How bad were the Cheka?

[RadioRaheem84]

Victims were reportedly skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, and rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Chinese Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat into the other end which was then closed off with wire netting. The tube was then held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape. Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[27][28][29]

Cheka attrocities according to Anton Denkin. Although this is the same Denkin of the White Russian Army and the anti-Jewish pogroms.

But the point is that the Cheka are condemned by history as monsters. I was just wondering how much of the stuff out there by them is true? I am sure it might just be but at the same time, how much of it is also anti-Soviet propaganda?

http://books.google.com/books?id=R6HAJIJhNp4C&pg=PA383&dq=red+victory+cheka+torture+beatings&ei=JPDrRvHBDY3goALEseCxDw&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=Q2uKWqXLBGbGzwKVQYfnIR-LWaQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

[syndicat]

during war communism a person could be summarily shot for engaging in illegal trade activity. the thing is, trade in grain had been made illegal as the state claimed a monopoly. but the state food system didn't work. many city dwellers took trains out to their relatives villages or some place where they could barter for grain with peasants. they did this to avoid starvation. so in essence a large part of the population had to do something that had been banned in order to survive. and any person doing this could be summarily executed by the cheka.

people would denounce people to the cheka for purposes of personal revenge. proof wasn't needed.

if you want to read about the repression in that era you could read, say, "The Guillotine At Work" by G. P. Maximov.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Putin defended the role of the Cheka as defending state interests. Any secret police apparatus set up by some other party would have done the same stuff. Keep in mind that the Cheka was set up in response to strikes by upper civil servants.

[syndicat]

ha ha. "strikes by upper civil servants." by summer 1918 the whole economy had been nationalized. the whole workforce were now "civil servants." in the spring of 1918 they were also involved in overthrowing soviets.

so you think the way to deal with strikes is to shoot people and declare martial law? i suppose if you're running a dictatorial regime you might do that. a worker run governmental system under actual mass control wouldn't be so likely to do that.

the cheka also routinely harassed the anarchists, syndicalists and Left Mensheviks.

[RadioRaheem84]

I am trying to put the Cheka in it's historical context. It seems like it was a repressive answer to the problems surrounding the new USSR.

Could it be seen in the same vein as Robespierre's Reign of Terror?

[syndicat]

the period known as the Red Terror occurred during the summer of 1918. oppositional left tendencies were banned or repressed in various ways. thousands of people were executed summarily, without trial, during that period.

saying that it was a response to the "problems" of the USSR is a bit of a euphymism. the Congress of Soviets in Oct 1917 had discussed the idea of a coalition government of the whole left. if that course had been followed, mass protests organized by opposition tendencies (such as the worker conference movement organized by the Left Mensheviks) would have been less likely. the "problem" was one party, arrogant in its assumption that it alone had the right to rule, trying to construct a party-state regime.

[RadioRaheem84]

i suppose if you're running a dictatorial regime you might do that. a worker run governmental system under actual mass control wouldn't be so likely to do that.

How is the answer to everything 'worker control' to you guys? It's not as if the Bolsheviks were completely against the ideal, it's just the reality on the ground did not materialize for the total realization of this immediate goal.

Heck, I would love for that to be the only solution but it seemed like when facing civil war, foreign invasion, internal sabotage, etc, that the faults of the Russian Revolution can be examined in a better light, not because of a lack of anarchist ideals.

You're right about the Cheka though, it did seem like a guillotine at work.

[syndicat]

How is the answer to everything 'worker control' to you guys? It's not as if the Bolsheviks were completely against the ideal, it's just the reality on the ground did not materialize for the total realization of this immediate goal.

the "reality on the ground" was that there were alternatives...alternatives not pursued in part because of the fixation on building a centralized state controlled setup. as to "everything is worker control to you guys", it's my understanding that the socialist movement's purpose for existence is the liberation of the working class, and that this is supposed be done by the workers' own efforts and result in their actual power in society. maybe you missed that part.



Heck, I would love for that to be the only solution but it seemed like when facing civil war, foreign invasion, internal sabotage, etc, that the faults of the Russian Revolution can be examined in a better light, not because of a lack of anarchist ideals.


the cheka was created in Nov 1917. the foreign invasion and civil war didn't really get underway til the revolt of the Check Legion in June 1918. there wasn't really the will to use worker control organizations, community organization and local soviets as the means to both organize for provision of local needs and maintain local order. you say "sabotage", well what? can you give any examples of this?

why a centralized police force accountable only to the Central Committee of one party, the Bolsheviks? the Left SRs later set up their own Cheka units, but because there wasn't really a unified soviet police, independent of party, AFAIK.

[RadioRaheem84]

The Cheka were created in December of 1917,if I am not mistaken, so the problems associated with the Cheka in 1918 were not that far off, especially from the beginning of the White Terror, which started when the Reds took power in Nov. of 1917. There is your sabotage.

I too think that there was this obsession with centralized control, but again I think it was due to the reality on the ground, and less to do with this belief that it was all about power hungry men.

[bailey_187]

Fun fact: during the Cheka's terror, the name Terrora became a popular name to call children

(B.I. Kolonitskii, “Revolutionary Names”: Russian Personal Names and Political Conciuousness in the 1920s and 1930s’, Revolutionary Russia, 1993, vol.6)

[Dire Helix]

After the revolution you`d need an organization to defend it from reactionary elements and forces hostile to it. Cheka was such an organization. And not only did it fight counter-revolutionaries of all sorts, it also played crucial role in eliminating the consequences of the famines and restoring large parts of the country`s infrastructure.

Although I`d say that after Dzerzhinsky`s death the organization quickly deteriorated from being a tool of revolutionary terror to being a tool of state terror used by Stalin to eliminate all opposition(often imaginary) within the party and the army.


Fun fact: during the Cheka's terror, the name Terrora became a popular name to call childrenThere also existed a magazine called Red Terror. Although I think its circulation was limited only to a few regions.

[Zanthorus]

The Cheka's ruthless can in part be explained as a reaction to the devastation of the Civil War. However, another factor that should be taken into account is the instances of anti-Bolshevik terrorism. The infamous 'Red Terror' was announced three days after a failed assasination attempt on Lenin which had hospitalised him and another (Succesful) assasination attempt on the head of the Petrograd Cheka. Most of the early victims of the terror were also from the old Tsarist elite, and the ruthlessness can perhaps be explained in part as a reaction to years of state repression by the autocracy.

The Cheka was actually initially quite a disorganised affair. The sections of the Cheka were set up individually by each local Soviet, and the provincial Soviets were slow in following the initiative of Petrograd and Moscow. To back up DNZ's point, a few of the Left SR's were actually initially quite enthusiastic about the supression of counter-revolutionaries until they broke with the Bolsheviks.


the Congress of Soviets in Oct 1917 had discussed the idea of a coalition government of the whole left... the "problem" was one party, arrogant in its assumption that it alone had the right to rule, trying to construct a party-state regime.

The Bolshevik delegates supported the motion for an All-Soviet coalition government. The problem was that the Right Social-Revolutionary and Menshevik delegates preceeded to denounce the actions of the Military-Revolutionary Committee against the provisional government and subsequently walked out of the Congress, actively aligning themselves with counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet forces. You talk about the Bolsheviks 'arrogant' presumption that it alone had the right to rule, but in 1905 the Bolsheviks had been clear that it would be impossible for the revolutionary socialists to command a majority during the Russian revolution: "incorrect... are Parvus’ statements that “the revolutionary provisional government in Russia will be... an integral government with a Social-Democratic majority”... This is impossible, because only a revolutionary dictatorship supported by the vast majority of the people can be at all durable (not absolutely, of course, but relatively). The Russian proletariat, however, is at present a minority of the population in Russia." (Lenin, Social-Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/sdprg/iv.htm#v08fl62-288)) The supposed presumption of the right to rule was actually contrary to what had been preached by the Bolsheviks up until 1917, it was counter to the idea of the Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry. The Bolsheviks 'arrogant' assumption of the right to rule might have had more to do with the fact that the flow of events had given them the overwhelming majority of delegates at the Second All-Russia Congress.

This is not to mention the fact that the Central Executive Committee elected by the All-Russia congress was comprised of delegates from both the two remaining revolutionary parties: the Bolsheviks and Left Social-Revolutionaries. Nor is it to mention the fact that the Left SR's managed to get representation in the Council of People's Commissars after they split from the Right of the party.


the foreign invasion and civil war didn't really get underway til the revolt of the Check Legion in June 1918.


It is obvious that Soviet power is organised civil war against the landlords, the bourgeoisie, and the Kulaks.
- Trotsky, June 1918

The Russian Civil War began on the 25th of October 1917 when the Petrograd MRC overthrew the provisional government. That event marked the beggining of armed conflict between the various groups of Russian society. If you're not convinced, you could consider the fact that three days later there was a rising of officer cadets in Petrograd in tandem with an attack on the southern skirt of the city by a band of Cossacks led by General Krasnov, which had to be put down by a detachment of armed workers' and soldiers' organised by the People's Commisar for war Antonov-Ovseenko.

[Die Neue Zeit]

ha ha. "strikes by upper civil servants." by summer 1918 the whole economy had been nationalized. the whole workforce were now "civil servants." in the spring of 1918 they were also involved in overthrowing soviets.

so you think the way to deal with strikes is to shoot people and declare martial law?

It depends on the class composition of the strikes. The clearly non-working-class upper civil servants acted like the managers on strike in Venezuela back in 2002-2003. Bust 'em.

[ComradeOm]

The Cheka was actually initially quite a disorganised affair. The sections of the Cheka were set up individually by each local Soviet, and the provincial Soviets were slow in following the initiative of Petrograd and MoscowThis cannot be stressed enough. The image of a centralised hierarchical organisation ruthlessly carrying out the orders of Lenin/Moscow could not be further from the truth. Such images owe more to later perceptions of the KGB than reality. The Cheka was first and foremost a manifestation of the grassroots explosion of violence that accompanied the Revolution. (Hence one of the most marked aspects of its existence - the violence and brutality of its methods - was directly derived from traditional peasant cruelties and tortures). The Cheka was organised in an exceptionally loose manner with cells first responsible to local authorities. It wasn't until late 1918 that there were even any real discussions on creating a vertical chain of command

In short, like everything else in Russia 1917-18 the Cheka was an ad-hoc response to real pressures and challenges at a grassroots level. The result was huge structural variation, much wasted effort and a great deal of independence for the various cells. To give an example, the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky who Zanthorus has referred to, put up very strong resistance from both Moscow and his own ranks to launch a strong offensive against counter-revolutionary elements in the city. Ironically of course it was his assassination that triggered the eventual 'red terror' in Petrograd, but this does serve to illustrate just how decentralised the organisation was when its branch in Russia's first/second city had huge scope for independent action and policy. Its also worth noting the influence of the Left SRs in the Petrograd Cheka at the time

So talking about a "centralized police force accountable only to the Central Committee of one party" is absolute nonsense. But then you might expect as much from a emigre work entitled The Guillotine At Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution


ha ha. "strikes by upper civil servants." by summer 1918 the whole economy had been nationalizedI believe that DNZ was referring to the refusal of Tsarist bureaucrats to acknowledge the new Soviet government in Nov-Dec 1917. This was what Lenin referred to as "political sabotage"

That said, to address DNZ's point, a more pressing driver for the creation of the Cheka was the fact that the Petrograd military revolutionary committee (MRC), which had been effectively running the city since the October Revolution, was rapidly getting out of control. Complaints were mounting about its arbitrary arrests, censorship and general policing. The Cheka was a product of the imperative need to put governance on a sounder and more permanent footing

[syndicat]

so, refusal of a few tsarist officials to "recognize" the regime requires a nation-wide political police with powers of summary execution? that idea doesn't survive the laugh test.

the assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief and attempt on Lenin was part of the populist response to the war on the peasants that was organized by the Bolsheviks beginning spring of 1918. The Bolsheviks said they were only aiming at the "Kulaks" but this was mere P.R. the Kulak class were a small minority of well off farmers who owned 10 hectares of more of land, which was the minimum needed to run a farm where you had to hire farm laborers to work for you. the peasantry had already seized a lot of Kulak land in the summer and fall of 1917. in reality the punitive expeditions into the countryside were aimed at the ordinary or "middle" peasants. the whole business of cheka participation in the grain requisitions effort also meant, as I said above, that anyone who was involved in the illicit trade...and this was a huge percentage of the population since the govt food system wasn't working...could be summarily shot by the cheka.

yes, the Bolshevik regime was not all centered in the Central Committee or the capitol. In fact, one of the major causes of discontent by the working class in the spring of 1918 was their belief that contradictory orders from different Bolshevik centers was creating chaos, disorganizing the economy. They called this "chaos from above". Criticisms of this sort were brought out during the Left-Menshevik worker conference movement in 1918, which was created in response to the overthrow of numerous soviets by the cheka and Bolshevik-controlled military units in the spring of 1918.

It's possible, moreover, to have a "centralized" approach that is also decentralized. this is when you have the centering of control in the hands of a relative few in a locality or province and these local centers act in an uncoordinated way. this was what was going on in 1918.


The Bolshevik delegates supported the motion for an All-Soviet coalition government. The problem was that the Right Social-Revolutionary and Menshevik delegates preceeded to denounce the actions of the Military-Revolutionary Committee against the provisional government and subsequently walked out of the Congress, actively aligning themselves with counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet forces.

yes, and then, at Lenin's insistence, the Bolshevik delegates switched their position when the opportunity arrived for instituting a govenment controlled by their party. Lenin was opposed to the idea of government of the left. Much of the radical left in Oct 1917 thought that transfer of power to the Congress of Soviets would make the Congress's Central Exec Committee the government. The CEC had Left-Mensheviks, and even some libertarian socialists (maximalists, syndicalists, anarchists) in its ranks, plus the Left SRs. so to claim that the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks were "the only revolutionary parties" is a bit misleading. Once the right wing SR and right-Menshevik delegates walked out, the Bolshevik party had a temporary majority. they took advantage of that opportunity to concentrate government in the hands of a much smaller committee, the Council of People's Comissars. they were forced into a coalition with the Left SRs for a time because the Left SRs obtained a majority at the Peasant Congress in Nov 1917 after the right-SRs walked out.

after Nov 1917 the Bolsheviks also packed the soviet congress and CEC by allowing union bureaucrats and officials of soldier organizations to be delegates...violating the soviet principle of direct election. that enabled the Council of People's Delegates to start ruling be decree and ignoring the CEC (nominal legislature) in not too many months.

[ComradeOm]

so, refusal of a few tsarist officials to "recognize" the regime requires a nation-wide political police with powers of summary execution? that idea doesn't survive the laugh testI suggest you stop laughing and start reading

In the first place, these 'strikes' were a serious matter that threatened to undermine at a stroke the transfer of power to the Soviet. Trotsky entered the Foreign Ministry to find that safes were located, information withheld and it quite impossible to get any work done. The situation was similar, and far more pressing, in other departments. The banks were shut - thus depriving the new state of much needed currency - the telegraphs did not work and what was left of the old state apparatus simply froze up in an attempt to strangle the new government before it even started governing*. Put this in the context of the struggle to expand soviet power, plus the fighting in the Ukraine and the Don Basin, and it was no laughing matter

Secondly, it was not the 'strikes' themselves that served as the rationale for the creation of the Cheka. Rather these were merely a manifestation of what Lenin called, as noted above, "political sabotage" - ie, an attempt by counter-revolutionary elements to hinder or destroy the new Soviet government. Combating this was the Cheka's remit, not clearing out a few ministries

And finally, I mentioned above that all this was merely one driver behind the establishment of the Cheka. It was not even the primary motivation. Nor was the Cheka a "nation-wide political police" force in any real sense of the term. It was a means of refining the role of the various MRCs - plus Red Guards and other ad hoc bodies that had sprung up during 1917 - relative to the Soviet structures. This actually involved diminishing their roles and restricting them to a to a largely passive police role, which was badly needed given the breakdown in order and rocketing crime rates that accompanied the Revolution. Instead of creating some sort of omni-present secret police, the decree of 7 Dec actually stripped a number of organisations of the rights to make arrests, seizures or executions

*To head off any suggestions to the contrary, this was not a matter of the Bolsheviks trying to 'lay their hands' on the state machinery but rather the resources, data and expertise needed to construct a new one. When the strike did peter out in January 1918 it was the new soviet bodies that benefited


the assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief and attempt on Lenin was part of the populist response to the war on the peasants that was organized by the Bolsheviks beginning spring of 1918Hmmm? Uritskii was executed by one Leonid Kannegisser, a former military cadet and poet with only the most tenuous of links to the SRs. His primary motivation seems to have been revenge for the death of a friend, with a strong dash of anti-Semitism thrown in

As for Kaplan, she was part of the Left SR terror campaign and this had very little to do with agricultural policy. If only because Bolshevik agrarian policy still remained largely of copy of the SR programme. The only real change - ie, the emphasis on the 'committees of the village poor' and extending class war to the commune - had only been introduced in May 1918, some three months after the Left SRs had withdrawn from government. More to the point, this was not a bone of contention between the two parties in the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets (July 1918) or mentioned in the resolution adopted by the CC of the Left SRs on 24 June. The principal point of disagreement was Brest-Litovsk ('German imperialism') and perceived fraud in the elections to the Fifth Congress


the whole business of cheka participation in the grain requisitions effort also meant, as I said above, that anyone who was involved in the illicit trade...and this was a huge percentage of the population since the govt food system wasn't working...could be summarily shot by the chekaYet I think you'll find that "a huge percentage of the population" was not "shot by the Cheka". Which undermines your point somewhat


It's possible, moreover, to have a "centralized" approach that is also decentralized. this is when you have the centering of control in the hands of a relative few in a locality or province and these local centers act in an uncoordinated way. this was what was going on in 1918This is priceless. Decentralised centralisation? Actually no, when you have many centres of authority then this is called 'decentralisation'. Attempting to dress it up as anything else is simply semantic wordplay. Particularly so when these "local centres" are actually local soviets with very little oversight or control from Moscow

But please, make up your mind. Did the Bolsheviks establish a "nation-wide political police" with real and extensive powers in the provinces? Or were the Cheka units something that developed organically across these myriad local soviets (or "local centres", if you will)?


yes, and then, at Lenin's insistence, the Bolshevik delegates switched their position when the opportunity arrived for instituting a govenment controlled by their partyExcept that they was no switching involved. The Bolsheviks supported a pan-socialist government (Martov's proposal) and the Mensheviks and Right SRs walked out. The Left SRs were then offered cabinet positions but they refused "pending construction of a broadly inclusive socialist coalition" (to quote Rabinowitch). This did not appear - even if the Bolsheviks were willing to make considerable compromises in the following Vikzhel negotiations; these were rejected by the Mensheviks - and the Left SRs eventually joined in a two-party coalition

This is the reality ignored by those who suggest that the Bolsheviks were somehow "opposed to the idea of government of the left". At every point in the post-October negotiations it was not the Bolsheviks who walked away. An all-Bolshevik government, which I would agree was not the most desirable outcome, came about through default and not some conniving master plan


Much of the radical left in Oct 1917 thought that transfer of power to the Congress of Soviets would make the Congress's Central Exec Committee the government. The CEC had Left-Mensheviks, and even some libertarian socialists (maximalists, syndicalists, anarchists) in its ranks, plus the Left SRs.Well let's have a look at the composition of the CEC elected by the Second Congress. It contained 62 Bolsheviks, 29 Left SRs, 6 United Social-Democratic Internationalists, three Ukrainian Socialists and one SR Maximalist. Now leaving aside the absence of anything that can be really considered syndicalists or anarchist, there are two particularly striking features to this body. The first is, most obviously, that there is a huge and absolute Bolshevik majority, which tends to render much of this conversation moot. The second is that this a committee comprised of over a hundred persons. It is laughable to expect a body of such size to act as an executive committee - which is exactly why an executive committee was formed to carry out the day-to-day business of government


Once the right wing SR and right-Menshevik delegates walked out, the Bolshevik party had a temporary majorityAgain, a few points. The first is that the Bolsheviks always had a majority with 390 of the 650-ish delegates in attendance*. The second is that there is no question that, even if everyone had remained in the house, there was a handsome majority to support any Bolshevik motions for transferring power to the Soviets. The Left SR support (around a hundred delegates) ensured that. The third point is simple: the decision to walkout and align themselves with counter-revolutionary Tsarist forces - ie, to abandon the soviet bodies - was one made by the Mensheviks and Right SRs. It is something for which the Bolsheviks are entirely blameless and attempting to cast this as a measure that they secretly engineered or otherwise capitalised on (to secure a "temporary majority") is ridiculous. As is expecting such counter-revolutionaries to enter into a genuinely socialist government

*Although admittedly some sources do give them a 'mere' 45% of the vote with 300 out of 670 delegates. But then, everything I've said above is underpinned by one simple and inescapable fact: the Bolsheviks were by far the most popular party amongst Russia's revolutionary working class and their position in Nov 1917 was derived entirely from that

[syndicat]

Decentralised centralisation? Actually no, when you have many centres of authority then this is called 'decentralisation'. Attempting to dress it up as anything else is simply semantic wordplay. Particularly so when these "local centres" are actually local soviets with very little oversight or control from Moscow


you're wrong. "centralization" and "decentralization" are vague terms because they have more than one meaning. the local soviets formed, mainly by the Mensheviks initially, in Russia's cities were centralized in the sense that power was concentrated initially in the executive committee, and later further centralized in a smaller body, the presidium. the tendency was to treat the plenaries of delegates as rubber stamps. and as time went on decisions were increasingly not sent to them.

so that is a form of centralization. even if the various MRCs and local soviets had considerable local authority, and often acted in poorly coordinated ways...a form of decentralization.


Yet I think you'll find that "a huge percentage of the population" was not "shot by the Cheka"


you miss the point of course. if a large part of the population are inevitably in violation of the law, then who is selected by the cheka for punishment can be arbitrary. they will always have a reason to off somebody if they want one.


Except that they was no switching involved. The Bolsheviks supported a pan-socialist government (Martov's proposal) and the Mensheviks and Right SRs walked out. The Left SRs were then offered cabinet positions but they refused "pending construction of a broadly inclusive socialist coalition" (to quote Rabinowitch). This did not appear - even if the Bolsheviks were willing to make considerable compromises in the following Vikzhel negotiations; these were rejected by the Mensheviks - and the Left SRs eventually joined in a two-party coalition


First, the Mensheviks did not walk out. it was only the Right-Mensheviks who walked out. the Left-Mensheviks stayed. and at the Nov 1917 party congress, the Left had more than 60 percent of the delegates. The Left had gained control of the party.

But my point was this: originally the radical left assumed that transfer of power to the Soviet Congress would mean that the Central Exec Comm of the Congress would be the government. at that time the CEC had Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, libertarian socialists as well as Bolsheviks on it. The proposal to create a separate committee was Lenin's idea, and it was broached only later in the meeting of the Congress in October 1917.


Well let's have a look at the composition of the CEC elected by the Second Congress. It contained 62 Bolsheviks, 29 Left SRs, 6 United Social-Democratic Internationalists, three Ukrainian Socialists and one SR Maximalist. Now leaving aside the absence of anything that can be really considered syndicalists or anarchist,

first of all, the Maximalists throughout the revolution were in a tight alliance with the syndicalists. they were a part of the libertarian Left. for example, in the proposal at the Jan 1918 first trade union congress to invoke a national factory committee congress to build a national economic plan and system of coordination form the bottom up, this was proposed by the syndicalists and all the maximalist delegates voted for it, and the Menshevik and Bolshevik delegates voted no. another example: the alliance of the maximalists and syndicalists in the Kronstadt soviet were the dominant political tendency in the fall of 1917 and winter of 1918, and they worked together pretty continuously.

second, the Congress of Workers and Soldier's Deputies represented only a minority of the population because 80 percent of the population were peasants, and the Left SRs had a majority in the Peasant Congress. if they had received an appropriate share in the merged congress and CEC, they would have been in the majority, not the Bolsheviks. but, as I say, the Bolsheviks insisted on adding something like 100 people to CEC who weren't elected directly as soviet delegates were supposed to be, but represented the trade union bureaucracy and officials of soldier organizations. This is the only reason the Bolsheviks retained a majority on CEC....because they packed it. and this enabled the Council of People's Commissars very soon to start ruling by decree and ignoring the nominal legislature.

[ComradeOm]

you're wrong. "centralization" and "decentralization" are vague terms because they have more than one meaning. the local soviets formed, mainly by the Mensheviks initially, in Russia's cities were centralized in the sense that power was concentrated initially in the executive committee, and later further centralized in a smaller body, the presidium. the tendency was to treat the plenaries of delegates as rubber stamps. and as time went on decisions were increasingly not sent to themTo cast the emergence of executive committees (inherent in any organisation of any scale) as "centralisation" is to stretch the term beyond breaking point. Most notably, when you believe that every last soviet was compromised by its "centralised" nature then the phrase becomes absolutely meaningless when describing the actual later centralisation of state functions

But then unless you want to question the entire basis of the council as a building block for socialism (and I'm just waiting to link to some old posts on factory committees) I don't see the relevance. The Cheka and soviets were decentralised in the sense that there was almost no oversight from Moscow (little to no vertical integration) and that their actions were poorly coordinated. What more is there to add?


you miss the point of course. if a large part of the population are inevitably in violation of the law, then who is selected by the cheka for punishment can be arbitrary. they will always have a reason to off somebody if they want oneWhich would be valid if any percentage of these hundreds of thousands were actually being executed for "involvement in the illicit trade". That there weren't mass killings on this basis simply suggests that it was not a significant offence

(All of which of course skirts the small fact that for the years in question there was nothing even resembling a law code in place. Most of the decrees against speculation, for example, were first formulated by the various MRCs. Chaos)


First, the Mensheviks did not walk outThe Menshevik-Internationalists refused to split with the remainder of the party and, accompanied by Martov, most of them walked out after/during Trotsky's famous 'dustbin of history' speech. A small portion of the group, led by Kapelinsky, re-entered the Congress some hours later but quickly left again. The odd individual may have lingered on but as a group they had walked out

(Incidentally, the Menshevik-Internationalists had a mere 14 delegates at the Congress, compared to around 70 for the right of the party)


But my point was this: originally the radical left assumed that transfer of power to the Soviet Congress would mean that the Central Exec Comm of the Congress would be the government. at that time the CEC had Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, libertarian socialists as well as Bolsheviks on it. The proposal to create a separate committee was Lenin's idea, and it was broached only later in the meeting of the Congress in October 1917.And I'm saying that this is not the case. The 'socialist government' talked of my Martov and others was just that - a cabinet government. It was abundantly clear to all that the CEC (with over a hundred members) could not possibly function as an executive body. That would be simply unworkable. The only innovation of Lenin's was to call the new ministers 'commissars'


second, the Congress of Workers and Soldier's Deputies represented only a minority of the population because 80 percent of the population were peasants, and the Left SRs had a majority in the Peasant Congress. if they had received an appropriate share in the merged congress and CEC, they would have been in the majority, not the BolsheviksMy mistake, I assumed that we were discussing the All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Frankly, I couldn't care less about the interests of the peasantry. What with being a Marxist and all :glare:


but, as I say, the Bolsheviks insisted on adding something like 100 people to CEC who weren't elected directly as soviet delegates were supposed to be, but represented the trade union bureaucracy and officials of soldier organizations. This is the only reason the Bolsheviks retained a majority on CEC....because they packed it. and this enabled the Council of People's Commissars very soon to start ruling by decree and ignoring the nominal legislature.You forget to mention that this was both accompanied by a further 108 delegates from the All-Russia CEC of Peasants' Soviets and was agreed in advance with the Left SRs. Furthermore the addition of soldiers' deputies and trade unionists only provided the Bolsheviks with a majority because these constituencies were now firm Bolshevik strongholds in which they, due to their sheer popularity, were able to dominate the elections from these committees

Now I would have personally preferred that the moderate socialists engage with the Bolsheviks or that the Left SRs had been more eager to impose themselves on their coalition partners. Bolshevik dominance, coupled with the collapse in the Russian proletariat, did not turn out particularly well. What I vehemently disagree with however is the notion that every Bolshevik move or action was intended to secure some new dictatorship of the party or establishing an omnipresent secret police. As I pointed out here, and many other posts, it was not the Bolsheviks who walked away from coalition and they were as much victims of circumstance as any other party in Russia at the time. Criticising the Bolsheviks for the mistakes of others or the chaos inherent in a revolution is a waste of time

[syndicat]

Now I would have personally preferred that the moderate socialists engage with the Bolsheviks or that the Left SRs had been more eager to impose themselves on their coalition partners. Bolshevik dominance, coupled with the collapse in the Russian proletariat, did not turn out particularly well. What I vehemently disagree with however is the notion that every Bolshevik move or action was intended to secure some new dictatorship of the party or establishing an omnipresent secret police. As I pointed out here, and many other posts, it was not the Bolsheviks who walked away from coalition and they were as much victims of circumstance as any other party in Russia at the time. Criticising the Bolsheviks for the mistakes of others or the chaos inherent in a revolution is a waste of time

I think initially many rank and file members of the Bolshevik party hoped that the party's dominance could be consistent with retaining the worker democracy, such as it was, that had been built during the revolution, through mass assertion by workers. it was in spring of 1918 when the party opted for a party dictatorship. it was around March or April that Lenin first started talking about the "dictatorship of the party".

in particular, i didn't say that there was secret plan to establish a one-party dictatorship. if you're saying that, you're putting words in my mouth. i do think that elements of orthodox Marxism and Leninism did encourage this slide to "the dictatorship of the party"...a concept completely at odds with "the liberation of the working class must be the work of the workers."


To cast the emergence of executive committees (inherent in any organisation of any scale) as "centralisation" is to stretch the term beyond breaking point. Most notably, when you believe that every last soviet was compromised by its "centralised" nature then the phrase becomes absolutely meaningless when describing the actual later centralisation of state functions


now you are putting words in my mouth. I didn't say this was true of all soviets. It was true of the main soviets, such as the St Petersburg and Moscow soviets. but it was not true of the Kronstadt soviet, as is shown in much concrete detail in "Kronstadt: 1917-1921" by Israel Getzler. there the deputies, who were workers and sailors, proposed, debated, decided. they had an executive committee, but it's role was to ensure that the decisions were carrried out. it did not try to concentrate the decision-making and policy-making power in its hands.

the Kronstadt soviet was a model for both the maximalists and syndicalists of how soviets should be structured. the libertarian left wanted horizontal soviets like this, not soviets dominated by exec committees controlled by party leaders and intelligentsia.


Frankly, I couldn't care less about the interests of the peasantry. What with being a Marxist and all

towards the end of his life Marx told Vera Zasulich that the Russian mir could potentially be the basis for socialism in Russia. the mir didn't allow a single peasant household to aggregate land to the point of hiring others. they periodically reassigned the land so that each peasant family had a portion that was equal on a per person basis. a democratic socialism, the only socialism worth having, couldn't be built on the basis of autocratic dictatorship over the peasantry.

it was only after the 1905-06 revoluton that the tsarist regime came to recognize that the mir was a roadblock to the development of a capitalist agriculture, and began programs to encourage the development of peasant proprietors apart from the mir, the basis of the kulak class, but this hasn't gotten very far by the time of the 1917 revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Can someone please compare the mir to:

1) Associations for Joint Cultivation of Land,
2) Agricultural artels, and
3) Agricultural communes?

Based on my commentary here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/national-democratization-industrial-t143922/index.html

[Die Neue Zeit]

The Russian Civil War began on the 25th of October 1917 when the Petrograd MRC overthrew the provisional government. That event marked the beggining of armed conflict between the various groups of Russian society. If you're not convinced, you could consider the fact that three days later there was a rising of officer cadets in Petrograd in tandem with an attack on the southern skirt of the city by a band of Cossacks led by General Krasnov, which had to be put down by a detachment of armed workers' and soldiers' organised by the People's Commisar for war Antonov-Ovseenko.

To be more technical, the Russian Civil War began when the tottering Provisional Government made its ill-fated attempt to shut down the Bolshevik press. This was the signal for the MRC to act.

I'm not for giving any fodder to reactionary historians who shout, "The Bolsheviks started the Civil War!"

And just for the sake of humouring my brief Putin remark in an earlier post, I should quote US senator John McCain parody of Bush's "Putin's soul" speech:

I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B. :D

[ComradeOm]

now you are putting words in my mouth. I didn't say this was true of all soviets. It was true of the main soviets, such as the St Petersburg and Moscow sovietsSo was it merely true of most soviets? I'm sure you can see where I'm going here. If the soviets were inherently 'decentralised centralised', or whatever, with Kronstadt as the only real exception*, then you are questioning the viability of the soviets to actually represent their members and their class interests. These were after all grassroot organisations, the majority of them being configured along district or neighbourhood levels, that sprung up across the country

Conversely, if most soviets were not marked by this centralisation (not that I believe for a second that this would be a bad thing) then it brings us back to your original argument about the Cheka and centralisation. What was that again?

*Out of curiosity, how many members were there in the Kronstadt soviet? I'd wager it was significantly less than in Petrograd. IIRC the latter was topping one thousand members by the end of 1917. The proliferation of plena and executive committees was not some dastardly plot to seize control but rather a response to the need to actually get things done. Similar to your suggestions regarding the CEC, a body of one hundred plus members is simply not suited to this. No, it sounds like Kronstadt was small enough to function as a typical city district soviet


towards the end of his life Marx told Vera Zasulich that the Russian mir could potentially be the basis for socialism in Russia. the mir didn't allow a single peasant household to aggregate land to the point of hiring others. they periodically reassigned the land so that each peasant family had a portion that was equal on a per person basis. a democratic socialism, the only socialism worth having, couldn't be built on the basis of autocratic dictatorship over the peasantry.Marx was wrong on this issue. 1917 proved that if nothing else. The commune was revealed for what it really was - not some building block for socialism but a reactionary obstacle to it. The greatest mistake, if understandable given the circumstances, that the Bolsheviks made in 1917 was ratifying the SR Decree on Land which condoned and encouraged the land seizures. This greatly contributed to the encroaching urban famine as the estates (which traditionally produced the bulk of the marketed foodstuffs) were broken up and turned to subsistence farming. The latter being something which, as its name suggests, was unsuited to supplying the cities with food. So the peasantry ate well while the workers starved

More to the point, the enrichment of the peasantry, particularly the reaffirmation of the commune structure, re-entrenched the power of this class throughout the country. This would prove a major obstacle to any attempts to construct a socialist economic programme in the coming years. The peasants had their land and their semi-independence... they didn't want to hear of anything else

And no, the commune did not preclude the use of hired labour by the middle and rich peasants. Similarly the commune had begun to break down prior to 1917 not just because the Stolypin Reforms encouraged private farming, but because these same measures withdrew the raft of Tsarist legislative measures that the communes had traditionally sheltered under. Which is somewhat ironic - prior to Stolypin this supposed nucleus of a socialist society was in fact the Tsardom's primary tool for keeping order in the provinces


To be more technical, the Russian Civil War began when the tottering Provisional Government made its ill-fated attempt to shut down the Bolshevik press. This was the signal for the MRC to act.I've actually seen historians date it to the Kornilov Affair

[IronEastBloc]

The Cheka has not done anything that the FBI or CIA hasn't done which isnt saying much but i tend to see that american propaganda overblows the role they played in any smear piece in an attempt to discredit soviet history

[robbo203]

More to the point, the enrichment of the peasantry, particularly the reaffirmation of the commune structure, re-entrenched the power of this class throughout the country. This would prove a major obstacle to any attempts to construct a socialist economic programme in the coming years. The peasants had their land and their semi-independence... they didn't want to hear of anything else


An important reason as any, I guess, as to why the Bolshevik revolution could not have possibly have achieved a socialist society - the great mass of population simply had no interest in achieving such a society and you cannot possibly have socialism without a majority wanting and understanding it. As Lenin rightly said in April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P he said "We cannot be for "introducing" socialism—this would be the height of absurdity. We must preach socialism. The majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have no idea of socialism

All the Bolsheviks could do was to develop capitalist relations of production which they did in the guise of state capitalism. Or, as Lenin put it in his spat with his Leftists opponents: Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory. (1918)

[ComradeOm]

An important reason as any, I guess, as to why the Bolshevik revolution could not have possibly have achieved a socialist society - the great mass of population simply had no interest in achieving such a society and you cannot possibly have socialism without a majority wanting and understanding itI wouldn't say impossible and nor would I pay any attention to percentages. The problem of the peasantry was not their numbers but that they played a pivotal role in the country's economy, and particularly the production of foodstuffs. This 'lack of economic inheritance', to paraphrase Preobrazhensky, was of course acknowledged by the Bolsheviks who continually stressed the need for the wider European revolution to take hold

[robbo203]

I wouldn't say impossible and nor would I pay any attention to percentages. The problem of the peasantry was not their numbers but that they played a pivotal role in the country's economy, and particularly the production of foodstuffs. This 'lack of economic inheritance', to paraphrase Preobrazhensky, was of course acknowledged by the Bolsheviks who continually stressed the need for the wider European revolution to take hold

Whatever. But you still could not have socialism without a majority wanting and understanding it and this was nowhere near the case in Russia at the time. This is to say nothing of the economic backwardness of the country then. As for the wider European revolution happening that too was the triumph of hope over realism notwithstanding events such as the Spartacus uprising

[Hater of Dilettantes]

While there are legitimate accounts of Cheka extra legal executions, Denikin's description is more likely an account of what his forces did to captured Bolsheviks.

[ComradeOm]

Whatever. But you still could not have socialism without a majority wanting and understanding it and this was nowhere near the case in Russia at the timeI still don't see why you keep bringing numbers into this. Its irrelevant if 51% of the population supports socialism or not. What counts is the relative strength of the respective classes and their ability to dominate the others. That Russia's advanced industrial base was overshadowed by the peasant economy is only tangentially linked to the actual demographic composition of the country. More important than the numbers of peasants was that they monopolised agricultural output (itself a development of 1917) and were therefore in a position to dictate terms to the cities


As for the wider European revolution happening that too was the triumph of hope over realism notwithstanding events such as the Spartacus uprisingWell yeah, when you discount all the actual socialist uprisings in Europe during these years then there was little real hope of a European revolution. I've no idea why you would omit the likes of Germany from this calculation however

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The Checka? They were a fun group of guys.

wddY7qCn-ig

[Kiev Communard]

According to modern Russian scholar Ratkovsky, who wrote a comprehensive study of Cheka's activities in 1918 (The Red Terror and the Activity of Cheka in 1918 - St.-Petersburg, 2006), the total numbers of victims of Cheka are greatly exaggerated in mainstream media. For instance, according to Cheka's archives, the total number of execution in Soviet-controlled territories of former Russian Empire in 1918, - the peak of Red Terror period, - does not exceed 9,000 persons, mainly representatives of Russian haute bourgeoisie and the highest military command, while in 1918 alone White Guards killed more than 20,000 individuals accused of being "Bolsheviks", and additional 15,000 fell victim to Right SR-led peasant rebels. From these figures, it is evident that Cheka were not such bloodthirsty, and their opponents weren't "innocent victims" the bourgeois propaganda tries them to present.

[robbo203]

I still don't see why you keep bringing numbers into this. Its irrelevant if 51% of the population supports socialism or not.

To the contrary it is critically relevant. How on earth can you possibly achieve, let alone operate, a genuine socialist society without mass understanding and support?. I reminded here of Engels' words in his introduction to Marx's Class struggles in France
The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.




What counts is the relative strength of the respective classes and their ability to dominate the others. That Russia's advanced industrial base was overshadowed by the peasant economy is only tangentially linked to the actual demographic composition of the country. More important than the numbers of peasants was that they monopolised agricultural output (itself a development of 1917) and were therefore in a position to dictate terms to the cities

This is a difficult one. In one sense you have a point. In the case of pre-revolutionary Russia, for instance, what was clear was the indigenous capitalists were too weak to mount a successful bourgeois revolution themselves. That essentially fell to the Bolsheviks to do. With the revolution accomplished the Russian capitalists were indeed "dominated" in the sense you mean and in the case of many of them (apart from the small capitalists employing under ten workers) their means of production were nationalised by decree. However to the extent that private capitalists lost economic control so the state - or more precisely those who controlled the state - came to step into the shoes vacated by these private capitalists.

In a sense it does not really matter who the functionaries of capital may be - be they private capitalists or the state itself acting (as Engels put it) as the national capitalist. The relationship between capital and wage labour is an inherently unequal one in which capital of its very nature exploits, and therefore necessarily dominates, wage labour . In this functional sense as opposed to the empirical sense you have in mind, the capitalist class , however it is constituted, cannot be "dominated" by the class it exploits. Such domination, were it to happen, would be tantamount to the cessation of the capitalists very existence as an exploiting class and hence also of the class it exploits.






Well yeah, when you discount all the actual socialist uprisings in Europe during these years then there was little real hope of a European revolution. I've no idea why you would omit the likes of Germany from this calculation however

But I didnt. I specifically mentioned the Spartacus uprising in Germany - perhaps the most notable example of its kind. However without being drawn into a protracted discussion as to what extent these uprising were actual "socialist" uprisings rather than simply the uprising of discontented workers dillusioned with the post war dispensation (it is no concidience that all these uprisings tended to occur in countries that had been on the losing sife of the war rather than within the Entente countries) what is noticable is that they were all minority uprisings. In Germany the 1919 Spartacus uprising was crushed by the SPD-led Weimar goverment of Ebert - ironic given the centrality of the German SPD in the Social Democratic movement, a movement to which the R.S.D.L.P had been affiliated.

So no I dont think there was any prospect whatsoever of a socialist revolution anywhere in Europe at the time, still less in a technologically backward state like Russia characterised by a huge peasant population. Though there is case for saying that support for a genuine non market socialist society was greater than it is today, the great bulk of the European Working class were not socialist but rather reformist (and hence capitalist) in orientation . And this was no better demonstrated than by the rise of Social Democratic and Labour parties throughout Europe itself

[syndicat]

According to modern Russian scholar Ratkovsky, who wrote a comprehensive study of Cheka's activities in 1918 (The Red Terror and the Activity of Cheka in 1918 - St.-Petersburg, 2006), the total numbers of victims of Cheka are greatly exaggerated in mainstream media. For instance, according to Cheka's archives, the total number of execution in Soviet-controlled territories of former Russian Empire in 1918, - the peak of Red Terror period, - does not exceed 9,000 persons, mainly representatives of Russian haute bourgeoisie and the highest military command, while in 1918 alone White Guards killed more than 20,000 individuals accused of being "Bolsheviks", and additional 15,000 fell victim to Right SR-led peasant rebels. From these figures, it is evident that Cheka were not such bloodthirsty, and their opponents weren't "innocent victims" the bourgeois propaganda tries them to present.


A general culture of impunity is created if a group of guys with guns have carte blanche to arrest people and kill them without trial.

You also ignore the use of the cheka against organizations of the left, such as the syndicalists and maximalists and Left-Mensheviks.


And no, the commune did not preclude the use of hired labour by the middle and rich peasants.

You can claim what you like but i'd like to see evidence of this. Your view is contradicted, for example, by Sheila Fitzpatrick's history of the Russian revolution and by the data given by Alexandre Skirda in "Anarchy's Cossack" (about the revolutionary movement in Ukraine).

I think a case could be made that the Russian peasantry decided the outcome...against the working class. But not for the reasons you cite. Labor historian (and libertarian Marxist) Pete Rachleff argues that illiteracy was very widespread among the Russian peasantry. I believe this was 50 percent in Russia proper (much less in Ukraine, about a fourth). The peasants were generally ignorant of affairs beyond their villages and rather inward focused on the aims of the revolution. They were, however, a revolutionary class...and they contributed, in this way, to their being a revolution. Their vast land seizures and opposition to the existing regime helped to bring it down. On the other hand, they had little organizational experience or ability and were, as I say, often illiterate and ignorant of larger affairs in society. They thus lacked the organizational ability and interest in asserting their goverance over society, even tho they were 80 percent of the population. Because the passivity and incapacity of the peasantry impeded a democratic outcome, it contributed to a substitutionist outcome: the Bolshevik party substituting itself for the masses (workers and peasants alike).

But the revolutionary consciousness of the peasantry also infected the working class. A large part of the working class in the cities were of recent origin, had moved there from the villages, and were in contact with their peasant relatives. But because the peasantry were a revolutionary class in that context, this tended to support the working class collective self-assertion that helped to make a revolution take place.

[RedTrackWorker]

From being an anarchist, two things that convinced be the "Red Terror" was necessary and defensible (which is different from saying there weren't terrible mistakes and excesses):
1. Reading a bourgeois biography of Lenin (I think Lenin: the man behind the mask?), it went into all the problems with the Cheka, argued it lead to Stalin...and then noted that when the Cheka weren't there, the peasants would ask for it because former landlords would be waging terror to regain control or something like that.
2. Being from the U.S. South and thinking about a revolution there, especially in the late 1800's say, clearly a "terror" would've been needed to keep workers' and sharecroppers' control of any revolutionary government, just as terror was used to overthrow the Reconstruction governments. And clearly--to me at least, one would not have been able to have effective and efficient arrests, trials, and rehabilitating institutions for all those problems, but bloody civil war.
Syndicat says there were other alternatives. I think there were other alternatives in his mind. Why don't we just imagine the Reconstruction governments not being overturned, an extension and victory of the later populist movement in the U.S. and therefor the U.S., instead of becoming the world's supercop, becomes the first workers' state. If that was possible, it isn't through any of the means Syndicat is talking about, but would taken "audacity, audacity, audacity" and revolutionary terror.
I'm guessing Syndicat knows how Lenin at various times talked about how "deformed" the Soviet state was. At times, especially in the past, I had let my defense of the basic gains and historical significance of the Russian revolution lead me to downplay or overlook its limitations and problems. There were many problems--and some of what Syndicat criticizes I agree with abstractly, I just don't think it was materially possible to do better. Where I 100% disagree with Syndicat is not seeing the fundamental conquests of the Russian revolution, the fact that it was a society moving in a different direction for a time. And we have a saying, "Those that can't defend the gains of the past--intellectually or practically--cannot lead the fight to win the gains of the future."

[Zanthorus]

In Germany the 1919 Spartacus uprising was crushed by the SPD-led Weimar goverment of Ebert

The government which was brought to power after the quelling of the 1918 German revolution, which you seem to have conveniently skipped over.


ironic given the centrality of the German SPD in the Social Democratic movement, a movement to which the R.S.D.L.P had been affiliated.

That's because the SPD were stone-cold traitors to the principles they'd nominally ascribed to since the early 1890's. There's nothing ironic here. You claim that the rise of the Social-Democratic and Labour parties showed the rise of a reformist orientation in the class. You clearly haven't got a clue what Social-Democracy was. Here's a fun hint: the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International banned participation in the cabinets of bourgeois governments. The tabboo was so finely ingrained that Lenin's proposal for a 'revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' was met by the Menshevik Martynov with the accusation that he was guilty of 'crass Jaurèsism' (Jaurès being the French socialist leader who defended the participation of Alexandre Millerand in the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet on the pretence of defending the French republic against Monarchist and restorationist elements).

[syndicat]

Syndicat says there were other alternatives. I think there were other alternatives in his mind. Why don't we just imagine the Reconstruction governments not being overturned, an extension and victory of the later populist movement in the U.S. and therefor the U.S., instead of becoming the world's supercop, becomes the first workers' state. If that was possible, it isn't through any of the means Syndicat is talking about, but would taken "audacity, audacity, audacity" and revolutionary terror.
I'm guessing Syndicat knows how Lenin at various times talked about how "deformed" the Soviet state was. At times, especially in the past, I had let my defense of the basic gains and historical significance of the Russian revolution lead me to downplay or overlook its limitations and problems. There were many problems--and some of what Syndicat criticizes I agree with abstractly, I just don't think it was materially possible to do better. Where I 100% disagree with Syndicat is not seeing the fundamental conquests of the Russian revolution, the fact that it was a society moving in a different direction for a time. And we have a saying, "Those that can't defend the gains of the past--intellectually or practically--cannot lead the fight to win the gains of the future."

your fundamental problem is that you don't consider what it means for the working class to control society. that doesn't mean putting in power a bureaucratic Jacobin dictatorship on the excuse of a need for organized force to fight violence of the counterrevolution.

what were these supposed "conquests" in the Russian revolution? workers weren't managing industry. they were subordinated to a bureaucratic managerial class of experts, bosses, planners, political party leaders. they weren't in control of their towns.

the claim that a so-called "workers party" controlling a top-down military and police structure could somehow end up in something other than a bureaucratic ruling class is the worst sort of idealist nonsense.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Here's a fun hint: the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International banned participation in the cabinets of bourgeois governments.

Source? That's more explicit than my timid "programmatic centralism" proposal re. a future workers "international" and grandfather clauses on existing reform coalitions. ;)

[RedTrackWorker]

your fundamental problem is that you don't consider what it means for the working class to control society. that doesn't mean putting in power a bureaucratic Jacobin dictatorship on the excuse of a need for organized force to fight violence of the counterrevolution.

what were these supposed "conquests" in the Russian revolution? workers weren't managing industry. they were subordinated to a bureaucratic managerial class of experts, bosses, planners, political party leaders. they weren't in control of their towns.

the claim that a so-called "workers party" controlling a top-down military and police structure could somehow end up in something other than a bureaucratic ruling class is the worst sort of idealist nonsense.

The obvious two conquests are the war and the land. The other is: what if the Bolsheviks had not taken power? Christopher Hitchens is a political renegade from the workers' movement, but he retains some historical understanding when he says that without the October revolution, the word for "fascism" would be Russian, instead of Italian. The initial deficiencies, deformities, mistakes and errors, plus the later counterrevolutions (the bureaucratic political counterrevolution in the 20's and the social counterrevolution in the 30's), cannot erase those facts: an end to world war 1 and the peasant revolution.
You, syndicat, can sneer all you like, putting workers' party in quotes, but what other party holding state power waited on pins and needles for news of the Chinese revolution? The answer is none. Yes, the political degeneration of the Bolshevik party and Comintern played a key role in aborting the Chinese revolution in the 20's, but it played the abortive role of a workers' organization with a leadership degenerating--not of a capitalist force crushing (as it did in Spain).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Christopher Hitchens is a political renegade from the workers' movement, but he retains some historical understanding when he says that without the October revolution, the word for "fascism" would be Russian, instead of Italian.

Even that is contingent upon the defeat of the Central Powers. Without this defeat, the word would have been French.

[robbo203]

The government which was brought to power after the quelling of the 1918 German revolution, which you seem to have conveniently skipped over.


Technically you are correct. The Spartacus uprising was in January 1919 while the Weimar republic was set up in February of that year. My careless error then. But this does not alter the substance of the point of the point I was making. The coalition SPD-USPD government was set up in November 1918 with Ebert of the SPD being made Chancellor. It was this same Ebert who later ordered in the Freikorps to quell the Spartacus uprising




That's because the SPD were stone-cold traitors to the principles they'd nominally ascribed to since the early 1890's. There's nothing ironic here. You claim that the rise of the Social-Democratic and Labour parties showed the rise of a reformist orientation in the class. You clearly haven't got a clue what Social-Democracy was. Here's a fun hint: the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International banned participation in the cabinets of bourgeois governments. The tabboo was so finely ingrained that Lenin's proposal for a 'revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' was met by the Menshevik Martynov with the accusation that he was guilty of 'crass Jaurèsism' (Jaurès being the French socialist leader who defended the participation of Alexandre Millerand in the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet on the pretence of defending the French republic against Monarchist and restorationist elements).

I am not quite sure what point it is that that you are trying to make with this (somewhat obscure) history lesson of yours. I am well aware - thank you very much - that the social democrats were fatally compromised in their attitude towards refromism. The 1891 Erfurt document put forward a dual strategy combining both a maximum and minimum programme with the minimum programme being drawn up by Bernstein. Inevitably, the minimum programme supplanted the maximum and the rest as they say is history. Lenin too had something to say about the maximum programme and his words in 1905 anticipate the reformist and state capitalist path that the Bolsheviks themselves were later to go down
"If any workers ask us at the given moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum program, we shall answer by pointing out how far the masses of the democratically-minded people still are from Socialism, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, how unorganised the proletarians still are. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch02.htm)

My general point was quite simply that as far as the European working class was concerned there was no prospect whatsoever of a genuine communist/socialist revolution happening at the time because genuine communist/socialist support for the maiximum programme was pretty much marginal. It is delusional fantasism to think otherwise. The vast majority of workers were not revolutionary minded but were clearly reformist in outlook and that this was unequivocally demonstrated by the rise of reformist Social Democratic and Labour parties in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Dont forget also that the working classes of different European countries had just finished slaughtering each other in a bloody world war at the behest of their capitalist masters. Can anyone seriously maintain that this was the outlook of a revolutionary class ready to bring about the complete elimination of commodity production and the establishment of classless communism?

[Zanthorus]

Source? That's more explicit than my timid "programmatic centralism" proposal re. a future workers "international" and grandfather clauses on existing reform coalitions. ;)


Participation in a government with the bourgeois democrats has been banned by a resolution of the Amsterdam Congres; it is Jaurèsism, i.e., unconscious betrayal of the interests of the proletariat, the reduction of the proletariat to a hanger-on of the bourgeoisie, its corruption with the illusion of power, which in reality is completely unattainable in bourgeois society.- Lenin, The Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry

And according to the collected works footnote:


The reference is to the resolution on “International Rules of Socialist Tactics” adopted at the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in August 1904.


I am well aware - thank you very much - that the social democrats were fatally compromised in their attitude towards refromism. The 1891 Erfurt document put forward a dual strategy combining both a maximum and minimum programme with the minimum programme being drawn up by Bernstein. Inevitably, the minimum programme supplanted the maximum and the rest as they say is history.

This explains the polemics by August Bebel that reportedly lasted for several hours at the 1898 congress of the SPD against Bernstein's revionism does it? As for the (in)famous minimum-maximum divide, that had nothing to do with a 'dual strategy' and infilitration of Bernsteinism (The programme was drawn up before Bernstein became a revisionist), it was based on the similar division in the programme of the French Parti Ouvrier, drawn up by Marx himself. The minimum programme was a set of demands for a Paris Commune-type which would ensure the political rule of the working-class, the basis from which the maximum programme would be implemented. Hence it is false to say that:


...as far as the European working class was concerned there was no prospect whatsoever of a genuine communist/socialist revolution happening at the time because genuine communist/socialist support for the maiximum programme was pretty much marginal.

The immediate task of revolution is the political rule of the working-class. It is not necessary for workers to support the maximum programme in order for a revolution to occur, only the minimum one.

[robbo203]

-
The immediate task of revolution is the political rule of the working-class. It is not necessary for workers to support the maximum programme in order for a revolution to occur, only the minimum one.

If the maximum programme has not been implemented , if you have not fundamentally overturned the socio-economic basis of society, then you still have capitalism - that much is obvious. And if you still have capitalism it is illogical to maintain that you have had a (socialist) revolution. That too is obvious. Only full implementation of the maximum programme can truly be called revolutionary. The minimum programme by retaining capitalism can at best be called progressive reformism.

[Zanthorus]

Well, now we're at an impass as from previous discussions we know that you hold to an essentially anarchist position that the dictatorship of the proletariat is irrelevant while I don't.

[robbo203]

Well, now we're at an impass as from previous discussions we know that you hold to an essentially anarchist position that the dictatorship of the proletariat is irrelevant while I don't.

Well, yes, this is the sticking point in our exchanges - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its not quite true that I reject it because I hold an "essentially anarchist position". I am sympathetic to much of anarchism but I do not reject the need to democratically capture state power and I guess this would place me outside the anarchist camp as far as anarchists are concerned. Probably the perspective that I am closest too is that of the WSM (www.worldsocialism.org (http://www.worldsocialism.org)) although I have certain criticism of the WSM too! So I reject the DOTP, not because I am an anarchist but because I think the whole concept is fundamentally flawed and incoherent as Ive said many times.

But while we we may beg to differ on the question of the DOTP, we can surely agree - can we not? - that only implementation of the maximum programme signifies a revolutionary transformation of society and that the minimum programme implies the continuation of capitalism

[Nosotros]

Does anyone know roughly how many people were killed by the Checka? thousands has been mentioned so far but I thought I read somewhere that it was in the millions, is this so?

[Red Commissar]

Does anyone know roughly how many people were killed by the Checka? thousands has been mentioned so far but I thought I read somewhere that it was in the millions, is this so?

Current media and sources often used by education nowadays throw a lot of exaggerated figures left and right to further discredit the whole thing. They did kill people, but no where near as many as the large figures that are common place now nor as clear cut black and white as the moralists would have it.

Look at Kiev Communard's post:


According to modern Russian scholar Ratkovsky, who wrote a comprehensive study of Cheka's activities in 1918 (The Red Terror and the Activity of Cheka in 1918 - St.-Petersburg, 2006), the total numbers of victims of Cheka are greatly exaggerated in mainstream media. For instance, according to Cheka's archives, the total number of execution in Soviet-controlled territories of former Russian Empire in 1918, - the peak of Red Terror period, - does not exceed 9,000 persons, mainly representatives of Russian haute bourgeoisie and the highest military command, while in 1918 alone White Guards killed more than 20,000 individuals accused of being "Bolsheviks", and additional 15,000 fell victim to Right SR-led peasant rebels. From these figures, it is evident that Cheka were not such bloodthirsty, and their opponents weren't "innocent victims" the bourgeois propaganda tries them to present.

[IronEastBloc]

When dealing with the Cheka, you have to view it in the context of war, (specifically, class warfare, which is exactly what the communist struggle is) in which case, it's easier to deal with.

I have this feeling that many in the mainstream think the Cheka/NKVD/KGB just randomly abducted innocent people who spent their entire lives living innocently and minding their own business. Those were not the people the Cheka were after. The Cheka was "the sword of the revolution", and thus was only meant to sniff out and eliminate class collaborators and class enemies, which in a war, is what you do. can you imagine if the French Resistance didn't execute nazi or fascist collaborators? they probably would've have survived at all were that the case.

people need to view this in the context of a war, and then it becomes more clear and begins to make much more sense at that point.

[ComradeOm]

To the contrary it is critically relevant. How on earth can you possibly achieve, let alone operate, a genuine socialist society without mass understanding and support?Define "mass understanding and support". Personally I would consider the active political "understanding and support" of a few million workers to constitute a mass movement. This is very different from insisting that X% of the population need to be on board or possess copies of Kapital

Socialism is the supremacy of the proletariat (not just a percentage of the 'national population') and demographics only enter the equation insofar as they reflect the balance of power between classes. In this the Russian proletariat - inherently more organised, compact and class conscious - possessed immense advantages over the disorganised peasantry. It is unfortunate that these were not enough to overcome the rural challenge, but to decry the situation as impossible is to indulge in inane determinism


Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul][/I]Anyone who believes that the Russian proletariat of 1917 does not fit this description is simply ignorant


...it is no concidience that all these uprisings tended to occur in countries that had been on the losing sife of the war rather than within the Entente countries...Yes, its no surprise that those countries in which the ruling class had been seriously weakened and state structures under serious strain saw mass socialist risings. These were genuine revolutions and were typically underpinned by the formation of popular worker councils that put forward socialist programmes. More to the point, you may feel free with hindsight to write this whole process off as irrelevant but to project this view back to 1917, when every possible sign did point to mass unrest and revolution, is absurd


...the great bulk of the European Working class were not socialist but rather reformist (and hence capitalist) in orientation . And this was no better demonstrated than by the rise of Social Democratic and Labour parties throughout Europe itselfOne would have thought that the shattering of the social-democratic model - one that saw the breakaway communist parties in France, Germany and Italy take with them the majority of the old membership - was indicative of the European proletariat's increasing radicalism? That the old regimes survived, more or less, the ordeal should not grant license to erase it from history

[robbo203]

Define "mass understanding and support". Personally I would consider the active political "understanding and support" of a few million workers to constitute a mass movement. This is very different from insisting that X% of the population need to be on board or possess copies of Kapital

Socialism (aka communism) is a non-market stateless alternative to capitalism in which commmodity production and wage labour cease to exist. To establish such a society requires that a significant majority of the population understand and want it. It cannot be imposed from above . That is what I mean by a "mass movement". Or as the Communist Manifesto put it "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" And, no, it doesnt require that individuals comprising this movement should each possess a copy of Kapital or even have heard of that cantankerous old bearded bugger back in the 19th century who spoke with a heavy german accent.



Socialism is the supremacy of the proletariat (not just a percentage of the 'national population') and demographics only enter the equation insofar as they reflect the balance of power between classes. In this the Russian proletariat - inherently more organised, compact and class conscious - possessed immense advantages over the disorganised peasantry. It is unfortunate that these were not enough to overcome the rural challenge, but to decry the situation as impossible is to indulge in inane determinism

The Russian proletariat were a small minority of the Russian population in 1917. Even if a majority of Russian workers were socialist in the above sense, which they were not, you could not have had a socialist revolution. This is because the huge majority of the popuation were not socialist. Sorry but demographics do matter, its not just a question of class organisation. Without majority support and understanding you simply cannot have socialism. This is not "inane determinism". It flows from the very nature of a socialist or communist society itself



Anyone who believes that the Russian proletariat of 1917 does not fit this description is simply ignorant



But that description that you give is not enough to qualify as revolutionary socialist. This is my point. Even Lenin himself acknowleged that most workers were not socialists. Sure there was a good deal of working class militancy - this is not denied - but working class militancy in and of itself does not equate with a revolutionary socialist outlook



Yes, its no surprise that those countries in which the ruling class had been seriously weakened and state structures under serious strain saw mass socialist risings. These were genuine revolutions and were typically underpinned by the formation of popular worker councils that put forward socialist programmes. More to the point, you may feel free with hindsight to write this whole process off as irrelevant but to project this view back to 1917, when every possible sign did point to mass unrest and revolution, is absurd

Sorry but I beg to differ. They weren't "socialist risiings". That does not mean I write them off as "irrelevant" or consider them pointless but I do think we need to keep clearly in mind the nature of these uprisings. I will agree that there were revolutionary socialists involved - Luxemburg being an outstanding example - but the uprisings themselves were not essentially motivated by the desire to establish a genuine socialist society. They sprang from a general disillusionment and discontent of workers in the aftermath of war and the "programmes" you refer to were essentially a set of radical reforms or proposals intended to benefit the workers but within a set-up in which the wage labour-capital relationship continued to exist. You need to distinguish between the socialist rhetoric and the actual objectives of those involved, in other words.

[Dave B]

From Engels 1895;



Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul][/I]


From ComradeOM



Anyone who believes that the Russian proletariat of 1917 does not fit this description is simply ignorant




Well that would include Lenin then;

V. I. Lenin THESES ON THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL


Published in July, 1920




On the other hand, the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions and character ('already have grasped'?) under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie (which assumes an infinite variety of forms that become more subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers.

In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat , supported by the whole or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists -- it is only after this, and only in the actual process of an acute class struggle, that the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around ( a section of ) the proletariat (the vanguard ie comradeOm?) under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers.


And only 'after this' a 'conversion' or 'a complete transformation of the social organization'.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TSCI20.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TSCI20.html)

As if the bourgeois intelligentsia don't have 'selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property' themselves!

Even if bourgeois intelligentsia read books as opposed to what the workers have their 'fish suppers' wrapped in.

Doctor heal thyself, and who will educate the educators?

Which was the same view that Lenin had in his What Is To Be Done, in 1902





what has been said above, we shall quote the following profoundly just and important utterances by Karl Kautsky on the new draft program of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party:



"Many of our revisionist critics believe that Marx asserted that economic development and the class struggle create not only the conditions for socialist production, but also, and directly, the consciousness (K. K.'s italics) of its necessity. And these critics aver that England, the country most highly developed capitalistically, is more remote than any other from this consciousness.

Judging from the draft, one might assume that this allegedly orthodox-Marxist view, which is thus refuted, was shared by the committee that drafted the Austrian program. In the draft program it is stated:

'The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the proletariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious' of the possibility and of the necessity for Socialism. In this connection socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle.

But this is absolutely untrue. Of course, Socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, just as the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But Socialism and the classs struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions.

Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (K. K.'s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done.

Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig). Accordingly, the old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle. The new draft copied this proposition from the old program, and attached it to the proposition mentioned above. But this completely broke the line of thought. . . ."


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html)


And what perhaps Engels meant with his 1895 'body and soul quote'?

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1879 Marx and Engels to August Bebel (http://www.revleft.com/glossary/people/b/e.htm#august-bebel), Wilhelm Liebknecht (http://www.revleft.com/glossary/people/l/i.htm#wilhelm-liebknecht), Wilhelm Bracke (http://www.revleft.com/glossary/people/b/r.htm#wilhelm-bracke) and others





We cannot therefore co-operate with people who say that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois.


Or the philanthropic bourgeois Bolshevik intelligentsia;



If the new Party organ adopts a line corresponding to the views of these gentlemen, and is bourgeois and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us, much though we should regret it, but publicly to declare our opposition to it and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad. But it is to be hoped that things will not come to that.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/letters/79_09_15.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/letters/79_09_15.htm)

[I appear to be having problems logging in, it was the same yesterday when I gave up]
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[∞]

Once again we managed to find a potential tool for inter-sect understanding and swerved it into a impasse discussing the means of proletarian revolution hurrrr. It is rather foolish to overlook the mass raids of Anarchist assemblies, imprisoning other leftists, and the carnage done in the Kronstadt uprising.

The fact of the matter is the the Cheka had done, horrible and brutal things (other than it being a means to suppress the very nature of revolution). Even Trotsky came to this realization when being asked about the dismantling and supression of other leftists and his statements regarding his earlier support for free political affiliation , to which he responded "those were good days"....

If we really want to see participation amongst leftists, we must not ignore the problems we have had in history, we must learn from them.

Not join some idiotic "pan-leftist" group yet still involve ourselves in sectarian shitfests.