On the Cheka and Lenin

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Do you agree with Lenin's creation of the Cheka and their use of summary executions? Do you think it was created and used as a "defense of the revolution" or as a way for the Bolsheviks to "silence their opposition?"

[daft punk]

Well, in the first half of 1918, 22 people were executed. That is not a lot for a huge country at war and in a revolution.

[l'Enfermé]

I think it did more good than bad, and considering the circumstances, especially since it was under Dzerzhinsky's control, I think it was justifiable. There was no better way, revolutionary times require revolutionary means. The excesses of the Red Terror were responses to the unrestrained terrorism of the reactionaries, Anarchists, SRs, who amongst other things, assassinated hundreds of Bolsheviks before the Red Terror began.

[Grenzer]

The Cheka is not a black and white issue. It is necessary to take efforts to stop capitalists that wish to reverse the revolution, but as you can see from Borz's blatant opportunism, it was not a far slide to basically become an excuse to start murdering anyone that disagreed with The Party as opposed to those that were pro-capitalist. The counter-revolutionary excesses of the Cheka laid the foundation for the future terror of Stalinism; so we should praise what they did right, but condemn what they did wrong.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I recall reading once that an increase in organized crime following the revolution and civil war also contributed to the creation of the Cheka. How much of that is true?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I think it did more good than bad, and considering the circumstances, especially since it was under Dzerzhinsky's control, I think it was justifiable. There was no better way, revolutionary times require revolutionary means. The excesses of the Red Terror were responses to the unrestrained terrorism of the reactionaries, Anarchists, SRs, who amongst other things, assassinated hundreds of Bolsheviks before the Red Terror began.

I somewhat agree with this view. The Social Revolutionaries and Anarchists were assassinating Bolsheviks and that was for sure a reason why the Red Terror was instituted, but I also feel another reason for the Red Terror was to silence Bolshevik critics, which is wrong and unjustifiable. I guess I agree with Grenzer's statement. There was some good the Cheka did and some bad.

[l'Enfermé]

The White Terror started as soon as October actually, 1917, when Cadets captured soldiers of a revolutionary reserve regiment and executed almost 400 unarmed revolutionaries.

In Kiev, about 2,000 revolutionary workers were slaughtered in early 1918. Denikin's men(whom he inherited from Kornilov)killed about 150,000 Jews...Krasnov killed about 50,000 revolutionaries...The Mensheviks, Whites, and the SRs took no hostages and didn't arrest revolutionary workers and peasants, they hung, shot and maimed them. Arresting workers and taking hostages was completely prohibited.

Such were the circumstances when the Cheka was founded. This is what the Red Terror was a reply to.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

The White Terror started as soon as October actually, 1917, when Cadets captured soldiers of a revolutionary reserve regiment and executed almost 400 unarmed revolutionaries.

In Kiev, about 2,000 revolutionary workers were slaughtered in early 1918. Denikin's men(whom he inherited from Kornilov)killed about 150,000 Jews...Krasnov killed about 50,000 revolutionaries...The Mensheviks, Whites, and the SRs took no hostages and didn't arrest revolutionary workers and peasants, they hung, shot and maimed them. Arresting workers and taking hostages was completely prohibited.

Such were the circumstances when the Cheka was founded. This is what the Red Terror was a reply to.

Honestly, I am not trying to sound confrontational, and I am not saying you're wrong, but were is your proof/sources for such claims?

[l'Enfermé]

Honestly, I am not trying to sound confrontational, and I am not saying you're wrong, but were is your proof/sources for such claims?
It's not really a disputed topic(not even by bourgeois historians), I listed only a tiny fraction of the crimes of the Whites that created the necessity for the Red Terror(And the Cheka).

[Ostrinski]

In all honesty the Cheka itself was a product of circumstance. The Makhnovists had a similar organ in Ukraine. The Cheka was originally an organ of the revolution, but would later be employed as a means of counter-revolution.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

It's not really a disputed topic(not even by bourgeois historians), I listed only a tiny fraction of the crimes of the Whites that created the necessity for the Red Terror(And the Cheka).

...okay, I never said I was disputing you. I was just wondering where you got your numbers from for you claims that 400 unarmed revolutionaries were killed by Cadets in 1917, etc. Even this I do not dispute, I am just wondering where you got this information.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The Red Terror, such as it was, was a necessary response to murderous counter-revolutionaries. And it worked. To relate the Cheka from the period of 1918-1921 to Stalin's GPU and the Great Purges, is simply wrong. To take a static view of the Revolution and judge what the Cheka did abstractly makes no sense -- there was a civil war and state power was at stake. Later the GPU was in the service of Stalin arresting and killing communists -- these things are in no way equivalent.

[#FF0000]

tbh i don't even know if the Cheka itself was as damaging as the snitch culture that was so prominent in the USSR by the time of Kruschev.

[Grenzer]

. To take a static view of the Revolution and judge what the Cheka did abstractly makes no sense -- there was a civil war and state power was at stake.

I agree, which is why the opportunist view that all bad things began with Stalin is absurd.

A counter-offensive against counter-revolutionaries is required, as Brospierre mentioned, even Makhno and the anarchists recognized that. However, when these measures against counter-revolution become an extension of the party, rather than the actual workers, you start having a problem. When revolutionary anarchists and communists that are outside the bounds of the party line are targeted as counter-revolutionaries simply for disagreeing, then again, you start having a problem. If in order to stop counter-revolution you become counter-revolutionary in the process, then it defeats the point. Your black and white view of the Russian Revolution is embarrassing. Even the Stalinists take a more critical view of the actions of Stalin and Lenin than some of you do of Lenin and Trotsky.

The message some of the people in here seem to be making is: There is nothing at all to learn from the Russian Revolution, we should just repeat everything the Bolsheviks did exactly because they were perfect.

The point of the message? Thank fuck you're never going to get your hands on state power. One can only imagine what must go through the minds of some of the posters here..

[l'Enfermé]

Revolutionary Anarchists and Communists were all on the side of the Bolshevik Party, Grenzer.

[Ostrinski]

The counter-revolution of the Bolsheviks was inevitable. You might say that the Bolsheviks were forced to centralize their power given the circumstances, which is not only true but also demonstrates my point. In carrying out the centralization process they started banning party factions but more importantly they alienated thmselves from the working class, and still more importantly they became less accountable to the working class effectively laying the foundations for a new ruling class to develop from within the party. Counter-revolution was inescapable.

[A Marxist Historian]

The counter-revolution of the Bolsheviks was inevitable. You might say that the Bolsheviks were forced to centralize their power given the circumstances, which is not only true but also demonstrates my point. In carrying out the centralization process they started banning party factions but more importantly they alienated thmselves from the working class, and still more importantly they became less accountable to the working class effectively laying the foundations for a new ruling class to develop from within the party. Counter-revolution was inescapable.

The working class? What working class? By 1921, the working class had dropped in sheer numbers for six million in 1917 to a million and a half, due to the collapse of the economy, workers fleeing to the countryside to grow food, deaths from famine and warfare, and the most revolutionary workers becoming Soviet officials or Red Army commissars and officers.

The Bolsheviks didn't substitute themselves for the working class, the problem was that the revolutionary working class of 1917 had ceased to exist. Generally, the people still working in factories at this point were the workers who weren't involved in the revolution in 1917 and spent four years of civil war trying desperately to feed their families and stay out of trouble.

The working class was reconstituted during the 1920s during the NEP period. But when Stalin's industrialization drive happened in the late '20s and early '30s, you had a vast increase in the working class based on emigration from the countryside, and veteran workers who had kept their nose clean and stayed out of politics were promoted en masse into the Soviet bureaucracy.

Approximately a million and a half Soviet workers were promoted into the bureaucracy in this period, and the coincidence in the figure with the number of Soviet workers in the factories in 1921 is not accidental.

Which by the way is one reason why the vast Soviet bureaucracy of the 1930s was at its lower levels so enthused about the purge of the Trotskyists. Large numbers of them had been involved in the broad spring 1921 strike wave in factories, which was basically a protest against ultraleft "war communism," and was led by the Mensheviks. So they hated Trotsky and all the Old Bolsheviks in 1921 and again in 1937.

I've done research in ex-Soviet archives with respect to the Great Terror. The one thing you never ever see as an accusation against purge victims or arrestees is participation in the 1921 strike waves (except in files of actual Mensheviks). That's because that would target half the bureaucracy if not more.

Indeed even Yezhov himself, the administrator of the Great Terror, was a supporter of Kollontai's "Workers Opposition" in 1921.

-M.H.-

[l'Enfermé]

The counter-revolution of the Bolsheviks was inevitable. You might say that the Bolsheviks were forced to centralize their power given the circumstances, which is not only true but also demonstrates my point. In carrying out the centralization process they started banning party factions but more importantly they alienated thmselves from the working class, and still more importantly they became less accountable to the working class effectively laying the foundations for a new ruling class to develop from within the party. Counter-revolution was inescapable.
The banning of factions was a temporary measure, and the Stalinist bureaucracy that developed as the Soviet Union degenerated can't be said to have constituted a class, it was only a caste.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I agree, which is why the opportunist view that all bad things began with Stalin is absurd.

A counter-offensive against counter-revolutionaries is required, as Brospierre mentioned, even Makhno and the anarchists recognized that. However, when these measures against counter-revolution become an extension of the party, rather than the actual workers, you start having a problem. When revolutionary anarchists and communists that are outside the bounds of the party line are targeted as counter-revolutionaries simply for disagreeing, then again, you start having a problem. If in order to stop counter-revolution you become counter-revolutionary in the process, then it defeats the point. Your black and white view of the Russian Revolution is embarrassing. Even the Stalinists take a more critical view of the actions of Stalin and Lenin than some of you do of Lenin and Trotsky.

The message some of the people in here seem to be making is: There is nothing at all to learn from the Russian Revolution, we should just repeat everything the Bolsheviks did exactly because they were perfect.

The point of the message? Thank fuck you're never going to get your hands on state power. One can only imagine what must go through the minds of some of the posters here..
There is, of course, much to be learned from the Russian Revolution. I don't know of these revolutionary communists and anarchists that were killed by the Cheka, do you have some documentation?

The Bolsheviks were far from perfect, but better than anyone else before or since. A little fucking humility on your part wouldn't hurt.

My point was, that on the ground at that time, things were not calm and clear. If there were excesses -- that is not good and they should be discussed -- but it is not the same thing as killing political oppositionists at a time of relative stability. What I think the argument comes down to is this -- you are arguing that Lenin and the Bolsheviks necessarily led to Stalin and the Great Purges. That, comrade, is not borne out by some revolutionary excesses that might have happened. The Bolshevik Party was a revolutionary communist party.

I suppose you could really go for the gusto and tell us that Lenin and Stalin were just the logical culmination of Tsarism.

[Ostrinski]

The banning of factions was a temporary measure, and the Stalinist bureaucracy that developed as the Soviet Union degenerated can't be said to have constituted a class, it was only a caste.It developed into a class.

[Omsk]

It developed into a class.

Wrong.

And for a number of reasons.

The Soviet administrative control bureaucracy could not use its income as a private capital,as a source of profit,or to exploit other workers.Any relatives,children,can't recieve their 'status' from them,after they die. They are not born that way,[The members of the bureaucracy] they are recruiting future members from the working class,and other classes.Nothing prevents ordinary workers from factories in the Urals and collective farmers to become the part of the bureaucratic group.
It was not a class,it just wasn't.

But still,to argue that it was not a class,is not to say that it had little controll over the present state of USSR and the living and functioning elements of the Soviet society,the problem is the huge exaggerasation,which is a result of the impractical and incomplete definitions of what the very term "Soviet bureaucracy" ment - and what it means today.If we are going to look from a historical viewpoint,than the 'Stalinist' regime was certainly determined to fight this bureaucratic functional group or to curb its influence on everyday life.Many workers also formed commissions to try and report the mistakes of the local bureaucrats and the local apparatus,which was sometimes,not functioning on the level proposed and wished by the Kremlin.[In terms of efficiency.]

[ArrowLance]

Do you agree with Lenin's creation of the Cheka and their use of summary executions? Do you think it was created and used as a "defense of the revolution" or as a way for the Bolsheviks to "silence their opposition?"

These things were largely one in the same.

[daft punk]

I When revolutionary anarchists and communists that are outside the bounds of the party line are targeted as counter-revolutionaries simply for disagreeing, then again, you start having a problem.

but this did not happen, supporting evidence please.





If in order to stop counter-revolution you become counter-revolutionary in the process, then it defeats the point.

This did not happen either, and seems a wild claim indeed!





Your black and white view of the Russian Revolution is embarrassing.

his view is neither black and white nor embarrassing, it is factual and logical.




Even the Stalinists take a more critical view of the actions of Stalin and Lenin than some of you do of Lenin and Trotsky.

Stalinists believe in lies, they tell lies, their views are worthless. Dont use them for support. Support you claims above.




The message some of the people in here seem to be making is: There is nothing at all to learn from the Russian Revolution, we should just repeat everything the Bolsheviks did exactly because they were perfect.

The point of the message? Thank fuck you're never going to get your hands on state power. One can only imagine what must go through the minds of some of the posters here..

No this is not the message, mistakes were made and admitted. For instance Trotsky admits that Lenin was right in the Trade Union debates. I would say, in hindsight of course, that Trotsky didnt go far enough in the New Course. But he was there, I wasnt. maybe he wanted to go further but felt it would be counterproductive. Lenin may have had some doubts about the way things had gone.

Of course there were excesses in the civil war, you have millions of uneducated men running around with guns, not always sure even who was on what side.

I can tell you the Bolsheviks were quite soft in many instances. For example when the SRs shot the German ambassador, to sabotage the peace, the Germans wanted 100 shot or something like that. The Bolsheviks shot about 10 as a token gesture but claimed to have shot 100.

There was a peace treaty at stake!

Your Stalinist friends, do they mention Stalin's hobby of burning villages? Not sure that was officially sanctioned.

I dont take Stalinists seriously. I dont take some so-called Trots very seriously, on certain issues at least. I am willing to have a serious debate with left coms and anarchists, provided they debate seriously.

That means supporting claims with evidence, misrepresenting people, and making unsupported wild claims.

I am a bit disappointed in the post I am replying to coming from you, your posts are usually better.

Of course there is stuff to learn, that is why we discuss the revolution. Half the people on here want it swept under the carpet. We Trots have nothing to hide. Do your research, show evidence that widespread abuse was tolerated with no good reason.

[daft punk]

The counter-revolution of the Bolsheviks was inevitable. You might say that the Bolsheviks were forced to centralize their power given the circumstances, which is not only true but also demonstrates my point. In carrying out the centralization process they started banning party factions but more importantly they alienated thmselves from the working class, and still more importantly they became less accountable to the working class effectively laying the foundations for a new ruling class to develop from within the party. Counter-revolution was inescapable.

Every word of the above is wrong. I suggest you do some basic reading. Start from scratch, forget everything you think you know or you will just see everything through a distorting lens and be no more objective that the Stalinists.

The degeneration that happened before 1924 and the degeneration that happened after are not in the same league. Degeneration in a small way, in desperate circumstances, is not counter-revolution, it is revolution. Degeneration a billion times greater, for completely opposite reasons, in completely different circumstances is the counter-revolution.

If you are dying of thirst and I give you a glass of water that is one thing.

If someone then forcibly pours 10 gallons of water down your throat and kills you that is another.

Did I contribute to your death?

I dont like analogies but the point is quantity is as important as quality. This is the Marxist method.

[Khalid]

The banning of factions was a temporary measure, and the Stalinist bureaucracy that developed as the Soviet Union degenerated can't be said to have constituted a class, it was only a caste.

Really? Who said that?

[Ostrinski]

Every word of the above is wrong. I suggest you do some basic reading. Start from scratch, forget everything you think you know or you will just see everything through a distorting lens and be no more objective that the Stalinists.

The degeneration that happened before 1924 and the degeneration that happened after are not in the same league. Degeneration in a small way, in desperate circumstances, is not counter-revolution, it is revolution. Degeneration a billion times greater, for completely opposite reasons, in completely different circumstances is the counter-revolution.

If you are dying of thirst and I give you a glass of water that is one thing.

If someone then forcibly pours 10 gallons of water down your throat and kills you that is another.

Did I contribute to your death?

I dont like analogies but the point is quantity is as important as quality. This is the Marxist method.Counter-revolution is counter-revolution, bro. The nature of counter-revolution does not change in accordance with who is running the show. I suggest you do some basic reading.

edit: also you're a weirdo

[daft punk]

Counter-revolution is counter-revolution, bro. The nature of counter-revolution does not change in accordance with who is running the show. I suggest you do some basic reading.

edit: also you're a weirdo

Congratulations, you just made it to my list of people who's posts are not worth bothering with.

[Per Levy]

Congratulations, you just made it to my list of people who's posts are not worth bothering with.


Ignore list: Brospierre

why do i have the feeling the list will get much bigger? come on now nothing Brospierre said is ignore worthy, besides your analogies are pretty weird.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Counter-revolution is counter-revolution, bro. The nature of counter-revolution does not change in accordance with who is running the show. I suggest you do some basic reading.

edit: also you're a weirdo
Well, doo dah. Apples are apples. That which constitutes counter-revolution is a change in the ownership of the means of production -- in this case the return of the bourgeoisie to power. Didn't happen until the 1990s. As many here on reflevt seem to think -- "Politics I don't like constitute counter-revolution." I have had long arguments with State Cappers about this on other threads and don't really want to repeat it. But bad policies, repression of democratic rights, etc., in and of themselves do not constitute counter-revolution, as objectionable as these things might be. Did Napoleon represent counter-revolution in France? No, France remained a bourgeois republic. Keep that in mind when you discuss the USSR.

[daft punk]

why do i have the feeling the list will get much bigger? come on now nothing Brospierre said is ignore worthy, besides your analogies are pretty weird.
I put him on ignore because he keeps repeating the same bollocks in the same annoying manner.

For example he made his usual claims, and then Marxist Historian made the effort to post a substantial refutation of the, which Brospierre followed with a pathetic "It developed into a class." directed at another poster.

His final "Counter-revolution is counter-revolution, bro. The nature of counter-revolution does not change in accordance with who is running the show."
was the last straw. There is no attempt at serious debate, just useless posts repeating the same simplistic claims.

Finally, he came back on to edit his post to add a line of personal abuse.

This is not worth my time, so ignore it is. I'm not one to hold grudges, and there are plenty of other crap posters, but sometimes you have to single someone out and make an example of them. Line them up against the wall...

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Wow guys, when I posted this I was hoping for a civilized debate over the Cheka, not name calling and temper tantrums! Can we please get back to the subject and stop this? Everyone has their own opinions, so respect them and discuss their ideas.

[Ocean Seal]

The Cheka was pretty great. That is all. It did good things and I'm happy we had it.

[Ismail]

Whatever one thinks of the Cheka's role post-civil war vis-à-vis the working class, it was relatively tame in practice.

"The total figures of executions, published in 1921, were as follows. In the first half of 1918 [before the Red Terror] they were 22, in the second half some 6,300, and for the three years 1918-20 (for all Russia) 12,733. When it is remembered that in Rostov alone about 25,000 workers were shot by the Whites upon occupying the city, not to speak of many other towns, the Red terror will fall into rather more just perspective."
(Andrew Rothstein. A History of the U.S.S.R. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1951. p. 106.)

[Rafiq]

Dzerzhinsky was one of the most admirable of Bolsheviks, both personally and in action. He was naturally gifted at what he did, and to this day, the Bourgeois class, no matter where, still tremble in fear of the sight of his cold, unforgiving stare. The Cheka was, strategically one of the most advanced and powerful intelligence organizations to ever exist. Even dwarfing that of the Imperialist intelligence, formed by ragged Bolsheviks with a selfless ambition to defend the revolution at all costs. It is a shame what it turned into in the 30's onward.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Hey Ismail, don't you ever wonder about this? That the terror, at the height of the civil war was relatively modest -- while in the 30s, with the regime relatively stable, Stalin and the GPU killed far more people? Just askin'. . .

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Dzerzhinsky was one of the most admirable of Bolsheviks, both personally and in action. He was naturally gifted at what he did, and to this day, the Bourgeois class, no matter where, still tremble in fear of the sight of his cold, unforgiving stare. The Cheka was, strategically one of the most advanced and powerful intelligence organizations to ever exist. Even dwarfing that of the Imperialist intelligence, formed by ragged Bolsheviks with a selfless ambition to defend the revolution at all costs. It is a shame what it turned into in the 30's onward.

I agree with this. I think it is the same reason that the Soviet intelligence was so much better than anyone else's. Instead of having either sadistic thugs or other manner of lowlife shits -- both the Cheka, and Soviet spy agencies had excellent human material. Intelligent people, driven to defend the revolution. In addition, for the international intelligence, you had people who were native to every country, that fit in perfectly and had all kinds of connections. These people were not verminous traitors, but serving the cause, in their own minds, of world revolution. It made all the difference -- and had a great deal to do with the Soviets victory in WWII. People who spy because they believe in a cause, are usually much finer human specimens than those that do it for personal gain -- or to act out sadistic fantasies.

[Rafiq]

Hey Ismail, don't you ever wonder about this? That the terror, at the height of the civil war was relatively modest -- while in the 30s, with the regime relatively stable, Stalin and the GPU killed far more people? Just askin'. . .

I would imagine this was due to the industrialization that was going on which required more administrative control over several regions... It would have been an inevitability.

[l'Enfermé]

Hey Ismail, don't you ever wonder about this? That the terror, at the height of the civil war was relatively modest -- while in the 30s, with the regime relatively stable, Stalin and the GPU killed far more people? Just askin'. . .
If the regime in the 30's was relatively stable, Stalin wouldn't have to execute almost a million people during the Great Purges(the number is from Soviet Archives and counts only the executions by the NKVD, it doesn't count the millions that died in then gulag).

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

If the regime in the 30's was relatively stable, Stalin wouldn't have to execute almost a million people during the Great Purges(the number is from Soviet Archives and counts only the executions by the NKVD, it doesn't count the millions that died in then gulag).

RELATIVELY. Relative to the period of the Civil War, it was stable. Of course big picture, it was not so stable -- especially as Stalin was eliminating a couple of generations of communists. Much of that instability was caused by the purges.

[robbo203]

Wrong.

And for a number of reasons.

The Soviet administrative control bureaucracy could not use its income as a private capital,as a source of profit,or to exploit other workers.Any relatives,children,can't recieve their 'status' from them,after they die. They are not born that way,[The members of the bureaucracy] they are recruiting future members from the working class,and other classes.Nothing prevents ordinary workers from factories in the Urals and collective farmers to become the part of the bureaucratic group.
It was not a class,it just wasn't.

But still,to argue that it was not a class,is not to say that it had little controll over the present state of USSR and the living and functioning elements of the Soviet society,the problem is the huge exaggerasation,which is a result of the impractical and incomplete definitions of what the very term "Soviet bureaucracy" ment - and what it means today.If we are going to look from a historical viewpoint,than the 'Stalinist' regime was certainly determined to fight this bureaucratic functional group or to curb its influence on everyday life.Many workers also formed commissions to try and report the mistakes of the local bureaucrats and the local apparatus,which was sometimes,not functioning on the level proposed and wished by the Kremlin.[In terms of efficiency.]

As has been explained many times before on this list, this is a quite mistaken way of looking at the question class.

It really does not matter one jot for the purposes of Marxian class analysis that the soviet state capitalist class "could not use its income as a private capital" . Nor does it matter how individuals were recruited to this class. In the Middle ages the Catholic Church owned vast amounts of land and many of its monastries were hives of industry. Individuals in the clergy did not individually own bits of this wealth. And it was certainly not the common property of the congregation. It belonged collectively to the Church establishment and those who comprised it.


Precisely the same argument couyld be made vis a vis state capitalism. Engels spelt this out clearly. What is important is not the existence of individual private capitalists but capital in the form of a social relationship from which can be inferred the existence of a capitalist class:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. Socialism Utopian and Scientific

The point is that wage labour implies capital (and vice versa) and where you have the wage labour-capital relationship you must ipso facto have a working class and a capitalist class. There is no such thing as a working class without a capitalist class in Marxian terms. That would be uttterly absurd. Thus if you accept there was a working class in the Soviet Union which obtained its income by working for a wage then by implication you have to accept the existence of a capitalist class. A wage is the price of the commodity, labour power, which the worker sells but in order to sell it there must be someone to sell it to. That is the capitalist class.

In the Soviet Union this capitalist class exercised ownership in real de facto collective terms rather than as individual capitalists holding private equity. Their relationship to the means of production was the same as the Church establishment in the Middle Ages. Effective ownership corresponded to, and was proportional to, the exercise of state power. It is what happens in real de facto terms that counts - not the de jure legal rights enshrined in some constititional document. That Trotsky (who is the main source of all this nonsense about there not being a capitalist class in Russia), should attach such huge importance to the legal superstructure of the Soviet Union, as opposed to the economic realities on the ground, speaks volumes for his essentially bourgeois idealist approach to historical analysis

When you think about it carefully, it was quite obvious that de facto ownership amounts to the same thing as ultimate control. If I ultimately control something I effectively own it. My ownership is made effective by virtue to my ability to dispose of it as I would wish.

It is absolutely undeniable that in the Soviet Union there was a small group of people - the apparatchiks or nomenklatura - who exerted ultimate control over the means of production by virtue of their more or less complete strangehold on the state machine. This group constituted a distinct class, in other words, who, because they controlled the state, meant they controlled the disposal of the economic surplus. It is this capacity to collectively , nor individually, dispose of the economic surplus as they wish that makes them a distinct class in Marxian terms - the state capitalist class. And one tell tale sign of this is the enormous gap in living standards between the state capitalist class and ordinary Russian workers. Ive already provided evidence that levels of inequality in the Soviet Union were not dissimilar to those in countries like Canada or the US. This happened not just in the post war era - under Stalin you had your Soviet millionaires too

To argue that no such state capitalist class existed in the Soviet union is to suggest that the relationship of this group of people at the top of the Party hierarchy to the means of production was no different to that of ordinary workers. That is patently nonsensical. All the important decisions were made by the state capitalist class and the workers simply did not get a look in. Being able to decide what to do in respect of the means of prpduction is precisely what is entailed by one 's relation to the means of production and in this regard there was a clear differentiation along class lines in the Soviet Union.

All of the primary characterisitics of capitalism were present in the Soviet Union and this is undeniable - generalised wage labour, commodity production, the pursuit of profits (actually a legal requirement for state enterrpises under Soviet law). Even means of production - capital - were bought and sold between state enterprises. The fact that markets were tightly regulated and subject to state intervention in the form of price fixing does not alter one iota the fact that it was still a market based capitalist society and therefore subject to the overrding need to extract surplus value in order to accumulate capital. Arguably, extensive price fixing by the state was not a very efficient way of running capitalism and this is why in the long run the Soviet state had to give more and more scope to free market forces as the economy developed and less emphasis was placed on heavy industriy and large scale infrastructure projects. Even so, saying that the economy in the Soviet Union was atypical and not very efficient judging by the usual criteria of capitalist efficiency, does not affect the argument that it was still nevetheless a capitalist economy

And it was because it was a capitalist economy that there existed by inference a capitalist class in the Soviet Union. You simply cannot have one thing without the other

[daft punk]

Wow guys, when I posted this I was hoping for a civilized debate over the Cheka, not name calling and temper tantrums! Can we please get back to the subject and stop this? Everyone has their own opinions, so respect them and discuss their ideas.

I like the way you post this after my post defending myself and not after the original one which contained an edit made specifically to be abusive. All the kids in the playground want to be friends with the bully- should be the revleft motto.

[l'Enfermé]

RELATIVELY. Relative to the period of the Civil War, it was stable. Of course big picture, it was not so stable -- especially as Stalin was eliminating a couple of generations of communists. Much of that instability was caused by the purges.
The logical conclusion of that thinking that everything was fine, then Stalin decided to kill all the Communists and a lot more people, and that's why the regime became unstable. The implication is that Stalin just killed a few million people for absolutely no reason.

Another version would be that because the regime was unstable and Stalin's hold on power was weakening, he killed a few million people to stabilize the regime and to maintain his hold on power. This version makes much more sense than "Stalin killed people for no reason". Perhaps Stalin's intellect was not so impressive in comparison to the rest of the Bolshevik leadership during the Revolution, but he was no idiot either.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I like the way you post this after my post defending myself and not after the original one which contained an edit made specifically to be abusive. All the kids in the playground want to be friends with the bully- should be the revleft motto.

Guess what, I wasn't taking anyone's side, okay? I don't want to be "friends with the bully." I was sick of the way the discussion was going when I actually had a serious question about the Cheka. You need to stop taking things so offensively. I actually wrote that after reading the "weirdo" edit! I am getting sick of seeing these types of arguments happening in threads all over revleft!

[Brosa Luxemburg]

The logical conclusion of that thinking that everything was fine, then Stalin decided to kill all the Communists and a lot more people, and that's why the regime became unstable. The implication is that Stalin just killed a few million people for absolutely no reason.

Another version would be that because the regime was unstable and Stalin's hold on power was weakening, he killed a few million people to stabilize the regime and to maintain his hold on power. This version makes much more sense than "Stalin killed people for no reason". Perhaps Stalin's intellect was not so impressive in comparison to the rest of the Bolshevik leadership during the Revolution, but he was no idiot either.

I agree. That whole "Stalin killed people just because he's mean" thing is ridiculous. He is evil, and he killed people to stay in power (as you said), but it wasn't just killing people because it sounded like a fun thing to do on his day off!

[Dave B]

On ‘bourgeois historians’ on Bolshevik oppression there were some official reports coming out of Russia that were never intended for publication.

Thus from R.H. Lockhart (British foreign office and MI5 agent basicaly , 10th November 1918, document No,10 in ‘Bolshevism In Russia’

Released fairly recently under the 60 year rule or whatever I think.



“the worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against their socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks have carried out , a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists.”

And from the same collection a copy of;

Protest of the (Russian) Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party (Menshevik Bundists- I believe) sent to the executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August 1918



`The imaginary dictatorship of the proletariat has definitely turned into the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, which attracted all sorts of adventurers and suspicious characters and is supported only by the naked force of hired bayonets. Their sham socialism…………….'



` In the continuing struggle against the Bolshevik tyranny which dishonours the Russian revolution, social democracy pursues the following aims.

1) To make it impossible for the working class to have to shed its blood for the sake of maintaining the sham dictatorship of the toiling masses or of the sham socialistic order, both of which are bound to perish and are meanwhile killing the soul and body of the proletariat.

2) To organise the working class into a force which, in union with other democratic forces of the country will be able to throw off the yoke of the Bolshevik regime, to defend the democratic conquests of
the revolution…….'

One can only wonder at how M16 assessed this kind of intelligence;


“So what do you think Sir George, perhaps these Bolsheviks might be some of our kind of people.”
And from the Germans;

116

The Foreign Ministry Representative in Petrograd (German Ambassador Mirbach) to the Chancellor.

REPORT NO. 26

A 4166 Petrograd, 24 January 1918



In all other fields, too, the government is following the well-tried formula: 'If you won't be my brother I'll beat your brains in.' The press could hardly be more completely gagged. With the exception of the party organs Pravda and Izvestia, all the newspapers are strictly censored and, if necessary, severely punished.
(With the Kaiser's personal written marginal remark on it: 'We shall have to do the same with our gutter-press.')


Political opponents, too, enjoy short shrift. Politicians, deputies, editors, and other such members of the opposition live under a continual threat to their liberty, if not worse.
Lenin had a nerve taking 100’s of millions of dollars worth of German capitalist money from the bourgeois state apparatus to finance the Bolshevik press and to silence the others and then go on to say;


V. I. Lenin "DEMOCRACY" AND DICTATORSHIP


Take, for example, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. The Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners assure the workers that the present elections to the Constituent Assembly in Germany and Austria are "democratic". That is a lie. In practice the capitalists, the exploiters, the landowners and the profiteers own 9/10 of the best meeting halls, and 9/10 of the stocks of newsprint, printing-presses, etc.

The urban workers and the farm hands and day labourers are, in practice, debarred from democracy by the "sacred right of property" (guarded by the Kautskys and Renners, and now, to our regret, by Friedrich Adler as well) and by the bourgeois state apparatus, that is, bourgeois officials, bourgeois judges, and so on. The present "freedom of assembly and the press" in the "democratic" (bourgeois-democratic) German republic is false and hypocritical, because in fact it is freedom for the rich to buy and
page 371
bribe the press, freedom for the rich to befuddle the people with the venomous lies

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DD18.html

Although by then the capitalist funds from Germany had dried up I suppose.

And;

Vlad The Ripper Lenin, to G. F. FYODOROV

August 9, 1918

Comrade Fyodorov,


It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men with dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/09gff.htm

And;

V. I. Lenin Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.I.) March 27-April 2, 1922


we say in reply, “For the public manifestations of Menshevism our revolutionary courts must pass the death sentence, otherwise they are not our courts, but God knows what.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm

Even Stalin didn’t go that far, not as a public statement anyway.

And;

Agnes Smedley (What a woman she was!)

letter to Florence Lennon (December 1921)


'Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only. And no person is safe from intrigues and the danger of prison. The prisons are jammed with anarchists and syndicalists who fought in the revolution. Emma Goldman and Berkman are out only because of their international reputations. And they are under house arrest; they expect to go to prison any day, and may be there now for all I know.

Any Communist who excuses such things is a scoundrel and a blaggard.

Yet they do excuse it - and defend it. If I'm not expelled or locked up or something, I'll raise a small-sized hell. Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.'



The idea of Mensheviks carrying out summary executions of Bolsheviks.

Really!

[daft punk]

On ‘bourgeois historians’ on Bolshevik oppression there were some official reports coming out of Russia that were never intended for publication.

Thus from R.H. Lockhart (British foreign office and MI5 agent basicaly , 10th November 1918, document No,10 in ‘Bolshevism In Russia’

Released fairly recently under the 60 year rule or whatever I think.
"“the worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against their socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks have carried out , a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists.”"

It's nice that you have so much faith in a British agent wo was trying to overthrow the Bolsheviks.





And from the same collection a copy of;

Protest of the (Russian) Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party (Menshevik Bundists- I believe) sent to the executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August 1918




One can only wonder at how M16 assessed this kind of intelligence;

I guess they just made it up. Where are the links, where are you getting this stuff?



And from the Germans;

116

The Foreign Ministry Representative in Petrograd (German Ambassador Mirbach) to the Chancellor.

REPORT NO. 26

A 4166 Petrograd, 24 January 1918



(With the Kaiser's personal written marginal remark on it: 'We shall have to do the same with our gutter-press.')

These unsourced pastes are worthless. Even if they are bona fide, they are just the lies of a British spy and a German diplomat. Germany was at war with Russia at the time.



Lenin had a nerve taking 100’s of millions of dollars worth of German capitalist money from the bourgeois state apparatus to finance the Bolshevik press and to silence the others
support this



and then go on to say;


V. I. Lenin "DEMOCRACY" AND DICTATORSHIP



http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DD18.html

Although by then the capitalist funds from Germany had dried up I suppose.

have you led many revolutions Dave?



And;

Vlad The Ripper Lenin,

oh how amusing



to G. F. FYODOROV

August 9, 1918

Comrade Fyodorov,


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/09gff.htm



Sounds harsh. Civil war is harsh. World war 1 was harsh. Have you been in a world war or a civil war Dave?



And;

V. I. Lenin Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.I.) March 27-April 2, 1922
"we say in reply, “For the public manifestations of Menshevism our revolutionary courts must pass the death sentence, otherwise they are not our courts, but God knows what.”"


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm


Lenin threatened to shoot people who said the NEP was a retreat to capitalism. Well he warned them, and he had a good reason to, because their tittle tattle could have led to counter-revolution or whatever. I dunno if anyone was actually shot for this.

"Either you refrain from expressing your views, or, if you insist on expressing your political views publicly in the present circumstances, when our position is far more difficult than it was when the whiteguards were directly attacking us, then you will have only yourselves to blame if we treat you as the worst and most pernicious whiteguard elements."



Even Stalin didn’t go that far, not as a public statement anyway.

Stalin said very little publicly. He just shot communists. Lenin was giving people free choice - they could tell lies that risked the revolution if they didn't mind the risk of being shot for it.




And;

Agnes Smedley (What a woman she was!)

letter to Florence Lennon (December 1921)


Who was she? Didnt she later become a Stalinist spy?






The idea of Mensheviks carrying out summary executions of Bolsheviks.

Really!


as if

[Dave B]

The lockhart stuff is or was online somewhere, I read it in a book on it a while ago typed it out and saved into word, I have used it before.

I can look for it if you want later, I am going out in 10 minutes.

Lockhart was quiet a character and wrote a book on the russian revolution I think, not read it.

The German telegram stuff comes from an acaedemic book.

GERMANY AND AS

THE REVOLUTION

IN RUSSIA 1915-1918

Documents from the Archives

of the

German Foreign Ministry

EDITED BY

Z. A. B. ZEMAN

LONDON OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Mirbach was German Ambassador in Petrograd and was at that time the main channel for the German funding of the Bolsheviks he was assassinated in June or July 1918 or something by the SR’s no doubt in an attempt to cut of the snakes head.


support the german gold story;

No problem, I have all of it digitised, it.

It was used in Richard Pipes book and has appeared in various other places.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsmedleyA.htm

Have to trust the Spartacus people for the moment I suppose.

[daft punk]

Well, I'm not convinced. I don't really like quotes without links as you cant see the context so they could be giving a different impression to what was originally meant, Stalinist/creationist style.
However if you wanna post more stuff I will read it. But you have to also listen to what I'm saying in reply otherwise it's not really a debate.

[Dave B]

Well the bayonets hired with german money quote appears independently and slightly differently elsewhere;



4.— The So-Called "Dictatorship of the Proletariat 55 The organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, "Rabochy International" (The Workmen's International), of August 7, contains an interesting resolution passed by the Execu- tive and Petrograd Committees of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in July 27, 1918. The following are some extracts from it:

"The imaginary dictatorship of the proletariat has definitely turned into the dictatorship of the Bolshevist Party, which at- tracts all sorts of adventurers and suspicious characters and is supported only by the naked force of hired bayonets. Their sham Socialism has resulted in the complete destruction of Russia's industry, in the country's enslavement to foreign capital, in the destruction of all class organizations of the proletariat, in the suppression of all democratic liberty and of all organs of democratic State life, thus preparing the ground for a bour- geois counter-revolution of the worst and most brutal kind.

"The Bosheviki are unable to solve the food problem, and their attempt to bribe the proletariat by organizing expeditions into the villages, in order to seize supplies of bread, drives the peasantry into the arms of the counter-revolution and threatens to rouse its hatred towards the town in general, and the prole- tariat in particular, for a long time to come. "In continuing the struggle against the Bolshevist tyranny which dishonors the Russian Revolution, Social-Democracy pur- sues the following aims: (1) To make it impossible for the working class to have to shed its blood for the sake of main- taining the sham dictatorship of the toiling masses or of the sham Socialist order, both of which are bound to perish and are meanwhile killing the soul and body of the proletariat; (2) To organize the working class into a force which, in union with other democratic forces of the country, will be able to throw off the yoke of the Bolshevist regime, to defend the democratic conquests of the Revolution and to oppose any reactionary force which would attempt to hang a millstone around the neck of the Russian democracy."

http://www.archive.org/stream/caseofrussianlab00russrich/caseofrussianlab00russrich_djvu.txt


The other one appears here and in expanded form, I suspect this was the book I got it from.

I borrowed it from Manchester library as I prefer to do with most books.


No. 10. Mr. Lockhart to Sir G. Clerk. Dear Sir George, November 10, 1918.

THE following points may interest Mr. Balfour………..


4. The worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against their Socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks have carried out a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists who had waged a life-long struggle against the old regime, but who are now denounced as counter-revolutionaries merelybecause they disapprove of the manner in which the Bolsheviks have discredited socialism.


5. The Bolsheviks have abolished even the most primitive forms of justice. Thousands of men and women have been shot without even the mockery of a trial, and thousands more are left to rot in the prisons under conditions to find a parallel to which one must turn to the darkest annals of Indian or Chinese history. 6. The Bolsheviks have restored the barbarous methods of torture. The examination of prisoners frequently takes place with a revolver- at the unfortunate prisoner's head. 7. The Bolsheviks have established the odious practice of taking hostages. Still worse, they have struck at their political opponents through their w T omen folk. When recently a long list of hostages was published in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks seized the wives of those men whom they could not find and threw them into prison until their husbands should give themselves up.

http://www.archive.org/stream/collectionofrepo00greaiala/collectionofrepo00greaiala_djvu.txt

Sir George was head of the predecessor of MI5 or whatever.

Lockhart as a British embassy attaché and spook of some sort actually wasn’t a totally insignificant figure in the Russian revolution. He is mentioned in some of the serious and not necessarily bourgeois histories of the Russian revolution, really can’t remember the details but I think it was spook and honey trap spying stuff.

Amusing at the time but forgettable.

I don’t know what to quote from the zeman book, it is about 150 pages long and after a short introduction just contains a stream of translations from the german foreign ministry re the Bolsheviks covering the period from 1914-18, starting with the Parvus stuff.

The rumours were actually current in 1917 and they appear in the Lenin archive. Bernstien raised it in the early 1920’s the Bolsheviks threatened sue and Bernstien begged them to see him in court , they declined.

Arthur Ransome, supposed Bolshevik supporter but allegedly another British spook who interviewed Lenin on state capitalism for the Manchester Guardian in 1922 also did a ‘sceptical’ piece on it circa 1918 in the New York Times

It flared up again in the 50’s for some reason and Shrackman or whatever his name is wrote another denial of it.

I think the telegram material first appeared in an academic article in the 1957 when that first came to light, I think.

Alan woods I seem to remember wrote an extremely unconvincing response to it, don’t know when, that could have been a dream. I can’t remember everything.


The Zeman book is really interesting for loads of other reasons and doesn’t totally obsess itself with the Bolshevik Gold story.

There is something in it as well about the Germans attempting ‘bribe’ the internationalist Mensheviks, as anonymous benefactors, as well when they were still stuck in Switzerland.

I am just cut and pasting the following from something I prepared earlier for libcom



There is quite a lot of material on the German funding of the Bolsheviks. Most of it originated from the following book and I will include one complete telegram from it; but there are plenty of others, that stack up somewhat.


GERMANY AND THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA 1915-1918

Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry

EDITED BY Z. A. B. ZEMAN

LONDON OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The State Secretary to the Foreign Ministry Liaison Officer at General Headquarters

TELEGRAM NO. I925

AS 4486 Berlin, 3 December 1917

The disruption of the Entente and the subsequent creation of political combinations agreeable to us constitute the most important war aim of our diplomacy. Russia appeared to be the weakest link in the enemy chain. The task therefore was gradually to loosen it, and, when possible, to remove it. This was the purpose of the subversive activity we caused to be carried out in Russia behind the front—in the first place promotion of separatist tendencies and support of the Bolsheviks.

It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic propaganda and appreciably to extend the originally narrow basis of their party. The Bolsheviks have now come to power; how long they will retain power cannot be yet foreseen. They need peace in order to strengthen their own position; on the other hand it is entirely in our interest that we should exploit the period while they are in power, which may be a short one, in order to attain firstly an armistice and then, if possible, peace. 1 The conclusion of a separate peace would

mean the achievement of the desired war aim, namely a breach between Russia and her Allies. The amount of tension necessarily caused by such a breach would determine the degree of Russia's dependence on Germany and her future relations with us. Once cast out and cast off by her former Allies, abandoned financially, Russia will be forced to seek our support.

We shall be able to provide help for Russia in various ways; firstly in the rehabilitation of the railways; (I have in mind a German Russian Commission, under our control, which would undertake the rational and co-ordinated exploitation of the railway lines so as to ensure speedy resumption of freight movement), then the provision of a substantial loan, which Russia requires to maintain her state machine. This could take the form of an advance on the security of grain, raw materials, &c, &c, to be provided by Russia and shipped under the control of the above-mentioned commission. Aid on such a basis—the scope to be increased as and when necessary—would in my opinion bring-about a growing rapprochement between the two countries.

Austria-Hungary will regard the rapprochement with distrust and not without apprehension. I would interpret the excessive eagerness of Count Czernin to come to terms with the Russians as a desire to forestall us and to prevent Germany and Russia arriving at an intimate relationship inconvenient to the Danube Monarchy. There is no need for us to compete for Russia's good will. We are strong enough to wait with equanimity; we are in a far better position than Austria-Hungary to offer Russia what she needs for the reconstruction of her state. I view future developments in the East with confidence but I think it expedient for the time being to maintain a certain reserve in our attitude to the Austro-Hungarian government in all matters including the Polish question which concern both monarchies so as to preserve a free hand for all eventualities.

jThe above-mentioned considerations lie, I venture to believe, within the framework of the directives given me by His Majesty. I request you to report to His Majesty accordingly and to transmit to me by telegram the All-highest instructions.

KUHLMANN

And from Bernstien, he wrote two articles on it in 1921 apparently


"From absolutely reliable sources I have now ascertained that the sum was very large, an almost unbelievable amount, certainly more than fifty million goldmarks, a sum about the source of which Lenin and his comrades could be in no doubt. One result of all this was the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. General Hoffmann, who negotiated with Trotsky and other members of the Bolshevik delegation at Brest, held the Bolsheviks in his hand in two senses [that is, military and monetary], and he made sure they felt it."


Joel Carmichael in his1984 addendum of his edited and abridged etc version of “Sukhanov’s The Russian Revolution, 1917” puts it at $800 million, in 1984 money I presume.


There was quite a bit on it in Sukhanov’s book, a memoir published in 1922, in the chapter on the July days.

Sukhanov himself didn’t believe it at the time, even when it was revealed after a raid of the Pravda offices that they were flush with cash and had been receiving massive amounts of money from some unknown sources.


(Sukhanov’s book was even accepted by the Bolsheviks as a classic history of that period of the revolution.)

Back to real time.

You said I have never been in a revolution which just demonstrates that you are somewhat missing the point.

If I had been in your kind of revolution I wouldn’t be around to post would I?

I would have been put up against the wall and shot as a ‘counter-revolutionary Menshevik’ before you got around to murdering the anarchist.

I mean that is the whole point isn’t it?

You would kill me and I wouldn’t dream of killing you irrespective of what your opinions were.

[Dave B]

It looks as if it wasn’t a dream and Woods did write a refutation, I must have read one of his crappy books.

Our brave bourgeois intellectual does the typical trick of his blood brothers at Fox news; putting up the less intimidating straw men to knock them down and tilting at windmills and like Don Quixote whilst blowing hot air out his arse.

Anyway for balance; German Intrigues

http://www.marxist.com/bolshevism-old/part5-3.html


From Zeman don’t blame me for the crappy transcription.


INTRODUCTION

In November 1914 it became clear to Germany's leaders that they had failed to achieve a decisive victory in the first phase of the war. The transformation of the war in the West and in the East into a one-front engagement was, according to Falken-hayn, the Chief of the General Staff, the shortest way to victory. 1 It could be effected only if Germany concluded peace with one of the principal partners of the Entente.

Zimmermann, the Under State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, concurred with this opinion in a memorandum dated 27* November. 2 He wrote: 'The aim of our policy in this war, conducted with such uncommon sacrifice, must be not only an honourable, but also a lasting peace. In order to achieve this aim I regard it as desirable that a wedge should be driven between our enemies, so that we may conclude an early separate peace with one or the other. 5 In the subsequent years of the war, to isolate one of the enemy powers and conclude a peace with it was the principal aim of the German foreign policy.

Behind this policy there was a tremendous profusion of activity and confusion of thought. The Foreign Ministry, having lost its peace-time functions, took over its management. The German missions in the neutral countries were the Ministry's busiest outposts. Politicians, journalists, members of noble families, university professors, directors of banking houses, industrialists, cranks, and crooks were involved. Large amounts of money were spent by the government in order to achieve this aim. 3

France and Russia were the most likely targets for the policy of separate peace. But in Russia, apart from the possibility of concluding peace with the established regime, there was another way open to Germany. This was to give support to the revolutionary movement, to weaken the existing regime not only by military defeats but also by disruptive revolutionary agitation, both nationalist and socialist, and finally to conclude peace with a government dependent upon German good-will.

The Imperial government never made a clear-cut choice

' Bethmann-Hollweg's letter to Zimmermann, 19 November 1914 (AS 2769 in WK 2 seer, volume 1). For explanation of archival references see pp. xiii andxiv.

2 AS 2769 in WK 2 seer, volume 1.

1 The relevant documents on German peace-feelers in the Great War can be loiind in the series WK 2 seer and WK 2.

between the two courses of action open to it: from 1915, throughout the war with Russia, it pursued the policy of support of the revolutionary socialist movement, especially its left-wing elements, and the various separatist, nationalist movements^ such as the Finnish and the Ukrainian. At the same time, the Germans used every opportunity to negotiate with the representatives of the government they were doing their best to weaken and deprive of its power. 1

It was Dr. Helphand,2 alias Parvus, by origin a Russian Jew, a Social Democrat who attempted to stand above the Bolshevik-Menshevik controversy, who did much to attract the attention of the German government to the possibilities of a revolution in Russia. From the spring of 1915 till November 1917, Helphand played the most important part in Germany's relations with the Russian revolutionary movement, in spite of the fact that some socialists distrusted him, and that he may have been by-passed when the various German agencies acquired their own contacts. In November 1917 he parted company with the German government and made an attempt to pursue an independent policy. 3

Although the centre of political power had shifted, at the outbreak of the war, from Berlin to the seat of the Highest Army Command, it was the Foreign Ministry, and not the General Staff, who played the leading role in the policy of support of the revolutionary movement. It was pursued with the approval, and, in broad outline, with the knowledge of the highest military levels, and in co-operation with the Political Section of the Deputy General Staff in Berlin/ The Political Section, first under Nadolny and later with Hiilsen at its head, played an important part in the implementation of this policy. But the initiative came, most of the time, from the Foreign Ministry.

The support of the left wing of the Russian revolutionary movement, political and financial, was the policy of the Foreign Ministry throughout the war. It was initiated while Jagow was the State Secretary, and Zimmermann the Under State

1 See editorial note, p. 23, and footnote 3, document No. 90.

2 No biography on this interesting subject exists. Deutscher, in his biography of Trotsky, The Prophet Armed (London, 1954, pp. 99 e t seq.), discusses Helphand s relations and influence on Trotsky. K. Haenisch, the German Social Democrat journalist, wrote a short pamphlet, entitled Parvus (Berlin I925)-

3 See editorial note, p. 72.

« von Moltke, the predecessor of Falkenhayn in the General Staff, was the head of the Deputy General Staff office in Berlin.

Secretary in the Auswartiges Amt; it was carried on, more intensively, by Zimmermann after Jagow's resignation and later by Kuhlmann, who saw its consummation and decline in the final stages of the war.

It was a policy beset by difficulties. The servants of the German state had to deal, however indirectly, with unpleasant facts of revolution, with the demi-monde of revolutionaries in exile, and also with the subtle distinctions among the various revolutionary groups. Minister Diego Bergen, the trusted official in Wilhelmstrasse, the central office of the Foreign Ministry, who, after the Great War, served both the Weimar Republic and Hitler's regime as Ambassador to the Holy See, dealt with this policy efficiently from the beginning of 1915 till the end of 1917. He was in constant touch with Helphand, but not entirely dependent on him; he could distinguish between the more and less effective types of revolutionaries and he took them for what they were: enemies of the Tsarist regime and advocates of the cessation of hostilities and peace.

The policy bore the mark of the highest security rating; its outline becomes clear from the documents printed in this volume. Its implementation, carried out by many agents, is obscure to a degree. Often the search in the archives of the Foreign Ministry is unrewarding: the words 'the matter was settled by word of mouth' appear too often. As few records as possible were made; it is surprising that so large a number of relevant documents were recorded and preserved. This is often due to the urgency of the matter in hand: the amount of documents for April and November of 1917 is higher than for any other period. The return of the political emigres after the March revolution and the German reaction to the Bolshevik seizure of power were matters urgent to both parties involved. In more tranquil periods, the men involved could be summoned to Berlin for consultations. No record of these talks was preserved.

Some of the men who took part in the formulation of German war-time policy recorded their experiences. But the memoirs of I.udendorff, Kuhlmann, Hoffmann, or Erzberger 1 do not enlighten the reader much as to the official attitude towards the revolution in Russia. They may have been unaware of the consistency of the policy as Bergen conducted it; they may

1 E. Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, Berlin, 1919; R. Kuhlmann, Erinncrun-gin, Heidelberg, 1948; K. F. Nowak, Die Aufzeichnungen des General-Majors Max Hoffmann, Berlin, 1928; M. Erzberger, Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg, Stuttgart und Berlin, 1920.

have regarded it as an incident which should remain hidden in the government archives, or they may have just forgotten. Kiihl-mann certainly knew about it but chose to be uninformative in his memoirs. Ludendorff, when referring to Lenin's journey across Germany, did so with 'bated breath'.

The committee of the Reichstag, inquiring, in the early years of the Weimar Republic into the causes of the downfall of the German Empire, 1 served us no better. Interested, as this committee was, in the problem of 'responsibility' for the breakdown of 1918, it may have regarded this feature of German policy in the Great War as outside the scope of its inquiry. Some Social Democrat members of the Committee may have had reasons not to proceed with it. Yet in 1921 Bernstein, the prominent Social Democrat, wrote two articles for the Volksrecht discussing this aspect of German war-time policy. 2

The terms in which it was discussed during and immediately after the war did much to obscure its outline and detail. Germany was referred to as the 'father of the Russian revolution', the Bolshevik leaders as 'agents of Germany', and their actions were described as 'subservient to the Imperial government'. This perhaps was understandable in the heat of the European conflagration. Now, forty years later, they appear out of date—in fact, there is no justification for employing them. 3

The aims of the Imperial Government and of the left wing of the Russian revolutionaries coincided to a high degree. The willingness of this government to grant favours may have, on occasions, exceeded the willingness of the revolutionaries to accept them.

There is no evidence among the documents of the Foreign Ministry that Lenin, a circumspect man, was in direct contact with any of the official German agenicies. How much he knew

1 Die Ursachen des deutschen ^usammenbruches im Jahre igi8. Published by the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry, Berlin.

2 Vorwarts, Morgenausgabe, 14 January 1921: 'Ein dunkles Kapitel', Abend-ausgabe, 20 January 1921: 'Meisterstuck und Meisterschuld'.

3 The publication of the Sisson Documents ( The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy, War Information Series, No. 20, Washington, 1918) did much to obscure both the German policy and its effect on the course of the revolution in Russia. Though in 191 g the German government described the publication as wholly fraudulent {Die Entlarvung der 'Deutsch-Bolshevistischen Verschworung' , with an introduction by the Premier, Philipp Scheidemann, Berlin, 1919; see also G. F. Kennan's article in the Journal of Modern History, volume XXVIII, No. 2, June 1956). When Weismann, the State Commissar for Public Order referred, in 1921, to a publication of the same set of documents in Switzerland in 1919, he wrote: 'The documents in this pamphlet were partly forged' (Film reference: K281/K096202).

about the activities of the men around him is difficult to tell. Hanecki, alias Fiirstenberg, and Radek, both officially Austro-Hungarian subjects, did, as well as Helphand, have some contacts with the Germans. 1 But it cannot be said even about Radek and Fiirstenberg, who had more contacts with the Germans than anyone else among the Bolsheviks, that the interests of the Imperial German government lay close to their hearts. A socialist revolution was their aim. To achieve and further it they were prepared to use every means.

The aim of this collection of documents is to give a picture of the policy of the Imperial German government towards the revolution in Russia and also of some of the information available to this government on which the policy was based.

The documents printed here divide into four periods: January 1915 till March 1917, from the time of the first records of Germany's interest in the revolution till its outbreak in March. The second period runs from March 1917 till the Bolshevik seizure of power. It includes the transport of the Russian revolutionaries through Germany. Lenin's contingent was the first of these transports; later, a number of them was organized from Switzerland and Belgium. The criterion the German government used for their approval was the attitude of the men who were to be allowed transit through Germany to the question of continuation of the war.

The third period covers November and December 1917, starting with the German reactions to the Bolshevik seizure of power, and ending at the time of the failure of Radek's and Helphand's plan for a conference on neutral territory and the opening of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. No documents on these negotiations are printed here: it is a feature of German-Russian relations which has been well covered both by publications of original sources and by secondary works. The documents in the German Foreign Ministry Archives, covering the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, have been filmed and are available at the Public Records Office in London and the National Archives in Washington.

The two letters from Ludendorff and from Mirbach (documents Nos. 134 and 136) are a suitable epitaph to the German policy towards the revolution in Russia.

1 See document No. 112 and A 23291 in Russland Nr. 61, volume 154. Deputy Chief of Staff in Berlin to the Foreign Ministry, 30 May 1918. A report, signed by Miiller, on a conversation with Jakob Hanecki.

A NOTE ON TRANSLATION, FILMING, AND ARCHIVAL REFERENCES

The editor has attempted to reproduce a faithful translation of the German originals. With one exception (see document No. 125 and footnote) the full text of the documents is printed here. Anything not to be found in the original text is isolated by square brackets. All the marginalia commenting on the contents of the document are given in notes following the document.

The editor allowed himself the following licenses: all routine administrative references and marginalia have been omitted. This includes references to other documents which introduce nothing new. The editor has attempted to trace references to other documents and the less known names which appear on the following pages: his failure to do so is not indicated by footnotes. He has also tried to provide editorial notes and footnotes which are purely explanatory and contain no comment or speculation.

Those readers interested in the German originals, or in the exploration of avenues which this publication opens, can consult the relevant films in the Public Records Office. Apart from the majority of the mission files, some of the Grosses Haupt-quartier papers and the relevant Nachlasse, it is to be hoped that all the documents printed here have been filmed. The editor had the good fortune to work on the original documents: the private filming, done by the various university and other institutions, and intended to supplement the official project filming, is not indicated in any way on the originals. The documents filmed officially bear a stamp, the so-called serial and frame number. Because of the diversity of manner in which this material has been filmed, the editor decided not to include any filming references.

The original archival references, used here, are a sufficient guide for the location of every document not only in the archives, but also on the film. The so-called Aktenzeichen (for instance: WK 2 seer or Russland Nr. 61) and the number of the volume are the most important indications as to the location of a document. Then there are the journal numbers (numbers with the letters A or AS preceding them), which indicate the location of a document in the file. Because of the German archivists' use of the description '-zu-' ( Verfugung, or action taken)

not every document has a separate journal number. There are sometimes two or more documents bearing the same number, or even more than one number: this indicates that the text of the document has some connexion with another document or documents: it is either a continuation or a reply. Only the first journal number (in case of documents which bear more than one) is printed here. Apart from the journal numbers, the numbers of the incoming and outgoing telegrams and reports are given as a further aid for the location of a document in the file.

Date and Subject

g Jan. 1915. The Under State Secretary to the State Secretary. The Ambassador in Constantinople reports a conversation with Dr. Helphand.

13 Jan. 1915. The State Secretary (at the time at the

General Headquarters) to the Foreign Ministry. Riezler will meet Helphand in Berlin.

[revhiphop]

Executions during revolution are both inevitable and necessary. No matter what class is taking power, executions are essential to keep that class in power. All these stupid anti-communists say shit like, "look how many people they executed during the revolution." Well no fucking shit, you think the founding fathers just let all the British (that they captured) and people who conspired against them go free?

[revhiphop]

"We must say here what is a known truth, which we have always expressed before the world: firing squad executions, yes, we have executed; we are executing and we will continue to execute as long as is necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death." - Che

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The logical conclusion of that thinking that everything was fine, then Stalin decided to kill all the Communists and a lot more people, and that's why the regime became unstable. The implication is that Stalin just killed a few million people for absolutely no reason.

Another version would be that because the regime was unstable and Stalin's hold on power was weakening, he killed a few million people to stabilize the regime and to maintain his hold on power. This version makes much more sense than "Stalin killed people for no reason". Perhaps Stalin's intellect was not so impressive in comparison to the rest of the Bolshevik leadership during the Revolution, but he was no idiot either.
Of course Stalin had his reasons for killing people -- he was not simply sadistic. I had no intention of suggesting that everything was fine -- I certainly don't know that Stalin actually needed to kill so many people to stay in power. If you look at his policies over the years, I think the best way they can be described is reactive and often panicked. He veered from one position to another. The only consistent feature was nationalism and an overwhelming desire to retain power. I don't know how you can arrive at the idea that Stalin had no reason to kill all those people from my previous post. I can assure you that the Great Purge had nothing to do with defending and extending the Russian Revolution.

[l'Enfermé]

Of course Stalin had his reasons for killing people -- he was not simply sadistic. I had no intention of suggesting that everything was fine -- I certainly don't know that Stalin actually needed to kill so many people to stay in power. If you look at his policies over the years, I think the best way they can be described is reactive and often panicked. He veered from one position to another. The only consistent feature was nationalism and an overwhelming desire to retain power. I don't know how you can arrive at the idea that Stalin had no reason to kill all those people from my previous post. I can assure you that the Great Purge had nothing to do with defending and extending the Russian Revolution.
Why are we arguing then, if we are in complete agreement? Must be a case of mutual misunderstanding.

[Grenzer]

Executions during revolution are both inevitable and necessary. No matter what class is taking power, executions are essential to keep that class in power. All these stupid anti-communists say shit like, "look how many people they executed during the revolution." Well no fucking shit, you think the founding fathers just let all the British (that they captured) and people who conspired against them go free?

Yeah, for the most part; though of course they weren't set free immediately. Many were imprisoned for quite some time.

Do you have any idea how profoundly idiotic it would have been to do that? Large number of soldiers were captured on both sides, so it was often prudent to keep them for exchange. Although they were at war, the Americans knew that it was prudent not to antagonize the British any further than necessary: trade agreements and the like would be needed after the war. In other words, it would have been completely idiotic and counter-productive to carry out summary executions, which were not done for the most part.

The war for American Independence isn't even remotely analogous to the Russian Revolution. It seems like you are just pulling this out of your ass to justify your position, and it doesn't work. Your opportunism and lack of reasoning indicates a tendency towards sociopathy and murder of those that disagree with you. Of course with you being a Maoist, it's not really all that surprising.

[l'Enfermé]

Obviously, Comrade Grenzer is not particularly aware of the long Anarchist tradition of senseless private acts of terrorism and murder, otherwise he would not be criticizing a Maoist for the same thing(albeit on a larger scale).

[Grenzer]

Obviously, Comrade Grenzer is not particularly aware of the long Anarchist tradition of senseless private acts of terrorism and murder, otherwise he would not be criticizing a Maoist for the same thing(albeit on a larger scale).

Ah yes, the time honored anarchist tradition of advocating the mass murder of everyone that disagrees with them. How could I forget?

[revhiphop]

Yeah, for the most part; though of course they weren't set free immediately. Many were imprisoned for quite some time.

Do you have any idea how profoundly idiotic it would have been to do that? Large number of soldiers were captured on both sides, so it was often prudent to keep them for exchange. Although they were at war, the Americans knew that it was prudent not to antagonize the British any further than necessary: trade agreements and the like would be needed after the war. In other words, it would have been completely idiotic and counter-productive to carry out summary executions, which were not done for the most part.

The war for American Independence isn't even remotely analogous to the Russian Revolution. It seems like you are just pulling this out of your ass to justify your position, and it doesn't work. Your opportunism and lack of reasoning indicates a tendency towards sociopathy and murder of those that disagree with you. Of course with you being a Maoist, it's not really all that surprising.

I didn't say they killed all of their prisoners. But they didn't let all of them free. My point is: a revolution is a revolution, proletariat or bourgeoisie. I was remarking on how anti-communists that defend their founding fathers by comparing them to "murderous communists" shouldn't be arguing that the founding fathers killed no one while communists killed everyone. A revolution is not a dinner party, executions will happen. And really? With the Maoist/sociopath cheap shots?

[revhiphop]

I'm sorry, did you think the capitalists would just bow down and say, "oh, well then. A revolution? Time to step down now!"?

[Grenzer]

I'm sorry, did you think the capitalists would just bow down and say, "oh, well then. A revolution? Time to step down now!"?

I said your analogy was idiotic and created a false dichotomy. There was nothing in the post that even talked about revolutionary strategy in the proletarian context.

What I have condemned is the opportunism of people like you and Borz who drone on to create some thin pretense to excuse the murder of revolutionaries. It's funny how it always seems that the ones advocate arbitrary violence the most under the pretense of "Hey, it's materialism" tend to also be the ones who moralistically whine the loudest about the evils of imperialism. Hypocritical rubbish.


Socialism in respect to its means. Socialism is the visionary younger brother of an almost decrepit despotism, whose heir it wants to be. Thus its efforts are reactionary in the deepest sense. For it desires a wealth of executive power, as only despotism had it; indeed, it outdoes everything in the past by striving for the downright destruction of the individual, which it sees as an unjustified luxury of nature, and which it intends to improve into an expedient organ of the community. Socialism crops up in the vicinity of all excessive displays of power because of its relation to it, like the typical old socialist Plato, at the court of the Sicilian tyrant; it desires (and in certain circumstances, furthers) the Caesarean power state of this century, because, as we said, it would like to be its heir. But even this inheritance would not suffice for its purposes; it needs the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed. And since it cannot even count any longer on the old religious piety towards the state, having rather always to work automatically to eliminate piety (because it works on the elimination of all existing states), it can only hope to exist here and there for short periods of time by means of the most extreme terrorism. Therefore, it secretly prepares for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the semieducated masses, to rob them completely of their reason (after this reason has already suffered a great deal from its semieducation), and to give them a good conscience for the evil game that they are supposed to play.

[l'Enfermé]

Ah yes, the time honored anarchist tradition of advocating the mass murder of everyone that disagrees with them. How could I forget?
I've forgotten, the anarchists have no blood on their hands!

[revhiphop]

What I have condemned is the opportunism of people like you and Borz who drone on to create some thin pretense to excuse the murder of revolutionaries. It's funny how it always seems that the ones advocate arbitrary violence the most under the pretense of "Hey, it's materialism" tend to also be the ones who moralistically whine the loudest about the evils of imperialism. Hypocritical rubbish.

And it is funny how the ones who are quickest to criticize we who are realistic about revolution are the ones who ignore the past of their own tendency.

When did I say it was okay to murder revolutionaries? I would not have an anarchist or a trotskyist executed. I would have those of the capitalist class (or ruthless defenders of it) who are refusing to give up power executed. And maybe those who are spies, snitches, or those who commit murder or rape against the innocent.

[Ostrinski]

And it is funny how the ones who are quickest to criticize we who are realistic about revolution are the ones who ignore the past of their own tendency.I don't think it's fair to assume that just because someone is, for instance, an anarchist, they don't disdain some of the authoritarian acts of the Catalonian or Ukrainian anarchists.

[revhiphop]

I don't think it's fair to assume that just because someone is, for instance, an anarchist, they don't disdain some of the authoritarian acts of the Catalonian or Ukrainian anarchists.

You're right. That may have been a little judgmental. However, this also applies to M-L's and famous M-L's.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

This factioned slingshit is silly:
If you take part in a revolution, expect to have to die for your cause. there are a lot of assholes around with different opinions. :thumbup:

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

Saying that Cheka was not necessary is like saying that revolutionary France could have survived without the Committee of Public Safety. When you have so many counterrevolutionaries and such a strong threat of foreign aggression, you need a strong national diet of terror. Reality can be sad sometimes.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Why are we arguing then, if we are in complete agreement? Must be a case of mutual misunderstanding.
Or maybe we are contentious and like to argue?:)

[daft punk]

Well the bayonets hired with german money quote appears independently and slightly differently elsewhere;



http://www.archive.org/stream/caseofrussianlab00russrich/caseofrussianlab00russrich_djvu.txt


The other one appears here and in expanded form, I suspect this was the book I got it from.

I borrowed it from Manchester library as I prefer to do with most books.


http://www.archive.org/stream/collectionofrepo00greaiala/collectionofrepo00greaiala_djvu.txt

Sir George was head of the predecessor of MI5 or whatever.

Lockhart as a British embassy attaché and spook of some sort actually wasn’t a totally insignificant figure in the Russian revolution. He is mentioned in some of the serious and not necessarily bourgeois histories of the Russian revolution, really can’t remember the details but I think it was spook and honey trap spying stuff.

Amusing at the time but forgettable.

I don’t know what to quote from the zeman book, it is about 150 pages long and after a short introduction just contains a stream of translations from the german foreign ministry re the Bolsheviks covering the period from 1914-18, starting with the Parvus stuff.

The rumours were actually current in 1917 and they appear in the Lenin archive. Bernstien raised it in the early 1920’s the Bolsheviks threatened sue and Bernstien begged them to see him in court , they declined.

Arthur Ransome, supposed Bolshevik supporter but allegedly another British spook who interviewed Lenin on state capitalism for the Manchester Guardian in 1922 also did a ‘sceptical’ piece on it circa 1918 in the New York Times

It flared up again in the 50’s for some reason and Shrackman or whatever his name is wrote another denial of it.

I think the telegram material first appeared in an academic article in the 1957 when that first came to light, I think.

Alan woods I seem to remember wrote an extremely unconvincing response to it, don’t know when, that could have been a dream. I can’t remember everything.


The Zeman book is really interesting for loads of other reasons and doesn’t totally obsess itself with the Bolshevik Gold story.

There is something in it as well about the Germans attempting ‘bribe’ the internationalist Mensheviks, as anonymous benefactors, as well when they were still stuck in Switzerland.

I am just cut and pasting the following from something I prepared earlier for libcom




Back to real time.

You said I have never been in a revolution which just demonstrates that you are somewhat missing the point.

If I had been in your kind of revolution I wouldn’t be around to post would I?

I would have been put up against the wall and shot as a ‘counter-revolutionary Menshevik’ before you got around to murdering the anarchist.

I mean that is the whole point isn’t it?

You would kill me and I wouldn’t dream of killing you irrespective of what your opinions were.

Cheers for all the effort you put in. However I'm not too bothered whether some rich people thought it suited their purposes to fund the Bolsheviks or not.

As for the executions, you just have a British spy in November 1918 saying thousands of executions had taken place. Well that is not news, 22 people were executed in the first half of 1918 and then the civil war started and in the second half 6,000 were executed according to Victor Serge who was pretty objective. It was a civil war. They did not shoot people just for their beliefs, they shot people who threatened the revolution or the peace deal. You would have had a choice, join the revolution of fight it. The capitalist countries sent 150,000 soldiers and £ millions worth of aid to the Whites. This was no picnic.

[A Marxist Historian]

Cheers for all the effort you put in. However I'm not too bothered whether some rich people thought it suited their purposes to fund the Bolsheviks or not.

As for the executions, you just have a British spy in November 1918 saying thousands of executions had taken place. Well that is not news, 22 people were executed in the first half of 1918 and then the civil war started and in the second half 6,000 were executed according to Victor Serge who was pretty objective. It was a civil war. They did not shoot people just for their beliefs, they shot people who threatened the revolution or the peace deal. You would have had a choice, join the revolution of fight it. The capitalist countries sent 150,000 soldiers and £ millions worth of aid to the Whites. This was no picnic.

Dave B. is a very right wing Menshevik who gets his lies about the USSR under Lenin & Trotsky from sources like Bruce Lockhart, a British spy!
In real life, Menshevik leader Martov at least tried to expel Mensheviks who wanted to collaborate with the British imperialists vs. the USSR, I'll give him that much.

And of course the Grand Lie about how allegedly the Bolsheviks were German agents, which was used by Kerensky to justify arresting Bolsheviks and to try to stir up right wing lynch mob frenzy against them--which only worked briefly.

In fact, Martov repeatedly denounced provocateurs like Dave B. claiming that the Bolsheviks were German agents as liars. After all, Martov himself took a train through Germany to Russia with German permission. So maybe Dave B.'s secret position is that Martov was a German agent too.

That various maneuvering German diplomats would have liked to put the Bolsheviks on the German payroll at one point is no secret, that's the basis of Zeman's misleading documentary revelations from German archives.

But it never happened, as the Bolsheviks weren't interested. In fact, the context of the letters Zeman found was internal arguments in 1918 among German diplomats about policy in the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, with the dciplomats who wanted to cut a deal creating this fantasy of Bolsheviks on the German payroll as an arguments against the hard liners.

Not a single piece of evidence of any actual money transfers has ever surfaced, even now twenty years after the Soviet archives fell into the possession of right wing anti-Communist Lenin haters like Dave B. and Boris Yeltsin.

-M.H.-

[Dave B]

The capitalist countries sent 150,000 soldiers and £ millions worth of aid to the Whites. This was no picnic.


The foreign intervention number in the Russian Revolution of 150,000 is a bit disingenuous when looked at in more detail.



50,000 Czechoslovaks (along the Trans-Siberian railway)[9]
28,000 Japanese, later increased to 70,000 (in the Vladivostok region and north) [10][11]
40,000 British (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)[10]
17,000 Poles - mostly 5th Rifle Division (almost 12,000 men) in Siberia and 4th Rifle Division (ca. 4000 men) in "Southern Russia", also a single 400-men-strong battalion in Murmansk within the Anglo-Slavic Legion
13,000 Americans (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
12,000 French and French colonial (mostly in the Arkhangelsk and Odessa regions)
11,500 Estonians in northwestern Russia[4]
4,192 Canadians (in the Vladivostok region)
1,100 Canadians (in the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions)
41 Canadians (in the Baku Region)
4,000 Serbs (in the Arkhangelsk region)
4,000 Romanians (in the Arkhangelsk region)
2,500 Italians (in the Arkhangelsk region and Siberia)[10]
2,300 Chinese (in the Vladivostok region)[12]
2,000 Greeks (in the Crimea)
150 Australians (mostly in the Arkhangelsk regions)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War


Of those the 50,000 Czech legion were probably most involved in the civil war, against there will if you like. As they were stranded in Russia and wanted to leave but Trotsky had refused to let them leave on orders from Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_Legions



TELEGRAM NO. 246

A 23074 Berlin, i June 1918


We have heard from the liaison officer of the High Command of the Army in Finland that Polish and Czech troops are being moved to the Murmansk railway for transport to the Western front. We have also heard from a reliable source that five train-loads of fully equipped Serbs have been seen on the line from Vologda to Perm. It must be made clear to the government in Moscow that we cannot stand by and watch such undertakings on the part of the Entente. If the Russian government should be incapable of effectively preventing such troop transports from taking place, then we should have to seek more extensive guarantees against any support being sent to the Entente by way of the Murmansk coast.

Your Excellency will be informed as soon as we receive a reply from the High Command of the Army to the suggestion that a German commissar be sent to the Murmansk area, but I would request you to discuss these events with Chichcrin at once in whatever way you think best, to point out to him the gravity of the matter, and to tell him that this state of affairs cannot possibly be allowed to continue. Finally, according to other reports, a Czechoslovak corps has passed through Chabarovsk. We insist that it be prevented from travelling on to Vladivostok, should such a move be intended. Report by telegram .

Kuhlmann


Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry EDITED BY Z. A. B. ZEMAN


The albeit significant Japanese involvement in the far east which continued until 1922 I think, and perhaps you could argue far away from the critical region of the civil war, was more a matter of pursuing their own imperial ambitions than anything to do restoring Tsarism.

The British involvement wasn’t in fact enthusiastic and Lloyd George laid down the rules in 1919


1) there must be no attempt to conquer Bolshevik Russia by force of arms.

2) Support would only be continued as long as it was clear that in the area controlled by Kolchak and Denikin the population was anti-Bolshevik in sentiment.

3) The anti-Bolshevik armies must not be used to restore the old Tasrist regime and reimpose on the peasants the old feudal conditions .


Pipes page 250

I accept myself there is a bit doublespeak in that.


The limited direct involvement of the British can be inferred from the total casualties of 400.

The situation in 1918 was slightly different;



179 Moscow also pursued for a while longer negotiations with the Allies for military assistance. ... In the meantime, the Allies, having given up hope of Soviet collaboration against the Germans, landed token forces on Russian territory. The first landings took place at Murmansk in March 1918 at the request of the local soviet and with Moscow's sanction.

Additional forces disembarked later in Murmansk and Archangel. Their immediate mission was to defend these ports from the Germans and Finns, and to protect the stores of war material accumulated there since 1916.

187 The mood in the Kremlin was gloomy enough when it learned, on August 1, that a British naval force had appeared off Archangel and landed 8,500 men. ... British general F. C. Poole, who commanded the force, had orders to resist German "influence and penetration," to help Russians willing to fight alongside the Allies, and to link up with the Czechoslovak legion. Fifteen thousand additional troops embarked at Murmansk. American troops also landed in ladivostok. None of these forces were to interfere in internal Russian matters, let alone seek to overthrow the existing regime.

189 The Bolsheviks contributed to their countries involvement in the conflict by playing the belligerent camps against each other. In the spring of 1918, they discussed with the Allies the formation on their territory of an anti-German multinational army; they agreed to the occupation of Murmansk; and they invited help in building an army of their own. In the fall, they requested German military intervention to recapture the northern posts and crush the Volunteer army. ... Helfferich , referring to the Soviet regime's crisis in the summer of 1918, conceded in his memoirs that "the strongest supporter of the Bolshevik regime during this critical time, if unconsciously and unintentionally, was the German Government". In view of these facts, it cannot be seriously maintained that foreign powers "intervened" in Russia in 1917-18 for the purpose of toppling the Bolsheviks from power. They intervened, first and foremost, in order to tip the balance of power in their favour, either by renewing the fighting in Russia, in the case of the Allies or by keeping it quiescent, in the case of the Central Powers.

The Bolsheviks actively participated in this foreign involvement and invited help now from this party, now from that, depending on their transient interest. German "intervention", which they welcomed and
solicited, more than likely saved them from suffering the fate of the Provisional Government.*

*Allied intervention in 1919, after the armistice, had, of course, different motives I cut and pasted that last quote from another forum after a quick check from the book that it was ok.


.

[A Marxist Historian]

The foreign intervention number in the Russian Revolution of 150,000 is a bit disingenuous when looked at in more detail.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War


Of those the 50,000 Czech legion were probably most involved in the civil war, against there will if you like. As they were stranded in Russia and wanted to leave but Trotsky had refused to let them leave on orders from Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_Legions



TELEGRAM NO. 246

A 23074 Berlin, i June 1918



Kuhlmann


Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry EDITED BY Z. A. B. ZEMAN


The albeit significant Japanese involvement in the far east which continued until 1922 I think, and perhaps you could argue far away from the critical region of the civil war, was more a matter of pursuing their own imperial ambitions than anything to do restoring Tsarism.

The British involvement wasn’t in fact enthusiastic and Lloyd George laid down the rules in 1919




Pipes page 250

I accept myself there is a bit doublespeak in that.


The limited direct involvement of the British can be inferred from the total casualties of 400.

The situation in 1918 was slightly different;


I cut and pasted that last quote from another forum after a quick check from the book that it was ok.


.

Basically, Dave B. is in favor of imperialist foreign intervention into Russia, you don't have to read very far at all between the lines of the farrago of lies he is hitting us with here.

Does it need to be said that the claim that Trotsky was trying to lock up the Czechoslovaks at the behest of the Germans is an outright lie, for which he provides no evidence?

The fact is that Trotsky tried very hard to find some way to send them out of Russia, by way of Archangelsk or something like that, but the Brits seizing control of Archangelsk made that pretty tricky. It is very doubtful that the Czechs would have been allowed to leave if the Brits in Archangelsk had their hands on them, they were the best armed, best organized military unit in all of Siberia, militarily quite capable of overthrowing the workers regime all by themselves, without any support from any Russians whatsoever.

Which is exactly what they did, and that's how the Whites took control of Siberia for a while.

Why did the British send so few troops to Russia? Because the British workers felt differently from Dave B. does, and dockworkers and seamen struck all military cargo shipments to be sent there. Lloyd George did want to get re-elected after all.

Anmd that is why there weren't a whole lot of French troops either. Because the largest French contingent, in Odessa, mutinied, trying to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks!

Basically, you had the workers of all Europe on one side and their enemies, like Dave B. and other Whites, on the other. That's why the foreign troop contingents intervening to suppress Bolshevism weren't as big as Dave B. would have liked.

-M.H.-

[Dave B]

I was attempting to provide some balance as regards the general Leninist viewpoint that there was a large, 150,000 contingent, of foreign troops ‘effectively’ supporting the white-guardist counter revolution.

I accept that there was a lot of working class sympathy for the Bolshevik revolution and in 1919 a general political objection to getting involved in another war.

I got impression from some of the articles in the 'capitalist press' at the time that in fact there wasn’t that much objection to the Bolshevik revolution.

There were some at the very least indifferent articles on it in the likes of the New York Times by Bolshevik sympathisers like Arthur Ransome.

I don’t claim to have done a widespread review of it and Winston Churchill was probably a bit of an exception as a rabid anti Bolshevik.


I am not an expert on the Czech legion, and I am quite happy to be corrected, but understood them to be mainly concerned with winning Bohemian independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Conscripted into the armies of the 'pro German' Austro-Hungarian ‘Central Powers’ to fight the Russians; they surrendered at the first opportunity to fight for the other side of the so called Triple Entente powers, ie France, Britain and Russia.

Their nationalist political orientation was probably mixed but not necessarily inclined towards Tsarist imperial monarchy.

I was also under the impression that Plan A was to get out of Russia via Archangel and Murmansk to join their ‘comrades’ in France and knock shit out of the central powers there.

And as a handy bunch dedicated lads would have been welcomed there.

And that was one of the reasons the British and French seized those ports to assist the process.

The Germans objected, the Bolsheviks complied and hence Plan B to travel the other way, half way around the world via America.

You have to admire their dedication to a cause.

They were undoutedly quite happy to clobber anyone who got in their way.

The whole thing is a kind of paradigm of the political chessboard of an ‘enemy of an enemy’ is a friend.

The idea, even reading between the lines, that I was;



In favour of imperialist foreign intervention into Russia.
Is just nonsense, what can I do but unreservedly deny it.

The accusation itself is more a reflection on your Jesuitical position than mine.

I did actually provide some evidence in that telegram that;

‘Trotsky was trying to lock up the Czechoslovaks at the behest of the Germans’.

As you put it.

It isn’t in fact that controversial.

Anyway, as a Leninist, what is your gripe with Imperialism?



page 464

3 COMMENTS ON THE REMARKS MADE BY THE COMMITTEE
OF THE APRIL ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE


Imperialism is a continuation of the development of capitalism, its highest stage -- in a sense, a transition stage to socialism.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/MRPP17.html

Actually I would never dream of saying anything like that myself, but I can at least sort of ‘understand’ albeit gag on it; not from my perspective before I get accused of defending Lenin again.

It is the allegedly ‘slavophile’ Marxist ‘idea’ of anything but reactionary feudalism and Lenin’s defeatist stage-ist let ‘progressive’ capitalism spread around the world, through capitalist imperialism, if necessary.

I Keep being acccused of not putting up sourced and evidential material whilst I am the only one doing it!

[Dave B]

should have been slavophobe I think

[A Marxist Historian]

I was attempting to provide some balance as regards the general Leninist viewpoint that there was a large, 150,000 contingent, of foreign troops ‘effectively’ supporting the white-guardist counter revolution.

I accept that there was a lot of working class sympathy for the Bolshevik revolution and in 1919 a general political objection to getting involved in another war.

I got impression from some of the articles in the 'capitalist press' at the time that in fact there wasn’t that much objection to the Bolshevik revolution.

There were some at the very least indifferent articles on it in the likes of the New York Times by Bolshevik sympathisers like Arthur Ransome.

I don’t claim to have done a widespread review of it and Winston Churchill was probably a bit of an exception as a rabid anti Bolshevik.


I am not an expert on the Czech legion, and I am quite happy to be corrected, but understood them to be mainly concerned with winning Bohemian independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Conscripted into the armies of the 'pro German' Austro-Hungarian ‘Central Powers’ to fight the Russians; they surrendered at the first opportunity to fight for the other side of the so called Triple Entente powers, ie France, Britain and Russia.

Their nationalist political orientation was probably mixed but not necessarily inclined towards Tsarist imperial monarchy.


The "Czech Legion" was sponsored by the Allies and wanted to overthrow Austria-Hungary, therefore they were natural opponents of Germany and Austria and natural allies of the Brits, the French and the Tsar. They probably didn't give a damn one way or another about the Tsar as opposed to Kerensky or Kornilov or any other nationalist Russian political figures, but they didn't care for anybody advocating any kind of peace, as any negotiated peace would have been unlikely to give the Czech lands independence. So they were pro-Allied warmongers.


I was also under the impression that Plan A was to get out of Russia via Archangel and Murmansk to join their ‘comrades’ in France and knock shit out of the central powers there.



Which was the plan Trotsky preferred too, until the British and Americans landed in Archangel and took over and imposed a White regime!

However, as the Czechs were quite well armed, and the Red Army wasn't, letting them wander over Soviet territory arms in hand after the British had already overthrown Soviet authority in Archangel, where the original plan was to send them, could not be allowed, they had to be disarmed by the Red authorities for reasons of simple self-defense.

Trotsky went along with the British landing in Murmansk as the German troops were advancing on Petrograd and Moscow, as it looked at the time as if like it or not, the Soviet republic would be at war with Germany, and obviously need all the allies it could get. But once the treaty was signed, there was no reason for British troops to be there one second longer--except of course in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

In retrospect, letting the British troops land in Murmansk was a mistake, but with the Soviet republic's back to the wall at that moment, it seemed as if desperate measures were necessary.


And as a handy bunch dedicated lads would have been welcomed there.


And that was one of the reasons the British and French seized those ports to assist the process.


How "helpful" of them. Assistance was not asked for and certainly not needed.


The Germans objected, the Bolsheviks complied and hence Plan B to travel the other way, half way around the world via America.

Well, all that telegram proves is that it offers a fine explanation as to why Trotsky was willing to let the Brits land in Murmansk, to help fend off arrogant German imperialists. For actual evidence you'd have to find something in the now wide open ex-Soviet archives to confirm your conspiratorial delusions.

It was the British troops in Archangelsk that required the change in route, not orders from Germany. If the British really wanted to help get 'em out quicker, instead of sending troops to conquer Russia, they could just have sent some badly needed railway engineers, shipped some engines and cars, etc. All of which would have been extremely useful and quickened things.

Now, this is a factual matter, and you show some faint signs of being willing to pay some attention to the facts, which is why I am bothering to respond to this part of your posting. Your trolling about Lenin as an imperialist does not even deserve a response.


-M.H.-


You have to admire their dedication to a cause.


They were undoutedly quite happy to clobber anyone who got in their way.

The whole thing is a kind of paradigm of the political chessboard of an ‘enemy of an enemy’ is a friend.

The idea, even reading between the lines, that I was;



Is just nonsense, what can I do but unreservedly deny it.

The accusation itself is more a reflection on your Jesuitical position than mine.

I did actually provide some evidence in that telegram that;

‘Trotsky was trying to lock up the Czechoslovaks at the behest of the Germans’.

As you put it.

It isn’t in fact that controversial.

Anyway, as a Leninist, what is your gripe with Imperialism?



page 464

3 COMMENTS ON THE REMARKS MADE BY THE COMMITTEE
OF THE APRIL ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE



http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/MRPP17.html

Actually I would never dream of saying anything like that myself, but I can at least sort of ‘understand’ albeit gag on it; not from my perspective before I get accused of defending Lenin again.

It is the allegedly ‘slavophile’ Marxist ‘idea’ of anything but reactionary feudalism and Lenin’s defeatist stage-ist let ‘progressive’ capitalism spread around the world, through capitalist imperialism, if necessary.

I Keep being acccused of not putting up sourced and evidential material whilst I am the only one doing it!

[Dave B]

I am sort of beginning to ask myself why I getting embroiled into this dead Russian society debate about the western governments attitude to the 'Russian revolution' and the civil war.

Particularly as it is a historical minefield and lends itself to simplistic arguments like the capitalist governments supported the pro Tsarist Whites to overthrow the Bolsheviks and thus took sides in the civil war and that justified the activities of the Bolshevik red terror and the Chekka etc.

The reality of the international situation was the confusion and contradictory positions that often follow on from lesser of two evils and an enemy of an enemy is a friend and different ‘political’ groups pursuing their own interests.

And it is possible to see that at the time.

So for instance President Woodrow Wilson applauded the Russian revolution as a "glorious act” and quickly recognised the new government in March 1917.

And at that point there was no suggestion from the American government of any latent counter revolutionary support for a white guardist restoration of ‘tsarist tyranny’.

In fact if the Wilson government had they read Lenin’s ‘Two Tactics’ or Stalin’s view in 1905 they may have found some common ideological ground with the pragmatic part of the Bolshevik stageist policy for ‘the establishment of a [capitalist] democratic republic in Russia’.

Or;


V. I. Lenin The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution 1909



The establishment of a democratic republic in Russia will be possible only as the result of a victorious popular uprising, whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government.... Subject to the relation of forces and other factors which cannot be determined exactly beforehand, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of waging a relentless struggle against all attempts at counter-revolution …………
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm

J. V. Stalin The Provisional Revolutionary Government and Social-Democracy August 15, 1905



In short, the provisional government ...............[will] immediately proceed to convene a popular Constituent Assembly which will give "perpetual" legal force to the changes that will have taken place in social life.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1905/08/15.htm


In fact they could have even continued that support up to the Bolshevik Coup in October that was as proclaimed by the Bolsheviks as done to ensure the convening of the 'popular Constituent Assembly'.

After the armed closure of the constituent assembly in January in 1918.

That had only discussed and agreed on two items; the immediate ending of the war and an Armistice and the redistribution of land to the peasants.

Things took to a turn for the worst and from then on progressively everyone, to varying degrees and for ideological reasons, were forced to choose between ‘lesser evils’.

Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to support counter revolutionary Tsarism whilst his Secretary of State Robert Lansing ‘later’ took a more anti Bolshevik viewpoint.

There were similar differences with the British ie Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.

The German government probably had the most ideological opposition to Bolshevism but took the pragmatic viewpoint of funding them to create as much chaos in Russia as possible and keep them out of the war.

And thus had the most successful strategy of all.

The fact is the Bolsheviks were taking blood money from their own junker German state capitalist class to keep Russia out of the war so the central powers could transfer troops to the Western front and shift the bloodbath there.

The ‘anti imperialist’ (of an Austo-Hungarian hue) Czech Legion were forced to stay in Russia by a bribed Trotsky taking orders from Berlin.

And if wasn’t for the Czech Legion the ‘whites’ would have struggled to have gained a foothold in the first place.

And the Entente powers were divided on the pragmatism of supporting a white guardist counter revolution.

If the Bolsheviks hadn’t dissolved the constituent assembly there may not have been a civil war in the first place.

The political oppression of the Bolsheviks was not a consequence of the civil war but rather contributed to it.


The Deputy State Secretary to the Foreign Ministry Representative at Eastern Command

TELEGRAM NO. I 14

9 January 1918


People who had languished for thirty to forty years in Russian prisons or in Siberia had once again been thrown into jail by the Bolsheviks because of their political convictions. Even members of the Constituent Assembly which has now been elected, who, of course, are supposed to enjoy immunity, were lying in prison. The laws had been declared invalid and there was no legal code at all in Russia. Tribunals consisting of Bolsheviks were functioning as courts of law. The entire press was under pressure. Those newspapers that still appeared were censored before publication, and even the organs of the extreme left were being gagged in this way. Newspapers were simply closed down and their types, their paper, and their capital confiscated.

You can read between the lines as much as you want.

As to what extent communist workers should support bougiouse revolutions we could look at what Fred said in his letter to Turati that actually became a Menshevik choosen focal point in the Bolshevik- Menshevik debate.


Marx-Engels Correspondence 1894 Engels to Filippo Turati
In Milan



But if it comes to this, we must be conscious of the fact, and openly proclaim it, that we are only taking part as an "independent Party," which is allied for the moment with Radicals and Republicans but is inwardly essentially different from them: that we indulge in absolutely no illusions as to the result of the struggle in case of victory; that this result not only cannot satisfy us but will only be a newly attained stage to us, a new basis of operations for further conquests; that from the very moment of victory our paths will separate; that from that same day onwards we shall form a new opposition to the new government, not a reactionary but a progressive opposition, an opposition of the most extreme Left, which will press on to new conquests beyond the ground already won.


After the common victory we might perhaps be offered some seats in the new Government – but always in a minority. Here lies the greatest danger. After the February Revolution in 1848 the French socialistic Democrats (the Réforme people, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Flocon, etc.) were incautious enough to accept such positions. As a minority in the Government they involuntarily bore the responsibility for all the infamy and treachery which the majority, composed of pure Republicans, committed against the working class, while at the same time their participation in the government completely paralysed the revolutionary action of the working class they were supposed to represent.

Here I am only expressing my personal opinion, which you asked me for, and I am doing this only with a certain amount of caution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_26.htm

[daft punk]

[QUOTE=Dave B;2390874]The foreign intervention number in the Russian Revolution of 150,000 is a bit disingenuous when looked at in more detail.
You say that, and yet you figures add up to about 250,000!

Also, the foreign intervention involved £ millions o aid to the Whites - weapons and so on.

"Total Allied aid to Kolchak in the first months of 1919 amounted to 1 million rifles, 15,000 machine guns, 800 million rounds of ammunition, and clothing and equipment for half a million men, 'roughly equivalent to the Soviet production of munitions for the whole of 1919'.35 By August 1919 Britain had already spent £47.9 million helping the Whites0--rising to £100 million by the end of the year, a figure equivalent to approximately £2.5 billion today. The French contribution was only slightly less, while the US allowed 'considerable sums' it had granted Kerensky's government to be diverted to the White cause by the ambassador of the Provisional Government.36 The imperialist powers may have left the frontline fighting to the Russian Whites, but Czechoslovak, Japanese, British, French, American, Polish, Romanian and Italian troops guarded the Trans-Siberian Railway to ensure supplies from Vladivostok reached Kolchak. A Siberian song at the time of Kolchak's rule expressed the situation perfectly: 'Uniform, British; boot, French; bayonet, Japanese; ruler, Omsk'.37"
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj86/trudell.htm

[Dave B]

Intervention by France was guided by a desire to recoup lost investments in Russia as well as to create buffer states against attacks from Germany. In March 1919 the 65,000-70,000 French troops were heavily defeated by the Red Army and Ukrainian guerrillas at Kherson and at Odessa. French soldiers at Sevastopol on the Crimea mutinied.

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj86/trudell.htm


Well most of the figures I have seen bandied around on numbers of ‘French’ involved have been in the 10,000 region. So perhaps the rest of the data in that article can be ‘questioned’.


The wikipedia entry has 12,000


The following post adding yet more interesting detail puts it at 8,000 (+ 24,000 ‘Greeks’!)


In the South, an 8,000-man force of French troops along with a unit of Polish troops formed on the Western front, landed in the black sea port of Odessa December 18, 1918. This did not happen until over a month after World War One ended due to the Black Sea being closed at the Bospherous by German allied Turkey. They were joined in January 1919 by 24,000 Greek soldiers of the two-division Army Corps "A" and elements of the British Royal Navy. Losing men to typhus, lack of mission, and the myriad of hostile forces in the area led to the rapid withdrawal of these units. Most had left by April 1919 when the Reds threatened Odessa.

The British navy captured the Russian battleships Evstafiy, Potemkin, Tri Svyatitelya and loann Zlatoust which the German navy had taken over during their occupation. Instead of turning them over to either the Whites or the Reds, the British scuttled them including the destruction of their engineering machinery when they withdrew from Odessa on April 25th 1919.

The French and British remained in token forces including a tank company, a marine battalion, and the Royal Scots Fusiliers until their final withdrawal from the Crimea in June 1920. The British Royal Navy battleship, HMS Marlborough, evacuated most of what was left of the Russian royal familiy including the dowager empress, the Tsar's sisters, Rasputin assasin Prince Felix Yussupov, and the Grand Duke Nicholas. The allies suffered nearly a thousand deaths in this theater (including 398 among the Greeks alone)


http://christopher-eger.suite101.com/allied-interventionists-in-russia-a34495

I suspect these casualty figures might need to be talked down as well as they included non combat fatalities I think.

There is an extract from Lockharts book below for interest, actually I haven’t read it all yet. with 'details' on the Czech legion stuff.

http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/BritAgent/BA04b.htm

From elsewhere there was even considerable ambivalence even amongst the French Officer class towards the White’s when the soon realised what a bunch of shits they were.

And again French government support for the whites wasn’t whole hearted either.

According to Pipes even Winston Churchill talked down the £100 million figure, perhaps to deflect and minimise criticism of it.

Claiming it was cost wise depreciated surplus military stock etc.

The French petty capitalist class probably had most to loose as they had apparently invested heavily in Tsarist bonds or loans that were unlikely to be honoured by the Bolsheviks, as they weren’t.

Apparently they were produced in glorious techno colour with art nouveau design.

And the French working class were apparently buying them for wall paper years later.

I actually don’t have much of a axe to grind on this kind of thing but just like to get a better understanding of the historical facts and scale of events and intervention etc.

It has been useful (or maybe just “interesting”) as it has stimulated me into some more detailed historical research.

[A Marxist Historian]

I am sort of beginning to ask myself why I getting embroiled into this dead Russian society debate about the western governments attitude to the 'Russian revolution' and the civil war.

Particularly as it is a historical minefield and lends itself to simplistic arguments like the capitalist governments supported the pro Tsarist Whites to overthrow the Bolsheviks and thus took sides in the civil war and that justified the activities of the Bolshevik red terror and the Chekka etc.

The reality of the international situation was the confusion and contradictory positions that often follow on from lesser of two evils and an enemy of an enemy is a friend and different ‘political’ groups pursuing their own interests.

And it is possible to see that at the time.

So for instance President Woodrow Wilson applauded the Russian revolution as a "glorious act” and quickly recognised the new government in March 1917.

And at that point there was no suggestion from the American government of any latent counter revolutionary support for a white guardist restoration of ‘tsarist tyranny’.

In fact if the Wilson government had they read Lenin’s ‘Two Tactics’ or Stalin’s view in 1905 they may have found some common ideological ground with the pragmatic part of the Bolshevik stageist policy for ‘the establishment of a [capitalist] democratic republic in Russia’...



Why do you want to get yourself involved in this "dead Russian society debate"? Well, let me explain you to yourself, as you don't seem to quite have figured yourself out.

You want to play attorney for the governments of England, your native country, and its allies such as America. Because, beneath your thin facade of ultimatism, you are a patriot of your fatherland, England. A "social patriot," as Lenin liked to put it.

You may not quite have recognized that yet, that is a psychological matter between you and your shrink. But it's obvious to anyone who has read your postings.

Particularly amusing is your suggestion that Wilson had the best of intentions for Russia, as there is "no suggestion" in his first comments on the Bolshevik Revolution of any desire to put the Tsar back on his throne.

Why would there be? How would that be useful for him? Wilson was nothing if not a canny politician. And bourgeois politicians, and especially American bourgeois politicians, are liars.

We Americans have a joke about politicians.

"How can you tell when a politician is lying? It's when his lips are moving."

-M.H.-