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