Split-off thread on Bolshevik CC background -attn:Miles

[DaringMehring]

Miles' post where he listed the class background of the Bolshevik CC of 1917, and the ensuing discussion, was very interesting to me. I'd like to use this thread to continue that discussion to get a better idea of who was what. Real historical research!

Right now I have a spreadsheet, with: Name, Parents, Self, based on the discussion in that thread, and my own research.

A few questions

1 -- We really need a subcategorization of peasant. Many of them are of "peasant" origin but there are bednyaks, srednyaks, and kulaks (low, middle, and high peasants) and this is a real difference and certainly came into play politically (eg Lenin argued the bednyaks were equivalent to proletarians). I'm guessing most Bolshevik CCers were of srednyak-kulak origin since they seem to have got educated, but figuring this out would be good. It doesn't usually say up front.

2-- "Georgi Lomov" -- does not appear to exist. There is Georgi Oppokov, who is noted to have also gone by the name Afanasi Lomov. Is this the same person? Someone claimed to know Lomov's class background... what was it more precisely than "well-off"?

3 -- Alexei Semyonovich Kiselyov -- still can't find info on his origin.

4 -- Kamenev's origin is Proletarian. His dad was a railway worker. However, I can't find where it says he himself worked on the rails.

5 -- Jan Berzin according to Wiki was from a "working class family" but it gives no further note. There is a page in Estonian that might have more info but I can't read it.

6 -- Dzerzhinsky. Miles claimed his family was nobility and the guy has a wonky noble sounding name (Edmund-Rufin) but Wiki says his dad worked as a physics teacher in a gymnasium. What's the deal?

Here is the spreadsheet I'm currently working off of:
Name Parents Self Jan Berzin Petty bourgeois (peasant) or (working?) Teacher (?) Andrei Bubnov Bourgeois (merchant)
Nikolai Bukharin Petty bourgeois (teachers)
Felix Dzerzhinsky Nobility Book binding factories Prokofy Dzhaparidze Petty bourgeois (professional)
Adolph Joffe Bourgeois (merchant)
Lev Kamenev Proletarian (railway worker) Railway worker (?) Alexei Kiselyev

Alexandra Kollontai Bourgeois (military general)
Nikolai Krestinsky Bourgeois (merchant)
Vladimir Lenin Petty bourgeois (education) Educated as a Lawyer Georgi Lomov (Upper class) – Oppokov?
Vladimir Milyutin Petty bourgeois (peasant)
Matvei Muranov Petty bourgeois (peasant) Railway worker, State Duma Viktor Nogin Petty bourgeois (shopkeeper) Weaver who owned own shop Alexei Rykov Petty bourgeois (farmer)
Fyodor Sergeyev Petty bourgeois (peasant)
Stepan Shahumyan Bourgeois (merchant) Philosophy graduate, educated abroad Ivar Smilga Petty bourgeois (forester)
Grigori Sokolnikov Petty bourgeois (railway doctor)
Josef Stalin Petty bourgeois (artisan) Baku oil fields (briefly) Elena Stassova Petty bourgeois (court official)
Yakov Sverdlov Petty bourgeois (intelligentsia) father an engraver, adopted by m. gorky Leon Trotsky Petty bourgeois (farmer)
Moisei Uritsky Bourgeois (merchant)
Grigori Zinoviev Petty bourgeois (farmer)

Any help appreciated...

[Ismail]

How about candidate members? E.g. the Great Soviet Encyclopedia describes (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Mikhail+Ivanovich+Kalinin) Mikhail Kalinin like so:

The son of a peasant.

Kalinin graduated from the village school in 1889. In 1893 he began to work as an apprentice lathe operator at the Staryi Arsenal Munitions Works in St. Petersburg, and in 1896 he became a lathe operator at the Putilov Works....

At the Sixth (Prague) Conference of the RSDLP in 1912, Kalinin was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and placed on the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. He participated in the founding of the newspaper Pravda and assisted the work of the Bolshevik faction in the Fourth State Duma. In the summer of 1912 he led a strike by the workers in the cannon foundry. From 1913 to 1915 he worked at the Aivaz plant, continuing his party activities. In January 1916 he was arrested in the case involving the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP, and after a year of imprisonment he was sentenced to exile in Eastern Siberia but managed to go into hiding and continue his party work illegally in Petrograd. He took an active part in the February Revolution of 1917 and was a member of the first legal Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks and the representative of this committee on the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a member of the editorial staff of Pravda. In September 1917 he was elected councillor (glasnyi) of the Petrograd municipal duma and chairman of the raion board of the Lesnovskii Raion, in whose offices was held the Oct. 16, 1917, session of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) that adopted the resolution for armed uprising.

After the victory of the October Revolution, Kalinin was elected to the Petrograd municipal duma, which chose him to be mayor (gorodskoi golova). In 1918 he worked as commissar of municipal services in Petrograd. In March 1919, at the Eighth Congress of the RCP (Bolshevik), he was elected to the party’s Central Committee. After the death of Ia. M. Sverdlov he was elected chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

[A Marxist Historian]

A few questions


2-- "Georgi Lomov" -- does not appear to exist. There is Georgi Oppokov, who is noted to have also gone by the name Afanasi Lomov. Is this the same person? Someone claimed to know Lomov's class background... what was it more precisely than "well-off"?

...
4 -- Kamenev's origin is Proletarian. His dad was a railway worker. However, I can't find where it says he himself worked on the rails.


Kamenev of all people would be about the last Bolshevik I'd have suspected of a proletarian origin. He certainly hid it well.

Giorgi Oppokov-Lomov was a very interesting figure whom I happen to know quite a bit about.

Lomov, the son of a prominent Tsarist official, joined the party at the age of 15. In 1917 he was probably the youngest member of the first Soviet government, appointed at age 29 as its original Commissar of Justice. A well-liked, youthful “old Bolshevik” with a reputation for honesty and integrity, he had been on the party Central Committee since the summer of 1917, but he was never seen as a political leader. During the Brest-Litovsk crisis in the spring of 1918, he resigned his post as deputy chairman of Vesenkha, the brand-new administrative board for Soviet industry, complaining that “the masses are being cut off from living creative power in all branches of our national economy.” He had been the last defender of the original slogan of “workers’ control” among top Soviet officials. But later he became a loyal supporter of Stalin, and the head of the Donbass coal trust, probably the most important industrial trust in the Soviet Union. Got promoted even higher in the 1930s in the top industrial hierarchy in Moscow, and the party Control Commission. Shot in 1937 as usual.

-M.H.-

[DaringMehring]

I did research with the help of a Russian speaker, so I could access Russian net sources. This provided more depth and in fact a good bit of what Miles put up is not correct.

I added education, opposition, and death. Here is the update:

(Name / Parents / Self / Univ. / Result / Opposition / Death)

Jan Berzin / Peasant (farm hand) / None / Never / Shot 1938 (Stalin)
Andrei Bubnov / Bourgeois (merchant) / Moscow Agricultural Institute / Expelled / 1923 / Shot 1938 (Stalin)
Nikolai Bukharin / Petty bourgeois (teacher) / Moscow University / Expelled / 1929 / Shot 1938 (Stalin)
Felix Dzerzhinsky / Noble (minor landowner) / None / Never / Heart attack 1926
Prokofy Dzhaparidze / ?? / Alexandrovsk Teachers Institute / Died prior / Shot 1918 (Whites)
Adolph Joffe / Bourgeois (rich merchant) / Berlin Univ. (Med), Univ. of Zurich (Law) / 1925 / Suicide 1927
Lev Kamenev / Proletarian (train machinist who became an engineer) / Moscow University (Law) / Expelled / 1926 / Shot 1936 (Stalin)
Alexei Kiselyov / Proletarian / Factory worker (fitter/machinist) / None / Never / Shot 1937 (Stalin)
Alexandra Kollontai / Noble (military general) / Univ. of Zurich (Econ and Stats) / 1921 / Natural causes 1952
Nikolai Krestinsky / Noble (teacher) / St. Petersburg Univ. (Law) / Degree / 1923 / Shot 1938 (Stalin)
Vladimir Lenin / Noble (acquired title, education) / Kazan Univ. (Law), St. Petersburg Univ. (Law) / Expelled, Degree / ---- / Natural causes 1924
Vladimir Milyutin / Petty bourgeois (teacher) / St. Petersburg Univ. (Law) / ?? / ?? / Shot 1937 (Stalin)
Matvei Muranov / Peasant / Railway worker, state Duma / ?? / Natural causes 1959
Viktor Nogin / Petty bourgeois (assistant manager) / Textile factory worker / ?? / ?? 1924
Georgi Oppokov / Noble (bank manager) / St. Petersburg Univ. (Law) / Degree / 1918 / Shot 1937 (Stalin)
Alexei Rykov / Peasant (who moved to the city) / Kazan Univ. (Law) / Expelled / 1929 / Shot 1938 (Stalin)
Fyodor Sergeyev / Peasant / Moscow Tech. Univ. / Expelled / Never / Accident 1921
Stepan Shahumyan / Petty bourgeois (assistant(?) merchant) / St. Petersburg Tech. Univ., Riga Tech. Univ., Humboldt Univ. of Berlin / Degree / Died prior / Shot 1918 (Whites)
Ivar Smilga / Petty bourgeois (forest ranger) / Moscow Univ. / Expelled / 1923 / Shot 1937 (Stalin)
Grigori Sokolnikov / Petty bourgeois (doctor) / Moscow Univ. (Law), Paris Univ. (Law) / Degree / 1923 / Executed 1939 (Stalin)
Josef Stalin / Petty bourgeois (artisan) / ---- / Natural causes 1953
Elena Stassova / Petty bourgeois (lawyer) / Teacher in workers' Sunday school / Never / Natural causes 1966
Yakov Sverdlov / Petty bourgeois (artisan) / Died prior / Illness 1919
Leon Trotsky / Petty bourgeois (farm owner) / 1923 / Assassinated 1940 (Stalin)
Moisei Uritsky / Bourgeois (merchant) / Univ. of Kiev (Law) / Degree / Died prior / Assassinated 1918 (SR)
Grigori Zinoviev / Petty bourgeois (farm owner) / Tutor, clerk / Univ. of Bern (chemistry) / Left / 1926 / Shot 1936 (Stalin)

Sorry, it's hard to translate my spreadsheet in...

Notes:
Dzhaparidze --- any information would be useful
Kamenev -- his father started as a machinist but worked his way up to engineer and Kamenev was not in poverty. His dad was prole -> petit bourgeoisie.
Berzin -- his father was a farm hand (a bednyak), and he was a factory worker. Genuine prole.
Kiselyov -- also total prole.
Milyutin -- don't know anything about who he was aligned with.
Muranov -- He was not shot but rather "retired" in 1939, presumably because he had been loyal AND he was old and had been in the Duma, so like Kollontai & Stassova, once stripped to no power, he could be let live.
Nogin -- don't know who he aligned with or how he died in 1924. Also could find nothing about him owning any textile shop. It said he worked in a textile factory.

In general:

1) The categorization of petit bourgeois is very broad. The working class ie proles in the classic sense of industrial workers was very small. Most CC came from a petit-bourgeois background, but none of them were very rich except for a few, like Kollontai who had servants as a child.

2) The backgrounds don't appear to give any indication of who was a sincere revolutionary, if you measure that by them coming into opposition. For instance, I can't find any evidence that Berzin or Kiselyov, the proliest, ever came into opposition (though both were of course eventually shot as per usual). Meanwhile noble bourgeois Kollontai sided with the workers' opposition in 1921, going into opposition even before Trotsky and his supporters, and noble bourgeois Oppokov also got stripped of power after opposing Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

Also, a lot of them were lawyers / studied law.

3) The backgrounds don't have correlation to who was or was not shot by Stalin.

[Apoi_Viitor]

How and why did Stalin kill so many revolutionaries?

[Crux]

How and why did Stalin kill so many revolutionaries?
Because they were all in a secret alliance with Hitler of course. Well, that was the reason given anyway.
The Moscow "Confessions" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/03/confession.htm)

[Ismail]

How and why did Stalin kill so many revolutionaries?He viewed them as treacherous and as persons who wanted to undermine the construction of socialism.

See: http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

As for the great purges themselves, see Getty's book Origins of the Great Purges and Robert Thurston's Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia.

You can also view the three court transcripts:


http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

Both Trotskyists and Rightists (Bukharin, Yagoda, etc.) were defeated as the result of the Moscow Trials.


Because they were all in a secret alliance with Hitler of course. Well, that was the reason given anyway.Actually the reasons varied. Some were accused of working with the Germans, some with the Poles, some with the Japanese, some with the British, whereas lesser defendants were simply seen as terrorists working on behalf of Trotsky (who, in their testimony, claimed to have met with Rudolph Hess.) Sabotage and coordinating assassination attempts were common accusations. The Rightists also had their own motivations, e.g. Yagoda was said to have admired Hitler and wanted to overthrow the Soviet state and implement a "National Socialist"-esque government, as well as get rid of both Stalin and Trotsky.

As for the link you gave to Trotsky's response to the 1936 trial, Trotsky says, "These wretched men, humiliated and broken, asked death for themselves so that they might better fulfill their odious role, and thus attempt to save their lives. It was prearranged in the contract." That's not quite believable when it was pretty obvious that the defendants knew that what they were confessing to was clearly worthy of death under Soviet law. It's much less believable when the 1937 and 1938 defendants clearly knew that they were going to also be shot per the 1936 example. There's also no proof of any sort of "contract" or "staging" of confessions.

[A Marxist Historian]

He viewed them as treacherous and as persons who wanted to undermine the construction of socialism.

See: http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

As for the great purges themselves, see Getty's book Origins of the Great Purges and Robert Thurston's Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia.

You can also view the three court transcripts:


http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf
Both Trotskyists and Rightists (Bukharin, Yagoda, etc.) were defeated as the result of the Moscow Trials.

Actually the reasons varied. Some were accused of working with the Germans, some with the Poles, some with the Japanese, some with the British, whereas lesser defendants were simply seen as terrorists working on behalf of Trotsky (who, in their testimony, claimed to have met with Rudolph Hess.) Sabotage and coordinating assassination attempts were common accusations. The Rightists also had their own motivations, e.g. Yagoda was said to have admired Hitler and wanted to overthrow the Soviet state and implement a "National Socialist"-esque government, as well as get rid of both Stalin and Trotsky.

As for the link you gave to Trotsky's response to the 1936 trial, Trotsky says, "These wretched men, humiliated and broken, asked death for themselves so that they might better fulfill their odious role, and thus attempt to save their lives. It was prearranged in the contract." That's not quite believable when it was pretty obvious that the defendants knew that what they were confessing to was clearly worthy of death under Soviet law. It's much less believable when the 1937 and 1938 defendants clearly knew that they were going to also be shot per the 1936 example. There's also no proof of any sort of "contract" or "staging" of confessions.

Unfortunately for this argument, not all of them were sentenced to death. Radek, who in the opinion of Trotsky and many other observors, was the true author of the script followed at his own trial, was not sentenced to death, and several others were not either. Rakovskii for example. Clearly cooperating with the script was the only hope of survival, however slim.

And all of these people had wives, children and so forth, who were in general (with some exceptions, e.g. for Zinoviev and Kamenev) not killed, but instead sent to gulags or orphanages. There was a special gulag in Kazakhstan called Alzhir, whose acronym is short for "wives of traitors to the motherland" or something like that.

Any of them who refused to cooperate, their loved ones would have faced the fate of all of Trotsky's relatives in the Soviet Union, who were exterminated virtually to the last. I think a few of Z and K's survived, though not many. Whereas Bukharin's wife survived, as Bukharin at least had never been an ally of Trotsky.

Of course all the defendants were killed anyway a few years later, without trial, whether they received the death penalty or not. Radek and Rakovskii and a few others were simply murdered in their cells in 1941 when HItler invaded.

In general, it is worth noting that according to the list we have here, with the exceptions of Stalin himself, Lenin's secretary Stasova and Stalin's old pre-October political partner Muranov, who was foresighted enough to drop off the Central Committee after 1923, and lucky enough to be at retirement age during the Great Terror, *none* of the members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in the year 1917 who survived until 1937-38 escaped execution.

For Muranov see the Wikipedia entry, probably pretty accurate.

So Ismail is essentially arguing that the Bolshevik Party of 1917 was a bourgeois counterrevolutionary organization. A position shared with others here on Revleft, come to think of it.

-M.H.-

[Ismail]

I don't really want this thread to go off-topic. If this continues I'll split the topic.


Unfortunately for this argument, not all of them were sentenced to death. Radek, who in the opinion of Trotsky and many other observors, was the true author of the script followed at his own trial, was not sentenced to death, and several others were not either.The "script"? Again, there's no evidence of any "script."


Rakovskii for example.He was given enough years that it basically functioned as a life sentence, considering his age.


Clearly cooperating with the script was the only hope of survival, however slim.As the 1937 verdict noted: Sokolnikov and Radek, "as members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyite centre, responsible for its criminal activities, but not directly participating in [their] organization and execution," and in 1938 for Rakovsky and Bessonov, "as not having taken a direct part in the organization of terrorist, diversive and wrecking activities," whereas in all three cases the vast majority of defendants were shot.


And all of these people had wives, children and so forth, who were in general (with some exceptions, e.g. for Zinoviev and Kamenev) not killed, but instead sent to gulags or orphanages. There was a special gulag in Kazakhstan called Alzhir, whose acronym is short for "wives of traitors to the motherland" or something like that.

Any of them who refused to cooperate, their loved ones would have faced the fate of all of Trotsky's relatives in the Soviet Union, who were exterminated virtually to the last. I think a few of Z and K's survived, though not many. Whereas Bukharin's wife survived, as Bukharin at least had never been an ally of Trotsky.Furr deals with this in his work that I linked too.


Of course all the defendants were killed anyway a few years later, without trial, whether they received the death penalty or not. Radek and Rakovskii and a few others were simply murdered in their cells in 1941 when HItler invaded.Yes. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this. Not like they could hold elaborate trials when the biggest invasion in history was occurring.


So Ismail is essentially arguing that the Bolshevik Party of 1917 was a bourgeois counterrevolutionary organization. A position shared with others here on Revleft, come to think of it.None of the Trotskyist defendants had any sympathy for Nazism. They adopted a "ends justify the means" method of gaining power, and along the way they figured that if Stalin and the "system" he "represented" were overthrown, it didn't really matter what the cost was. To my recollection pretty much all of them said that they were genuine communists and revolutionists, just "led astray" by Trotskyism and so on.

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't really want this thread to go off-topic. If this continues I'll split the topic.

The "script"? Again, there's no evidence of any "script."

He was given enough years that it basically functioned as a life sentence, considering his age.

As the 1937 verdict noted: Sokolnikov and Radek, "as members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyite centre, responsible for its criminal activities, but not directly participating in [their] organization and execution," and in 1938 for Rakovsky and Bessonov, "as not having taken a direct part in the organization of terrorist, diversive and wrecking activities," whereas in all three cases the vast majority of defendants were shot.

Furr deals with this in his work that I linked too.

Yes. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this. Not like they could hold elaborate trials when the biggest invasion in history was occurring.

None of the Trotskyist defendants had any sympathy for Nazism. They adopted a "ends justify the means" method of gaining power, and along the way they figured that if Stalin and the "system" he "represented" were overthrown, it didn't really matter what the cost was. To my recollection pretty much all of them said that they were genuine communists and revolutionists, just "led astray" by Trotskyism and so on.

The defendants, not just the Trotskyists, were just about the *entire* surviving leadership of the Bolshevik Party from the year 1917.

In short, what you are saying is that Stalin is good and Bolshevism is bad, indeed a crime you should be executed for. Except for the "Stalin good" part, that is a very common opinion these days.

And the prosecutor Vyshinsky happened to be the same lawyer who signed the arrest warrant for Lenin as an alleged German spy in 1917, when he was a Menshevik. Rather appropriate I should think.

Grover Furr's only argument that has any plausibility is that the stories of the defendants at the trials all pretty much fit together. Trotsky's suggestion, after closely studying the trial transcripts, that Radek was the true author of that 1938 piece of bad theater, was a conclusion he drew from his close and personal knowledge of Radek. Literary criticism as you will. In any case it answers Furr quite adequately.

Of course Radek would hardly have written anything down, there is no reason why that would be necessary. All he had to do was come up with the plot line and assign the parts, and the NKVD interrogators could easily coach the defendants with their lines.

Furr restricts himself to the famous Moscow trials. Anybody who has spent any time looking at any of the numberless confessions to treason left behind in the NKVD files of the scores of thousands of Soviet officials who confessed to spying and sabotage for Hitler or Japan or what have you knows that they contradict each other wildly, as the interrogators did not need any consistency in stories told that the public never heard. But nonetheless all curiously read the same. Only a very tiny minority of the communists executed in this period were tried in public.

Nor do you have to travel to Russia and get admitted to the ex-KGB archives to read them, as huge numbers of them have been published in Soviet historical journals and other such sources. If Furr has not done so, that is sheer laziness on his part, as he knows Russian. Or something else.

-M.H.-

[Ismail]

In short, what you are saying is that Stalin is good and Bolshevism is bad, indeed a crime you should be executed for.This is assuming that everyone all took the same Bolshevik line except Stalin. There were "left" oppositionists and rightists, it was not much different in, say, Albania where there were those who were loyal to the Yugoslavs, to the Soviets after 1956, to the Chinese, and those who wanted to open up to the West after 1978, etc., and this was also related to what they called for. The Yugoslav types would have benefited from the incorporation of Albania into Yugoslavia, the pro-Soviet ones wanted "destalinization" and less emphasis on heavy industry, and the pro-Chinese types tended to be in the military and wanted it to be above the Party.


And the prosecutor Vyshinsky happened to be the same lawyer who signed the arrest warrant for Lenin as an alleged German spy in 1917, when he was a Menshevik.He was ordered to do it by a superior, and that doesn't have any bearing on the Moscow Trials.


Furr restricts himself to the famous Moscow trials. Anybody who has spent any time looking at any of the numberless confessions to treason left behind in the NKVD files of the scores of thousands of Soviet officials who confessed to spying and sabotage for Hitler or Japan or what have you knows that they contradict each other wildly, as the interrogators did not need any consistency in stories told that the public never heard. But nonetheless all curiously read the same. Only a very tiny minority of the communists executed in this period were tried in public.Except the Moscow Trials defendants were put up to a different standard than provincial NKVD interrogators who were generally fulfilling quotas.

[Martin Blank]

I did research with the help of a Russian speaker, so I could access Russian net sources. This provided more depth and in fact a good bit of what Miles put up is not correct.

The one I put up was not 100-percent the same as yours. You had some more access to information than I did, but you also forgot some information.


Kamenev -- his father started as a machinist but worked his way up to engineer and Kamenev was not in poverty. His dad was prole -> petit bourgeoisie.

You forgot to take into account that Kamenev was not raised by his working-class father, but was raised by Maxim Gorky. It was the social being Gorky introduced to Kamenev that determined his petty-bourgeois consciousness and class development.

Overall, even with DM's more in-depth research, it does not change the point of argument about why this was posted in the first place, which was to refute the idea that the Bolshevik C.C. in 1917 was "mostly working class". One token worker does not a proletarian leadership make.

[A Marxist Historian]

This is assuming that everyone all took the same Bolshevik line except Stalin. There were "left" oppositionists and rightists, it was not much different in, say, Albania where there were those who were loyal to the Yugoslavs, to the Soviets after 1956, to the Chinese, and those who wanted to open up to the West after 1978, etc., and this was also related to what they called for. The Yugoslav types would have benefited from the incorporation of Albania into Yugoslavia, the pro-Soviet ones wanted "destalinization" and less emphasis on heavy industry, and the pro-Chinese types tended to be in the military and wanted it to be above the Party....

As even a casual glance at the list we are discussing clearly demonstrates, it is Stalin who was the oppositionist, since he had them all killed, whether left, right or center. Or rather, he was an opponent of Bolshevism pure and simple. The numbers do not lie.

All those who were leaders of the Revolution except himself were his enemies and he had them killed, on various legal excuses. He was a traitor to the revolution. And the prosecutor he deliberately chose was the same lawyer who signed Lenin's arrest warrant in 1917. This was obviously no accident.

Had Lenin still been alive in 1937 and Stalin were nonetheless in charge, Lenin would have been in the dock with the rest of them. Or more likely, like those Trotskyists and Bukharinists who refused to confess to Vyshinsky's absurd charges, he never would have made it to trial and would have died during interrogation like Riutin for example.

If Enver Hoxha followed the Stalin model and behaved in a similar fashion, wiping out the entire Central Committee of the Albanian party except himself, then the same could be said of him. I am not familiar enough with Albania to judge if this were true or not.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The one I put up was not 100-percent the same as yours. You had some more access to information than I did, but you also forgot some information.



You forgot to take into account that Kamenev was not raised by his working-class father, but was raised by Maxim Gorky. It was the social being Gorky introduced to Kamenev that determined his petty-bourgeois consciousness and class development.

Overall, even with DM's more in-depth research, it does not change the point of argument about why this was posted in the first place, which was to refute the idea that the Bolshevik C.C. in 1917 was "mostly working class". One token worker does not a proletarian leadership make.

I think given the social conditions of Tsarist Russia, it was difficult for a factory worker to get the lengthy political training, experience and education necessary to serve on the Bolshevik Central Committee.

This became much easier after the Revolution, and the leadership gradually proletarianized.

Remember, we are only talking about the very tip top leadership of the party. At middle and lower levels, the leadership was largely proletarian in the Bolshevik Party, unlike the Mensheviks or SR's. And at the membership level the party was overwhelmingly proletarian.

-M.H.-

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

And remember, most of the supporters of the Democratic Party are proletarian.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think it is really difficult to imagine much would've been substantially different if the one variable one was to change was the proletarian content of the party elite.

[A Marxist Historian]

And remember, most of the supporters of the Democratic Party are proletarian.

The "supporters" of the Democratic Party are those who pay the bills. That's the capitalists.

In the last election, the Democrats got *more* money from the capitalists for their election campaign than the Repubicans did. The relative pennies chipped in by the unions are chump change.

What matters in determining the nature of a party is what is its program and what does it do. Not who were the parents of the members of the Central Committee.

Especially since under Brezhnev, virtually *all* the top leaders came from a working class background. So I guess Brezhnev's Russia was the real socialist utopia, unlike that petty bourgeois sellout Lenin.

Be it noted that whatever their original class background, none of the members of the Central Committee were *practicing* capitalists or lawyers or certainly Tsarist nobles. They were all dirt poor professional revolutionaries hiding in workers' cellars, depending on them for survival, and subsisting on black bread and tea from the samovar.

-M.H.-

[Ismail]

As a note to others, if they'd like me to split this thread, I'll happily do so.


If Enver Hoxha followed the Stalin model and behaved in a similar fashion, wiping out the entire Central Committee of the Albanian party except himself, then the same could be said of him. I am not familiar enough with Albania to judge if this were true or not.James S. O'Donnell notes in his book A Coming of Age that, "Of all the prominent leaders in the Albanian Party of Labor since World War II (except for Ramiz Alia, who was the chosen successor), only Hysni Kapo died from natural causes, cancer of the pancreas. The others were purged or committed 'suicide.'" (p. 62.) But again this assumes an argument akin to argumentum ad populum. As for your claims about Lenin, the Medvedev brothers wrote in their book The Unknown Stalin (p. 90), "Stalin owned all the editions of Marx, Engels and Lenin that were published during the 1920s through to the 1940s. It is clear from his assiduous notes that he read Lenin with dedication." Erik Van Ree in his book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin (p. 258) states that, "The impression one gets from the notes in the books in Stalin's library is that he genuinely admired Marx and Lenin, considering himself their 'pupil.'"


And the prosecutor he deliberately chose was the same lawyer who signed Lenin's arrest warrant in 1917. This was obviously no accident.Stalin first met Vyshinsky in either 1905 or 1907. Stalin didn't wake up one day and go, "Oh hey, where's that ex-Menshevik who was ordered to sign a warrant for Lenin's arrest back in 1917?" Not to mention he was Prosecutor General at the time of the trials. Not to mention that Vyshinsky had a diplomatic career throughout the 1940's and, from all accounts, was far from being a liberal. Hoxha himself recalled meeting Vyshinsky in 1949 or so (it's mentioned in The Titoites), and he liked him.

[A Marxist Historian]

As a note to others, if they'd like me to split this thread, I'll happily do so.

James S. O'Donnell notes in his book A Coming of Age that, "Of all the prominent leaders in the Albanian Party of Labor since World War II (except for Ramiz Alia, who was the chosen successor), only Hysni Kapo died from natural causes, cancer of the pancreas. The others were purged or committed 'suicide.'" (p. 62.) But again this assumes an argument akin to argumentum ad populum. As for your claims about Lenin, the Medvedev brothers wrote in their book The Unknown Stalin (p. 90), "Stalin owned all the editions of Marx, Engels and Lenin that were published during the 1920s through to the 1940s. It is clear from his assiduous notes that he read Lenin with dedication." Erik Van Ree in his book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin (p. 258) states that, "The impression one gets from the notes in the books in Stalin's library is that he genuinely admired Marx and Lenin, considering himself their 'pupil.'"

Stalin first met Vyshinsky in either 1905 or 1907. Stalin didn't wake up one day and go, "Oh hey, where's that ex-Menshevik who was ordered to sign a warrant for Lenin's arrest back in 1917?" Not to mention he was Prosecutor General at the time of the trials. Not to mention that Vyshinsky had a diplomatic career throughout the 1940's and, from all accounts, was far from being a liberal. Hoxha himself recalled meeting Vyshinsky in 1949 or so (it's mentioned in The Titoites), and he liked him.

No need. I think your arguments are so feeble that I need not comment further. Indeed they tend to supplement mine own nicely. I do think you have provided good evidence that Hoxha was just as much of a counterrevolutionary as Stalin.

You seem to be arguing that it is perfectly natural, inevitable and downright standard for the Supreme Leader to kill all the other lesser leaders, and that this is what the working class needs to triumph. And then of course turn mass terror onto the rest of an ostensible workers' state, something you do not seem to care to deny. A truly remarkable conception. Further comment from me seems quite unnecessary.

I suppose one could say that Stalin was a true anarchist, as he spent so much of his career abolishing and indeed exterminating the state of which he was a functionary, which he himself labelled a workers' state.

I suppose the ghost of Bakunin might approve at some level.

So unless anyone else wants to clamber on board...

-M.H.-

[DaringMehring]

I'd appreciate keeping this thread clear of the Moscow trial garbage. It's off topic and it's agitating at least to me to see great revolutionaries get their graves pissed on.



You forgot to take into account that Kamenev was not raised by his working-class father, but was raised by Maxim Gorky. It was the social being Gorky introduced to Kamenev that determined his petty-bourgeois consciousness and class development.


First there was some claim that Sverdlov had been adopted by Gorky, now Kamenev (?). I can find no evidence on either of these claims. All I can find is that Sverdlov's family met Gorky at some point in Nizhny Novgorod.

For Kamenev, proletarian is a bit of a misnomer. It underscores, that the category of petit bourgeois is broad and the borders are fuzzy. I mean, Kamenev's dad went from train machinist (seemingly proletarian) to engineer (not just on trains, just, engineer --- petit bourgeois). I'm not sure when this happened but Kamenev was not badly off in childhood I think, certainly he got to university, and there is no note of him being forced into early work like tutoring for Zinoviev -- a reversal, since Kamenev was nominally proletarian and Zinoviev was from the petit-bourgeoisie.



Overall, even with DM's more in-depth research, it does not change the point of argument about why this was posted in the first place, which was to refute the idea that the Bolshevik C.C. in 1917 was "mostly working class". One token worker does not a proletarian leadership make.

I never said it did.

The Bolshevik CC of 1917 clearly was not "mostly working class."

I would argue that it was approximately a cross-section of Russian society at the time (in which the proletariat was a small minority), skewed towards the urban demographic.

However as has been noted, the member composition and orientation of the Bolsheviks was proletarian.

Also, I find it interesting, that so many had parents who were teachers. It seems these socially-oriented parents may have introduced democratic ideology. This calls to question, the relationship between objective and subjective factors in the class struggle. Objectively, V I Lenin for instance, was life-pathed to be a lawyer for and member of the exploiting classes.

Seeing the proletarian organization, which would today be criticized for being "workerist" by a lot of groups, led by in the main petit-bourgeoisie, also calls to question for me, if this is not actually a natural state of the affairs, in the sense, that petit-bourgeoisie always have more access to cultural resources, free time to study, and so on. Is it a surprise, that they would be ahead of the curve theoretically, be more experienced organizers, and so on?

After all, the Bolsheviks successfully led the revolution, and every one of those people on the CC had long term work with workers under their belt, worker trust, and support.

On the other hand, the revolution degenerated, *but can this really be blamed on the class origin of the CC*? As The Inform Candidate said, seems unlikely. Reasons: 1) as demonstrated, opposition status and class origin do not correlate. 2) Stalin found it necessary to kill all of these CC members, indicating that they were in fact preservers of revolutionary tradition.

There is a lot of food for thought.