

(peasants who employed wage labour), Russian villages were

1561

predominantly pre-capitalist and based on actual peasant farming (i.e.,

1562

people who worked their land themselves). While the Bolsheviks attacked

1563

kulaks, they, at best, numbered only 5 to 7 per cent of the peasantry

1564

and even this is high as only 1 per cent of the total of peasant

1565

households employed more than one labourer. The revolution itself had

1566

an equalising effect on peasant life, and during 1917 "average size of

1567

landholding fell, the extremes of riches and poverty diminished." [Alec

1568

Nove, An economic history of the USSR: 1917-1991, p. 103 and p. 102]

1569

1570

By 1919, even Lenin had to admit that the policies pursued in 1918,

1571

against the advice and protest of the Left-SRs, were failures and had

1572

alienated the peasantry. While admitting to errors, it remains the case

1573

that it was Lenin himself, more than anyone, who was responsible for

1574

them. Still, there was no fundamental change in policy for another two

1575

years. Defenders of the Bolsheviks argue that the Bolshevik had no

1576

alternative but to use violence to seize food from the peasants to feed

1577

the starving cities. However, this fails to acknowledge two key facts.

1578

Firstly, Bolshevik industrial policy made the collapse of industry

1579

worse and so the lack of goods to trade for grain was, in part, a

1580

result of the government. It is likely that if the factory committees

1581

had been fully supported then the lack of goods to trade may been

1582

reduced. Secondly, it cannot be said that the peasants did not wish to

1583

trade with the cities. They were, but at a fair price as can be seen

1584

from the fact that throughout Russia peasants with bags of grains on

1585

their backs went to the city to exchange them for goods. In fact, in

1586

the Volga region official state sources indicate "that grain-hoarding

1587

and the black market did not become a major problem until the beginning

1588

of 1919, and that during the autumn the peasants, in general, were

1589

'wildly enthusiastic to sell as much grain as possible' to the

1590

government." This changed when the state reduced its fixed prices by

1591

25% and "it became apparent that the new government would be unable to

1592

pay for grain procurements in industrial goods." [Orlando Figes,

1593

Peasant Russia, Civil War, p. 253 and p. 254] Thus, in that region at

1594

least, it was after the introduction of central state food requisition

1595

in January 1919 that peasants started to hoard food. Thus Bolshevik

1596

policy made the situation worse. And as Alec Nove noted "at certain

1597

moments even the government itself was compelled to 'legalise' illegal

1598

trade. For example, in September 1918 the wicked speculators and

1599

meshochniki [bag-men] were authorised to take sacks weighing up to 1.5

1600

poods (54 lbs.) to Petrograd and Moscow, and in this month . . . they

1601

supplied four times more than did the official supply organisation."

1602

[Op. Cit., p. 55]

1603

1604

Yet rather than encourage this kind of self-activity, the Bolsheviks

1605

denounced it as speculation and did all in their power to suppress it

1606

(this included armed pickets around the towns and cities). This, of

1607

course, drove the prices on the black market higher due to the risk of

1608

arrest and imprisonment this entailed and so the regime made the

1609

situation worse: "it was in fact quite impossible to live on the

1610

official rations, and the majority of the supplies even of bread come

1611

through the black market. The government was never able to prevent this

1612

market from functioning, but did sufficiently disrupt it to make food

1613

shortages worse." By January 1919, only 19% of all food came through

1614

official channels and rose to around 30% subsequently. Official

1615

sources, however, announced an increase in grain, with total

1616

procurements amounting to 30 million poods in the agricultural year

1617

1917-18 to 110 million poods in 1918-19. [Nove, Op. Cit., p. 55 and p.

1618

54] Needless to say, the average worker in the towns saw nothing of

1619

this improvement in official statistics (and this in spite of dropping

1620

urban populations!).

1621

1622

In the face of repression (up to and including torture and the

1623

destruction of whole villages), the peasantry responded by both cutting

1624

back on the amount of grain planted (something compounded by the state

1625

often taking peasant reserves for next season) and rising in

1626

insurrection. Unsurprisingly, opposition groups called for free trade

1627

in an attempt to both feed the cities and stop the alienation of the

1628

peasantry from the revolution. The Bolsheviks denounced the call,

1629

before being forced to accept it in 1921 due to mass pressure from

1630

below. Three years of bad policies had made a bad situation worse.

1631

Moreover, if the Bolsheviks had not ignored and alienated the Left-SRs,

1632

gerrymandered the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets and pushed them

1633

into revolt then their links with the countryside would not have been

1634

so weak and sensible policies which reflected the reality of village

1635

life may have been implemented.

1636

1637

Nor did it help that the Bolsheviks undermined Russia's extensive

1638

network of consumer co-operatives because they were associated with the

1639

moderate socialists. It should also be noted that the peasants (or

1640

"kulaks") were blamed for food shortages when problems on the transport

1641

network or general bureaucratic mismanagement was the real reason. That

1642

there is "is little evidence to support the Leninist view" that kulaks

1643

were behind the peasant resistance and revolts resulting from the

1644

Bolshevik food requisition policies should go without saying. [Figes,

1645

Op. Cit., p. 155]

1646

1647

Given all this, it is not hard to conclude that alternatives existed to

1648

Bolshevik policies - particularly as even the Bolsheviks had to admit

1649

in 1919 their decisions of the previous year were wrong! The New

1650

Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced in 1921 (under immense popular

1651

pressure) in conditions even worse than those in 1918, for example.

1652

Since NEP allowed wage labour, it was a step backwards from the ideas

1653

of the peasantry itself, peasant based parties like the SRs and

1654

Left-SRs as well as such rebels as the Kronstadt sailors. A more

1655

socialistic policy, recognising that peasants exchanging the product of

1656

their labour was not capitalism, could have been implemented much

1657

earlier but Bolshevik ignorance and disdain for the peasantry combined

1658

with a false belief that centralised state control was more efficient

1659

and more socialist ensured that this option was unlikely to be pursued,

1660

particularly given the collapse of industrial production Bolshevik

1661

state capitalist policies helped deepen.

1662

1663

The pre-revolution Bolshevik vision of a socialist system was

1664

fundamentally centralised and, consequently, top-down. This was what

1665

was implemented post-October, with disastrous results. At each turning

1666

point, the Bolsheviks tended to implement policies which reflected

1667

their prejudices in favour of centralism, nationalisation and party

1668

power. Unsurprisingly, this also undermined the genuine socialist

1669

tendencies which existed at the time and so the Bolshevik vision of

1670

socialism and democracy played a key role in the failure of the

1671

revolution. Therefore, the Leninist idea that politics of the

1672

Bolsheviks had no influence on the outcome of the revolution, that

1673

their policies during the revolution were a product purely of objective

1674

forces, is unconvincing. This is enforced by the awkward fact that the

1675

Bolshevik leaders "justified what they were doing in theoretical terms,

1676

e.g. in whole books by Bukharin and Trotsky." [Pirani, The Russian

1677

Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24, p. 9]

1678

1679

Remember, we are talking about the ideology of a ruling party and so it

1680

is more than just ideas for after the seizure of power, they became a

1681

part of the real social situation within Russia. Individually, party

1682

members assumed leadership posts in all spheres of social life and

1683

started to make decisions influenced by that ideology and its

1684

prejudices in favour of centralisation, the privileged role of the

1685

party, the top-down nature of decision making, the notion that

1686

socialism built upon state capitalism, amongst others. Then there is

1687

the hierarchical position which the party leaders found themselves. "If

1688

it is true that people's real social existence determines their

1689

consciousness," argued Cornelius Castoriadis, "it is from that moment

1690

illusory to expect the Bolshevik party to act in any other fashion than

1691

according to its real social position. The real social situation of the

1692

Party is that of a directorial organ, and its point of view toward this

1693

society henceforth is not necessarily the same as the one this society

1694

has toward itself." [Political and Social Writings, vol. 3, p. 97]

1695

1696

Ultimately, the Bolshevik's acted as if they were trying to prove

1697

Bakunin's critique of Marxism was right (see [26]section H.1.1).

1698

Implementing a dictatorship of the proletariat in a country where the

1699

majority were not proletarians failed while, for the proletariat, it

1700

quickly became a dictatorship over the proletariat by the party (and in

1701

practice, a few party leaders and justified by the privileged access

1702

they had to socialist ideology). Moreover, centralisation proved to be

1703

as disempowering and inefficient as Bakunin argued.

1704

1705

Sadly, far too many Marxists seem keen on repeating rather than

1706

learning from history while, at the same time, ignoring the awkward

1707

fact that anarchism's predictions were confirmed by the Bolshevik

1708

experience. It is not hard to conclude that another form of socialism

1709

was essential for the Russian revolution to have any chance of success.

1710

A decentralised socialism based on workers running their workplaces and

1711

the peasants controlling the land was not only possible but was being

1712

implemented by the people themselves. For the Bolsheviks, only a

1713

centralised planned economy was true socialism and, as a result, fought

1714

this alternative socialism and replaced it with a system reflecting

1715

that perspective. Yet socialism needs the mass participation of all in

1716

order to be created. Centralisation, by its very nature, limits that

1717

participation (which is precisely why ruling classes have always

1718

centralised power into states). As Russian Anarchist Voline argued,

1719

state power "seeks more or less to take in its hands the reins of

1720

social life. It predisposes the masses to passivity, and all spirit of

1721

initiative is stifled by the very existence of power" and so under

1722

state socialism the "tremendous new creative forces which are latent in

1723

the masses thus remain unused." [The Unknown Revolution, p. 250] This

1724

cannot help have a negative impact on the development of the revolution

1725

and, as anarchists had long feared and predicted, it did.

1726

1727

H.6.3 Were the Russian workers "declassed" and "atomised"?

1728

1729

A standard Leninist explanation for the dictatorship of the Bolshevik

1730

party (and subsequent rise of Stalinism) is based on the "atomisation"

1731

or "declassing" of the proletariat. Leninist John Rees summarised this

1732

argument:

1733

1734

"The civil war had reduced industry to rubble. The working class

1735

base of the workers' state, mobilised time and again to defeat the

1736

Whites, the rock on which Bolshevik power stood, had disintegrated.

1737

The Bolsheviks survived three years of civil war and wars in

1738

intervention, but only at the cost of reducing the working class to

1739

an atomised, individualised mass, a fraction of its former size, and

1740

no longer able to exercise the collective power that it had done in

1741

1917 . . . The bureaucracy of the workers' state was left suspended

1742

in mid-air, its class base eroded and demoralised. Such conditions

1743

could not help but have an effect on the machinery of the state and

1744

organisation of the Bolshevik Party." ["In Defence of October," pp.

1745

3-82, International Socialism, no. 52, p. 65]

1746

1747

It should be noted that this perspective originated in Lenin's

1748

arguments that the Russian proletariat had become "declassed." In 1921

1749

it was the case that the proletariat, "owning to the war and to the

1750

desperate poverty and ruin, has become declassed, i.e. dislodged from

1751

its class groove, and had ceased to exist as proletariat . . . the

1752

proletariat has disappeared." [Collected Works, vol. 33, p. 66]

1753

However, unlike his later-day followers, Lenin was sure that while it

1754

"would be absurd and ridiculous to deny that the fact that the

1755

proletariat is declassed is a handicap" it could still "fulfil its task

1756

of winning and holding state power." [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 412] Since

1757

Lenin, this argument has been utilised repeatedly by Leninists to

1758

justify his regime as well as explaining both its authoritarianism and

1759

the rise of Stalinism.

1760

1761

It does, of course, contain an element of truth. The numbers of

1762

industrial workers did decrease dramatically between 1918 and 1921,

1763

particularly in Petrograd and Moscow (although the drop in both cities

1764

was exceptional, with most towns seeing much smaller reductions). As

1765

one historian summarises, the "social turmoil at this time undeniably

1766

reduced the size of Russia's working class . . . . Yet a substantial

1767

core of urban workers remained in the factories, and their attitudes

1768

towards the Bolsheviks were indeed transformed." [Donald J. Raleigh,

1769

Experiencing Russia's Civil War, p. 348] This core was those with the

1770

least ties with the countryside - the genuine industrial worker.

1771

1772

Nor can it be maintained that the Russian working class was incapable

1773

of collective action during the civil war. Throughout that period, as

1774

well as before and after, the Russian workers proved themselves quite

1775

capable of taking collective action - against the Bolshevik state.

1776

Simply put, an "atomised, individualised mass" does not need extensive

1777

state repression to control it. So while the working class was "a

1778

fraction of its former size" it was able "to exercise the collective

1779

power it had done in 1917." Significantly, rather than decrease over

1780

the civil war period, the mass protests grew in militancy. By 1921

1781

these protests and strikes were threatening the very existence of the

1782

Bolshevik dictatorship, forcing it to abandon key aspects of its

1783

economic policies.

1784

1785

Which shows a key flaw in the standard Leninist account - the Russian

1786

working class, while undoubtedly reduced in size and subject to extreme

1787

economic problems, was still able to organise, strike and protest. This

1788

awkward fact has been systematically downplayed, when not ignored, in

1789

Leninist accounts of this period. As in any class society, the history

1790

of the oppressed is ignored in favour of the resolutions and decisions

1791

of the enlightened few at the top of the social pyramid. Given the

1792

relative lack of awareness of working class protest against the

1793

Bolsheviks, it will be necessary to present substantial evidence of it.

1794

1795

This process of collective action by workers and Bolshevik repression

1796

started before the Civil War began, continued throughout and after it.

1797

For example, "[t]hroughout the civil war there was an undercurrent of

1798

labour militancy in Moscow . . . both the introduction and the phasing

1799

out of war communism were marked by particularly active periods of

1800

labour unrest." In the Moscow area, while it is "impossible to say what

1801

proportion of workers were involved in the various disturbances,"

1802

following the lull after the defeat of the protest movement in mid-1918

1803

"each wave of unrest was more powerful than the last, culminating in

1804

the mass movement from late 1920." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in

1805

Power, p. 94 and p. 93] This was the case across Russia, with "periodic

1806

swings in the workers' political temper. When Soviet rule stood in

1807

peril . . . [this] spared the regime the defection of its proletarian

1808

base. During lulls in the fighting, strikes and demonstrations broke

1809

out." [Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p.

1810

101] Workers' resistance and protests against the Bolsheviks shows that

1811

not only that a "workers' state" is a contradiction in terms but also

1812

that there was a social base for possible alternatives to Leninism.

1813

1814

The early months of Bolshevik rule were marked by "worker protests,

1815

which then precipitated violent repressions against hostile workers.

1816

Such treatment further intensified the disenchantment of significant

1817

segments of Petrograd labour with Bolshevik-dominated Soviet rule."

1818

[Alexander Rabinowitch, Early Disenchantment with Bolshevik Rule, p.

1819

37] The first major act of state repression was an attack on a march in

1820

Petrograd in support of the Constituent Assembly when it opened in

1821

January 1918. Early May saw "the shooting of protesting housewives and

1822

workers in the suburb of Kolpino", the "arbitrary arrest and abuse of

1823

workers" in Sestroretsk, the "closure of newspapers and arrests of

1824

individuals who protested the Kolpino and Sestroretsk events" and "the

1825

resumption of labour unrest and conflict with authorities in other

1826

Petrograd factories." This was no isolated event, as "violent incidents

1827

against hungry workers and their family demanding bread occurred with

1828

increasing regularity." [Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in

1829

Power, pp. 229-30] The shooting at Kolpino "triggered a massive wave of

1830

indignation . . . Work temporarily stopped at a number of plants." In

1831

Moscow, Tula, Kolomna, Nizhnii-Novoprod, Rybinsk, Orel, Tver' and

1832

elsewhere "workers gathered to issue new protests." In Petrograd,

1833

"textile workers went on strike for increased food rations and a wave

1834

of demonstrations spread in response to still more Bolshevik arrests."

1835

This movement was the "first major wave of labour protest" against the

1836

regime, with "protests against some form of Bolshevik repression" being

1837

common. [William Rosenberg, Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power, pp.

1838

123-4]

1839

1840

This general workers' opposition generated the Menshevik inspired, but

1841

independent, Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates (EAD). "The emergence

1842

of the EAD", Rabinowitch notes, "was also stimulated by the widespread

1843

view that trade unions, factory committees, and soviets . . . were no

1844

longer representative, democratically run working-class institutions;

1845

instead they had been transformed into arbitrary, bureaucratic

1846

government agencies. There was ample reason for this concern." To

1847

counter the EAD, the Bolsheviks organised non-party conferences which,

1848

in itself, shows that the soviets had become as distant from the masses

1849

as the opposition argued. District soviets "were deeply concerned about

1850

their increasing isolation . . . At the end of March . . . they

1851

resolved to convene successive nonparty workers' conferences . . . in

1852

part to undercut the EAD by strengthening ties between district soviets

1853

and workers." This was done amidst "unmistakable signs of the widening

1854

rift between Bolshevik-dominated political institutions and ordinary

1855

factory workers." The EAD, argues Rabinowitch, was an expression of the

1856

"growing disenchantment of Petrograd workers with economic conditions

1857

and the evolving structure and operation of Soviet political

1858

institutions". [Op. Cit., p. 224, p. 232 and p. 231]

1859

1860

Anarchists should be not too surprised that the turning of popular

1861

organisations into parts of a state soon resulted in their growing

1862

isolation from the masses. The state, with its centralised structures,

1863

is simply not designed for mass participation - and this does doubly

1864

for the highly centralised Leninist state.

1865

1866

These protests and repression continued after the start of the civil

1867

war. "At the end of May and beginning of June, a wave of strikes to

1868

protest the lack of bread swept Nivskii district factories" and

1869

"strikes followed by bloody clashes between workers and Soviet

1870

authorities had erupted in scattered parts of central Russia." On June

1871

21, a general meeting of Obukhov workers "seized control of the plant"

1872

and the next day the assembled workers "resolved to demand that the EAD

1873

should declare political strikes . . . to protest the political

1874

repression of workers." Orders were issued by the authorities "to shut

1875

down Obukhov plant" and "the neighbourhood surrounding the plant was

1876

placed under martial law." [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 231 and pp.

1877

246-7] However "workers were not so readily pacified. In scores of

1878

additional factories and shops protests mounted and rapidly spread

1879

along the railways." [Rosenberg, Op. Cit., pp. 126-7]

1880

1881

Faced with this mounting pressure of spontaneous strikes, the EAD

1882

declared a general for the 2nd of July. The Bolshevik authorities acted

1883

quickly: "Any sign of sympathy for the strike was declared a criminal

1884

act. More arrests were made. In Moscow, Bolsheviks raided the

1885

Aleksandrovsk railroad shops, not without bloodshed. Dissidence

1886

spread." On July 1st, "machine guns were set up at main points

1887

throughout the Petrograd and Moscow railroad junctions, and elsewhere

1888

in both cities as well. Controls were tightened in factories. Meetings

1889

were forcefully dispersed." [Rosenberg, Op. Cit., p. 127] Factories

1890

were warned "that if they participated in the general strike they would

1891

face immediate shutdown, and individual strikes were threatened with

1892

fines or loss of work. Agitators and members of strike committees were

1893

subject to immediate arrest." Opposition printing presses "were sealed,

1894

the offices of hostile trade unions were raided, martial law on lines

1895

in the Petrograd rail hub was declared, and armed patrols with

1896

authority to prevent work stoppages were formed and put on twenty-four

1897

hour duty at key points around the city." Perhaps unsurprisingly, given

1898

"the brutal suppression of the EAD's general strike", it was not

1899

successful. [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 254 and p. 259]

1900

1901

Thus "[b]y the early summer of 1918" there were "widespread

1902

anti-Bolshevik protests. Armed clashes occurred in the factory

1903

districts of Petrograd and other industrial centres." [William

1904

Rosenberg, Op. Cit., p. 107] It should also be noted that at the end of

1905

September of that year, there was a revolt by Baltic Fleet sailors

1906

demanding (as they did again in 1921) a "return to government by

1907

liberated, democratic soviets - that is, 1917-type soviets." As after

1908

the more famous 1921 revolt, the Left-SR controlled Kronstadt soviet

1909

had been disbanded and replaced by a Bolshevik revolutionary committee

1910

in July 1918, during the repression after the Left-SR assassination of

1911

the German ambassador. [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 352 and p. 302]

1912

1913

As well as state repression, the politics of the opposition played a

1914

role in its defeat. Before October 1918, both the Mensheviks and SRs

1915

were in favour of the Constituent Assembly and Dumas as the main organs

1916

of power, with the soviets playing a minor role. This allowed the

1917

Bolsheviks to portray themselves as defenders of "soviet power" (a

1918

position which still held popular support). Understandably, many

1919

workers were unhappy to support an opposition which aimed to replace

1920

the soviets with typically bourgeois institutions. Many also considered

1921

the Bolshevik government as a "soviet power" and so, to some degree,

1922

their own regime. With the civil war starting, many working class

1923

people would also have been uneasy in protesting against a regime which

1924

proclaimed its soviet and socialist credentials. After October 1918,

1925

the Mensheviks supported the idea of (a democratically elected) soviet

1926

power, joining the Left-SRs (who were now effectively illegal after

1927

their revolt of July - see [27]section H.6.1). However, by then it was

1928

far too late as Bolshevik ideology had adjusted to Bolshevik practice

1929

and the party was now advocating party dictatorship. Thus, we find

1930

Victor Serge in the 1930s noting that "the degeneration of Bolshevism"

1931

was apparent by that time, "since at the start of 1919 I was horrified

1932

to read an article by Zinoviev . . . on the monopoly of the party in

1933

power." [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 188] It should be noted, though,

1934

that Serge kept his horror well hidden throughout this period - and

1935

well into the 1930s (see [28]section H.1.2 for his public support for

1936

this monopoly).

1937

1938

As noted above, this cycle of resistance and repression was not limited

1939

to Petrograd. In July 1918, a leading Bolshevik insisted "that server

1940

measures were needed to deal with strikes" in Petrograd while in other

1941

cities "harsher forms of repression" were used. For example, in Tula,

1942

in June 1918, the regime declared "martial law and arrested the

1943

protestors. Strikes followed and were suppressed by violence". In

1944

Sormovo, 5,000 workers went on strike after a Menshevik-SR paper was

1945

closed. Violence was "used to break the strike." [Remington, Op. Cit.,

1946

p. 105]

1947

1948

Similar waves of protests and strikes as those in 1918 took place the

1949

following year with 1919 seeing a "new outbreak of strikes in March",

1950

with the "pattern of repression . . . repeated." One strike saw

1951

"closing of the factory, the firing of a number of workers, and the

1952

supervised re-election of its factory committee." In Astrakhan, a mass

1953

meeting of 10,000 workers was fired on by Red Army troops, killing

1954

2,000 (another 2,000 were taken prisoner and subsequently executed).

1955

[Remington, Op. Cit., p. 109] Moscow, at the end of June, saw a

1956

"committee of defence (KOM) [being] formed to deal with the rising tide

1957

of disturbances." The KOM "concentrated emergency power in its hands,

1958

overriding the Moscow Soviet, and demanding obedience from the

1959

population. The disturbances died down under the pressure of

1960

repression." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., pp. 94-5] In the Volga region, delegates

1961

to a conference of railroad workers "protested the Cheka's arrest of

1962

union members, which the delegates insisted further disrupted

1963

transport. It certainly curbed the number of strikes." [Raleigh, Op.

1964

Cit., p. 371] In Tula "after strikes in the spring of 1919" local

1965

Menshevik party activists had been arrested while Petrograd saw

1966

"violent strikes" at around the same time. [Jonathan Aves, Workers

1967

Against Lenin, p. 19 and p. 23] As Vladimir Brovkin argues in his

1968

account of the strikes and protests of 1919:

1969

1970

"Data on one strike in one city may be dismissed as incidental.

1971

When, however, evidence is available from various sources on

1972

simultaneous independent strikes in different cities an overall

1973

picture begins to emerge. All strikes developed along a similar

1974

timetable: February, brewing discontent; March and April, peak of

1975

strikes: May, slackening in strikes; and June and July, a new wave

1976

of strikes . . .

1977

1978

"Workers' unrest took place in Russia's biggest and most important

1979

industrial centres . . . Strikes affected the largest industries,

1980

primarily those involving metal: metallurgical, locomotive, and

1981

armaments plants . . . In some cities . . . textile and other

1982

workers were active protesters as well. In at least five cities . .

1983

. the protests resembled general strikes."

1984

["Workers' Unrest and the Bolsheviks' Response in 1919", pp.

1985

350-373, Slavic Review, Vol. 49, No. 3, p. 370]

1986

1987

These strikes raised both economic and political demands, such as "free

1988

and fair elections to the soviets." Unsurprisingly, in all known cases

1989

the Bolsheviks' "initial response to strikes was to ban public meetings

1990

and rallies" as well as "occup[ying] the striking plant and

1991

dismiss[ing] the strikers en masse." They also "arrested strikers" and

1992

executed some. [Op. Cit., p. 371 and p. 372]

1993

1994

1920 saw similar waves of strikes and protests. In fact, strike action

1995

"remained endemic in the first nine months of 1920." Soviet figures

1996

report a total of 146 strikes, involving 135,442 workers for the 26

1997

provinces covered. In Petrograd province, there were 73 strikes with

1998

85,642 participants. "This is a high figure indeed, since at this time

1999

. . . there were 109,100 workers" in the province. Overall, "the

2000

geographical extent of the February-March strike wave is impressive"

2001

and the "harsh discipline that went with labour militarisation led to

2002

an increase in industrial unrest in 1920." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 69, p.

2003

70 and p. 80]

2004

2005

Saratov, for example, saw a wave of factory occupations break out in

2006

June and mill workers went out in July while in August, strikes and

2007

walkouts occurred in its mills and other factories and these "prompted

2008

a spate of arrests and repression." In September railroad workers went

2009

out on strike, with arrests making "the situation worse, forcing the

2010

administration to accept the workers' demands." [Raleigh, Op. Cit., p.

2011

375] In January 1920, a strike followed a mass meeting at a railway

2012

repair shop in Moscow. Attempts to spread were foiled by arrests. The

2013

workshop was closed, depriving workers of their rations and 103 workers

2014

of the 1,600 employed were imprisoned. "In late March 1920 there were

2015

strikes in some factories" in Moscow and "[a]t the height of the Polish

2016

war the protests and strikes, usually provoked by economic issues but

2017

not restricted to them, became particularly frequent . . . The assault

2018

on non-Bolshevik trade unionism launched at this time was probably

2019

associated with the wave of unrest since there was a clear danger that

2020

they would provide a focus for opposition." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 95]

2021

The "largest strike in Moscow in the summer of 1920" was by tram

2022

workers over the equalisation of rations. It began on August 12th, when

2023

one tram depot went on strike, quickly followed by others while workers

2024

"in other industries joined in to." The tram workers "stayed out a

2025

further two days before being driven back by arrests and threats of

2026

mass sackings." In the textile manufacturing towns around Moscow "there

2027

were large-scale strikes" in November 1920, with 1000 workers striking

2028

for four days in one district and a strike of 500 mill workers saw

2029

3,000 workers from another mill joining in. [Simon Pirani, The Russian

2030

Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24, p. 32 and p. 43]

2031

2032

In Petrograd the Aleksandrovskii locomotive building works "had seen

2033

strikes in 1918 and 1919" and in August 1920 it again stopped work. The

2034

Bolsheviks locked the workers out and placed guards outside it. The

2035

Cheka then arrested the SRs elected to the soviet from that workplace

2036

as well as about 30 workers. After the arrests, the workers refused to

2037

co-operate with elections for new soviet delegates. The "opportunity

2038

was taken to carry out a general round-up, and arrests were made" at

2039

three other works. The enormous Briansk works "experienced two major

2040

strikes in 1920", and second one saw the introduction of martial law on

2041

both the works and the settlement it was situated in. A strike in Tula

2042

saw the Bolsheviks declare a "state of siege", although the repression

2043

"did not prevent further unrest and the workers put forward new

2044

demands" while, in Moscow, a strike in May by printers resulted in

2045

their works "closed and the strikers sent to concentration camps."

2046

[Aves, Op. Cit., p. 41, p. 45, p. 47, pp. 48-9, pp. 53-4 and p. 59]

2047

2048

These expressions of mass protest and collective action continued in

2049

1921, unsurprisingly as the civil war was effectively over in the

2050

previous autumn. Even John Rees had to acknowledge the general strike

2051

in Russia at the time, stating that the Kronstadt revolt was "preceded

2052

by a wave of serious but quickly resolved strikes." [Op. Cit., p. 61]

2053

Significantly, he failed to note that the Kronstadt sailors rebelled in

2054

solidarity with those strikes and how it was state repression which

2055

"resolved" the strikes. Moreover, he seriously downplays the scale and

2056

importance of these strikes, perhaps unsurprisingly as "[b]y the

2057

beginning of 1921 a revolutionary situation with workers in the

2058

vanguard had emerged in Soviet Russia" with "the simultaneous outbreak

2059

of strikes in Petrograd and Moscow and in other industrial regions." In

2060

February and March 1921, "industrial unrest broke out in a nation-wide

2061

wave of discontent or volynka. General strikes, or very widespread

2062

unrest" hit all but one of the country's major industrial regions and

2063

"workers protest consisted not just of strikes but also of factory

2064

occupations, 'Italian strikes', demonstrations, mass meetings, the

2065

beating up of communists and so on." Faced with this massive strike

2066

wave, the Bolsheviks did what many ruling elites do: they called it

2067

something else. Rather than admit it was a strike, they "usually

2068

employed the word volynka, which means only a 'go-slow'". [Aves, Op.

2069

Cit., p. 3, p. 109, p. 112, pp. 111-2]

2070

2071

Mid-February 1921 saw workers in Moscow striking and "massive city-wide

2072

protest spread through Petrograd . . . Strikes and demonstrations

2073

spread. The regime responded as it had done in the past, with

2074

lock-outs, mass arrests, heavy show of force - and concessions."

2075

[Remington, Op. Cit., p. 111] As Paul Avrich recounts, in Petrograd

2076

these "street demonstrations were heralded by a rash of protest

2077

meetings" workplaces On the 24th of February, the day after a workplace

2078

meeting, the Trubochny factory workforce downed tools and walked out

2079

the factory. Additional workers from nearby factories joined in. The

2080

crowd of 2,000 was dispersed by armed military cadets. The next day,

2081

the Trubochny workers again took to the streets and visited other

2082

workplaces, bringing them out on strike too. In the face of a near

2083

general strike, three-man Defence Committee was formed. Zinoviev

2084

"proclaimed martial law" and "[o]vernight Petrograd became an armed

2085

camp." Strikers were locked out and the "application of military force

2086

and the widespread arrests, not to speak of the tireless propaganda

2087

waged by the authorities" was "indispensable in restoring order" (as

2088

were economic concessions). [Kronstadt 1921, pp. 37-8, p. 39, pp. 46-7

2089

and p. 50]

2090

2091

In Moscow, "industrial unrest . . . turned into open confrontation and

2092

protest spilled on to the streets", starting with a "wave of strikes

2093

that had its centre in the heart of industrial Moscow." Strikes were

2094

"also spreading outside Moscow city itself into the surrounding

2095

provinces" and so "Moscow and Moscow province were put under martial

2096

law". [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 130, p. 138, p. 143 and p. 144] This strike

2097

wave started when "[m]eetings in factories and plants gathered and

2098

criticised government policies, beginning with supply and developing

2099

into general political criticism." As was typical, the "first response

2100

of the civil authorities to the disturbances was increased repression"

2101

although as "the number of striking factories increased some

2102

concessions were introduced." Military units called in against striking

2103

workers "refused to open fire, and they were replaced by the armed

2104

communist detachments" which did. "That evening mass protest meetings

2105

were held . . . The following day several factories went on strike" and

2106

troops were "disarmed and locked in as a precaution" by the government

2107

against possible fraternising. February 23rd saw a 10,000 strong street

2108

demonstration and "Moscow was placed under martial law with a 24-hour

2109

watch on factories by the communist detachments and trustworthy army

2110

units." The disturbances were accompanied by factory occupations and on

2111

the 1st of March the soviet called on workers "not to go on strike."

2112

However, "wide-scale arrests deprived the movement of its leadership."

2113

March 5th saw disturbances at the Bromlei works, "resulting in the now

2114

customary arrest of workers. A general meeting at the plant on 25 March

2115

called for new elections to the Moscow Soviet. The management dispersed

2116

the meeting but the workers called on other plants to support the calls

2117

for new elections. As usual, the ringleaders were arrested." [Sakwa,

2118

Op. Cit., pp. 242-3, p. 245 and p. 246]

2119

2120

The events at the Bromlei works were significant in that the march 25th

2121

mass meeting passed an anarchist and Left-SR initiated resolution

2122

supporting the Kronstadt rebels. The party "responded by having them

2123

sacked en masse". The workers "demonstrated through" their district

2124

"and inspired some brief solidarity strikes." Over 3000 workers joined

2125

the strikes and about 1000 of these joined the flying picket (managers

2126

at one print shop locked their workers in to stop them joining the

2127

protest). While the party was willing to negotiate economic issues, "it

2128

had no wish to discuss politics with workers" and so arrested those who

2129

initiated the resolution, sacked the rest of the workforce and

2130

selectively re-employed them. Two more strikes were conducted "to

2131

defend the political activists in their midst" and two mass meetings

2132

demanded the release of arrested ones. Workers also struck on supply

2133

issues in May, July and August. [Pirani, Op. Cit., pp. 83-4]

2134

2135

While the Kronstadt revolt took place too late to help the Petrograd

2136

strikes, it did inspire a strike wave in Ekaterinoslavl (in the

2137

Ukraine) in May, 1921. It started in the railway workshops and became

2138

"quickly politicised," with the strike committee raising a "series of

2139

political ultimatums that were very similar in content to the demands

2140

of the Kronstadt rebels" (many of the resolutions put to the meeting

2141

almost completely coincided with them). The strike "spread to the other

2142

workshops" and on June 1st the main large Ekaterinoslavl factories

2143

joined the strike. The strike was spread via the use of trains and

2144

telegraph and soon an area up to fifty miles around the town was

2145

affected. The strike was finally ended by the use of the Cheka, using

2146

mass arrests and shootings. Unsurprisingly, the local communists called

2147

the revolt a "little Kronstadt." [Aves, Op. Cit., pp. 171-3]

2148

2149

Saratov also saw a mass revolt in March 1921, when a strike by railroad

2150

workers over a reduction in food rations spread to the metallurgical

2151

plants and other large factories "as workers and non-workers sent

2152

representatives to the railroad shops." They forced the Communists to

2153

allow the setting up of a commission to re-examine the activities of

2154

all economic organs and the Cheka. During the next two days, "the

2155

assemblies held at factories to elect delegates to the commission

2156

bitterly denounced the Communists." The "unrest spilled over into

2157

Pokrovsk." The commission of 270 had less than ten Communists and

2158

"demanded the freeing of political prisoners, new elections to the

2159

soviets and to all labour organisations, independent unions, and

2160

freedom of speech, the press, and assembly." The Communists "resolved

2161

to shut down the commission before it could issue a public statement"

2162

and set up a Provincial Revolutionary Committee which "introduced

2163

martial law both in the city and the garrison" as well as arresting

2164

"the ringleaders of the workers' movement." The near general strike was

2165

broken by a "wave of repression" but "railroad workers and dockworkers

2166

and some printers refused to resume work." [Raleigh, Op. Cit., pp.

2167

388-9]

2168

2169

Post-volynka, workplaces "that had been prominent in unrest were

2170

particularly hit by . . . purges . . . The effect on the willingness of

2171

workers to support opposition parties was predictable." However, "the

2172

ability to organise strikes did not disappear" and they continued to

2173

take place throughout 1921. The spring of 1922 saw "a new strike wave."

2174

[Aves, Op. Cit., p. 182 and p. 183] For example, in early March, "long

2175

strikes" hit the textile towns around Moscow. At the Glukhovskaia mills

2176

5000 workers struck for 5 days, 1000 at a nearby factory for 2 days and

2177

4000 at the Voskresenskaia mills for 6 days. In May, 1921, workers in

2178

the city of Moscow reacted to supply problems "with a wave of strikes.

2179

Party officials reckoned that in a 24-day period in May there were

2180

stoppages at 66 large enterprises." These included a sit-down strike at

2181

one of Moscow's largest plants, while "workers at engineering factories

2182

in Krasnopresnia followed suit, and Cheka agents reported 'dissent,

2183

culminating in strikes and occupation' in Bauman." August 1922 saw

2184

19,000 workers strike in textile mills in Moscow region for several

2185

days. Tram workers also struck that year, while teachers "organised

2186

strikes and mass meetings". Workers usually elected delegates to

2187

negotiate with their trade unions as well as their bosses as both were

2188

Communist Party members. Strike organisers, needless to say, were

2189

sacked. [Pirani, Op. Cit., p. 82, pp. 111-2 and p. 157]

2190

2191

While the strike wave of early 1921 is the most famous, due to the

2192

Kronstadt sailors rebelling in solidarity with it, the fact is that

2193

this was just one of many strike waves during the 1918 and 1921 period.

2194

In response to protests, "the government had combined concessions with

2195

severe repression to restore order" as well as "commonly resort[ing] to

2196

the lock out as a means of punishing and purging the work force." Yet,

2197

"as the strike waves show, the regime's sanctions were not sufficient

2198

to prevent all anti-Bolshevik political action." [Remington, Op. Cit.,

2199

p. 111, p. 107, and p. 109] In fact, repression "did not prevent

2200

strikes and other forms of protest by workers becoming endemic in 1919

2201

and 1920" while in early 1921 the Communist Party "faced what amounted

2202

to a revolutionary situation. Industrial unrest was only one aspect of

2203

a more general crisis that encompassed the Kronstadt revolt and the

2204

peasant rising in Tambov and Western Siberia." This "industrial unrest

2205

represented a serious political threat to the Soviet regime . . . From

2206

Ekaterinburg to Moscow, from Petrograd to Ekaterinoslavl, workers took

2207

to the streets, often in support of political slogans that called for

2208

the end of Communist Party rule . . . soldiers in many of the strike

2209

areas showed themselves to be unreliable [but] the regime was able to

2210

muster enough forces to master the situation. Soldiers could be

2211

replaced by Chekists, officer cadets and other special units where

2212

Party members predominated." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 187, p. 155 and p.

2213

186]

2214

2215

Yet, an "atomised" and powerless working class does not need martial

2216

law, lockouts, mass arrests and the purging of the workforce to control

2217

it. As Russian anarchist Ida Mett succinctly put it: "And if the

2218

proletariat was that exhausted how come it was still capable of waging

2219

virtually total general strikes in the largest and most heavily

2220

industrialised cities?" [The Kronstadt Rebellion, p. 81] The end of the

2221

civil war also saw the Bolsheviks finally destroy what was left of

2222

non-Bolshevik trade unionism. In Moscow, this took place against fierce

2223

resistance of the union members. As one historian concludes:

2224

2225

"Reflecting on the determined struggle mounted by printers, bakers

2226

and chemical workers in Moscow during 1920-1, in spite of appalling

2227

economic conditions, being represented by organisations weakened by

2228

constant repression . . . to retain their independent labour

2229

organisations it is difficult not to feel that the social basis for

2230

a political alternative existed." [Jonathan Aves, "The Demise of

2231

Non-Bolshevik Trade Unionism in Moscow: 1920-21", pp. 101- 33,

2232

Revolutionary Russia, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 130]

2233

2234

Elsewhere, Aves argues that an "examination of industrial unrest after

2235

the Bolshevik seizure of power . . . shows that the Revolution had

2236

brought to the surface resilient traditions of organisation in society

2237

and had released tremendous forces in favour of greater popular

2238

participation . . . The survival of the popular movement through the

2239

political repression and economic devastation of the Civil War

2240

testifies to its strength." [Workers Against Lenin, p. 186] The idea

2241

that the Russian working class was incapable of collective struggle is

2242

hard to defend given this series of struggles (and state repression).

2243

The class struggle in Bolshevik Russia did not stop, it continued

2244

except the ruling class had changed. All the popular energy and

2245

organisation this expressed, which could have been used to combat the

2246

problems facing the revolution and create the foundations of a genuine

2247

socialist society, were wasted in fighting the Bolshevik regime.

2248

Ultimately, though, the "sustained, though ultimately futile, attempts

2249

to revive an autonomous workers' movement, especially in mid-1918 and

2250

from late 1920, failed owing to repression." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 269]

2251

Another historian notes that "immediately after the civil war" there

2252

was "a revival of working class collective action that culminated in

2253

February-March 1921 in a widespread strike movement and the revolt at

2254

the Kronstadt naval base." As such, the position expounded by Rees and

2255

other Leninists "is so one-sided as to be misleading." [Pirani, Op.

2256

Cit., p. 7 and p. 23]

2257

2258

Nor is this commonplace Leninist rationale for Bolshevik rule

2259

particularly original, as it dates back to Lenin and was first

2260

formulated "to justify a political clamp-down." Indeed, this argument

2261

was developed in response to rising working class protest rather than

2262

its lack: "As discontent amongst workers became more and more difficult

2263

to ignore, Lenin . . . began to argue that the consciousness of the

2264

working class had deteriorated . . . workers had become 'declassed.'"

2265

However, there "is little evidence to suggest that the demands that

2266

workers made at the end of 1920 . . . represented a fundamental change

2267

in aspirations since 1917." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 18, p. 90 and p. 91] So

2268

while the "working class had decreased in size and changed in

2269

composition,. . . the protest movement from late 1920 made clear that

2270

it was not a negligible force and that in an inchoate way it retained a

2271

vision of socialism which was not identified entirely with Bolshevik

2272

power . . . Lenin's arguments on the declassing of the proletariat was

2273

more a way of avoiding this unpleasant truth than a real reflection of

2274

what remained, in Moscow at least, a substantial physical and

2275

ideological force." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 261]

2276

2277

Nor can it be suggested, as the Bolsheviks did at the time, that these

2278

strikes were conducted by newly arrived workers, semi-peasants without

2279

an awareness of proletarian socialism or traditions. Links between the

2280

events in 1917 and those during the civil war are clear. Jonathan Aves

2281

writes that there were "distinct elements of continuity between the

2282

industrial unrest in 1920 and 1917 . . . As might be anticipated, the

2283

leaders of unrest were often to be found amongst the skilled male

2284

workers who enjoyed positions of authority in the informal shop-floor

2285

hierarchies." Looking at the strike wave of early 1921 in Petrograd,

2286

the "strongest reason for accepting the idea that it was established

2287

workers who were behind the volynka is the form and course of protest.

2288

Traditions of protest reaching back through the spring of 1918 to 1917

2289

and beyond were an important factor in the organisation of the

2290

volynka". In fact, "an analysis of the industrial unrest of early 1921

2291

shows that long-standing workers were prominent in protest." [Aves, Op.

2292

Cit., p. 39, p. 126 and p. 91] As another example, "although the

2293

ferment touched all strata of Saratov workers, it must be emphasised

2294

that the skilled metalworkers, railroad workers, and printers - the

2295

most 'conscious' workers - demonstrated the most determined

2296

resistance." They "contested repression and the Communists' violation

2297

of fair play and workplace democracy." [Raleigh, Op. Cit., p. 376] As

2298

Ida Mett argued in relation to the strikes in early 1921:

2299

2300

"The population was drifting away from the capital. All who had

2301

relatives in the country had rejoined them. The authentic

2302

proletariat remained till the end, having the most slender

2303

connections with the countryside.

2304

2305

"This fact must be emphasised, in order to nail the official lies

2306

seeking to attribute the Petrograd strikes . . . to peasant

2307

elements, 'insufficiently steeled in proletarian ideas.' The real

2308

situation was the very opposite . . . There was certainly no exodus

2309

of peasants into the starving towns! . . . It was the famous

2310

Petrograd proletariat, the proletariat which had played such a

2311

leading role in both previous revolutions, that was finally to

2312

resort to the classical weapon of the class struggle: the strike."

2313

[The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 36]

2314

2315

As one expert on this issue argues, while the number of workers did

2316

drop "a sizeable core of veteran urban proletarians remained in the

2317

city; they did not all disappear." In fact, "it was the loss of young

2318

activists rather than of all skilled and class-conscious urban workers

2319

that caused the level of Bolshevik support to decline during the Civil

2320

War. Older workers had tended to support the Menshevik Party in 1917".

2321

Given this, "it appears that the Bolshevik Party made deurbanisation

2322

and declassing the scapegoats for its political difficulties when the

2323

party's own policies and its unwillingness to accept changing

2324

proletarian attitudes were also to blame." It should also be noted that

2325

the notion of declassing to rationalise the party's misfortunes was

2326

used before long before the civil war: "This was the same argument used

2327

to explain the Bolsheviks' lack of success among workers in the early

2328

months of 1917 - that the cadres of conscious proletarians were diluted

2329

by nonproletarian elements." [Diane P. Koenker, "Urbanisation and

2330

Deurbanisation in the Russian Revolution and Civil War", pp. 81-104,

2331

Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War, Diane P. Koenker,

2332

William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), p. 96, p. 95, p.

2333

100 and p. 84]

2334

2335

While there is still much research required, what facts that are

2336

available suggest that throughout the time of Lenin's regime the

2337

Russian workers took collective action in defence of their interests.

2338

This is not to say that workers did not also respond to the problems

2339

they faced in an individualistic manner, often they did. However, such

2340

responses were, in part (as we noted in the [29]last section), because

2341

Bolshevik policy itself gave them little choice as it limited their

2342

ability to respond collectively. Yet in the face of difficult economic

2343

circumstances, workers turned to mass meetings and strikes. In

2344

response, the Bolshevik's used state repression to break resistance and

2345

protest against their regime. In such circumstances it is easy to see

2346

how the Bolshevik party became isolated from the masses they claimed to

2347

be leading but were, in fact, ruling. This transformation of rebels

2348

into a ruling elite comes as no great surprise given that Bolshevik's

2349

aimed to seize power themselves in a centralised and hierarchical

2350

institution, a state, which has always been the method by which ruling

2351

classes secured their position (as we argued in [30]section H.3.7, this

2352

perspective flowed from the flawed Marxist theory of the state). Just

2353

as they had to, first, gerrymander and disband soviets to regime in

2354

power in the spring and summer of 1918, so the Bolsheviks had to clamp

2355

down on any form of collective action by the masses. As such, it is

2356

incredulous that latter day Leninists justify Bolshevik

2357

authoritarianism on a lack of collective action by workers when that

2358

authoritarianism was often driven precisely to break it!

2359

2360

So the claim by John Rees that the "dialectical relationship between

2361

the Bolsheviks and the working class was broken, shattered because the

2362

working class itself was broke-backed after the civil war" leaves a lot

2363

to be desired. [Op. Cit., p. 22] The Bolsheviks did more than their

2364

fair share of breaking the back of the working class. This is

2365

unsurprising for a government which grants to the working class the

2366

greatest freedom undermines its own power by so doing. Even a limited

2367

relaxation of its authority will allow people to organise themselves,

2368

listen to alternative points of view and to act on them. That could not

2369

but undermine the rule of the party and so could not be supported - nor

2370

was it.

2371

2372

For example, in his 1920 diatribe against Left-wing Communism, Lenin

2373

pointed to "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences" and Soviet

2374

Congresses as means by which the party secured its rule. Yet, if the

2375

congresses of soviets were "democratic institutions, the like of which

2376

even the best democratic republics of the bourgeois have never know",

2377

the Bolsheviks would have no need to "support, develop and extend"

2378

non-Party conferences "to be able to observe the temper of the masses,

2379

come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among

2380

them to state posts". [The Lenin Anthology, p. 573] How the Bolsheviks

2381

met "their requirements" is extremely significant - they disbanded

2382

them, just as they had with soviets with non-Bolshevik majorities in

2383

1918. This was because "[d]uring the disturbances" of late 1920, "they

2384

provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik policies."

2385

Their frequency was decreased and they "were discontinued soon

2386

afterward." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 203]

2387

2388

In the soviets themselves, workers turned to non-partyism, with

2389

non-party groups winning majorities in soviet delegates from industrial

2390

workers' constituencies in many places. This was the case in Moscow,

2391

where Bolshevik support among "industrial workers collapsed" in favour

2392

of non-party people. Due to support among the state bureaucracy and the

2393

usual packing of the soviet with representatives from Bolshevik

2394

controlled organisations, the party had, in spite of this, a massive

2395

majority. Thus the Moscow soviet elections of April-May 1921 "provided

2396

an opportunity to revive working-class participation. The Bolsheviks

2397

turned it down." [Pirani, Op. Cit., pp. 97-100 and p. 23] Indeed, one

2398

Moscow Communist leader stated that these soviet elections had seen "a

2399

high level of activity by the masses and a striving to be in power

2400

themselves." [quoted by Pirani, Op. Cit., p. 101]

2401

2402

1921 also saw the Bolshevik disperse provincial trade unions

2403

conferences in Vologda and Vitebsk "because they had anti-communist

2404

majorities." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 176] At the All-Russian Congress of

2405

Metalworkers' Union in May, the delegates voted down the party-list of

2406

recommended candidates for union leadership. The Central Committee of

2407

the Party "disregarded every one of the votes and appointed a

2408

Metalworkers' Committee of its own. So much for 'elected and revocable

2409

delegates'. Elected by the union rank and file and revocable by the

2410

Party leadership!" [Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 83]

2411

2412

Another telling example is provided in August 1920 by Moscow's striking

2413

tram workers who, in addition to economic demands, called for a general

2414

meeting of all depots. As one historian notes, this was "significant:

2415

here the workers' movement was trying to get on the first rung of the

2416

ladder of organisation, and being knocked off by the Bolsheviks." The

2417

party "responded to the strike in such a way as to undermine workers'

2418

organisation and consciousness" and "throttl[ed] independent action" by

2419

"repression of the strike by means reminiscent of tsarism." The

2420

Bolshevik's "dismissive rejection" of the demand for a city-wide

2421

meeting "spoke volumes about their hostility to the development of the

2422

workers' movement, and landed a blow at the type of collective

2423

democracy that might have better able to confront supply problems."

2424

This, along with the other strikes that took place, showed that "the

2425

workers' movement in Moscow was, despite its numerical weakness and the

2426

burdens of civil war, engaged with political as well as industrial

2427

issues . . . the working class was far from non-existent, and when, in

2428

1921, it began to resuscitate soviet democracy, the party's decision to

2429

make the Moscow soviet its 'creature' was not effect but cause."

2430

[Pirani, Op. Cit., p. 32, p. 33, p. 37 and p. 8]

2431

2432

When such things happen, we can conclude that Bolshevik desire to

2433

remain in power had a significant impact on whether workers were able

2434

to exercise collective power or not. As Pirani concludes:

2435

2436

"one of the most important choices the Bolsheviks made . . . was to

2437

turn their backs on forms of collective, participatory democracy

2438

that workers briefly attempted to revive [post civil war].

2439

[Available evidence] challenges the notion . . . that political

2440

power was forced on the Bolsheviks because the working class was so

2441

weakened by the civil war that it was incapable of wielding it. In

2442

reality, non-party workers were willing and able to participate in

2443

political processes, but in the Moscow soviet and elsewhere, were

2444

pushed out of them by the Bolsheviks. The party's vanguardism, i.e.

2445

its conviction that it had the right, and the duty, to make

2446

political decisions on the workers' behalf, was now reinforced by

2447

its control of the state apparatus. The working class was

2448

politically expropriated: power was progressively concentrated in

2449

the party, specifically in the party elite." [Op. Cit., p. 4]

2450

2451

It should also be stressed that fear of arrest limited participation. A

2452

sadly typical example of this occurred in April 1920, which saw the

2453

first conference of railway workers on the Perm-Ekaterinburg line. The

2454

meeting of 160 delegates elected a non-Party chairman who "demanded

2455

that delegates be guaranteed freedom of debate and immunity from

2456

arrest." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 44] A Moscow Metalworkers' Union

2457

conference in early February 1921 saw the first speakers calling "for

2458

the personal safety of the delegates to be guaranteed" before

2459

criticisms would be aired. [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 244] Later that year

2460

dissidents in the Moscow soviet demanded "that delegates be given

2461

immunity from arrest unless sanctioned by plenary session of the

2462

soviet." Immediately afterwards two of them, including an

2463

anarcho-syndicalist, were detained. It was also proposed that

2464

delegates' freedom of speech "included immunity from administrative or

2465

judicial punishment" along with the right of any number of delegates

2466

"to meet and discuss their work as they chose." [Pirani, Op. Cit. p.

2467

104] Worse, "[b]y the end of 1920 workers not only had to deal with the

2468

imposition of harsh forms of labour discipline, they also had to face

2469

the Cheka in their workplace." This could not help hinder working class

2470

collective action, as did the use of the Cheka and other troops to

2471

repress strikes. While it is impossible to accurately measure how many

2472

workers were shot by the Cheka for participation in labour protest,

2473

looking at individual cases "suggests that shootings were employed to

2474

inspire terror and were not simply used in the occasional extreme

2475

case." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 35] Which means, ironically, those who had

2476

seized power in 1917 in the name of the politically conscious

2477

proletariat were in fact ensuring their silence by fear of the Cheka or

2478

weeding them out, by means of workplace purges and shooting.

2479

2480

Perhaps unsurprisingly, but definitely significantly, of the 17,000

2481

camp detainees on whom statistical information was available on 1

2482

November 1920, peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at

2483

39% and 34% respectively. Similarly, of the 40,913 prisoners held in

2484

December 1921 (of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84%

2485

were illiterate or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either

2486

peasants of workers. [George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political

2487

Police, p. 178] Needless to say, Lenin failed to mention this aspect of

2488

his system in The State and Revolution (a failure shared by later

2489

Leninists). Ultimately, the contradictions between Bolshevik rhetoric

2490

and the realities of working class life under their rule was closed by

2491

coercion.

2492

2493

Such forms of repression could not help ensure both economic chaos and

2494

push the revolution away from socialism. As such, it is hard to think

2495

of a more incorrect assertion than Lenin's 1921 one that "[i]ndustry is

2496

indispensable, democracy is not. Industrial democracy breeds some

2497

utterly false ideas." [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 27] Yet without

2498

industrial democracy, any development towards socialism is aborted and

2499

the problems of a revolution cannot be solved in the interests of the

2500

working masses.

2501

2502

This account of workers' protest being crushed by the so-called

2503

workers' state raises an important theoretical question. Following Marx

2504

and Engels, Lenin asserted that the "state is nothing but a machine for

2505

the suppression of one class by another" [Collected Works, vol. 28, p.

2506

259] Yet here is the working class being suppressed by "its" state. If

2507

the state is breaking strikes, including general strikes, by what

2508

stretch of the imagination can it be considered a "workers' state"?

2509

Particularly as the workers, like the Kronstadt sailors, demanded free

2510

soviet elections, not, as the Leninists then and now claim, "soviets

2511

without Communists" (although one soviet historian noted with regards

2512

the 1921 revolt that "taking account of the mood of the workers, the

2513

demand for free elections to the soviets meant the implementation in

2514

practice of the infamous slogan of soviets without communists." [quoted

2515

by Aves, Op. Cit., p. 123]). If the workers are being repressed and

2516

denied any real say in the state, how can they be considered the ruling

2517

class? And what class is doing the "suppression"? As we discussed in

2518

[31]section H.3.8, Bolshevik ideology adjusted to this reality by

2519

integrating the need for party dictatorship to combat the "wavering"

2520

within the working class into its theory of the state. Yet it is the

2521

party (i.e., the state) which determines what is and is not wavering.

2522

This suggests that the state apparatus has to be separate from the

2523

working class in order to repress it (as always, in its own interests).

2524

2525

So anarchists argue that the actual experience of the Bolshevik state

2526

shows that the state is no mere "machine" of class rule but has

2527

interests of its own. Which confirms the anarchist theory of the state

2528

rather than the Marxist (see [32]section H.3.7). It should be stressed

2529

that it was after the regular breaking of working class protest and

2530

strikes that the notion of the dictatorship of the party became

2531

Bolshevik orthodoxy. This makes sense, as protests and strikes express

2532

"wavering" within the working class which needs to be solved by state

2533

repression. This, however, necessitates a normal state power, one which

2534

is isolated from the working class and which, in order to enforce its

2535

will, must (like any state) atomise the working class people and render

2536

them unable, or unwilling, to take collective action in defence of

2537

their interests. For the defenders of Bolshevism to turn round and

2538

blame Bolshevik authoritarianism on the atomisation required for the

2539

party to remain in power and enforce its will is staggering.

2540

2541

Finally, it should be noted that Zinoviev, a leading Bolshevik, tried

2542

to justify the hierarchical position of the Bolshevik party arguing

2543

that "[i]n time of strike every worker knows that there must be a

2544

Strike Committee - a centralised organ to conduct the strike, whose

2545

orders must be obeyed - although this Committee is elected and

2546

controlled by the rank and file. Soviet Russia is on strike against the

2547

whole capitalist world. The social Revolution is a general strike

2548

against the whole capitalist system. The dictatorship of the

2549

proletariat is the strike committee of the social Revolution."

2550

[Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 929]

2551

2552

In strikes, however, the decisions which are to be obeyed are those of

2553

the strikers. They should make the decisions and the strike committees

2554

should carry them out. The actual decisions of the Strike Committee

2555

should be accountable to the assembled strikers who have the real power

2556

(and so power is decentralised in the hands of the strikers and not in

2557

the hands of the committee). A far better analogy for what happened in

2558

Russia was provided by Emma Goldman:

2559

2560

"There is another objection to my criticism on the part of the

2561

Communists. Russia is on strike, they say, and it is unethical for a

2562

revolutionist to side against the workers when they are striking

2563

against their masters. That is pure demagoguery practised by the

2564

Bolsheviki to silence criticism.

2565

2566

"It is not true that the Russian people are on strike. On the

2567

contrary, the truth of the matter is that the Russian people have

2568

been locked out and that the Bolshevik State - even as the bourgeois

2569

industrial master - uses the sword and the gun to keep the people

2570

out. In the case of the Bolsheviki this tyranny is masked by a

2571

world-stirring slogan: thus they have succeeded in blinding the

2572

masses. Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the

2573

master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party."

2574

[My Disillusionment in Russia, p. xlix]

2575

2576

The isolation of the Bolsheviks from the working class was, in large

2577

part, required to ensure their power and, moreover, a natural result of

2578

utilising state structures. "The struggle against oppression -

2579

political, economic, and social, against the exploitation of man by

2580

man" argued Alexander Berkman, "is always simultaneously a struggle

2581

against government as such. The political State, whatever its form, and

2582

constructive revolutionary effort are irreconcilable. They are mutually

2583

exclusive." Every revolution "faces this alternative: to build freely,

2584

independently and despite of the government, or to choose government

2585

with all the limitation and stagnation it involves . . . Not by the

2586

order of some central authority, but organically from life itself, must

2587

grow up the closely knit federation of the industrial, agrarian, and

2588

other associations; by the workers themselves must they be organised

2589

and managed." The "very essence and nature" of the socialist state

2590

"excludes such an evolution. Its economic and political centralisation,

2591

its governmentalism and bureaucratisation of every sphere of activity

2592

and effort, its inevitable militarisation and degradation of the human

2593

spirit mechanically destroy every germ of new life and extinguish the

2594

stimuli of creative, constructive work." [The Bolshevik Myth, pp.

2595

340-1] By creating a new state, the Bolsheviks ensured that the mass

2596

participation required to create a genuine socialist society could not

2597

be expressed and, moreover, came into conflict with the Bolshevik

2598

authorities and their attempts to impose their (essentially state

2599

capitalist) vision of "socialism".

2600

2601

It need not have been that way. As can be seen from our discussion of

2602

labour protest under the Bolsheviks, even in extremely hard

2603

circumstances the Russian people were able to organise themselves to

2604

conduct protest meetings, demonstrations and strikes. The social base

2605

for an alternative to Bolshevik power and policies existed. Sadly

2606

Bolshevik politics, policies and the repression they required ensured

2607

that it could not be used constructively during the revolution to

2608

create a genuine socialist revolution.

2609

2610

References

2611

2612

1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61

2613

2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech25

2614

3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61

2615

4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62

2616

5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech63

2617

6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append4.html

2618

7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html'sech63

2619

8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech311

2620

9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech314

2621

10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech38

2622

11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech314

2623

12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62

2624

13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21

2625

14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62

2626

15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62

2627

16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61

2628

17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech17

2629

18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech32

2630

19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech33

2631

20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH5.html

2632

21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61

2633

22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech312

2634

23. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech314

2635

24. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech313

2636

25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH4.html

2637

26. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech11

2638

27. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61

2639

28. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech12

2640

29. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62

2641

30. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech37

2642

31. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech38

2643

32. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech37