Luxemburg & Left SR postion The Treaty of Brest Litovsk

[Coggeh]

I was reading through some articles by Rosa Luxemburg and her criticisms which merit a decent read and one of the few examples of a real constructive revolutionary criticism of the Bolsheviks (Though thats not to say I'm in agreement I just think her criticisms are decent ones .. if that makes sense)

Anyway: In the Russian Tragedy her she states:


In fact the ‘peace’ of Brest-Litovsk is an illusion. Not for a moment was there peace between Russia and Germany. War has continued since Brest-Litovsk up to the present time, but the war is a unique one, waged only by one side: systematic German advance and tacit Bolshevik retreat, step by step. Occupation of the Ukraine, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, larger and larger tracts of the southern Russia – this is the result of the ‘state of peace’ since Brest-Litovsk.

And this has meant a number of things. In the first place, the strangulation of the revolution and the victory of the counter-revolution in the revolutionary strongholds of Russia. For Finland, the Baltic provinces, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Black Sea region – this is all Russia, namely the terrain of the Russian Revolution, no matter what the empty, petit-bourgeois phrase-mongers may babble about the ‘right of national self-determination’.[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/09/11.htm#n1)

Secondly, this means the isolation of the Great Russian part of the revolutionary terrain from the grain-growing and coal-mining region and from the sources of iron-ore and naphtha, that is, from the most important and vital economic resources of the revolution.

Thirdly, the encouragement and strengthening of all counter-revolutionary elements within Russia, thus enabling them to offer the strongest resistance to the Bolsheviks and their measures.

Fourthly, Germany will play the role of arbiter in Russia’s political and economic relation with all of its own provinces: Finland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and the Caucasus, as well as with the neighbors, for example Rumania.
How would this encourage counter revolutionary elements in Russia ? of course they may attract some support for what is undeniably a poor deal(putting it nicely) but the war was one that was never supported by the Russian masses it was one of two key causes of the revolution to begin with (the other being the land question). The deal however did give the Bolsheviks time to gather time build an organized army capable of defeating the western and domestic imperialist, fascist and other counter revolutionary elements.

The deal was not only key to a successful revolution but also key for the survival of the revolution afterwards.

One other point that springs to mind which is quite juvenile as a counter criticism is the fact that in her own words in another essay mere weeks or months written before hand contradicted her criticism of Russia making a Treaty with Germany :



From the very first moment, the driving force of the revolution was the mass of the urban proletariat. However, its demands did not limit themselves to the realization of political democracy but were concerned with the burning question of international policy – immediate peace. At the same time, the revolution embraced the mass of the army, which raised the same demand for immediate peace, and the mass of the peasants, who pushed the agrarian question into the foreground, that agrarian question which since 1905 had been the very axis of the revolution. Immediate peace and land – from these two aims the internal split in the revolutionary phalanx followed inevitably. The demand for immediate peace was in most irreconcilable opposition to the imperialist tendencies of the liberal bourgeoisie for whom Milyukov was the spokesman. On the other hand, the land question was a terrifying spectre for the other wing of the bourgeoisie, the rural landowners. And, in addition, it represented an attack on the sacred principle of private property in general, a touchy point for the entire propertied class.Here she speaks about the Land and the peace question as what separated the phalanx of the revolutionary vanguards from right wing nationalists, liberal bourgeoise etc from revolutionary socialists.


To even acknowledge this fact is to state the importance of peace to the proletarian and peasant masses without Lenin's key sloganeering thought out in the April theses and the demand of Land and peace the separation of this "revolutionary" phalanx could not be possible.

Also, Her obvious fixation with the Left SR's to even try and excuse the assassinations of Mirbach and Eichhorn as a "signal" of mass uprising in German is quite naive if anything. She does point out the grave error though that the actions of the Left SR have gravely endangered the Russian Revolution and thus if she finds that a bad German reaction was a grave threat to the Bolshevik revolution why then continue to her deafening criticisms of the treaty?

I don't pretend to know 1/50th as much as many users who then to expertise in revolutionary program etc so if one disagrees please don't be harsh lol

[Devrim]

As well as from the SRs there were many critics of the peace within the party.

The 'Left' Communists' Theses on the Current Situation (Russia, 1918) (http://libcom.org/library/theses-left-communists-russia-1918)
discuss the treaty.

It is also discussed in our book, the Russian Communist Left:


Although no communist fraction in Russia at the time succeeded in making a fundamental critique of these substitutionist errors - and this was to remain a failing on the part of the entire Russian left - a revolutionary opposition to the Bolsheviks' early state early state policies crystallised only a few months after the seizure of power. This opposition took the form of the Left Communist group around Ossinski, Bukharin, Radek, Smirnov and others; organised mainly in the party's Moscow Regional Bureau and expressing itself through the factional journal Kommunist. This opposition of early 1918 was the first organised Bolshevik fraction to criticise the party's attempts to discipline the working class. But the original raison d'être of the Left Communist group was its opposition to the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with German imperialism.

This is not the place to undertake a detailed study of the whole Brest-Litovsk issue. In brief the main debate was between Lenin and the Left Communists (led on this issue by Bukharin) who were in favour of a revolutionary war against Germany and denounced the peace treaty as a ‘betrayal' of the world revolution. Lenin defended the signing of the treaty as a way of obtaining a ‘breathing space' while reorganising the military capacities of the Soviet state. The Lefts insisted that:
"The adoption of the conditions dictated by the German imperialists would be an act going contrary to our whole policy of revolutionary socialism; it would lead to the abandonment of the proper line of international socialism, in domestic as well as foreign policy, and could lead to one of the worse kinds of opportunism." (R. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, 1960, p.73)

Acknowledging the technical inability of the Soviet state to wage a conventional war against German imperialism, they advocated a strategy of tying the German army down with guerrilla tactics by flying detachments of Red partisans. The waging of the "holy war against German imperialism", they hoped, would serve as an example to the world proletariat and inspire it to join in the fight.

We do not wish to enter into a retrospective debate about the strategic possibilities open to the Soviet power in 1918. We should make it clear that both Lenin and the Left Communists recognised that the only ultimate hope of the Russian proletariat lay in the world extension of the revolution; both of their motivations and actions were placed within a framework of internationalism and both presented their arguments in full view of the Russian proletariat organised in the Soviets. We therefore consider it inadmissible to define the signing of the treaty as a ‘betrayal' of internationalism. Nor as it turned out, did it mean the collapse of the revolution in Russia or Germany, as Bukharin had feared. In any case, these strategic considerations are imponderable to some extent; one of the most important political questions deriving from the Brest-Litovsk debate is the following: is ‘revolutionary war' the principal means for extending the revolution? Does the proletariat in power in one region have the task of exporting revolution at bayonet point to the world proletariat? The comments of the Italian Left on the Brest-Litovsk question are significant in this regard:

"Of the two tendencies in the Bolshevik party who confronted each other at the time of Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's and Bukharin's, we think that it was the former who was more in line with the needs of the world revolution. The positions of the fraction led by Bukharin, according to which the function of the proletarian state was to liberate the workers of other countries through a ‘revolutionary war', are in contradiction with the very nature of the proletarian revolution and the historic role of the proletariat." (‘Parti-Etat-Internationale: L'Etat Proletarien', Bilan n°18, April-May, 1935)

In contrast to the bourgeois revolution, which could indeed be exported by military conquest, the proletarian revolution depends on the conscious struggle of the proletariat of each country against its own bourgeoisie: "The victory of a proletarian state against a capitalist state (in the territorial sense of the word) in no way means the victory of the revolution". (ibid). The Red Army's advance into Poland in 1920, which only succeeded in driving the Polish workers into the arms of their own bourgeoisie, is proof that military victories by a proletarian bastion cannot substitute for the conscious political action of the world proletariat, and therefore the extension of the revolution is first and foremost a political task. The foundation of the Communist International in 1919 was thus a far greater contribution to the world revolution than any ‘revolutionary war' could have been.

The actual signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, its ratification by the party and the Soviets, coupled with the Left's earnest desire to avoid a split within the party over the issue, ended the first stage of the Left Communists' agitation. Now that the Soviet state had acquired its ‘breathing space', many of the immediate problems facing the party were centred around the organisation of the war-torn economy within Russia. And it was on this question that the Left Communist group contributed its most valuable insights into the dangers facing the revolutionary bastion. Bukharin, the fervent partisan of revolutionary war, was less interested in formulating a critique of majority Bolshevik policy on the internal organisation of the regime; from now on many of the most pertinent criticisms of the leadership's domestic policies were to come from the pen of Ossinsky, who was to prove himself to be a much more consistent oppositional figure than Bukharin.


Devrim

[Blake's Baby]

Do you believe, Coggeh, that the original quote from Luxemburg is a criticism of the Bolsheviks? I think the earlier part makes it quite clear that Luxemburg considers that the Bolsheviks had little choice, and that the main problem was that by signing the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, they had made the revolution in Germany less likely:

"Since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/b/r.htm#brest-litovsk-treaty), the Russian Revolution has entered into a very difficult phase. The policy which has guided the Bolsheviks’ action is obvious: peace at any price in order to gain a respite, during which they can expand and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and realize as many socialist reforms as possible. They plan in this way to await the outbreak of the international proletariat revolution and at the same time to expedite it by the Russian example. Since the utter war-weariness of the Russian masses and the simultaneous military disorganization bequeathed by Tsarism appeared in any case to make the continuation of the war a futile shedding of Russian blood, there was no other way out but to conclude peace as quickly as possible. This is how Lenin and his comrades assessed the situation.
Their decision was dictated by two revolutionary viewpoints: by the unshakable faith in the European revolution of the proletariat as the sole way out and the inevitable consequence of the world war, and by their equally unshakable resolve to defend by any means possible the power they had gained in Russia, in order to use it for the most energetic and radical changes.
And yet these calculations largely overlooked the most crucial factor, namely German militarism, to which Russia surrendered unconditionally through the separate peace. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was in reality nothing but the capitulation of the revolutionary Russian proletariat to German militarism. Admittedly Lenin and his friends deluded neither themselves no other about the facts. They candidly admitted their capitulation. Unfortunately, they did deceive themselves in hoping to purchase a genuine respite at the price of this capitulation, to enable them to save themselves from the hellfire of the world war by means of a separate peace. They did no take into account the fact that the capitulation of Russia at Brest-Litovsk meant an enormous strengthening of the imperialist Pan-German policy and thus a lessening of the chances for a revolutionary rising in Germany. Nor did they see that this capitulation would bring about not the end of the war against Germany, but merely the beginning of a new chapter of this war..."

So Luxemburg sees it as an unfortunate miscalculation - the Bolsheviks have overestimated the strength of the German proletariat relative to the military potential of the German war machine.

But, how could the German advance into Russia not strengthen the hands of those who were fighting against the revolution? The Germans would be happy to work with any group that opposed the Bolsheviks (indeed, they supported the early 'socialist' Polish Republic, some of the nationalist gangs in Ukraine, the Caucuses and Baltic States, and the White armies).

As Rosa says, the Bolsheviks gambled everything on the revolution in the west. Her criticism of Brest-Litovsk I see as being a question of strategy, not orientation. They're both trying to reach the same goal; world revolution. Rosa believes that the signing of Brest-Litovsk makes that less likely, not more likely. But I don't see her recommending an alternative strategy such as revolutionary war,. Her concern is to bring about the same German Revolution that Lenin and Trotsky were banking on, hence her closing declaration:

"There is only one solution to the tragedy in which Russia in caught up: an uprising at the rear of German imperialism, the German mass rising, which can signal the international revolution to put an end to this genocide. At this fateful moment, preserving the honour of the Russian Revolution is identical with vindicating that of the German proletariat and of international socialists."

A conclusion I absolutely agree with, by the way; though, I also agree that the Bolsheviks had to accept the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, for exactly the same reason as Lenin urged that it be signed, for exactly the same reason Bilan approved it in the quote from Devrim above.

[Coggeh]

Thanks man. Excellent post

[chegitz guevara]

And, there was an uprising in the German rear, eight months later, which ended WWI. Lenin's gamble paid off.

Unfortunately, the social democrats drowned the workers uprising in blood.