2. The Bolsheviks: From Ideological Conflict to Civil War
The Russian Revolution and the Dialectic of Saturn
In the eyes of Khrushchev, Stalin is tarnished by the horrendous crimes against comrades from his own party, having deviated from Leninism and Bolshevism and having betrayed the ideals of socialism. But it’s precisely the reciprocal accusations of betrayal that contributed in a very important way to the tragedies which struck Soviet Russia; accusations that hasten or deepen the internal divisions in the leadership group from October 1917. How to explain these divisions? The dialectic of “Saturn devouring her own children” is certainly not a trait exclusive to the October Revolution: the consensus that presides over the overthrow of an old regime rejected by the majority of the people can inevitably crumble or wither at the moment in which they try to determine how the new order should be constructed. This is also true for the English and American Revolutions. But this dialectic in Russia is felt in a particularly violent and prolonged way. Even at the time of the Czarist autocracy’s collapse, while the attempts to restore the monarchy or to establish a military dictatorship persist, there’s a painful decision imposed on those who are determined to avoid a return to the past: to concentrate on peace first or, as the Mensheviks argue, to continue or even intensify the war efforts, rallying Russia behind the slogan of democratic interventionism.
The consolidation of the Bolshevik victory in no way ends the dialectic of Saturn, which gets further intensified, in fact. Lenin’s call for the conquest of power and the revolution’s transformation in a socialist direction is considered an intolerable deviation from Marxism in the eyes of Kamenev and Zinoviev, who alert the Mensheviks to the situation and therefore invite upon themselves the accusation of betrayal from the majority of the Bolshevik party. It’s a debate that extends beyond Russia’s borders and the communist movement itself. The social democrats are the first to cry out against the scandalous abandonment of orthodoxy, which excluded the possibility of a socialist revolution in a country that hadn’t yet passed through full capitalist development; while both Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg condemned Lenin’s embrace of the slogan “land to the peasantry” as an abandonment of the path toward socialism.
Here, however, it’s worth concentrating on the divisions that occur within the Bolshevik leadership group itself. The millenarian expectations that arise from a combination of circumstances, both objective and subjective, explains the particularly devastating strength demonstrated by the dialectic of Saturn. Fear and indignation, universally shared, caused by the unspeakable carnage and conflict between different states as if it they were Moloch, determined to sacrifice millions and millions of men on the altar of national defense, when in reality they are competing in an imperialist race for world hegemony, all of this strengthens the demand for a completely new political and social order: it’s a matter of once and for all ripping out the roots from from which all the horrors since 1914 had emerged. Nurtured by a world view (which with Marx and Engels appears to call for a future without national borders, market relations, a state apparatus, and even judicial coercion) and by an almost religious approach to the texts of the communist movement’s founders, that demand could only be a disappointment once the structure of the new order begins to take form.
Therefore, well before being central to Trotsky’s thoughts and the criticisms he made, and after having already manifested itself during the collapse of the Tsarist autocracy, the theme of the revolution betrayed looms like a shadow over the history that begins with the Bolshevik rise to power. The accusation or the suspicion of betrayal emerges at every turn of this particularly tortured revolution, driven by the government’s need to reconsider some of the original utopian motives, and in any case forced to moderate their grand ambitions given the extreme difficulties of the objective situation.
The first challenges faced by the new political order is that represented by the dissolution of the state apparatus and by the continued widespread anarchy among the peasantry (who lack any state or national vision, and are therefore quite indifferent to the plight of the cities, which lack any sources of food) inclined to establish short lived “peasant republics”; anarchy was also present among deserters, already hostile to all forms of discipline (as is confirmed by the rise of a “Free Republic of Deserters” in a district of Bessarabia). In this case, it’s Trotsky who’s labeled a traitor, who as leader of the army is on the front line in the restoration of centralized power and the very existence of the State: at this time it’s the peasantry, the deserters (among them deserters from the Red Army) and outcasts who lay claim to the “authentic” socialism and the “true” soviets, and who long for Lenin (who had endorsed or encouraged the revolt against state power) and who consider Trotsky and the Jews to be vile usurpers. One can place in that same context the revolt in 1921 by sailors in Kronstadt. From what it appears, on this occasion Stalin had spoken in favor of a more cautious approach, that is, waiting for the depletion of fuel and food provisions available to the besieged fortress; but in a situation in which the danger of civil war and intervention by counter-revolutionary powers had not yet vanished, a quick military solution ends up being imposed. Again, it’s Trotsky, the “police officer” or marshall, who is considered the “defender of bureaucratic organization”, “dictator”, and, in the last analysis, traitor to the original spirit of the revolution. Trotsky, for his part, suspects Zinoviev of having for weeks encouraged the agitation that then turns into a revolt, demagogically wielding the banner of “worker democracy [...] like in 1917." Judging from these events, the first accusation of “betrayal” is an inevitable step in all revolutions, but it’s especially painful when it’s a revolution carried out in the name of the state’s withering away, from the moment of the old regime’s overthrow up until the construction of the new order, from the “libertarian” phase up until the “authoritarian” phase. Naturally, the accusation or suspicion of “betrayal” is tied to personal ambitions and the struggle for power.
The Foreign Ministry “Closes Up Shop”
The jingoistic rhetoric and national hatreds, in part “spontaneous”, in part intentionally fanned, led to the nightmare of imperialist war. The need to put an end to all this takes on an all consuming importance. Thus, a totally unrealistic internationalism emerges in certain parts of the communist movement, which tends to dismiss different national identities as mere prejudices. Let’s see in what terms, at the start of 1918, Bukharin opposes not only the peace of Brest-Litovsk, but any attempt on the part of Soviet power to exploit the contradictions among the various imperialist powers, whether by stipulating agreements or doing deals with one or the other: “What are we doing? We are turning the party into a dung heap [...]. We always said [...] that sooner or later the Russian Revolution would have to clash with international capital. That moment has now come."
It’s easy to understand the deception and unease of Bukharin who nearly two years earlier―against a war to the last drop of blood between the great capitalist powers and between different nation states, and against the chauvinist turn by social democracy―had supported a vision of humanity finally united in brotherhood thanks to the “social revolution of the international proletariat, that through arms toppled the dictatorship of financial capital." With the defeat of “the socialist epigones of Marxism” (guilty of having forgotten or repressed “the well known thesis from the Communist Manifesto”, according to which “the workers have no fatherland”), “thus ends the final way of limiting the proletariat's conception of the world: the limitations of its nation state and its patriotism”; “the slogan for the abolition of state borders and the convergence of the peoples into a single socialist family."
It’s not a matter of a single person’s illusions. Upon taking the position as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Trotsky would declare: “I shall publish some revolutionary decrees to the peoples of the world, then I will close up shop." With the arrival of a unified humanity across the world following the ruins of war and a wave of global revolution, the ministry that would prove to be superfluous is that which would normally handle relations between different states. Compared to this enthusiastic perspective, reality and the political project―as revealed by the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, with the return of state and national borders and even the return of the state’s raison d'être―must appear mediocre and disappointing! It’s not a small number of Bolshevik members and leaders who experience that event as the fall, or even the vile abandonment and betrayal of an entire world of ideals and hopes. Certainly, it would not be easy to resist Wilhelm II’s armies, but to make concessions to German imperialism just because the Russian peasantry, self absorbed in their own interests and ignorant of the responsibilities imposed on them by world revolution, refuse to continue fighting? Is that not proof of the nascent “peasant degeneration within our party and Soviet power”? Toward the end of 1924 Bukharin describes the common sentiments among “the ‘pure blooded’ left communists” and the “circles that sympathized with comrade Trotsky” during the Brest-Litovsk period: “comrade Riazanov stood out in particular, who at the time quit the party because, in his opinion, we had lost revolutionary purity." Apart from individual figures, there are important party organizations that declare: “In the interest of the international revolution, we judge it opportune to accept the possibility of losing Soviet power, which has now become something purely formal." They are “strange and monstrous” words from Lenin’s perspective, who’s suspected and accused of treason, and even becomes the target of a coup plot by Bukharin, however vague it may have been.
All of the prestige and energy of the great revolutionary leader is needed to overcome the crisis. But it emerges again some years later. With the defeat of the central powers and the outbreak of revolution in Germany, Austria, Hungary and its potential outbreak in other countries, the outlook the Bolsheviks were forced to abandon with Brest-Litovsk appears to again acquire new vitality and relevance. At the conclusion to the First Congress of the Communist International, it’s Lenin himself who declares: “The victory of the worldwide proletarian revolution is guaranteed. The founding of the International Soviet Republic draws near." Therefore, the imminent defeat of capitalism around the world would have been rapidly followed by the fusion of different nations and different states into a single entity: again, the foreign ministry was about to become superfluous!
The twilight of that illusion coincides with Lenin’s illness and death. The new crisis is even more serious because now, inside the Bolshevik party, there’s no indisputable authority. From the point of view of Trotsky, his allies, and his followers, there can be no doubt: what had dictated the choice of “socialism in one country” and the consequent neglect of the idea of world revolution, wasn’t political realism and a calculation of the balance of forces, but bureaucracy, opportunism, cowardice, and in the last analysis, betrayal.
The first to face this accusation is Stalin, who from the start had dedicated special attention to the national question, looking toward the victory of the revolution at an international level, but thinking first of Russia. Between February and October of 1917, he had presented the proletarian revolution not only as the necessary instrument to build the new social order, but to also reaffirm Russia’s national independence. The Entente tried to force Russia, through all possible means, to continue fighting and bleeding, and similarly tried to transform it into some type of “colony of Britain, America and France”; worse yet, they behaved in Russia as if they were “in Central Africa”; complicit in this operation were the Mensheviks, who with their insistence on the war’s continuation, accepted the imperialist diktat, and were open to the “gradual sale of Russia to the foreign capitalists”, leading the country “to ruin” and revealing themselves, therefore, as the true “traitors” to the nation. Against all this, the completion of the revolution not only promoted the emancipation of the popular classes, but cleared “the way to the effective liberation of Russia."
After October, the counter-revolution, unleashed by the Whites and supported or encouraged by the Entente, was also defeated due to the appeal to the Russian people by the Bolsheviks to resist the invasion by the imperialist powers determined to reduce Russia to a colony or semi-colony of the West; it’s for that reason even officers from the nobility had given their support to the new Soviet order. And Stalin had distinguished himself once again in promoting this line, describing the situation during the civil war as follows:
A victory by Denikin and Kolchak means the loss of Russia’s independence, the transformation of Russia into a rich source of money for the Anglo-French capitalists. In that sense, the Denikin-Kolchak government is the most anti-popular and anti-national government. In that sense, the soviet government is the only popular and national government in the best meaning of this term, because it carries with it not only the liberation of the workers from capital, but also the liberation of all of Russia from the yoke of world imperialism, and the transformation of Russia from a colony into a free and independent country.
On the battlefield, “Russian officers who’ve sold out, who’ve forgotten Russia, who have lost their honor and are ready to switch to the side of the enemy of workers’ and peasants’ Russia” confront soldiers of the Red Army, who are aware that “they fight not for capitalist profit, but for the liberation of Russia." From this perspective, the social struggle and the national struggle are interlinked: replacing “imperialist unity” (that’s to say the unity based on national oppression) with a unity founded on the recognition of the principle of equality between nations. The new Soviet Russia had put an end to the “disintegration” and the “complete ruin” represented by the old Tsarist Russia; at the same time, while increasing its “strength” and its “weight”, the new Soviet Russia had contributed to the weakening of imperialism and the victory of the revolution around the world.
However, when the course of the civil war and the struggle against foreign intervention started to improve, illusions had taken hold about a rapid expansion of socialism in the wake of the Red Army’s successes, and its advance far beyond the borders established in Brest-Litovsk. Due to his realism and profound sensitivity to the national question, Stalin noted the dangers that would arise from entering far into Polish territory:
The rear of the Polish armies [...] differ notably to those of Kolchak and Denikin, to Poland’s great advantage. Different from the rearguard of Kolchak and Denikin, the Polish troops are homogeneous and have a single nationality. From there arises their unity and stability. “Patriotic sentiment” prevails in the spirit of their people, which reaches the frontlines in a number of ways, creating a sense of national unity and steadfastness among the troops.
Therefore, it was one thing to defeat in Russia an enemy discredited in national terms, but it was another matter to confront outside of Russia a nationally motivated enemy. Therefore, proclamations in favor of a “march on Warsaw”, and the declarations according to which one could “only accept a ‘red and soviet Warsaw’”, were expressions of empty “bluster” and a “self satisfaction damaging to the cause."
The failed attempt to export socialism to Poland, that until not long before had been part of the Tsarist empire, had strengthened Stalin’s convictions. In 1929, he pointed to a phenomenon in large part unexpected by the protagonists of the October Revolution: “the stability of nations is tremendously solid." They appear destined to be a vital force for a long time in history. As a consequence, for a long period of time humanity would have to remain divided not only between different social systems, but also between different linguistic, cultural and national identities. What relations would have to be established between them? In 1936, in an interview with Roy Howard (of the Times), Stalin states:
Exporting revolution is nonsense. Each country can have its revolution if it wishes, but if it doesn’t want it, there won’t be a revolution. Our country wanted to have a revolution and it did.
Outraged, Trotsky comments:
We cite word by word. The theory of revolution in one country is the natural next step after the theory of socialism in one country [...]. We have proclaimed an infinite number of times that the proletariat in the country with the victorious revolution is morally obligated to help the revolting and oppressed classes, and not only in the realm of ideas, but also with weapons, if possible. And we haven’t limited ourselves to declaring it. We have defended with weapons the workers of Finland, Estonia and Georgia. We tried, by marching on Warsaw with the Red Army, to offer the Polish proletariat the opportunity to have an insurrection.
Having exhausted the vision of an “International Soviet Republic”, and with it the final disappearance of state and national borders, Stalin makes use of the principle of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems. But this new principle, that was the result of a learning process and that guaranteed the Soviet Union the right to independence in a world that was hostile and militarily stronger, in the eyes of Trotsky appeared to be a betrayal of proletarian internationalism, as well as the abandonment of the duty of mutual and active solidarity between the oppressed and exploited around the whole world. His polemic against the political turn is unending, against the transformation of the initial “internationalist revolutionary” program into a “conservative-national” program; against “the national pacifist foreign policy of the Soviet government”; against ignoring the principle based on the idea that a single workers state should alone carry out the role of “leading the world revolution." In any case, since the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism is impossible, “a socialist state can’t peacefully integrate and develop (hineinwashsen) within a world capitalist system." It’s a position that Trotsky stresses still in 1940: it would have been better not to have started the war against Finland, but once started, it should have been “seen through until the end, that is, until the sovietization of Finland."
The End of “the Money Economy” and “Market Morality”
The dialectic of Saturn is demonstrated in a number of other political and social settings. Internally, how should equality be understood by the regime born out of the October Revolution and that was called upon to realize it? War and hardship had produced a “communism” founded on the more or less egalitarian distribution of quite miserable food rations. With respect to that practice and the ideology that had developed upon it, the NEP [New Economic Policy] was an upsetting shock, with the emergence of new and stark inequalities, made possible by the toleration of certain sectors of the capitalist economy. The sense of “betrayal” is a widespread phenomenon, and it heavily affects the Bolshevik party: “In 1921 and 1922, literally tens of thousands of Bolshevik workers ripped up their membership cards, so disgusted by the NEP they had renamed it the New Extortion of the Proletariat." Outside of Soviet Russia, we see a French communist leader accept the radical change, but not without adding, while writing in L’Humanité: “The NEP has brought with it some of the capitalist rot that had completely disappeared during war communism."
At times, one has the impression that it’s not specific aspects of the economic reality that are looked at with distrust or indignation, but that very reality as a whole. It’s necessary not to lose sight of the millenarian expectations that characterize revolution for the lower strata of the people, and which persist after a crisis of long duration. In France 1789, even before the storming of the Bastille, the meeting of the Estates General and the agitation by the third estate awaken “the popular spirit of the old millenarism, the anxious expectations for the revenge of the poor and the happiness of the humiliated: it will deeply permeate the revolutionary mentality." In Russia, driven by tsarist oppression and especially by the horrors of the First World War, millenarism had already demonstrated its strength during the February Revolution. Welcoming it as the Easter Resurrection, Christian circles and important sections of Russian society had expected a complete transformation, with the emergence of an intimately unified community and with the disappearance of the division between rich and poor, even theft, lies, gambling, blasphemy, and drunkenness. Disillusioned with the Menshevik program and by the continuation of the war and its carnage, these millenarian expectations had ultimately brought no small number of supporters to the Bolshevik cause.
For example, that’s the case with Pierre Pascal, a French catholic who will later be deeply disappointed with the move toward NEP, although he had initially welcomed the events of October 1917 as follows:
It’s the realization of Psalm Four from Sunday Vespers and the Magnificat: the powerful are toppled from their thrones and the poor are rescued from misery [...] There’s no longer any rich, only the poor and the very poor. Knowledge does not confer privilege or respect. The former worker promoted to manager gives orders to the engineers. The gap between higher and lower salaries is narrowed. The right to property is reduced to personal possessions. The judge is no longer obligated to apply the law if his sense of proletarian equality contradicts it.
Upon reading this fragment Marx’s affirmation comes to mind, according to which there’s “nothing easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge." One shouldn’t think that this vision exists only within openly religious circles. As always, the Manifesto of the Communist Party notes that the “first proletariat movements” are often characterized by demands along the lines of “a universal asceticism and a rough egalitarianism." It’s what takes place in Russia after the catastrophe of the First World War. In the 1940s, a Bolshevik effectively describes the pervading spiritual climate in the period immediately following the October Revolution, having emerged from a war caused by imperialist competition to plunder the colonies, the drive to conquer new markets and natural resources, and by the capitalist search for profits and super profits:
We, communist youths, all grew up with the conviction that money would disappear once and for all [...]. If money returned, wouldn’t the rich also reappear? Would we not find ourselves on a slippery slope that leads us to capitalism?
It’s a spiritual climate that’s also expressed in the work of eminent Western philosophers. In 1918, the young Bloch invites the Soviets to put an end not only to “all private economic activity”, but also the entire “money economy”, and with it the “market morality that blesses all the evil that there is in man." Only by liquidating such rottenness in its entirety was it possible to once and for all end the pursuit of wealth and domination, the conquest of colonies and hegemony, that lead to the catastrophe of war. On publishing in 1923 the second edition of The Spirit of Utopia, Bloch considers it opportune to remove those previously cited excerpts marked by millenarianism. However, the state of mind and the vision that had inspired them didn’t disappear, not in the Soviet Union or outside it.
While on the one hand they attenuate it, this moral crisis is nonetheless reignited by the healing of the wounds opened by the First World War and the two civil wars (against the Whites and the kulaks), as well as by the economic recovery. Especially after the completion of the collectivization of agriculture and the consolidation of the new regime, it’s no longer possible to blame the remnants of capitalism or the danger of an immediate collapse to explain the continued differences in wages. Were they to be tolerated, and to what point?
In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel demonstrates the aporia contained in the idea of material equality that’s rooted in the demand for a “community of goods." When an equal satisfaction of the different needs of individuals is put into practice, it’s obvious that the result will be an inequality in relation to the “quota of participation”, in other words, the distribution of goods; if there’s an “equal distribution” of goods, however, then it’s obvious that the “satisfaction of necessities” for individuals become unequal (as needs are always different). In any case, the “community of goods” is unable to maintain the promise of material equality. Marx, who was quite familiar with Phenomenology, solves the problem (in the Critique of the Gotha Programme) by matching the two different approaches to rejecting “equality” (which always seemed partial and limited) to two different phases of development in the post-capitalist society: in the socialist phase distribution is according to “equal right”, in other words, redistribution according to the same measurement of work realized by each individual. It’s always different for each individual, producing an evident inequality in total redistribution and in income; in that sense, “equal right” is nothing else but the “right to inequality." In the communist phase, the equal satisfaction of different needs also brings with it an inequality in the distribution of resources, except that the enormous development of the productive forces, completely satisfying the needs of all, makes such inequalities lose their importance. In other words, in socialism material equality is not possible; in communism it no longer has any meaning. With the permanence of inequality in the distribution of resources, the transition from unequal satisfaction to equal satisfaction presupposes, aside from the overthrow of capitalism, the prodigious development of the productive forces, and this can be achieved solely through the affirmation, during the socialist stage, of the principle of redistribution to every individual based on the different work carried out by them. It’s here that Marx’s insistence arises on the fact that, once having seized power, the proletariat is called upon to commit themselves to the development of the productive forces, in addition to committing themselves to the transformation of social relations. On the other hand, however, in praising the Paris working class for confronting the French bourgeoisie, which enjoys its luxuries while it carries out a bloody repression, Marx highlights a measure approved by the Commune as a model : “public service had to be done at workman’s wage." In that case, redistributive and material equality becomes an objective of a socialist society.
It’s not easy to reconcile those two perspectives, and their divergence will play a non-negligible role in irremediably dividing the Bolshevik party’s leaders. As it’s consolidated, Soviet power is forced to address the growing problem of economic development, for the purpose of establishing social consensus and achieving national legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian people, as well as a means to defend “the homeland of socialism” from the threats growing on the horizon. Referring to the polemic already found in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, against “universal asceticism” and its “egalitarian tinge”, Stalin insists: “It’s time to understand that Marxism is the enemy of egalitarianism”, The equality achieved by socialism consists in the elimination of class exploitation, certainly not in the imposition of uniformity and equalization, which is what religious primitivism aspires to:
Leveling in the context of necessities and personal life is a reactionary and petty-bourgeois absurdity, worthy of any primitive ascetic sect, but not for a socialist society organized in the Marxist spirit, because one can’t demand everyone have the same needs and tastes, that everyone live their personal lives according to a single and universal model [...]. In terms of equality, Marxism no longer understands it as leveling in the context of personal necessities and living standards, but as the elimination of classes.
Religious primitivism can only be expressed through the aspiration for a communal life, in which individual differences are meant to disappear, with serious damage to the development of the productive forces as well:
The idealization of agricultural communes was encouraged at a certain time, going as far as to introduce workshops and factories into the communes, where skilled and unskilled workers, working each according to their vocation, had to put their salary in the common fund, and later divide it in equal parts. It’s well known how much damage was caused for our industry by these puerile exercises in leveling due to “left” bunglers.
Stalin’s long term objective is quite ambitious, both at the social and national level: “To make our Soviet society the society with the greatest standard of living”; to complete the “transformation of our country into the most advanced country”; but to achieve this result “it’s necessary that in our country labor productivity surpass the labor productivity of the most advanced capitalist countries”, which once again requires material incentives in addition to moral incentives, and therefore the need to overcome that egalitarianism, considered by the Soviet leader to be crude and mechanistic.
And again, and more than ever, the religious primitivism makes itself felt, with its distrust not only in relation to difference in income, but above all else in relation to wealth as such: “if everyone becomes rich and the poor cease to exist, who will then have need of the Bolsheviks and our work?”: thus, according to Stalin, argue the “‘left’ bunglers who idealize the poor peasants as the eternal supporters of Bolshevism." This causes us to think of the critical observations developed by Hegel with regards to the evangelical commandment that obligates one to help the poor. Losing sight of the fact that it’s “a conditional rule”, and instead absolutizing it, Christians then end up absolutizing poverty, which alone can give meaning to the rule that demands aid to the poor. Instead, the quality of aid to the poor ought to be measured by the contribution given to overcoming poverty as such.. In the state of horror caused by capitalism’s butchery and by the auri sacra fames, a religious distrust for gold and wealth as such is created, and the idealization of misery, or at least of scarcity, understood and experienced as an expression of spiritual fulfillment or of revolutionary rigor. And Stalin feels obligated to stress a key point: “It would be stupid to think that socialism can be built on top of misery and deprivation, by reducing personal needs and everyone’s standard of living to that of the poor”; on the contrary, “socialism can be built only on the basis of a relentless development of society’s productive forces” and “on the basis of a comfortable life for the workers”, or better yet, “a comfortable and civilized life for all members of society." Just like the Christian doctrine of helping the poor, the revolutionary doctrine, that insists that communist parties first place themselves among the exploited and the poor, is also “conditioned”, and it is only taken seriously once it is understood for its conditionality.
Therefore, for Stalin it was necessary to intensify efforts with the aim of decisively increasing social wealth, adding “new energy” to “socialist emulation”; it would demand resorting to both material incentives (making use of the socialist principle of redistribution according to work) as well as moral incentives (for example, granting “the highest honor” to the most eminent Stakhanovites). Both different and opposed is Trotsky’s orientation: in “restoring ranks and decorations” and in liquidating “socialist equality” as such, the bureaucracy also lays the groundwork for changes in “property relations." While Stalin explicitly makes reference to the polemic from the Manifesto against a socialism understood as synonymous with “universal asceticism” and “crude egalitarianism”, the left opposition knowingly and unknowingly makes use of the thesis found in The Civil War in France, according to which even the highest ranking leaders should be paid according to “workers salaries." Trotsky insists that, to justify their privileges, the bureaucracy and Stalin mistakenly reference the Critique of the Gotha Program: “Marx didn’t speak of creating a new inequality, but in the gradual elimination of inequalities in income, preferable to its abrupt elimination."
Based on that political line (the leveling of wages both in the factories and in the state apparatus), it was quite difficult to promote the development of the productive forces, and Stalin stressed that salary differentiation did not mean the restoration of capitalism. It was necessary not to confuse social differences that exist within the new regime with the old antagonism between exploiting classes and exploited classes. But from Trotsky’s perspective, it was a clumsy simplification: “the contrast between misery and luxury is all too apparent in the urban centers." In conclusion:
Whether “radical” or “superficial”, the differences between the worker aristocracy and the proletarian masses matter little from the perspective of Stalinist sociology; in any case, it’s this difference that gave birth in its time to the need to break with social democracy and to found the Third International.
According to Marx, socialism was also called upon to overcome the distinction between intellectual and manual labor. Here again the problem would reappear: how to achieve such an ambitious objective? And once again the Bolshevik leadership group is divided; in this case as well, the stance elaborated by Stalin in the thirties stands out for its caution:
There are some who think that the suppression of the antagonism between intellectual labor and physical labor can be achieved through a certain cultural and technical leveling of intellectual and manual workers, that it could be attained by lowering the cultural and technical level of engineers and specialists, of the intellectual workers, and even the level of moderately skilled workers. That is absolutely wrong.
Instead, it’s a matter of encouraging access to education for all social strata who had been excluded up until then. On the opposing side, Trotsky recognized that there had been a process of “training scientific cadre originating from the people”, and yet he claimed: “The social gap between manual and intellectual labor has increased during the last few years instead of decreasing." The continuation of the division of labor and the continuation of social and economic inequalities were two sides of the same coin; in other words, it’s the return of capitalist exploitation and, therefore, of the complete betrayal of socialist ideals:
The new constitution, in declaring that “exploitation of man by man is abolished in the USSR”, says the opposite of the truth. The new social differentiation created the conditions for a rebirth of exploitation under the most barbaric forms, like the hiring of a man for another’s personal service. Servants are not counted in the census, having evidently been included under the category of “workers." The following questions are not made: does the Soviet citizen have servants and what kind (maid, cook, nurse, governess, driver)? Do you have an automobile? How many rooms do you have? Nor does it even speak of the amount of their salary! If the Soviet rule that deprived political rights to those who exploited the work of others was restored, you would suddenly see that the top leaders of Soviet society ought to be deprived of their constitutional rights! Fortunately, a complete equality has been established… between master and servant.
Therefore, the very presence of the “maid” as a social figure, and the servant in general, was synonymous not only with exploitation, but “exploitation under its most barbaric forms”; and how do you explain the continuation or the reemergence in the USSR of such relations, if not by the abandonment of an authentically socialist perspective, in other words, by betrayal?
The long reach of millenarianism, certainly already implicit in Marx’s more utopian thinking, but frighteningly increased in reaction to the horrors of the First World War, continues to make itself felt. In his Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress of the CPSU (January 26th, 1934), Stalin feels it necessary to warn against “the leftist chatter, that in part exists among our militants, according to which Soviet commerce is a stage that’s been surpassed, and that money should soon be abolished." Those who make that argument, “with their haughty attitude toward Soviet commerce, don’t express a Bolshevik point of view, but a point of view belonging to decadent nobles, full of pretensions, but without a cent in their pocket." While Trotsky doesn’t miss the opportunity to condemn the previously mentioned “economic adventurism” rejected by Stalin, he still mocks the “rehabilitation of the ruble” and the return of “bourgeois methods of distribution." In any case, he insists that they are destined to disappear under communism, together with the state, but also “money” and markets in all their forms.
“No More Distinctions Between Yours and Mine”: The Disappearance of the Family
Along with imperialism and capitalism, the October Revolution was called upon to put an end to the oppression of women. To make possible their equal participation in social and political life, it was necessary to liberate them by developing social services as much as possible, by freeing them from domestic reclusion and a division of labor that humiliated and hampered them; the criticism of traditional morality and its duplicity would then guarantee sexual emancipation for women as well, up until that time reserved―though in a partial and distorted form―to men alone. Following these grand transformations, would the family institution still have meaning, or was it destined to disappear? Alexandra Kollontai has no doubts: “the family is no longer necessary." It was thrown into crisis by women’s complete emancipation, and by the spontaneity and “fluidity” that now characterize sexual relations. The family, aside from inconvenient, also proves to be superfluous: “the raising of children passes gradually into the hands of society." Moreover, there was no cause for despair: the family was a privileged place for the cultivation of egotism, going hand in hand with the attachment to private property. In conclusion: “The socially conscious mother will revolt to the point of no longer making a distinction between yours and mine and, therefore, remembering that there are only our children, the children of communist Russia and its workers." These ideas are strongly criticized by the Bolshevik leadership group in its entirety. In particular, in a speech in 1923, Trotsky wisely notes that such a vision ignored “the responsibility of the father and mother toward their child”, thus encouraging the neglect of children and, therefore, worsening a scourge that was already widespread in Moscow during those years. However, in one form or another, those ideas were “quite popular within party circles." Even at the start of the 1930s, a close collaborator of Stalin’s, namely Kaganovich, is forced to confront them. We turn to his biographer:
Despite completely adhering to the principle of women’s liberation, Kaganovich vehemently charged against extremist positions that sought the elimination of individual kitchens and wanted forced cohabitation in communes. Sabsovich, one of the leftist planners, had even proposed ending all spaces of cohabitation between husband and wife, with the exception of a small bedroom at night. He pushed the idea of large beehive like structures for two thousand people with all the services shared to encourage the “communal spirit” and suppress the bourgeois family unit.
However, Kaganovich’s (and Stalin’s) position drew strong criticism from Trotsky, who at that time was the opposition’s leader: “The totally recent cult to the Soviet family did not fall from the sky. The privileges that can’t be bequeathed to children lose half their value. Now, the right to leave inheritance is inseparable from that of private property." Therefore, the restoration of the family institution (and the rejection of the commune destined to absorb and dissolve them) meant the defense of the right to inheritance and the right to property, and consequently takes on a clear counter-revolutionary meaning. In fact, by a “divine coincidence”―Trotsky mocks―”the solemn rehabilitation of the family” takes place at the same time that money becomes respected again; “the family is reborn at the same time in which the coercive role of the ruble is reaffirmed." The consecration of marital fidelity goes hand in hand with the consecration of private property: to put it in religious terms, “the Fifth Commandment comes back into force at the same time as the Seventh, without invoking divine authority, for now."
In fact, when looking closely, that invocation already appears on the horizon. In his speech on the drafting of the Constitution of 1936, Stalin criticizes those who want “to prohibit the holding of religious ceremonies” and “deprive clergymen of their right to vote." And again Trotsky intervenes to denounce that unacceptable retreat with respect to the initial project for the definitive liberation of society from the shackles of superstition: “The assault on the heavens has ceased [...]. Worried about their good reputation, the bureaucracy ordered the atheist youths to hand over their weapons and get on with reading. It’s only the start. A regime of ironic neutrality is being slowly instituted with regards to religion." Along with the family, the right to inheritance and to property, the opiate of the masses that Marx spoke of can’t be allowed to return.
Behind this new chapter scrutinizing the revolution’s “betrayal” is the dialectic we came across earlier. Doing away with the bourgeois family, its ingrained prejudices, and its dead laws, the revolution would have allowed love, freedom, and spontaneity into a previously private space. And yet, it’s interesting to note that what causes Trotsky’s protests and anger was still the idea of a juridical regulation of family relations:
The authentic socialist family, freed by society from the heavy and humiliating daily burdens, will not need any regulation, and the very idea of laws on divorce or abortion will be no more than the memory of houses of pleasure or of human sacrifice.
The Condemnation of “Führerpolitik”, or the “Transformation of Power into Love”
Therefore, more than the concept of family (and the right to inheritance and to property) and the religious consecration of power (of the family head and the property owner), Trotsky’s polemic attacks the question of society’s juridical organization as a whole, the question of the state. It’s the central question on which all the different questions previously analyzed converge: predicted by Marx after the overthrow of capitalism, when and under what conditions can the process of the state’s withering away begin? The victorious proletariat―The State and Revolution affirms on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution―”only has need of a State in the process of withering away”; however, carrying out an enormous wave of nationalizations, the new power gives an unprecedented impulse to the expansion of the state apparatus. In other words, as they move towards building a new society, Lenin is forced, whether consciously or not, to move increasingly further away from anarchism (and the positions he had initially taken). To better understand this, it’s enough to look at an important intervention―Better Fewer, but Better―published in Pravda on March 4th, 1923. What immediately stands out are the new slogans: “to improve our state apparatus”, seriously committing to the “construction of the state”, “to construct a truly new apparatus that truly deserves the socialist and soviet name”, to improve “administrative work” and to do all this without hesitation, learning from “Western Europe’s best examples."
But does massively expanding the state apparatus and focusing on the question of its improvement not mean, in fact, renouncing the ideal of the state’s withering away? Of course, the realization of that ideal can be delayed to a far distant future, but meanwhile, how should state owned property be managed, which had now experienced an enormous expansion, and what forms should state power take on in Soviet Russia as a whole? Even in The State and Revolution, written at a moment when Lenin was harsh, and couldn’t not be, in his denunciation of the representative regimes responsible for the war, we can read that even the most developed democracy can’t do without “representative institutions." Meanwhile, the expectation for the withering away of the state continues to fuel distrust in relation to the idea of representation, at the exact same time that the leaders of Soviet Russia increase the number of representative bodies (as the soviets undoubtedly are), not even neglecting a second and third level of representation: the soviets from a lower level elect their delegates to the soviet at the higher level. It would not take long for the controversy to break out.
The question of reestablishing order and the revitalization of the productive apparatus, with its recognized link to the principle of competency, is also raised in the factories: from the new regime’s beginning, social and political circles hesitant about the changes denounce the rise to power of “bourgeois specialists” and a “new bourgeoisie”, and again the target of their criticism is Trotsky, who at that time occupies a very prominent role in the leadership of the state-military apparatus. It’s a controversy that extends beyond Russia. There’s significant criticism directed at Gramsci, who celebrated the new state that’s taking form in the birthplace of the October Revolution, and pays tribute to the Bolsheviks for being “an aristocracy of statesmen”, and Lenin for being “the greatest statesman in contemporary Europe." They knew how to put an end to the “profound abyss of misery, barbarity, anarchy, and disorder” created “by a long and disastrous war." But―an anarchist objects―”that apology, full of lyrical praise” for the state, “statolatry”, and the “authoritarian, legalistic, parliamentarian state socialism” is in contradiction with the Soviet constitution itself, committed to installing a regime under which “there will no longer be class divisions, nor state power."
It’s not only openly declared anarchist circles and authors who adopt a critical position. Even supporters of the international communist movement express their clear dissatisfaction, disappointment and dissension. Let’s turn to one of them, namely Pannekoek, who is no longer able to identify with the Bolshevik political program: “specialists and managers in the factories exercise a power greater than that which should be compatible with communist development [...]. From among the new managers and administrators emerges a new bureaucracy." “The bureaucracy”, the Workers Opposition Platform in Russia insists in the following year, “is a direct negation of mass action”; unfortunately, it’s an “ailment” that “has now invaded the most intimate fibers of our party and our Soviet institutions."
Beyond Russia, such criticisms are also directed at the West. They call for an end “to the bourgeois representative system, to parliamentarianism." More so than the Bolshevik dictatorship, the target of condemnation is the principle of representation. Yes, “that someone decides your destiny, that is the essence of bureaucracy." The degeneration of Soviet Russia resides in the fact that a single person takes charge of a determined position: “individual management” is taking the place of “collective management” in the factories, and at all levels; and this “is a product of the individualistic mentality of the bourgeois class” and “fundamentally” expresses “an unlimited and remote free will, unbound by the collective." Rather than “mass politics” (Massenpolitik), the Third International now “practices top-down politics” (Führerpolitik).
As one can see, the accusation of betrayal to the original ideals, more than being directed at abuse of power, is directed against the organs of power, founded on the distinction/opposition between leaders and those who are led, and therefore founded to the exclusion of direct action and “mass politics." While the soviets are not free of suspicion, explicit is the disgust directed toward parliament, unions, and parties, sometimes even the communist party that is itself based on the principle of representation, and therefore infected by the bureaucratic virus. Ultimately, more so than organs of powers, it is power itself that is the subject of criticism. “It’s the curse of workers power: having barely taken some ‘power’, it seeks to increase that power through unprincipled means." Thus, it ceases to be “pure”: it’s what happens to German social democracy, and it’s also what’s happening to the Third International.
We can place the young Bloch in this context; apart from overcoming the market economy, the mercantile spirit and of money itself, he also hopes the revolution and the soviets “transform power into love." While the German philosopher, in removing these lines and unrealistic expectations from the second edition of The Spirit of Utopia, distances himself from the most millenarian aspects of his thinking, there are none too few communists, in Soviet Russia and outside it, who ultimately cry out in outrage because the miracle of the “transformation of power into love” doesn’t take place.
In the first years of Soviet Russia, more so than with Stalin, the anti-”bureaucratic” polemic primarily attacks Lenin and even Trotsky, included among the most prominent “defenders and crusaders of the bureaucracy." The situation noticeable changes in the following years. Before even considering its contents, the approval of the constitution of 1936 alone represents a radical change, just for the fact of breaking with anarchist notions stubbornly attached to the ideal of the withering away of the state, on the basis of which “laws are the opiate of the masses” and “the very idea of a constitution is bourgeois." In Stalin’s words, the constitution of 1936 “does not stop at determining the formal rights of citizens, but shifts the focus toward guaranteeing these rights, toward the means of exercising these rights." Although insufficient and not constituting its key aspect, the “formal” guarantee of rights doesn’t appear to be irrelevant here. With satisfaction, Stalin stresses the fact that the new constitution “guaranteed the application of universal suffrage, direct and equal, with secret ballot voting." But it’s precisely this point that draws Trotsky’s criticism: in bourgeois society, the secret ballot is used to “shield the exploited from intimidation by the exploiters”; the reappearance of that institution in Soviet society is proof that even in the USSR the people must be protected from intimidation, if not from an authentic exploiting class, than from the bureaucracy at the very least.
To those that demanded that the question of the state’s withering away be addressed, Stalin responded in 1938 by encouraging them not to transform the lessons of Marx and Engels into an empty scholastic dogma; the setback in the ideal’s realization was explained by the permanent capitalist encirclement. However, in listing the functions of the socialist state, aside from the traditional ones of defense against the enemy class both internal and external, Stalin called attention to a “third function, namely, the work of economic organization and the cultural and educational work by our state organs”, a work carried out with the “aim of planting the seeds of the new socialist economy and of reeducating everyone in the spirit of socialism." It was a point on which the Report to the Eighteenth Party Congress of the CPSU strongly insisted: “Now, the fundamental task of our state, inside the country, consists of the peaceful work of economic organization, and a cultural and educational work." The theorization of this “third function” was already by itself an important breakthrough. But Stalin would go further, in declaring: “The repressive task has been substituted by the task of safeguarding socialist property against thieves and those who squander the people’s property."
Obviously, it’s a declaration that’s somewhat problematic, even mystifying: certainly it doesn’t concretely reflect the situation of the USSR in 1939, when the Terror rained havoc and the Gulag expanded monstrously. But here we are dealing with another aspect: is the thesis of the state’s withering away valid, and if so, up to what point? Will we also retain the state under communism? “Yes, it will be retained, if the capitalist encirclement is not eliminated, if the threat of foreign military aggression is not eliminated." Thus, the realization of communism in the Soviet Union or in a select number of countries would have meant the fading away of the first function of the socialist state (the defense against the danger of counter-revolution from within), although not the second function (the protect against external threats) that, with the presence of powerful capitalist countries, would have continued being vital even “in a communist era." But why would the third function―”economic and cultural work”, as well as the “safeguarding of socialist property from thieves and those who squander the people’s property”― have to end following the collapse of the capitalist encirclement and the absence of the second function? There’s no doubt that Stalin shows indecision and contradiction, likely driven by the necessity of moving with caution through a political minefield, where any deviation with respect to the classic thesis of the state’s withering away would expose him to the accusation of betrayal.
The Assassination of Kirov: State Conspiracy or Terrorism?
From the start, The leadership group that takes power in October 1917 proves to be profoundly divided around the most important domestic and international political questions. That division, contained only while Lenin was still alive, becomes unbridgeable following the passing of the charismatic leader. Will the clash remain isolated to the political-ideological realm?
Long gone are the times in which, with regards to the Sergei M. Kirov case (frontline leader of the CPSU, shot and killed at his office’s front door by a communist youth, Leonid Nikolaev, December 1st, 1934, in Leningrad), one could write that “there’s no doubt about the fact that the assassination was organized by Stalin and executed by his police agents." The account and the insinuations contained in the Secret Report had already raised strong doubts in the middle of the 1990s. But now we can make use of the work by a Russian researcher, published in French by Stéphane Courtois and Nicolas Werth―the editors of The Black Book of Communism. We have before us research that is presented with the most anti-Stalinist credentials possible. And yet, while denying that there was a vast conspiracy behind the assassination, it rips apart the account contained or raised by the Secret Report to the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU. Khrushchev’s report proves to be somewhat “inexact” on a number of details; at the same time, its author “knew that he needed powerful arguments to provoke a psychological shock among the supporters of the ‘peoples’ father’”; thus, the theory of “Stalin’s plot against Kirov perfectly answered that need."
The truly cooperative and friendly relationship that exist between the leader and his colleague become apparent in the account written on Kirov by the Russian historian:
This open man had no love for intrigue, lies, or trickery. Stalin had to have appreciated these character traits that were the basis of their relationship. According to those who knew him at the time, Kirov was in fact capable of raising objections to Stalin, and softening his distrustful and rude spirit. Stalin sincerely cared for him and trusted him. Loving to fish and hunt, he often sent fresh fish and meat from animals he caught. Stalin had such trust in Kirov that he often invited him to the sauna, an “honor” that was conceded to only one another living man, general Vlassik, head of his personal guard.
Until the very end, nothing intervened to disturb that relationship, as is confirmed by the investigations of another Russian historian. In the archives there’s nothing to suggest a political split or a rivalry between the two. This theory is even more ridiculous for the fact that Kirov only participated irregularly “in the activities of the party’s highest organizational body”, the Politburo, in order to concentrate on the administration of Leningrad.
But while “the idea of a rivalry between Kirov and Stalin has no basis”, the reaction from Trotsky, on the other hand, raises questions:
The right-wing political turn on both the internal and external front couldn’t not alarm the most class conscious segments of the proletariat [...]. The youth are also overtaken by a profound unease, especially those that live close to the bureaucracy and observes its arbitrariness, its privileges, and its abuse of power. It’s in this atmosphere that Nikolaev’s gun was fired [...]. It’s extremely probable that he wanted to protest against the existing regime within the party, against an unaccountable bureaucracy and against the turn to the right.
The sympathy or understanding for the author of the attack is transparent, and the disdain and hatred for Kirov are explicit. Far from mourning him as a victim of the dictator in the Kremlin, Trotsky classifies him as the “skilled and unprincipled dictator of Leningrad, a typical personality in his organization." And he goes on to add: “Kirov, the brutal satrap, stirs no compassion in us." The victim was an individual who, for sometime, inspired the wrath of the revolutionaries:
Those who resort to the new terrorism are neither the old ruling classes nor the kulaks. The terrorists in the past few years have been recruited exclusively among the Soviet youth, in the ranks of the communist party’s youth organization.
At least at this time―between 1935 and 1936―the attack on Kirov is in no way discussed as a set-up. It’s stated, yes, that anything can be exploited by the “bureaucracy as a whole”, but at the same time it’s stressed, with some satisfaction, that “every bureaucrat trembles before the terrorism” arising from below. Despite not having the “experience of the class struggle and the revolution”, these youths, who are inclined “to enter clandestine struggle, learning to fight and prepare themselves for the future”, give reason to hope. Trotsky appeals to the Soviet youth, who have already started to spread fear among the members of the ruling elite, calling on them to join the new revolution that draws near. The bureaucratic regime has fought a “battle against the youth”, as has already been denounced in the title of a central paragraph in The Revolution Betrayed. Now, the oppressed will topple the oppressors:
Any revolutionary party will first find support from the ascendant class’s generation of youth. Political senility is expressed by the loss of their capacity to carry the youth [...]. The Mensheviks got their support from the higher and more mature strata of the working class, and for this reason they became haughty and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Events ruthlessly demonstrated their errors: at the decisive moment, the youths dragged along the mature and even older men.
It’s a dialectic destined to be repeated. However immature the initially forms may be, a revolt against oppression always has a positive value. After having made clear his disdain and hatred for Kirov, Trotsky adds:
We remain neutral in relation to the one who killed him only because we don’t know his motives. If we learned that Nikolaev consciously fired his gun with the intention of avenging the workers whose rights have been trampled on by Kirov, without reservations our sympathies would lie with the terrorist.
Like the “Irish terrorists” or those of other countries, the “Russian” terrorists also deserve respect.
Initially, the investigations by authorities centered on the “White Guards." In fact, in Paris these groups were well organized; they have had success in carrying out a “certain number of terrorist attacks in Soviet territory." In Belgrade similar groups operated: their monthly publication specified, in the November 1934 edition, that, in the aim of “toppling the leaders of the Soviet nation”, it’s worthwhile “to utilize the weapon of terrorism." Among the leaders to be assassinated was Kirov himself. However, those investigations were not making progress; Soviet authorities then began looking in the direction of the left opposition.
As we have seen, it’s Trotsky who corroborates the new investigative lead, and he does not stop at highlighting the revolutionary fervor of the Soviet youth, but he also clarifies that those who resort to violence are not, and couldn't be, a definitively defeated class that’s close to surrender:
The history of individual terrorism in the USSR strongly characterizes the country’s general evolutionary stages. At the dawn of Soviet power, the Whites and the socialist revolutionaries organized terrorist attacks in the context of civil war. When the old property owning classes lost all hope for restoration, the terrorism stopped. The attacks by kulaks, that continued on until recently, had a local character; they fought an insurgency against the regime. The most recent terrorism does not get its support from either the old ruling classes or the rich peasantry. The latest generation of terrorists are drawn exclusively from the Soviet youth, from the communist youth wing and from the party, and frequently from the children of party leaders.
While the old ruling classes, swept away by the October Revolution and later with the collectivization of agriculture, have given up, the same does not occur with the proletariat, the protagonists of the revolution, but which is momentarily obstructed and oppressed by the Stalinist bureaucracy. It’s the latter who should be afraid: the attack against Kirov and the increase in terrorism by the Soviet youth are symptomatic of the isolation and the “hostility” that surrounds and harasses the usurpers of Soviet power.
It’s true that Trotsky is quick to clarify that individual terrorism is not really effective. But it’s a classification that’s not all that convincing, and possibly said without much conviction. Meanwhile, under the existing conditions in the USSR, it’s an inevitable phenomenon: “terrorism is the tragic outcome of Bonapartism." Moreover, while it’s not able to resolve the problem, “individual terrorism nevertheless has the importance of being a symptom, as it characterizes the severity of the antagonism between the bureaucracy and the vast popular masses, and particularly the youth." Regardless, the critical mass is rising for an “explosion”, that’s to say a “political cataclysm”, destined to inflict on the “Stalinist regime” the same fate suffered by the regime “led by Nicholas II."
Terrorism, Coups and Civil War
The Fall of the Romanov dynasty was preceded by a long series of attacks promoted by organizations which, despite heavy blows from repression, always managed to reconstitute themselves. In Trotsky’s opinion, a similar process was unfolding in the USSR in response to the ‘betrayal’ consummated by the bureaucracy. What threatens it aren’t individual acts of terrorism, but precursors of another great revolution:
All indications lead us to believe that events are headed toward a conflict between the popular forces, motivated by cultural promotion and the bureaucratic oligarchy. This crisis doesn’t allow for a peaceful solution [...]; the country is clearly headed toward a revolution.
A decisive civil war appears on the horizon and, “in the atmosphere of civil war, the assassination of some oppressors is no longer a matter of individual terrorism”; in any case, “the Fourth International supports a struggle to the death against Stalinism”, destined to eliminate “a faction already condemned by history."
As you can see, the attack against Kirov evokes the spectre of civil war among the forces that had toppled the old regime. In reality, this spectre follows the history of Soviet Russia like a shadow from the moment it is established. To sabotage the peace of Brest-Litovsk, interpreted by Bukharin as a capitulation to German imperialism and a betrayal of proletarian internationalism, he harbors for a moment the idea of a type of coup d’état that would see removed from power, at least for some time, the man who was until that moment the undisputed leader of the Bolsheviks. If it was already out in the open while Lenin was still alive, despite his enormous prestige as a leader, the spectre of the division of the Bolshevik leadership group, and of civil war within that same revolutionary bloc, took complete form in the following years. It’s what unequivocally appears in the important testimony from within the anti-Stalinist opposition and from the deserters of the communist movement, in whom the old faith had transformed into unrelenting hatred. Let’s see how Boris Souvarine describes the situation created in the CPSU around ten years after the October Revolution:
The opposition considers forming its own organization as a clandestine party within the one party, with its miniature hierarchy, its Politburo, its central committee, its regional and local agents, its groups on the ground, its participation quotas, its memos, and its code for correspondence.
The expectations were not just for a political clash, but a military one as well. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the memoirs of Ruth Fischer are published in the United States, at the time a leading figure within the German communist movement and member of the presidium of the Comintern from 1922 to 1924. In this memoir she explains the way in which, in her time, she participated in the “resistance” organization in the USSR against the “totalitarian regime” that had been installed in Moscow. This is in 1926. After breaking with Stalin the year before, Zinoviev and Kamenev drew close to Trotsky: they organize the “bloc” to win power. They then develop a clandestine network that reaches “as far as “Vladivostok” and the Far East: messengers distribute classified party and state documents, transmit coded messages, armed guards provide security to secret meetings. “The leaders of the bloc made preparations for definitive steps”; based on the assumption that the clash with Stalin could only be resolved with “violence”, they met in a forest in the outskirts of Moscow with the aim of analyzing in depth “the military aspect of their program,” starting with the “role of those army units” willing to support the “coup d’état.” Fischer continues:
It was a question that was mostly technical, which should be discussed between the two military leaders, Trotsky and Lashevich [vice-commissar for War, who died soon after, before the purges]. Since as vice-commissar of the Red Army he was still in a favorable legal position, Lashevich was tasked with planning the military action against Stalin.
The street demonstrations the following year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, should be read in that context: from Moscow and Leningrad they extended to “other industrial centers” so as to “force the party hierarchy to give in."
In Europe during those years, it wasn’t a mystery to anyone the severity of the political battle that went on in Soviet Russia: “The history of the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky is the history of the attempt by Trotsky to take power [...], it is the history of a failed coup d’état." The brilliant organizer of the Red Army, still enjoying “immense popularity”, certainly didn’t accept defeat: “His violent polemic and cynical and foolhardy pride made him a type of red Bonaparte backed by the army, the popular masses, and by the rebellious spirit of the young communists against the old Leninist guard and the high clergy of the party." Yes, “the high tide of sedition advances upon the Kremlin."
The author, Curzio Malaparte, who was in Moscow and had interviewed figures at the highest level, gives a reading of the tensions of 1927 which is confirmed by Ruth Fischer, that’s to say, by an authorized representative of the anti-Stalinist opposition:
On the eve of the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the imprisonment of Trotsky would provoke an unpleasant reaction [...]. The occasion chosen by Trotsky to seize state power couldn’t be any better. Like the good tactician he is, he stayed in the shadows. To not appear as a tyrant, Stalin wouldn’t dare arrest him. When he would dare to, it would be too late, thought Trotsky. By the time the lights would go off on the tenth anniversary of the revolution, Stalin would no longer be in power.
As is already known, these plans fail and Trotsky, expelled from the party, sees himself obligated to transfer first to Alma Ata and later to Turkey. There “the Soviet consulate authorities” pay him $1,500 for ‘royalties’ as an author. Although it’s a “ridiculous quantity”, as affirmed by a supporter, historian, and biographer of Trotsky, the gesture could be read as an attempt to not sharpen the contradiction any further.
Conspiracy, Infiltration of the State Apparatus, and “Aesopian Language”
The exiled revolutionary didn’t renounce his plans. But how would he seek to carry them out? Malaparte writes:
The acts of sabotage on the railways, power stations, telephone and telegraph lines increase every day. Everywhere Trotsky’s agents worm their way in. Screwing with the gears of the state’s technical organization, they provoke once in a while the partial paralyzation of sensitive agencies. They are the skirmishes that proceed the insurrection.
Is this a matter of mere illusions or the echo of the regime’s propaganda? The book cited here, after being published, circulated widely in Europe and the thesis within it did not appear to provoke contemptuous smiles or scandalized laughter. Just like with “terrorism”, so we must not lose sight of the particular history of Russia when it comes to “sabotage." In 1908, both the petroleum executives and Stalin repeatedly condemned, with obviously different motives, the certain tendencies within the working class to achieve their demands by resorting to “economic terrorism." Despite stressing that the ultimate cause of this phenomenon was capitalist exploitation, the Bolshevik leader had welcomed “the latest resolution by the strikers from the Mirzoiev [factory], directed against the fires and ‘economic’ assassinations”, and against “the old terroristic” and anarchist tendencies. By the start of the 1930s, had this tradition totally disappeared, or did it continue to manifest in new forms? In any case, we saw the White Guards take advantage of it. What of the left opposition?
The “insurrectionary” plans that Malaparte mentions reveal an important confirmation, at the very least. Here Trotsky’s biographer describes the attitude his hero continued to maintain while in exile: “The instructions are simple: the opposition must take on a solid military training, with a serious commitment to the party and, once expelled from it, in the proletarian and soviet organizations in general, referring always to the International." Here he turns against Soviet power the tradition of conspiracy which greatly contributed to its establishment. In What is to be Done? Lenin especially emphasizes that: We, the revolutionaries, “have to give maximum attention to propaganda and agitation among the soldiers and officers, and the creation of ‘military organizations’ belonging to our party."
Taking note of that lesson, the opposition organizes a clandestine network that gives particular attention to the military apparatus. The tortured process of its creation made the task of infiltrating it easier. What happened at the time the Cheka―the first political police force in Soviet Russia―was created is significant. On July 6th, 1918, an attack takes the life of the German ambassador: the perpetrator was Yakov G. Blumkin, a socialist revolutionary who sought to protest the Brest-Litovsk treaty and reopen the debate on it. When the chief of the Cheka, Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, went to the German embassy in Moscow to offer the apologies of the Soviet government, he is informed the authors of the attack appeared with the Cheka’s credentials. To discover the truth, he proceeds to the headquarters of that institution where he is then arrested by “Cheka dissidents”, themselves either members or close to the Revolutionary Socialist party. Later freed by the Red Guard, Dzerzhinsky then purges the political police and orders the execution of those responsible for the conspiracy and the mutiny. In conclusion, the first victims of the “purge” are members of the Cheka, although they formed part of the opposition.
The perpetrator of the attack managed to flee, but doesn’t yet exit the scene: “Trotsky publicly recognized, toward the end of 1929, having received Blumkin as a guest, while still an agent of the intelligence services of the Red Army.” Lev Sedov, son and colleague of Trotsky, sought to make it appear as something casual, however a document archived in Stanford “shows that the contact between Trotsky and Blumkin didn’t come about by coincidence, but from an organized link within the USSR”; in this content “the secret agent evidently had an important role." It would be this link that pushes Stalin “to order Blumkin’s execution."
As you can see, the opposition “agents infiltrate everywhere." Even “in the GPU” a “small nucleus of Trotsky’s loyalists” remain hidden for a time. According to a contemporary American historian, it’s possible that Genrikh G. Yagoda played a role as a double agent, the man who led the first phase of the Great Terror, before even he is consumed by it. According to the accounts of militant anti-Stalinists, it’s known that “some [opposition] documents were printed in the typography of the GPU”; looking closely, there’s “permanent tension within Russia’s [state] terrorist apparatus."
The infiltration is made easier by the regime’s cautious opening. Upon calling for struggle against the “bureaucratic dictatorship”, Trotsky points out that “the new constitution offers at the same time a semi legal trench from which to fight against it." It is best fought with camouflage, disguising their intentions of seeking to undermine and topple state power. On this point, the leader of the opposition leaves no room for doubt: “the subversive work demands some conspiratorial precautions”; it’s necessary “to observe in the struggle [...] the rules of the conspiracy." Further:
This life and death struggle can’t be conceived without the cunning of war, in other words: without lies and deceptions. Could the German workers possibly avoid deceiving Hitler’s police? Would Soviet Bolsheviks be unethical in deceiving the GPU?
Again the Bolshevik conspiratorial tradition is turned against the regime that emerged out of the revolution. In 1920, Lenin had called for the revolutionaries’ attention to “the obligation of combining illegal forms of struggle with legal forms, with the obligatory participation in the most reactionary parliament and a certain number of other institutions under reactionary laws." And that’s not all: revolutionaries should know how to “face all sacrifices and―in case of necessity―resort to all sorts of tricks and illegal methods, and to silence and to hide the truth with the objective of infiltrating the unions and remaining in them, and realizing there, at whatever cost, the work of a communist." It’s exactly how the opposition conducts itself in relation to the political and social organizations of the hated “Thermidorian” regime. The conspirators follow a precise rule of conduct:
Carry out self criticism, recognize your “errors” and that they are generally corrected. Those called “two faced men” by the Stalinist press, or even the “left-right faction”, from this moment on seek contacts which would allow the broadening of the resistance front to Stalin’s policies. Meet up with other groups on this path...
It’s understandable then the obsession over “duplicity”, the obsession for which Khrushchev condemned Stalin. Meanwhile, the abandonment of NEP culminates in the rupture with Bukharin. Due to the position assumed by the latter, it’s interesting to read the testimony of Humbert-Droz, leader of the Comintern who was expelled from the Communist Party of Switzerland in 1942 over his differences with Stalin. On a trip to the First Conference of the Revolutionary Labor Unions of Latin America in the spring of 1929, he meets with Bukharin and has a meeting with him, which he recalls in these words: “He got me up-to-date on the contacts his group made with the Zinoviev-Kamenev faction to coordinate the struggle against Stalin’s power”, that he anticipated the struggle including “individual terrorism”, whose central objective “was eliminating Stalin” and, to be clear, “eliminate him physically." Three years later, it is another representative of the “right”, Martemyan N. Ryutin, who draws up and circulates a document that passes from hand to hand and which classifies Stalin as a “provocateur” who they must rid themselves of, resorting even to tyrannicide. When Bukharin reveals his plans, Humbert-Droz objects that “the introduction of individual terrorism in the political struggles born out of the Russian Revolution would run the risk of turning against those that used it”, but Bukharin isn’t persuaded. On the other hand, it would be difficult for the objection just seen to persuade a man who, as we now know―as he himself secretly revealed in 1936―harbored a profound “hatred” toward Stalin, in fact, the sort of “absolute” hatred that is reserved for a “demon." While he expressed himself like this in private, Bukharin was in charge of Izvestia, the newspaper of the Soviet government. Are we dealing with obvious incoherence? Not from the point of view of the Bolshevik leader, who continued to combine legal and illegal work, with the aim of toppling a regime that he considered detestable, and who valued another of Lenin’s lessons. In reference to Tsarist Russia, we can read in What is to be Done? that:
In a country ruled by an autocracy, with a completely enslaved press, in a period of desperate political reaction in which even the tiniest outgrowth of political discontent and protest is persecuted, the theory of revolutionary Marxism suddenly forces its way into the censored literature and, though expounded in aesopian language, is understood by all “interested” parties.
This is exactly how Bukharin uses the Soviet government’s newspaper. The condemnation of the “all-seeing total state”, founded on “blind discipline”, “Jesuit obedience”, and on “the glorification of ‘leader’” pretends to alone make reference to Hitler’s Germany, but in fact points to the USSR as well. The “aesopian language” recommended by Lenin becomes immediately transparent when the denunciation refers to “cruel and uncultured provincialism." It’s clearly the portrait of Stalin painted by the opposition. We saw Trotsky refer to him as a “small provincial man”, and in discussions behind closed doors it is Bukharin himself that expresses his disdain for the leader that has succeeded Lenin, despite not knowing any foreign languages.
Continuing on the effectiveness displayed in Tsarist Russia by the revolutionary message expressed in “aesopian language”, What is to be Done? proceeds as follows:
Quite a considerable time elapsed (by our Russian standards) before the government realized what had happened and the unwieldy army of censors and gendarmes discovered the new enemy and flung itself upon him. Meanwhile, Marxists books were published one after another, Marxist journals and newspapers were founded, nearly everyone became a Marxist; Marxists were flattered, Marxists were courted, and the book publishers rejoiced at the extraordinary, ready sale of Marxist literature.
Bukharin and the opposition hoped that a similar phenomenon would create a climate favorable to Stalin’s overthrow. But Stalin also read What is to be Done? And knew the rules of Bolshevik conspiracy well. In conclusion, we witness a prolonged civil war. The clandestine network organizes itself, or seeks to reorganize itself despite successive rounds of repression that become increasingly unforgiving. According to the words of an active militant in the struggle against Stalin: “Despite being stomped on and annihilated, the opposition survived and grew; in the army, in the administration, in the party, in the cities, in the rural areas, every terrorist wave [from Stalin’s regime] brought forth a resistance movement." The leading Bolshevik group now appears divided in a conflict that doesn’t exclude coups and that, at least in the expectations and hopes of Stalin’s enemies, from one moment to another could become open and generalized, involving the entire country. While the opposition turns to Lenin’s lessons and to the conspiratorial tradition of Bolshevism to weave their plans in the shadow, this double game provokes the outrage of Soviet power, which identifies in false friends the most dangerous and insidious enemy: the tragedy heads toward its conclusion.
Infiltration, Disinformation, and Calls for Insurrection
The “rules of the conspiracy” theorized by Trotsky, do they only imply the concealment of one’s own political identity, or could they include the recourse to false denouncements, in order to spread confusion and chaos in the enemy camp and to make more difficult the identification of the clandestine network struggling to topple Stalin’s regime? In other words, do the “rules of the conspiracy” include just the rigorous protection of private information, or do they also allow the use of disinformation? It’s not just the American journalist Anne Louise Strong, sympathetic to the government, who raises such suspicions. In the Secret Report itself it speaks of false charges and “provocations” realized by “authentic Trotskyists”, thereby carrying out their “revenge”, but also “careerists without a conscience” willing to clear the way by using the most contemptible means. Noteworthy is an episode that takes place when the assassination of Kirov is made public. Most reactions―according to Andrew Smith, who at the time worked in the Kuznecov Elektrozavod factory―are of shock and concern in relation to the future; but there’s also those who express regret that it wasn’t Stalin who was shot. Later an assembly is held, during which the workers are encouraged to denounce enemies or possible enemies of Soviet ruling.
Smith recalls his surprise at how, during the debate, the dissident group he was in contact with proved to be the most active in attacking the opposition and deviationists, and seeking the most severe measures against them.
Indicative as well is an episode that occurs outside the USSR, but could help in understanding what occurs inside that country. When general Alexandr M. Orlov, a former high-level collaborator with the NKVD (and in 1938 sheltering in the United States), is accused by the journalist Louis Fischer of having participated in the liquidation of anti-Stalinist communists during the Spanish Civil War, he responds with the false revelation that it was his accuser, in fact, who was a spy in service to Moscow.
In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, we have seen the opposition infiltrating the repressive apparatus at the highest levels: it would be very strange if, after having achieved this objective, it limited itself to obeying Stalin’s orders. Disinformation carries the double advantage of obstructing the machinery of repression and redirecting it against an especially hated enemy; it’s an integral part of war: and that’s what it’s about, at least judging by Trotsky’s argument in July of 1933, when he considers the counter-revolutionary civil war carried out by the “Stalinist bureaucracy” to be “already underway”, and which culminated in the “infamous annihilation of the Leninist-Bolsheviks." Therefore it’s necessary to be aware of the new situation. “The slogan for the reform of the CPSU” doesn’t make sense anymore. A head-on struggle is imposed: the party and the International led by Stalin, now on their last leg, “can only bring misfortune and nothing but misfortune” to the “world proletariat”; on the opposing side, the authentic revolutionaries certainly can’t be inspired in their actions by “petty bourgeois pacifists. "There can be no doubt: “Only with violence can the bureaucracy be forced to return power to the hands of the proletarian vanguard." Hitler’s rise to power for Trotsky doesn’t mean that unity is necessary, in the aim of confronting the enormous danger which looms, starting from Germany; it means that they can’t stop half-way in the struggle against a power, Stalinism, which had led to the defeat of the German and international proletariat.
As you can see, it’s the very leader of the opposition who speaks of “civil war” within the party that he in part led during the October Revolution and in the first years of Soviet Russia. Before us is the topic which constituted the starting thread of the investigation by a Russian historian who is a convinced and self-declared Trotskyist, author of a monumental and multi-volume work, dedicated precisely to the detailed reconstruction of this civil war. He speaks, regarding Soviet Russia, of a “preventive civil war” carried out by Stalin against those who had organized to topple him. Even outside the USSR, this civil war takes shape and at times intensifies within the front that fought against Franco; in fact, referencing Spain from 1936-1939, he speaks not of one, but “two civil wars." With great intellectual honesty and taking advantage of new and rich documentary material available thanks to the opening of Russian archives, the author cited here reaches this conclusion: “The Moscow trials weren’t a crime without motive nor in cold blood, but more accurately Stalin’s reaction during an acute political struggle."
In arguing against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who paints the victims of the purges as a bunch of “rabbits”, the Russian Trotskyist historian cites a pamphlet which in the 1930s called for the Kremlin to be cleared of “the fascist dictator and his clique." He then comments: “including from the perspective of Russian legislation in force today, this pamphlet would be judged as a call for the violent overthrow of the government (the ruling elite to be more precise)." In conclusion, far from being an “irrational and senseless outbreak of violence”, the bloody terror carried out by Stalin is in fact the only way he could defeat the “resistance of the true communist forces." “The party of the executed”, is how he defined those targeted, “in an analogy to the expression used to identity the French Communist Party, the principal force of anti-fascist resistance and privileged target of Hitler’s terror.". Thus, Stalin is compared to Hitler; highlighting the fact that the communist and French partisans didn’t limit themselves to a passive or nonviolent resistance while opposing the latter.
Civil War and International Maneuvers
It’s no surprise that, from time to time, this or that superpower had sought to take advantage of the latent civil war in Soviet Russia. Who solicits or hopes to provoke foreign intervention is, sometimes, the defeated faction, which believes it has no other hope for success. Such a dynamic unfolds starting from the first months of Soviet Russia. Let’s return to the attack of July 6th of 1918. It is an integral part of a very ambitious project. On one end, the Left Revolutionary Socialists promote “counter-revolutionary uprisings in a number of urban centers against the Soviet government”, or rather “an insurrection in Moscow which hoped to topple the communist government”; on the other end, they also propose to “assassinate various German representatives” with the aim of provoking a military reaction from Germany and the subsequent resumption of the war. It would be confronted with a levée en masse by the Russian people, which would inflict a simultaneous defeat to the traitorous government and the enemy invader. The perpetrator of the attack against the German ambassador is a sincere revolutionary: well before entering into contact with Trotskyist circles, he intends to emulate the Jacobins, protagonists of the most radical phase of the French Revolution and of the heroic mass resistance against the invasion by the counter-revolutionary powers. However, in the eyes of Soviet authority, Blumkin could very well be a provocateur: the success of his plan would have resulted in a new advance by the armies of Wilhelm II and, perhaps, the toppling of the authority born out of the October Revolution.
The interaction between internal and international politics appears in all historical changes. Hitler’s rise to power, with the annihilation or decimation of the German section of the Communist International, represents a hard blow to the Soviet Union: what consequences would it have for internal political stability? On March 30th, 1933, Trotsky blames the ruling bureaucracy in the USSR for the defeat of the communists in Germany, and writes that “the liquidation of Stalin’s regime” is “absolutely inevitable and [...] isn’t far off." In the summer of that same year, Daladier’s government in France allows Trotsky to visit: only a few months after the previous rejection by Herriot, and doubts arise about the reasons for this change. Ruth Fischer thinks that the French government did so on account of “Stalin’s weakened position”, the “reorganization of the opposition against him”, and Trotsky’s nearing return to Moscow with leading responsibilities at the highest level.
A new and dramatic turn of events arises with the outbreak of the Second World War. In the spring of 1940, the Soviet Union is still outside the gigantic conflict, and it even remains committed to the non-aggression pact with Germany. It is an intolerable situation for the countries already facing Hitler’s aggression; taking the Finno-Russian conflict as a pretext, they consider a plan to bombard the petroleum centers in Baku. It’s not just a matter of striking the Third Reich’s energy supply line: “the Franco-British military plans sought to break the military alliance between the Soviet Union and Germany through attacks against the oil industries in the Caucasus region and bringing a post-Stalinist regime to their side against Germany."
Let’s return for a moment to the attack against German ambassador Mirbach. The perpetrator certainly had in mind triggering a German attack, but not because he hopes for their victory: on the contrary, he hoped the assault would awaken Russia, leading it to a decisive response. Later we see Blumkin participating in the conspiracy led by Trotsky. And the latter, for his part, in clarifying his position, compares himself in 1927 to French Prime Minister Clemenceau who, during the First World War, assumed leadership of the country after denouncing the lack of military effectiveness by his predecessors, and therefore proposing himself as the only statesman capable of leading France to victory against Germany. Of the many number of possible interpretations and reinterpretations for this analogy, only one thing was made clear: not even the invasion of the Soviet Union would have put an end to the attempts by the opposition to seize power. Even more disturbing is the already cited comparison of Stalin to Nicholas II: during the First World War, read and denounced as an imperialist war, the Bolsheviks had put forth the slogan of revolutionary defeatism and had identified the tsarist autocracy as the internal and principal enemy, that which they first sought to combat and defeat.
In the years to follow, Trotsky goes way beyond evoking the spirit of Clemenceau: on April 22nd, 1939, he declares his support for “the liberation of so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist yoke." Once independent, it would later be unified with western Ukraine upon being separated from Poland, and with Carpathian Ukraine, annexed earlier by Hungary. Let’s reflect on the moment in which this position is taken. The Third Reich had just carried out the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and rumors grow which indicate that the Soviet Union (and especially Ukraine) is Germany’s next objective. In these circumstances, in July of 1939, it is even Kerensky who takes a stand against Trotsky’s surprising project which, according to the Menshevik leader, only favors Hitler’s plans. “It’s the same opinion from the Kremlin” was the quick response from Trotsky who, on the other hand, in an article from April 22nd had written that with Ukraine’s independence “the Bonapartist clique will reap what they have sown”; it’s good for the “current Bonapartist caste to be undermined, shaken, destroyed and swept away”; only that way is the road paved for a real “defense of the Soviet Republic” and its “socialist future." Soon after the invasion of Poland begins, Trotsky goes even further. In foreseeing the final ruin of the Third Reich, he adds: “However, before going to hell, Hitler could inflict such a defeat on the Soviet Union that it could cost the head of the oligarchy in the Kremlin." That prediction (or that desire) of the liquidation (physical as well) of the “Bonapartist clique” or “caste” carried out by a revolution from below, or even by a military invasion, couldn’t not be seen in the eyes of Stalin as confirmation of the suspicions about the convergence, at least the objective convergence, between the Nazi leadership and the Trotskyist opposition; both had an interest in provoking the collapse of the internal front in the USSR, even if the first saw that collapse as the precondition for the Slavic nation’s enslavement, and the second saw it as the precondition for the outbreak of a new revolution.
Also, it’s not a particularly ignominious suspicion: acting like the new Lenin, Trotsky aspired to use to his advantage the dialectic that had led to the defeat of the Russian army, the toppling of the tsarist autocracy and the victory of the October Revolution. Once again, the past history of Bolshevism is turned against Soviet power. Kerensky, who in 1917 had denounced the treason by the Bolsheviks, now warns of the treason by those who define themselves as “Bolshevik-Leninists." From Stalin’s point of view, there’s been a radical change with respect to the First World War: now it’s a matter of confronting a political party or faction which, at least with respect to the first phase of the conflict, hopes for the collapse of the country and the military victory of a Germany not yet depleted from three years of war, as was the case with Wilhelm II, but at the height of its power and explicitly dedicated to building its colonial empire in the East. Given this context, it’s certainly not surprising that the accusation of treason is raised. Let’s return to the article by Trotsky from April 22nd, 1939. In it there’s but a single affirmation which could have received Stalin’s agreement: “The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece."
While the flames of the Second World War burn ever higher, destined as well to reach the Soviet Union according to the same prediction by Trotsky, he continues making declarations and statements that are anything but reassuring. Let’s see a few of them: “Soviet patriotism can’t be separated from the irreconcilable struggle against the Stalinist clique” (June 8th, 1940); “The Fourth International has recognized for some time now the need to topple the bureaucracy [in power in Russia] through a revolutionary uprising by the workers” (September 25th, 1939); “Stalin and the oligarchy led by him represent the principal danger to the Soviet Union” (April 13th, 1940). It is quite understandable that the “bureaucracy” or the “oligarchy”, branded as the “principal enemy”, is convinced that the opposition, if not at the direct service of the enemy, is in any case ready from the start to follow-up its actions.
Any government would have found organizations of this orientation to be a threat to national security. Only to fuel Stalin’s concerns and suspicions is the prediction by Trotsky (September 25th 1939), of an “imminent revolution in the Soviet Union”: only “a few years or perhaps months away from the inglorious collapse” of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Where does such certainty come from? Is it a prediction formulated while only taking into account the internal developments within the country?
It becomes even more complicated upon analyzing the interplay between internal political conflict in Russia and international tensions; the suspicions and accusations are in fact encouraged by the existence of a fifth column and by disinformation operations carried out by Nazi Germany’s intelligence services. In April of 1939, Goebbels writes in his diary: “Our clandestine radio station in Eastern Prussia which broadcasts into Russia has caused an uproar. It operates in Trotsky’s name and causes trouble for Stalin." Immediately after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the leader of the Third Reich’s propaganda services is even more pleased: “now we are using three clandestine radio stations in Russia: the first is Trotskyist, the second separatist, the third Russian-nationalist, all are critical of the Stalinist regime." It’s an instrument the aggressors give great importance to: “We work with all methods, especially the three clandestine radio stations in Russia”; these “are a model of cunning and finesse." On the role of “Trotskyist” propaganda, the diary entry from July 14th is especially significant, which references the treaty between the Soviet Union and Great Britain and the joint statement by the two countries, it proceeds as follows: “This is an excellent occasion to show the compatibility between capitalism and Bolshevism [here a synonym for official Soviet authority]. The statement will find scarce acceptance among Leninist circles in Russia” (having in mind that Trotskyists like to define themselves as “Bolshevik-Leninists”), in contrast to the “Stalinists”, considered traitors to Leninism.
Naturally, the intention by Stalin and his collaborators to collectively condemn the opposition as a den of enemy agents appears grotesque today, but it’s important not to lose sight of the historical context broadly presented here. It’s especially necessary to have in mind that similar suspicions and accusations were raised against the Stalinist leadership. After having labelled Stalin as a “fascist dictator”, the pamphlets which the Trotskyist network circulated in the Soviet Union added: “The leaders of the Politburo are either mentally ill or mercenaries of fascism." Even official documents of the opposition insinuated that Stalin could be the protagonist of a “gigantic and deliberate provocation." On both sides, instead of committing to an exhaustive analysis of the objective contradictions, and how political conflicts interrelate with them, they prefer to quickly resort to the category of treason and, in its extreme form, the traitor becomes a conscious and valuable agent for the enemy. Trotsky doesn’t tire in denouncing the “plot of the Stalinist bureaucracy against the working class”, and the plot is even more despicable because the “Stalinist bureaucracy” is nothing more than “imperialism’s transmission device." It’s not necessary to say that Trotsky is on the receiving end as well: he laments at seeing himself described as an “agent of a foreign power”, but in turn labels Stalin as an “agent provocateur at Hitler’s service."
The most infamous accusations are exchanged by both sides; on closer examination, the most incredible are those coming from the opposition. The conflicted and tormented mood of its leader was carefully analyzed by a Russian historian not suspected of having Stalinist sympathies:
Trotsky didn’t want the defeat of the Soviet Union, but Stalin’s collapse. In his predictions on the imminent war, his unease is evident: the exile knew that only his country’s defeat could put an end to Stalin’s power [...]. He desired war, because in that war he saw the only possibility of toppling Stalin. But Trotsky didn’t want to admit this even to himself.
“Bonapartist Reaction”, “Coup d’Etats” and Disinformation: The Tukhachevsky Case
With a civil war (latent or in the open) within the new leadership group born out of the toppling of the old regime, with mutual accusations of betrayal and collaboration with the imperialist enemy and the extensive activities of their intelligence services, dedicated both to the recruitment of agents as well as to subversion, it’s in this context that we must place the events that in 1937 led to the prosecution and execution of marshal Tukhachevsky and a number of other leading officers in the Red Army.
There’s a long history behind this case. Years earlier Lenin saw the Bonapartist danger threatening Soviet Russia and also expressed his concerns to Trotsky: would civil authority really be able to subordinate military authority? In 1920, Tukhachevsky seems to have wanted to make the decision regarding the march on Warsaw―a dream of his. There clearly emerges―a leading historian from our time observes―the possibility of the brilliant general “becoming the Bonaparte of the Bolshevik Revolution." Ten years later, Stalin is warned by the GPU about the schemes that are being forged by military elements opposed to him. Was there no cause for alarm? In April of the following year, it was Trotsky who expresses his great doubts regarding Tukhachevsky, offering the following analysis of the situation created in the USSR after the political defeat of Bukharin and his allies on the “right”: the principal danger for socialism is represented not by “Thermidorian reaction”, which would formally conserve the country’s Soviet character and the communist character of the ruling party, but by “Bonapartist reaction”, that will take “the most open, ‘most mature’ form of the counter-revolution, that will be waged against the Soviet system and the Bolshevik party as a whole, unsheathing the saber in the name of bourgeois property." In such a case, “the most adventurous praetorian elements like Tukhachevsky” could play a role of great importance. Those opposing them “with weapons in hand” would be the “revolutionary elements” of the party, the state and―take note―”the army”, reunited around the working class and the “Bolshevik-Leninist faction” (that is, the Trotskyists).
This stance constitutes a new factor in the conflict between the Bolsheviks. Despite having “the armed forces under his control”, Stalin “was careful not to get them too closely involved in the controversies and intrigues that shook the party and the state”; now, clearly, the opposition seeks to gain entry or to consolidate its presence in the army in the name of the struggle against the Bonapartist threat; after all, only it would be able to meaningfully oppose it. However, not allowing himself to be intimidated by this Bonapartist threat, in 1935 Stalin grants Tukhachevsky and four other military officers the title of marshal. It’s a promotion made in the context of a reform that sees the army abandon its “predominantly territorial militia character”, becoming “a true standing army” and restoring “the old pre-revolutionary discipline." On December 21st of the same year, together with other members at the apex of Soviet political and military leadership, the new marshall celebrates Stalin’s birthday at the latter’s home “until 5:30 in the morning!”, Dimitrov emphasizes.
It’s precisely that reform which draws Trotsky’s outrage, who, on the one hand, returns to the old denunciation: the Red Army “was not spared in the Soviet regime’s degeneration; on the contrary, that degeneration found in the army its highest expression." On the other hand, Trotsky takes on a new tone, mentioning the “formation of a new kind of opposition faction in the army”, which, from the left, laments the abandonment of the “focus on world revolution." And the text cited here, it somewhat suggests that this opposition could have lured in Tukhachevsky himself: a man who in 1921 had fought with “excessive zeal” for the formation of a “world high-command” could hardly have supported the abandonment of internationalism and the “cult to the status quo” that had taken hold in the USSR. What to say of this text? The agitation in the army continues and appears to be strengthening; only that now the approaching struggle doesn’t oppose a “Bolshevik-Leninist faction” against the Bonapartist generals, but a reliable part of the army and its leadership against the Thermidorian leaders and traitors in the Kremlin. The resistance by the Red Army, and its rebellion against state power, would be further justified by the fact that its new political course constituted a “double coup d’état” that, in breaking with the Bolshevik October, arbitrarily proceeded to the “elimination of the militias” and the “restoration of the officer caste, eighteen years after its revolutionary suppression”; rising up against Stalin, the Red Army would have, in fact, prevented the coup d’états he was planning and would have reestablished revolutionary legitimacy. As if all of that wasn’t enough, the Trotskyist Opposition Bulletin announces an imminent revolt by the army. Perhaps a measure taken in Moscow some months before the trials aimed to confront that possible threat. “On March 29th, 1937, the Politburo debated the removal from the Red Army of all commanders and officers who had been expelled from the party for political motives, transferring them to the economic ministries.
The rumors spread by White Russian exiles in Paris about a military coup d’etat that was being prepared in Moscow fueled even more the climate of suspicion and concern. Finally, during the latter half of January 1937, the Czechoslovakian president, Edvard Beneš, receives intelligence about the secret “negotiations” underway between the Third Reich and “the anti-Stalinist clique in the USSR of marshal Tukhachevsky, Rykov and others”: was there some basis to the accusation, or was it all a set-up by German intelligence services? Yet early on in 1937, in speaking with his foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, Hitler rejects the idea of an improvement in relations with the USSR, but adds: “It would be different if things in Moscow developed in the direction of an absolute despotism under the control of the military. It that case it would be wrong to miss the opportunity to make our presence felt again in Russia." Beneš also keeps the French leaders up to date on those “negotiations”, thereby “notably weakening confidence in the French-Soviet pact." Therefore it wasn’t Stalin alone who believed the information shared by the Czechoslovakian president. Moreover, even after the end of the Second World War, Churchill appears to confirm Moscow’s version, stressing, as we will see (infra, ch. 7, § 2), that the purge struck the “pro-German elements”, adding: “Stalin felt he owed a great deal of gratitude to president Beneš."
At any rate, the question remains without an answer, and to conclusively answer it only a private conversation of Hitler’s in the summer of 1942 offers some assistance. Despite not mentioning a concrete military conspiracy, he observes that Stalin had serious reasons to fear being killed by Tukhachevsky’s inner circle. If it had all been a set-up with Hitler’s direct supervision or approval, he would have perhaps boasted of it at a time in which the memories were still fresh of the initial and unstoppable advances by the Wehrmacht.
In asking the key question (“was there really a military conspiracy?”) about the then recent “trials” and executions, Trotsky gives an answer that raises more questions. “It all depends on what one considers to be a conspiracy. Any sign of discontent and any contact made among those who are disgruntled, any criticism and any consideration about what to do, or how to oppose the government’s shameful policies, all of this, from Stalin’s point of view, is a conspiracy. It’s a totalitarian regime, all opposition is undoubtedly the seed of a conspiracy”; in that sense, the “seed” was the generals’ aspirations to protect the army from the “demoralizing intrigues of the GPU." Is it his rejection of the conspiracy theory, or is it his corroboration of it, expressed in the “Aesopian language” imposed by circumstances? Who calls attention to that ambiguous declaration is the fervent Trotskyist and Russian historian we’ve already encountered (Rogowin), who ends up accepting the thesis of the “anti-Stalinist conspiracy” by Tukhachevsky, putting it in a “Bolshevik” political context rather than a bourgeois one.
To conclude, doubts remains, but it seems difficult to explain all that had happened with the usual deux ex machina, the power hungry and bloodthirsty dictator, eager to surround himself with puppets, blind and unconditional in their loyalty. This explanation is all the more fragile for the fact that in 1932 Stalin had no issues in attending, together with Molotov, classes by the commandant of the Military Academy, Boris M. Shaposhnikov; and Stalin gained a lot from these classes, given by a highly decorated strategist, yet who was not a member of the communist party. Moreover, “military science was one of the few politically important fields in which Stalin favored originality and innovation”, to the extent that “the officer corps” could exercise considerable “spiritual independence." Taking the place of Tukhachevsky and his subordinates are generals who, far from being passive yes-men, frankly expressed their opinions and made arguments according to their own judgment, not hesitating to contradict the supreme leader, who, moreover, encourages and sometimes rewards that attitude (supra, ch. 1, § 6).
Three Civil Wars
If we don’t want to be held prisoners to the caricatures of Stalin drawn by Trotsky and Khrushchev during two different but equally intense political struggles, it’s necessary not to lose sight of the fact that the events that began in October 1917 are marked by three civil wars. The first war saw the confrontation between the revolution on one side, and the coalition of its enemies on the other, supported by capitalist powers committed to containing the Bolshevik contagion by any means possible. The second war is more or less the collectivization of agriculture, which is driven by a revolution from above or from afar, despite in part being driven by the peasantry from below. The third is that which divided the Bolshevik leadership group.
The last one is even more complex because it’s characterized by great mobility and by the dramatic shifts in its frontlines. We saw Bukharin, on the occasion of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, momentarily flirt with the idea of a type of coup d’état against Lenin, who he condemns for wanting to transform “the party into a dung heap." While at that moment Bukharin’s position is similar to Trotsky’s, in the eyes of the latter he becomes, ten years later, the privileged incarnation of Thermidorian reaction and betrayal by the bureaucracy: “With Stalin against Bukharin? Yes. With Bukharin against Stalin? Never." It’s a moment when Trotsky appears to predict Stalin’s turn against Bukharin: the latter would have immediately “toppled Stalin as a Trotskyist, exactly how Stalin had toppled Zinoviev." We are in 1928 and there’s already hints of the split between Stalin and Bukharin, who in fact, because of the abandonment of NEP, begins “privately describing Stalin as the representative of neo-Trotskyism” and as “an unprincipled schemer”; in the last analysis, as the worst and most dangerous enemy inside the party. Thus, the former member of the duumvirate proceeds down the path that will unite him with Trotsky. Ultimately, the opposing sides form coalitions against the victor; it becomes clear that in the mortal conflict between the Bolsheviks, the alignments change rapidly until the very end.
Fought in a country without a liberal tradition and characterized both by the prolonged state of emergency and by the persistence of an ideology prone to liquidating as merely “formal” the norms that govern the rule of law, the third civil wars take on the ferocity of a religious war. Trotsky, who “considers himself the only man able to lead the revolution”, is inclined to use “any means available to make the ‘false messiah’ fall from his throne." A “zealous faith” inspires the opposing side as well (infra, ch. 4, § 4). And the more Stalin is determined to eliminate all conspiratorial threats, including the most unlikely, the more heavily loom the clouds of a war that threatens the very existence of Russia and the homeland of socialism, and which therefore represent a mortal threat both to the national cause as well as the social cause, two causes Stalin is determined to lead.
While their distinctions are hard to make out (acts of terrorism and sabotage can be the expression of a counter-revolutionary project or of a new revolution), the three civil wars become tied up in the interventions by this or that great power. The entirety of these convoluted and tragic conflicts vanish in the differing accounts, described first by Trotsky and later by Khrushchev, that tell simple fables and construct a monster who at his mere touch transforms gold into blood and dirt.
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