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.