The October Revolution

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

So I'm sure there have been countless threads about this but what do you guys think the October Revolution actually was? Was it an actual popular workers' revolution or just a coup d'état by the Bolsheviks? Also, if it was a socialist revolution, when did the Bolsjeviks put a stop to workers' control in the soviets?

I'd especially like to hear what fellow Trotskyists think about this.

[The Idler]

I think it's been well-established now that the majority of the country were not class conscious.
Julius Martov (https://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/) and the Mensheviks were very close to what happened, in fact for a while Trotsky was a member of the Mensheviks.
There is a good review of a book here.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1292-april-2012/book-reviews-pity-billionaire-zinoviev-martov-head-

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Trotsky was never a Menshevik. He was part of the minority at the Second Congress; but if members of the minority are counted as Mensheviks, then the members of the majority should be counted as Bolsheviks, including Plekhanov. The Mensheviks were a fusion of the remnants of the Congress minority and the conciliatory members of the majority; by that time, Trotsky had adopted his infamous unity line and tried to take a position between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. This pattern would continue - with the exception of his rigidly anti-Bolshevik line during the August Bloc debacle - until the First World War, when he joined, first the Mezhrayonka (an organization comprising many former Mensheviks, including Uritsky and the elder Yezhov), and then the RKP(b), the Bolsheviks.

As for the Mensheviks at the time of the October Revolution, these were a sad parody of their former selves. Their best elements had left them, either for the Mezhrayonka, the Bolsheviks, or Larin's group. What remained was an organization of "revolutionary" defencists like Dan, and "internationalists" who continued to sit in the same party as the chauvinists, like Martov. Even honest chauvinists, like Plekhanov, couldn't stand the morass that the Mensheviks - the Organizing Committee, formally - had become.

Mensheviks participated in the Provisional Government - Mensheviks participated in the reactionary zemstvos and committees of salvation - Mensheviks helped organize the White Guards and provided political support to White generals. In Georgia, Menshevik authorities carried out pogroms and destroyed entire districts, while keeping the rule of capital safe. These are the people the "Socialist" Party of Great Britain promotes.

As for the October Revolution - just recall that it was sanctioned by the congress of soviets, although it was organized by a revolutionary minority, as all revolutions are. The soviets were partially deemphasized during the civil war, as the greater part of the militant proletariat had died, fighting the very Mensheviks our "comrade" above promotes.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

It seems pretty disingenuous to insinuate that Martov held similar political views as Trotsky when Trotsky called for the Mensheviks to be cast into the dustbin of history. A good piece to read about the period would be John Reed's 'Ten Days that Shook the World' (http://marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/index.htm).

[tuwix]

Was it an actual popular workers' revolution or just a coup d'état by the Bolsheviks?

Definitely a coup IMHO. But not the usual one. In ordinary coup there only objective is to take power. In this one, there was a change of socio-economic system. However, there was never achieved a socialism.

[Dave B]

Was Trotsky a Menshevik?

Most people consider that the Russian RSDLP ‘split’ into two ‘fractions’ in July-August 1903.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Congress_of_the_Russian_Social_Democratic_Labo ur_Party


There are a range of opinions over whether they ever formally split into two parties and if they ever did what dates they formally split into two parties and disputes over dates at which they split into fractions informal or otherwise etc etc

Anyway as below Trotsky “explains” his political history before the Dewy commission himself *;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/session02.htm

where he says;




………….that from 1904* until 1917 I remained aside from both factions.


[* Actually September 1904]

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

And as according to the falsifier of history Trotsky;


….. The split came in April 1905……….

And not 1903

Therefore according to lying Mr Trotsky he could not have been a Menshevik from August 1903 to September 1904 because the “Mensheviks did not exist” until April 1905.

This is bollocks of course as we have extant a “Menshevik”, or ‘Soft Iskra-ist’, pamphlet called ‘Our Political Tasks’ written up by Trotsky himself in 1904 presumably before September.

The subject matter being an attack on Lenin and that which led to the 1903 ‘split’ including the famous quote;





In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organisation “substituting” itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee…….


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch03.htm

In this pamphlet Trotsky just chooses to refer to the “Bolsheviks” as the Hard’s and the “Mensheviks” as the Soft’s. This was then the preferred nomenclature of the ‘Mensheviks’, like Trotsky himself, as they considered the term ‘the minority’ as a misleading misnomer.

Mensheviks participated in the Provisional Government?

To begin with on this issue the Mensheviks were on the left and were thus opposed to participating in a anticipated Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks were for the idea.

Thus;



We shall begin with the history of the discussion of this question by the Russian Social-Democrats. It was brought up by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks at the beginning of 1905. ………………In keeping with the spirit of the times, both sections of the Party in their resolutions dealt, not with the theoretical and general question of the aim of the struggle and the class content of a victorious revolution in general, but with the narrower question of a provisional revolutionary government.

The Bolshevik resolution read:

". . .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, and of defending the independent interests of the working class.”

The Menshevik resolution read:

"...Social-Democracy must not set out to seize power or share it with anyone in the provisional government, but must remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition.”



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm

This provisional government was understood by both sides as the interim government between the overthrow of the Tsar and the democratically elected ‘revolutionary’ bourgeois democratic republic.

The Bolsheviks justified participating in this provisional government, that would inevitably involve in part administering capitalism and stuff, as the only reliable guarantee for the election and convocation of the constituent assembly.

And to prevent some kind of anti-democratic counter coup by some alliance between the old feudal order and the big capitalists etc.

The Mensheviks suspected that once the Bolsheviks entered the “marble halls of power”, as they put it.

As power corrupts, especially those who are power mad, they would like it too much.

Or according to the Mensheviks they might do something even more stupid.

Lenin summarising the Mensheviks objection to the proposed [Bolshevik] participation in the provisional government.


By [the Bolsheviks] participating in the provisional government…[the Bolsheviks] would have the power in its hands; but as the party of the proletariat,….. [and the Bolsheviks would not]…… hold the power without attempting to put [their] maximum programme into effect, i.e., without attempting to bring about the socialist revolution…..[and that by doing that they would] at the present time, inevitably come to grief, discredit itself, and play into the hands of the reactionaries. Hence, participation by [any] Social-Democrats in a provisional revolutionary government is inadmissible.

Lenin said this was bollocks because it would mean the Bolsheviks attempting to carry out a ‘socialist revolution’ when all that was possible was a bourgeois democratic revolution and republic etc. And in doing so they would make arseholes out of themselves and be as bad as the anti Marxist SR noodle-heads, and Anarchists.

And it would involve the Bolsheviks suddenly, or “spontaneously” getting carried away, and mixing up or confounding the;



………the democratic revolution with the socialist revolution, the struggle for the republic (including our entire minimum programme) with the struggle for socialism.

If Social-Democracy sought to make the socialist revolution its immediate aim, it would assuredly discredit itself. It is precisely such vague and hazy ideas of our “Socialists—Revolutionaries” that Social-Democracy has always combated. For this reason Social-Democracy has constantly stressed the bourgeois nature of the impending revolution in Russia and insisted on a clear line of demarcation between the democratic minimum programme and the socialist maximum programme. Some Social-Democrats, who are inclined to yield to spontaneity, might forget all this in time of revolution, but not the Party as a whole.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm

Of course that is exactly what the Bolsheviks did do in October 1917.


But returning to the evil Mensheviks in the provisional government circa May 1917 onwards.

Around may 1917 following the collapse of the previous provisional government the [Petrograd] Soviet wanted leftists members of the soviet itself [SR’s and Mensheviks] represented in the next government to keep an eye on the other bourgeois rich bastards that would be in it etc.

The Mensheviks; split into Menshevik members of the soviet, members of the Petrograd Menshevik party and the central or General Menshevik Party [with some cross over] entered into a complicated and acrimonious argument amongst themselves about it.

The result was that some Mensheviks entered into the next provisional government.

And in doing so adopted the old Bolshevik party position and abandoned the Menshevik one.

(The Bolsheviks were not invited as they were correctly under suspicion of receiving funds from the German government; and therefore under its influence.)

As our lying Leninist historians like to portray this infamous provisional government as bourgeois crypto white guard lackeys etc.

Lets us see how Lenin described this provisional government, and Skobelev in particular.


Today we must point out that the programme of the Menshevik Minister Skobelev (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/s/k.htm#skobelev-matvei) goes even further than Bolshevism. Here is the programme, as reported in the ministerial paper, Rech:


“The Minister [Skobelev] declared that ’... the country’s economy is on the brink of disaster. We must intervene in all fields of economic life, as there is no money in the Treasury. We must improve the condition of the working masses, and to do that we must take the profits from the tills of the businessmen and bankers’. (Voice in the audience: ‘How?’) ’By ruthless taxation of property,’ replied the Minister of Labour, Skobelev. ’It is a method known to the science of finance. The rate of taxation on the propertied classes must be increased to one hundred per cent of their profits.’ (Voice in the audience: ’That means everything.’) ‘Unfortunately,’ declared Skobelev, ’many corporations have already distributed their dividends among the share holders, and we must therefore levy a progressive personal tax on the propertied classes. We will go even further, and, if the capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of business, let them work without interest, so as not to lose their clients.... We must introduce compulsory labour service for the shareholders, bankers and factory owners, who are in a rather slack mood because the incentive that formerly stimulated them to work is now lacking.... We must force the shareholders to submit to the state; they, too, must be subject to labour service.’”


We advise the workers to read and reread this programme, to discuss it and go into the matter of its practicability.

The important thing is the conditions necessary for its fulfilment, and the taking of immediate steps towards its fulfilment.

This programme in itself is an excellent one and coincides with the Bolshevik programme, except that in one particular it goes even further than our programme, namely, it promises to take the profits from the tills of the bankers “to the extent of one hundred per cent”.

Our Party is much more moderate. Its resolution demands much less than this, namely, the mere establishment of control over the banks and the “gradual [just listen, the Bolsheviks are for gradualness!] introduction of a more just progressive tax on incomes and properties”.

Our Party is more moderate than Skobelev.


https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/16b.htm

The Mensheviks were later of course accused of supporting the White Guard’s during the civil war; which is another lie.

Thus from Abrahamovitch internationalist Menshevik;


Permit me to recall that during the civil war, despite our rejection of the Bolshevik dictatorship in principle, in order to save the revolution from White Guard reaction and foreign intervention we voluntarily mobilised members of our party to fight in the ranks of the Red Army against counterrevolution.
I do not wish to discuss the correctness or otherwise of our tactics then or now. That, however, is what they were, and no honest person anywhere can deny it.


http://www.korolevperevody.co.uk/korolev/abramovich01.htm

This was concerning a Stalinist show trial of alleged “Mensheviks” that was to foreshadow that of old Bolsheviks in 1936.

Something the other typical wicked white-guardist Theodore Dan and Mensheviks protested against in a letter sent to the editor of the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN on September 4, 1936.

Ending with;



If the Soviet Union is to be preserved as the nucleus of peace, and the war peril facing all humanity thus exorcised, all friends of the Russian Revolution and of world peace must stand resolutely on the side of the Russian workers and peasants in order to assist them to defend the possibilities of democratic and Socialistic development of the Soviet Union against the nationalistic and Bonapartist policy of Stalin. The Moscow murders are perhaps one of the final warnings.—

Yours, &c.,
Paris, August 28.


http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistappeal/vol02/no09/dan.htm




* Trotsky mentions Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky in the Dewey investigation; a rogue Menshevik who participated in the Komuch government for which he was expelled from the Menshevik party. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1921.


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

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Bigger font please.

First of all, the Iskra minority - what you call the "soft Iskra-ists" - were not the Mensheviks; the Mensheviks were a later fusion of the majority of the Iskra minority, conciliatory elements of the Iskra majority, economists and Bundists. Calling the Iskra minority "Mensheviks" is as ridiculous as calling the economists "Mensheviks".

And the (incorrect) desire of the Bolsheviks (who at the time still held to the two-stage model of the revolution) to participate in a provisional government in 1909 is not the same as the Menshevik's actual participation in the Provisional Government, which was not a transitional democratic government but the executive committee of a landowner-bourgeois alliance that aimed to keep Russia in an imperialist war and crush any workers' resistance.

And Lenin was mocking Skobolev, who made promises he knew he couldn't fulfill - radical-sounding rhetoric with which he tried to mask his complete subservience to the Kadets and Octobrists.

As for the Menshevik participation in the White movement: (1) we have the already-mentioned case of minister Maysky, (2) Mensheviks participated in the Union for the Salvation of Russia, the first Whiteguard organization, (3) Lieber, the "revolutionary defencist", entered into an open alliance with the Kadets and reactionary zemstvos, on behalf of the Mensheviks, against the Bolshevik government, (4) Mensheviks participated in the Centrocaspian Dictatorship, the Siberian Provisional Government, the Ufa Directorate, etc., (5) the Mensheviks, alone, organized the White government in Georgia.

Is that quite enough?

[bropasaran]

So I'm sure there have been countless threads about this but what do you guys think the October Revolution actually was? Was it an actual popular workers' revolution or just a coup d'état by the Bolsheviks? Also, if it was a socialist revolution
It was a coup that happened in a proto-capitalist society and established a tyranny which enacted economic changes (nationalization in forms of war communism and forced collectivizations) that reverted the state of the working people into those of serfs half a century earlier, or even worse.


I think it's been well-established now that the majority of the country were not class conscious.
I think they were. Of course, having in mind the anarchist, not the marxist notion of class.

[aristos]

Whether revolution or coup is irrelevant.
The important thing is changing from capitalist society to non-capitalist society.
Any and all means that can be applied to effect this change are legitimate.

We can see very clearly in the light of recent events how fetishisation of "revolution" leads to bizarre support for some very sinister elements. Elements that ironically only lead to either the strengthening of the capitalist grip in the regions where said revolutions occur or regression to even worse forms of exploitation.

[Dave B]

(1) we have the already-mentioned case of minister Maysky-and joined the Bolshevik party in 1921, like Skobolev.


(2) Mensheviks participated in the Union for the Salvation of Russia, the first Whiteguard organization ??????????????


(3) Lieber, the "revolutionary defencist", entered into an open alliance with the Kadets and reactionary zemstvos, on behalf of the Mensheviks, against the Bolshevik government?????

This one?

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


There were Bolshevik "revolutionary defencists", in fact it almost split their party.



(4) Mensheviks participated in the Centrocaspian Dictatorship, the Siberian Provisional Government, the Ufa Directorate, etc.??????????


(5) the Mensheviks, alone, organized the White government in Georgia.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/index.htm

[Le Socialiste]

Dave B, refrain from using larger font please. It's unnecessary and distracting.


I think they were. Of course, having in mind the anarchist, not the marxist notion of class.

And what might that be?

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

Whether revolution or coup is irrelevant.
The important thing is changing from capitalist society to non-capitalist society.
Any and all means that can be applied to effect this change are legitimate.

We can see very clearly in the light of recent events how fetishisation of "revolution" leads to bizarre support for some very sinister elements. Elements that ironically only lead to either the strengthening of the capitalist grip in the regions where said revolutions occur or regression to even worse forms of exploitation.

The distinction between revolution and coup is relevant in my opinion. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have asked the question.

For those advocating a bottom-up implementation of socialism as opposed to top-down, a coup would generally be considered undesirable unless it has widespread support from the people.

I don't 'fetishize' the current bourgeois revolutions taking place in many different places right now. I only want a proletarian one.

[bropasaran]

And what might that be?

Marxism views class on the basis of ownership on the means of production, thereby considering themselves a movement of wage-workers (which includes managers, coordinators, engeneers, intellectuals, no matter their hierarchical role), but not of workers that own their means of production like artisans, peasants, and workers in workers' coops, whether or not they exploit anyone or not.

Anarchism views class not on basis of ownership, but on basis of power stratification, so there's difference in opinion there on who's the ruling class and who's the working class. So Bakunin can say things like:

the designation of the proletariat, the world of the workers, as class rather than as mass is deeply antipathetic to us revolutionary anarchists who unconditionally advocate full popular emancipation. To do so means nothing more or less than a new aristocracy, that of the urban and industrial workers, to the exclusion of the millions who make up the rural proletariat.

Basically, for Marxism, you have to exploited to be working class, for anarchism, you have to not exploit or oppress other people in order to be working class.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

(1) we have the already-mentioned case of minister Maysky-and joined the Bolshevik party in 1921, like Skobolev.

Because he was able to paint himself as a poor confused person who spent his ministry on scientific expeditions. In retrospect, yeah, Maysky should probably have been shot - but then people like you would complain about that, too.


(2) Mensheviks participated in the Union for the Salvation of Russia, the first Whiteguard organization ??????????????

The Union was organized no later than March 1918, and while it was mostly composed of Esers and Popular Socialists, it contained the Mensheviks Potresov and Levitsky, Martov's younger brother.


(3) Lieber, the "revolutionary defencist", entered into an open alliance with the Kadets and reactionary zemstvos, on behalf of the Mensheviks, against the Bolshevik government?????

This one?

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



That one.


There were Bolshevik "revolutionary defencists", in fact it almost split their party.

Well, yes, just as there were Bolshevik liquidators, but the difference is that the Bolsheviks weren't run by "revolutionary defencists", like the Mensheviks (after the honest chauvinists had left for Yedinstvo and the internationalists for the Bolsheviks, Larin's group or the Mezhrayonka).


(4) Mensheviks participated in the Centrocaspian Dictatorship, the Siberian Provisional Government, the Ufa Directorate, etc.??????????

I'm sorry, was that a question? All I see is someone leaning on the question mark key, presumably because they don't have anything substantive to add.


(5) the Mensheviks, alone, organized the White government in Georgia.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/index.htm

Ah, well, Kautsky, the pope of centrism, who voted for war credits - why would anyone not believe such a person?

You know what's really hilarious? You SPGB types generally go around shouting "FULL SOCIALISM NOW!" at every conceivable opportunity, yet here you champion a party that claimed that socialism was impossible in Russia, and that instituted a particularly bloody capitalist regime out of the kindness of its heart, without even being paid like the Baku Mensheviks. Scratch a modern "impossibilist", and you will find a little England liberal - and a patriot at that, judging by how much whining you people do about mean old Lenin pulling Russia from the war.

[Dave B]

Presumably by the “Centrocaspian Dictatorship”

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

there seems to be a slightly different version of this.

Thus;


After the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I), Azerbaijan, together with Armenia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia) and Georgia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)) became part of the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcaucasian_Democratic_Federative_Republic). When the republic dissolved in May 1918, Azerbaijan declared independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan_Democratic_Republic) (ADR). The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_republic) in the Muslim world.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-Swietochowski_Borderland-7)[71] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-kazemzadeh-71)[72] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-72) Among the important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making Azerbaijan the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men.[71] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-kazemzadeh-71) Another important accomplishment of ADR was the establishment of Baku State University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_State_University), which was the first modern-type university founded in Muslim East.[71] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-kazemzadeh-71)
By March 1920, it was obvious that Soviet Russia would attack the much-needed Baku. Vladimir Lenin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin) said that the invasion was justified as Soviet Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Soviet_Federative_Socialist_Republic) could not survive without Baku's oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum).[73] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-73)[74] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan#cite_note-74) Independent Azerbaijan lasted only 23 months until the Bolshevik (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik) 11th Soviet Red Army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Soviet_Red_Army) invaded it, establishing the Azerbaijan SSR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan_Soviet_Socialist_Republic) on April 28, 1920. Although the bulk of the newly formed Azerbaijani army was engaged in putting down an Armenian revolt that had just broken out in Karabakh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabakh), Azeris did not surrender their brief independence of 1918–20 quickly or easily. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what was effectively a Russian reconquest


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

the mensheviks were not part of the Siberian Provisional Government(s) or Ufa Directorate, they were Socialist revolutionaries and as regards the Ufa Directorate that was an alliance of (3) SR’s and (2) Kadets; ie the directorate.

That was short lived and overthrown by the whiteguards.


E. H. Carr I think said a few Mensheviks without the support of the party in general took part in the Samara government which was also mainly SR.

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

You would need to provide some material for 2 & 3 as I don’t know what you are talking about.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Mark Steel has a lecture on this very subject that can be found here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoRbK3Qg-Sk).

It's pretty good and pretty enlightening.

[Dave B]

The pretence for the reason of the October coup was to guarantee the convocation of the constituent assembly, the “consummation of the bourgeois democratic revolution”, which the Bolsheviks had supported throughout 1917 whilst claiming that others were conspiring to prevent it.

Thus from Tony Cliff, the guru of Mark Steele’s party, quoting Sukhanov.


Tony Cliff Trotsky: Towards October 1879-1917
15. Towards the insurrection


At last on 5 October the central committee bent to Lenin’s will and resolved, with only one dissenting voice – Kamenev’s, to withdraw from the Pre-Parliament on its first day. Trotsky succeeded in convincing the Bolshevik delegates to the Pre-Parliament that they should boycott this body – again with only one vote against.


On 7 October Trotsky read out a fighting statement at the Pre-Parliament. This was probably the first time he appeared as the main Bolshevik spokesman. Sukhanov describes the scene:………..




‘The officially stated aim of the Democratic Conference,’ Trotsky began, ‘was the elimination of the personal regime that fed the Kornilov revolt, and the creation of a responsible government capable of liquidating the war and promoting the convocation of a Constituent Assembly at the appointed time……………..



………. If the propertied elements were really preparing for the Constituent Assembly in a month and a half, they would have no grounds for defending the non-responsibility of the government now. The whole point is that the bourgeois classes have set themselves the goal of preventing the Constituent Assembly ...’


There was an uproar. Shouts from the right: ‘Lies!’

……….. The propertied classes, who provoked the uprising, are now moving to crush it and are openly steering a course for the bony hand of hunger, which is expected to strangle the revolution and the Constituent Assembly first of all.



‘Nor is foreign policy any less criminal. After forty months of war the capital is threatened by mortal danger. In response to this a plan has been put forward for the transfer of the government to Moscow. The idea of surrendering the revolutionary capital to German troops does not arouse the slightest indignation amongst the bourgeois classes; on the contrary it is accepted as a natural link in the general policy that is supposed to help them in their counter-revolutionary conspiracy.’


The uproar grew worse.

The patriots leaped from their seats and wouldn’t allow Trotsky to go on speaking. Shouts about Germany, the sealed car and so on. One shout stood out: ‘Bastard!’

……………………….The chairman called the meeting to order. Trotsky was standing there as though none of this were any concern of his, and finally found it possible to go on.

‘We, the Bolshevik fraction of the Social-Democratic Party, declare that with this government of national treachery and this “Council” we –’

The uproar took on an obviously hopeless character. The majority of the right got to their feet with the obvious intention of stopping the speech. The chairman called the speaker to order. Trotsky, beginning to lose his temper, and speaking by now through the hubbub, finished:

‘–……... We appeal to the people: Long live an immediate, honourable democratic peace, all power to the Soviets. All land to the people, long live the Constituent Assembly!’


All the Bolsheviks stood up and walked out of the assembly hall to the accompaniment of shouts ‘Go to your German trains!’




http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html


The Bolsheviks of course closed the constituent assembly under armed force in January.

Sukhanov’s history of the Russian revolution, basically covering 1917, is/was regarded as a standard work by even the Bolsheviks themselves.

Sukhanov himself in passing called the October seizure of power by the Bolsheviks as a coup, I think.

Sukhanov was a sort of half hearted Menshevik. His wife was a Bolshevik and the famous Bolshevik meeting or final plot to seize power etc was held in his flat; behind his back.

The “consummations of the bourgeois democratic revolutions” in the likes of Georgia and Azerbaijan etc went almost exactly to the plan of the pre 1917 RSDLP (both Bolshevik and Menshevik).

Eg

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/PRG05.html



Although the Russian Mensheviks disassociated and disaffiliated themselves, from at least the Georgian Mensheviks, for directly participating in a bourgeois democratic government.

This was consistent with their long held previous position.

Thus from Radek in 1922 (Bolshevik)


Starting off from the fact that the Russian Revolution would to begin with prepare the ground for the free development of capitalism – this concept was common to both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks – the Mensheviks concluded from it that leadership in the revolution must fall to the bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks combated in the most resolute manner the idea that the working class along with the peasantry must take power for the revolution to achieve its bourgeois democratic aims – if nothing more.

According to the Menshevik conception, the role of the revolutionary working class and its party had to be the role of a left opposition. The Mensheviks compared the efforts of the working class to conquer power along with the peasantry to Millerandism, to the participation of the Social Democracy in bourgeois governments towards the end of the nineteenth century, and prophesied that any attempt to participate in government would be a disaster for the Social Democracy.





http://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1922/paths/ch01.html

[Dave B]

The idea that ‘Marxism’ says that a socialist revolution is only possible after the material conditions of advanced and fully developed capitalism is in place etc and it is not just a matter of political will etc is a problem for some leftists.

It was in fact one point of theory that discriminated between ‘Anarchists’ and ‘Marxists’.



Schoolboy stupidity! A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level [...] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.



https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

As reflected albeit in an exaggerated and somewhat over enthusiastic support for the bourgeois revolution and capitalism from Lenin himself in the material below; that actually stuck in the gullet of the more left leaning Mensheviks and SR’s

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TT05.html#c6

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm

The Bolshevik object and ‘minimum programme’ was the ‘political liberty’ associated with the more mature bourgeois democracies; as the Bolsheviks had experienced and benefited from in places like Switzerland, Belgium and Britian were they were free to spout off etc.

And indeed the brief comparative oasis of political freedoms of the Provisional Governments of Russia in mid 1917.

[robbo203]

[SIZE=2]
You know what's really hilarious? You SPGB types generally go around shouting "FULL SOCIALISM NOW!" at every conceivable opportunity, yet here you champion a party that claimed that socialism was impossible in Russia, and that instituted a particularly bloody capitalist regime out of the kindness of its heart, without even being paid like the Baku Mensheviks. Scratch a modern "impossibilist", and you will find a little England liberal - and a patriot at that, judging by how much whining you people do about mean old Lenin pulling Russia from the war.

You are talking out of your backside , chum. Im not a member of the SPGB but what you claim is an outrageous lie. Check out this article from the Socialist Standard in 1918 (albeit written in the flowery prose of the time)- in particular:

Whatever may be the final outcome, the Bolsheviks have at all events succeeded in doing what all the armies, all the diplomats, all the priests and primates, all the perfervid pacifists of all the groaning and bleeding world have failed to do – they have stopped the slaughter, for the time being, at all events, on their front.

How much more than this they ever intended to do the future may reveal. They may have higher aims, yet to be justified by success or condemned by failure; but it is an astounding achievement that these few man have been able to seize opportunity and make the thieves and murderers of the whole world stand aghast and shiver with apprehension.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-161-january-1918/russian-situation

My suspicion is you wouldnt recognise an "impossibilist" if you tripped over one judging by some of your idiotic comments :rolleyes:

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Presumably by the “Centrocaspian Dictatorship”

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

there seems to be a slightly different version of this.

Thus;

Thus, you quite a Wikipedia article on something else entirely. Needless to say, I don't see what the Azeri Democratic Republic, which nominally controlled Baku after the Centrocaspian Dictatorship had been destroyed by the Ottoman army, has to do with Menshevik participation in the Centrocaspian government.

Concerning sources, well, let's see what your beloved Martov had to say about Liber:

"All this caused a great turmoil in the Party. At first, our Right elements …took the next step and openly identified themselves with the foreign occupation… and with the struggle against the Bolsheviks as part of a ‘coalition’. They proclaimed it to be a ‘national task’ to restore capitalist order. Headed by Liber, they organised the Committee for Active Struggle for the Regeneration of Russia.

This created a de facto split in the Party, which did not become de jure only because terror put such pressure on all of us that any public debate… or convocation of a conference or congress to judge any rebellious elements became impossible…."

(source: V.N.Brovkin, Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik
Revolution and Civil War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 125–6)

Of course, since the Menshevik organization was legal throughout the period, Martov's excuse is unconvincing. And let us note that he would repeat this sort of behavior in Germany: completely silent about the murderous activities of the SPD, he railed against the distant Bolsheviks while maintaining a "left" facade.


the mensheviks were not part of the Siberian Provisional Government(s) or Ufa Directorate, they were Socialist revolutionaries and as regards the Ufa Directorate that was an alliance of (3) SR’s and (2) Kadets; ie the directorate.

The Vladivostok-based Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia included two Mensheviks - M. A. Kobolov and I. S. Yudin. See, e.g., Pereira's "White Siberia: the Politics of Civil War".

Now, the Ufa Directorate was a coalition of various anti-Bolshevik petty governments, including the KomUch, which as we already established included the Menshevik Maysky, included the Menshevik L. V. Preobrazhensky as a plenipotentiary in Samara, and so on. In fact a special committee of the Menshevik organization for the KomUch territory was established in the summer of 1918, authorized to assist the KomUch "as long as it was defending the accomplishments of the February Revolution", i.e. as long as it fought the Bolsheviks. See Smith, Captives of the Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918–1923.

And so on, and so on. I would dig up sources for the Menshevik participation in the Union of Regeneration, or Rebirth, and so on, but quite frankly I'm ill and I think the sources I have provided are more than enough - and then there is the little matter of the Menshevik government in Georgia, which you never really addressed.


E. H. Carr I think said a few Mensheviks without the support of the party in general took part in the Samara government which was also mainly SR.

It had to be mainly Eser, because the Mensheviks were microscopically small by that point. As for the lack of support by the "party in general", the Menshevik Central Committee was forced to operate in Bolshevik territory. Nonetheless, they only expelled Maysky, for example, from the Central Committee, not from the party itself, until the fall of the KomUch, when it became expedient to dissociate themselves from the whiteguard government.


The pretence for the reason of the October coup was to guarantee the convocation of the constituent assembly, the “consummation of the bourgeois democratic revolution”, which the Bolsheviks had supported throughout 1917 whilst claiming that others were conspiring to prevent it.

Thus from Tony Cliff, the guru of Mark Steele’s party, quoting Sukhanov.

This is beyond dishonest. First of all, the Constituent Assembly did not figure in the demands of the Bolsheviks on the eve of the October Revolution at all - land and peace did, as did the central demand of "all power to the soviets!", which was pretty much incompatible with a slavish adherence to the Constituent Assembly.

As for the paragraphs you cite, perhaps you should pay attention to the dates. Trotsky's speech in the pre-parliament was on October the 7th; the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which were rigged even by bourgeois standards, since they did not record the left-right Eser split, happened in November.


The Bolsheviks of course closed the constituent assembly under armed force in January.

No, they didn't. The guards of the Tauride palace, who were led by an anarchist, dispersed the Constituent Assembly because they were tired and couldn't listen to the speeches of the members anymore. Before that, the Assembly refused to recognize the acts of the Congress of Soviets, and was duly ignored by the Congress and the Bolshevik-PLSR government, although Bolsheviks remained in the Assembly until its closure.


The idea that ‘Marxism’ says that a socialist revolution is only possible after the material conditions of advanced and fully developed capitalism is in place etc and it is not just a matter of political will etc is a problem for some leftists.

It was in fact one point of theory that discriminated between ‘Anarchists’ and ‘Marxists’.

It still is. The point is that the SPGB proclaimed that capitalism was no longer progressive, anywhere in the world, as soon as it was founded. Therefore your support for the Mensheviks - and indeed the support the modern SPGB give to the Mensheviks - is nothing short of hilarious.


You are talking out of your backside , chum. Im not a member of the SPGB but what you claim is an outrageous lie. Check out this article from the Socialist Standard in 1918 (albeit written in the flowery prose of the time)- in particular:

That, as they say, was then, this is now. I used to read the debates on this site before registering - the charge that Lenin was a mean old German agent who endangered the front against the evil Central Powers had been made several times.

[robbo203]

That, as they say, was then, this is now. I used to read the debates on this site before registering - the charge that Lenin was a mean old German agent who endangered the front against the evil Central Powers had been made several times.


While you are accusing people like DaveB of dishonesty you should hold up a mirror to yourself

This is what you said:

Scratch a modern "impossibilist", and you will find a little England liberal - and a patriot at that, judging by how much whining you people do about mean old Lenin pulling Russia from the war.

This is an outrageous lie. The SPGB "whining" about Lenin pulling Russia from the war, FFS! How ridiculous can you get! And dont try and squirm your way out if it with a pathetic attempt at an excuse: "That, as they say, was then, this is now". Show me the evidence from "now" in that case. You can't and you damn well know it.

Whether or not Lenin had some arrangement with the German authorities, I have no idea and couldnt care less. It is NOT relevant to the claim you made which is that impossibilists like the SPGB were "whining" about Lenin pulling Russia from the war which was the one thing that the SPGB did NOT do. To the contrary, they in fact praised the Bolsheviks for taking Russia out of the war

As for calling impossibilists "little Englanders", and patriots at that, fuck off. What an idiotic statement. If there is one thing that puts the SPGB head and shoulders above almost everyone on the Left it is its unflinching opposition to every capitalist war and its unequivocal rejection of nationalism-cum-patriotism in any shape or form. In both world wars, many SPGBers were sent to prison for their uncompromising refusal to take sides so dont talk to me about "little Englanders", you prat.

Next time at least get your facts right first if you want to make a useful contribution

[Dave B]

I think it is important to state yet again that I and the SPGB are not Mensheviks.

The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, unlike the SPGB, were 2nd international minimum programme possiblists.

This is a matter of discussing history and should not a case of labelling everyone as a white and a right Menshevik etc who dares challenge the apologists and defenders of Bolshevism.

And all anti Bolsheviks were whites etc

The Mensheviks were not able to operate freely in Bolshevik Russia in the middle of 1918.

Thus a group of menheviks from the bundist fraction, including the internationalist Abramovitch, were in jail in August;


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 resulted in the complete destruction of Russian industry, in the country's enslavement to foreign capital, in the destruction of all class organisations of the proletariat, in the suppression of all democratic liberty and of all organs of democratic State life, thus preparing the ground for a bourgeois counter-revolution of the worst and most brutal kind.

The Bolsheviks are unable to solve the food problem, and their attempt to bribe the proletariat by organising 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 proletariat in particular, for a long time to come. . . . In continuing the 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 and to oppose any reactionary force which would attempt to hang a millstone around the neck of the Russian democracy. . . . Forty delegates elected by workmen of various towns, to a con- ference, for the purpose of making arrangements for the convocation of a Labour Congress, have been arrested and committed for trial by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, created to pass death sentences without the ordinary guarantees of a fair trial.

They are falsely and calumniously accused of organising a counter-revolutionary plot. Among the arrested are the most prominent workers of the Social Democratic Labour movement, as, for instance, Abramovitch, member of the Central Executive Committees of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and of the " Bund," who is personally well known to many foreign comrades ; Alter, member of the Executive Committee of the " Bund " ; Smirnov, member of last year's Soviet Delegation to the Western Countries ; Vezkalin, member of the Executive Com- mittee of the Lettish Social Democratic Party ; Volkov, chairman of the Petrograd Union of Workmen's Co-operative Societies ; Zakharov, secretary of the Petrograd Union of Workmen of Chemical Factories ; and other prominent workers of the trade union and co-operative movement. We demand immediate intervention of all Socialist parties to avert the shameful and criminal proceeding. (Protest of the Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party sent to the Executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August, 1918.)




There is no dispute that there were ‘rogue’ Mensheviks in 1918 (like Maysky who became a Bolshevik in 1921) operating in Siberia and the far east etc.

The problem for the Menshevik centre were threefold.

Knowing what was actually going on elsewhere at the time.

The inability to operate and function properly as a party under Bolshevik persecution.

The fact they were a democratic party and had to take decisions as such; being opposed in principal to the idea of ‘centralised democracy’.

The issue of the Siberian government (s) including the Samara KomUch, the one in Omsk later I think, the Ufa directorate and the somewhat separate one in Vladivostok is complicated.

There were a few other minor ones I think.

I don’t pretend to understand it all.

I think the Samara government when it ‘fell’ wasn’t all absorbed into the Ufa directorate and its remnants split I think.

The Ufa directorate was overthrown by a whiteguard military coup and imprisoned by them I think.

And if, as according to Mark Steel’s logic, and how could the Stalinists be Leninists if they persecuted Lenininist.

Then how could the Ufa directorate be whites if they were overthrown by them.

[I am genuinely interested in L. V. Preobrazhensky was he related to the other one by any chance, not that that would matter.]


I did address the Georgian government providing a link the book on it by the White guardist Kautsky and said that the Georgian Mensheviks were disowned by the ‘Russian’ Mensheviks for their ‘Millerandism’.


………..Constituent Assembly did not figure in the demands of the Bolsheviks on the eve of the October Revolution……..



Read Trotsky’s own words that I provided via Sukonov and Cliff



“Long live the constituent assembly”

The constituent assembly was prevented from its second sitting by armed guards and protestors against the closure of it were machined gunned in the streets a few days later.

I can provide a list of quotations from Lenin on his consistent support for the constituent assembly through 1917.


My opinion of the Mensheviks is that they were orthodox genuine Marxists and internationalist on the left of the 2nd international.

Persecuted by the Bolsheviks from the beginning of 1918 for their objection to the heresy of a working class party taking control of the state and running [state] capitalism in a backward feudal country; and discrediting the name of communism and Marxism in general.

The victims of the first Stalinist show trials.

And then chased out of Germany by the Brown fascists as opposed to the red ones in the 1930’s.

That was rushed I am being badgered to go out now.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Oh, someone's annoyed. It seems that "impossibilists" can dish it out - namely they can dish out the same tired canned criticism of every other group for allegedly being "reformist", even when that group is fighting for a revolution and the SPGB is fighting for seats in the parliament - but they can't take it. Or does the "little England liberal" description sting a bit too much? We all know what the position of the SPGB on revolutionary violence is.

Now, for "impossibilists" whining about Lenin pulling Russia out of the war, here is what Dave B themselves had to say: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2613821&postcount=8

Is that consistent with the anti-war stance of the old SPGB? It isn't. But neither is their support for Mensheviks and similar figures. Neither, for that matter, is their recently-found sympathy for Luxemburg, who the old SPGB roundly condemned for "reformism". Of course, the SPGB isn't really driven by their ostensible programme - they are driven by opportunist appetites and anti-communism.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

I think it is important to state yet again that I and the SPGB are not Mensheviks.

I never said they were. In fact I pointed out that Menshevism - or at least what Menshevism had become after 1917 - is blatantly incompatible with SPGB "impossibilism", more so than even Bolshevism. That is why it is amusing to see the SPGB defend and champion Mensheviks.


This is a matter of discussing history and should not a case of labelling everyone as a white and a right Menshevik etc who dares challenge the apologists and defenders of Bolshevism.

And all anti Bolsheviks were whites etc

Obviously not the case. The Black-Hundreds were not part of the White movement. Neither were the Makhnovtsy or the Antonovtsy. But as I showed, the Mensheviks were, from the beginning. The various provisional governments that the Mensheviks staffed, together with Yedinstvo, the right Esers, Popular Socialists, the Kadets (although the right of the Kadets - who had absorbed the nationalists and the Octobrists - saw the Whites as too "left-wing"), the Siberian regionalists and god knows what else, would join with a clique of former imperial generals into the White movement.


The Mensheviks were not able to operate freely in Bolshevik Russia in the middle of 1918.

Thus a group of menheviks from the bundist fraction, including the internationalist Abramovitch, were in jail in August;



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 resulted in the complete destruction of Russian industry, in the country's enslavement to foreign capital, in the destruction of all class organisations of the proletariat, in the suppression of all democratic liberty and of all organs of democratic State life, thus preparing the ground for a bourgeois counter-revolution of the worst and most brutal kind.

The Bolsheviks are unable to solve the food problem, and their attempt to bribe the proletariat by organising 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 proletariat in particular, for a long time to come. . . . In continuing the 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 and to oppose any reactionary force which would attempt to hang a millstone around the neck of the Russian democracy. . . . Forty delegates elected by workmen of various towns, to a con- ference, for the purpose of making arrangements for the convocation of a Labour Congress, have been arrested and committed for trial by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, created to pass death sentences without the ordinary guarantees of a fair trial.

They are falsely and calumniously accused of organising a counter-revolutionary plot. Among the arrested are the most prominent workers of the Social Democratic Labour movement, as, for instance, Abramovitch, member of the Central Executive Committees of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and of the " Bund," who is personally well known to many foreign comrades ; Alter, member of the Executive Committee of the " Bund " ; Smirnov, member of last year's Soviet Delegation to the Western Countries ; Vezkalin, member of the Executive Com- mittee of the Lettish Social Democratic Party ; Volkov, chairman of the Petrograd Union of Workmen's Co-operative Societies ; Zakharov, secretary of the Petrograd Union of Workmen of Chemical Factories ; and other prominent workers of the trade union and co-operative movement. We demand immediate intervention of all Socialist parties to avert the shameful and criminal proceeding. (Protest of the Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party sent to the Executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August, 1918.)

The following paragraph is rather telling:

"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 and to oppose any reactionary force which would attempt to hang a millstone around the neck of the Russian democracy. . . . Forty delegates elected by workmen of various towns, to a conference, for the purpose of making arrangements for the convocation of a Labour Congress, have been arrested and committed for trial by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, created to pass death sentences without the ordinary guarantees of a fair trial. "

Now, what other democratic forces might these be? Obviously the right Esers and everything to the right of them. How is this any different from the KomUch adventure, except by being infinitely more stupid by taking place nearly in public deep inside Bolshevik territory?

Abramovich, it needs to be said, was also part of the VIKZhel, the notorious corporatist "union" (it included both managers and workers) that tried to stop the October Revolution through strike actions that were defeated by the mass of railway workers, later organized into the workers-only VIKZheDor (the subsequent fate of the VIKZheDor is an amusing little story that underscores how wrong "cooperativists" are, but this is material for another thread).


There is no dispute that there were ‘rogue’ Mensheviks in 1918 (like Maysky who became a Bolshevik in 1921) operating in Siberia and the far east etc.

How was Maysky a "rogue Menshevik"? The Menshevik Central Committee was familiar with his activities, and only expelled him from the Central Committee - which he couldn't attend anyway - and explicitly not from the party until the KomUch fell.


The problem for the Menshevik centre were threefold.

Knowing what was actually going on elsewhere at the time.

But obviously they knew about Maysky, and if they failed to notice two regional associations explicitly forming a counter-revolutionary association, they should have been shot "for that typically great-Russian slovenliness", as an exasperated Lenin once put it.


The inability to operate and function properly as a party under Bolshevik persecution.

Except all the instances of "Bolshevik persecution" turn out to have been connected to people who formed counter-revolutionary associations. The Menshevik organization was obviously able to function until its dissolution.


The fact they were a democratic party and had to take decisions as such; being opposed in principal to the idea of ‘centralised democracy’.

Whereas, as it is generally known, the Bolshevik party took members who were opposed to Lenin out and shot them. This is the reason why Lenin lost the first vote concerning the Brest-Litovsk peace and why he had to expend considerable energy on fights within the RKP(b).

"Democracy", in this case, is simply an excuse, and not a good one at that. Obviously the Menshevik CC had enough authority to throw people out of the organization, since that is what happened to Maysky.


The issue of the Siberian government (s) including the Samara KomUch, the one in Omsk later I think, the Ufa directorate and the somewhat separate one in Vladivostok is complicated.

There were a few other minor ones I think.

I don’t pretend to understand it all.

I think the Samara government when it ‘fell’ wasn’t all absorbed into the Ufa directorate and its remnants split I think.

The Ufa directorate was overthrown by a whiteguard military coup and imprisoned by them I think.

And if, as according to Mark Steel’s logic, and how could the Stalinists be Leninists if they persecuted Lenininist.

Then how could the Ufa directorate be whites if they were overthrown by them.

That just show how ridiculous this sort of "logic" is. The White movement had no centralized command; individual warlords and governments could and usually were at each others' throats - just recall the situation in the Far East between various White warlords and the Japanese.


[I am genuinely interested in L. V. Preobrazhensky was he related to the other one by any chance, not that that would matter.

No, I don't think he was. I don't know much about the Menshevik Preobrazhensky, though.


I did address the Georgian government providing a link the book on it by the White guardist Kautsky and said that the Georgian Mensheviks were disowned by the ‘Russian’ Mensheviks for their ‘Millerandism’.

But as I said, Kautsky's grasp of revolutionary politics in those years was tenuous at best, and he wasn't actually in Georgia, nor did he have reliable reports about it.

And your Mensheviks are whittling away into nothingness - first Maysky was disqualified, then Liber, now Zhordania and Tsereteli and then who knows? In the end your "Mensheviks" will consist of Dan sitting alone in an empty room.


Read Trotsky’s own words that I provided via Sukonov and Cliff

That was a speech in the pre-parliament. It wasn't exactly propaganda to the workers.


The constituent assembly was prevented from its second sitting by armed guards and protestors against the closure of it were machined gunned in the streets a few days later.

Well - most sources I can think of simply describe the building as locked the next day. (The Tauride Palace was used for meetings of the Congress of Soviets after that.) But nothing happened to the representatives - they could have relocated to someone's basement and made speeches as long as they liked. The hard truth is that nobody was listening.

I don't know about the incident you're referring to - perhaps you're thinking of the incident when some sailors fired warning shots when confronted with a junker demonstration in favor of the Assembly? Well, too bad - the junkers were highly counterrevolutionary as the subsequent events showed.


I can provide a list of quotations from Lenin on his consistent support for the constituent assembly through 1917.

Well, you can if you want to. But ultimately it doesn't matter. The slogan of support for a constitutional assembly was a tactical one - of course it can't take precedence over the socialist revolution. Communists don't let bourgeois parties "vote the revolution away".


My opinion of the Mensheviks is that they were orthodox genuine Marxists and internationalist on the left of the 2nd international.

Persecuted by the Bolsheviks from the beginning of 1918 for their objection to the heresy of a working class party taking control of the state and running [state] capitalism in a backward feudal country; and discrediting the name of communism and Marxism in general.

I think a distinction needs to be made between Mensheviks prior to 1917 and the Mensheviks after that. The former - the old Menshevik group - were wrong, daft, and sometimes suicidal - but there were honest revolutionaries among them. The Bolsheviks of that period also had a few wonky ideas - eventually of course the best elements of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks formed the "new" Bolshevik group. The "new" Mensheviks were the dross that was left behind. Cowardly, counterrevolutionary and openly on the side of capitalism, it was the Mensheviks and their LSI allies that dragged the name of socialism through mud, so much that even today we have to be careful when we call ourselves "socialists" lest someone think we want some kind of regimented capitalism.


The victims of the first Stalinist show trials.

Except, you know, they were actually guilty. But that doesn't mean I accept the notion that the entire complex period of consolidation of the Stalin-led bureaucracy can be neatly encapsulated in the term "show trial", as if the bureaucracy were all cynical manipulators. Nor, indeed, do I think that people who were shot were all deserving of praise - I don't think anyone cared about Yagoda getting shot, for example, except the ICO and the Menshevik-loving London Bureau.


And then chased out of Germany by the Brown fascists as opposed to the red ones in the 1930’s.

Yes, actually Bolshevism is identical to fascism, only if you ignore just about everything concerning both Bolshevism and fascism.

[robbo203]

Oh, someone's annoyed. It seems that "impossibilists" can dish it out - namely they can dish out the same tired canned criticism of every other group for allegedly being "reformist", even when that group is fighting for a revolution and the SPGB is fighting for seats in the parliament - but they can't take it. Or does the "little England liberal" description sting a bit too much? We all know what the position of the SPGB on revolutionary violence is.

Now, for "impossibilists" whining about Lenin pulling Russia out of the war, here is what Dave B themselves had to say: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2613821&postcount=8

Is that consistent with the anti-war stance of the old SPGB? It isn't. But neither is their support for Mensheviks and similar figures. Neither, for that matter, is their recently-found sympathy for Luxemburg, who the old SPGB roundly condemned for "reformism". Of course, the SPGB isn't really driven by their ostensible programme - they are driven by opportunist appetites and anti-communism.


This is laughable. Youve been caught with you trousers down, lying through your teeth. So to save face you will invent any kind of scurrilous smear you can think of to throw at the SPGB impossibilists - flak to distract attention from your basic dishonesty. How desparate can you get?

I refer to your outrageous claim:

Scratch a modern "impossibilist", and you will find a little England liberal - and a patriot at that, judging by how much whining you people do about mean old Lenin pulling Russia from the war.

You can't produce any evidence whatsoever to back up this claim and, no, DaveB's post doesnt even remotely say what you claim it says. Your interpretative skills appear to be around zero


Im not a member of the SPGB but the fact remains that the SPGB is second to none in its long unblemished record of opposing nationalism and opposing war and also incidentally (with reference to your jibe about "anti communism"), exposing the vicious anti-working class character of Soviet state capitalism.

So rant away , chum. From where Im standing you are only succeeding in digging yourself into an ever deeper hole.

[Dave B]

But as I said, Kautsky's grasp of revolutionary politics in those years was tenuous at best, and he wasn't actually in Georgia, nor did he have reliable reports about it.



THE present book is the result of a visit which I made to Georgia in August 1920. Invited by the Social-Democratic Party of Georgia, I journeyed thence at the same time as the delegation of the Second International, which had been, asked to visit the country by the Georgian Government. Falling ill in Rome, I was only able to reach the country fourteen days after the delegation arrived, in fact, just at the time when the latter was returning. I remained a much longer time in the country, from the end of September until the beginning of January

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/preface.htm

[Dave B]

I don't know about the incident you're referring to - perhaps you're thinking of the incident when some sailors fired warning shots when confronted with a junker demonstration in favor of the Assembly? Well, too bad - the junkers were highly counterrevolutionary as the subsequent events showed.

It is, for instance, in Jane Burbanks book Intelligentsia and revolution page 23- 24, chapter one.



It is occasionally mentioned elsewhere.

I think it was mentioned in one of Alexander Rabinowitch’s pro Bolshevik books.

It was a comparatively minor atrocity I think with maybe only a few dozen killed

[Dave B]

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

NEW YORK TORONTO

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4



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.

The 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.

KtJHLMANN

[Dave B]

The Foreign Ministry Representative in Petrograd to the

Chancellor

REPORT NO. 26

A 4166 Petrograd, 24 January 1918

An identical report has been sent to the State Secretary.

Judging by purely external signs, the power of the Bolsheviks seems to have secured itself to some extent during the last few days. Whether or how long this positive trend will last remains to be seen. Since political life here moves entirely in convulsive spasms, one must always be prepared to reckon with very brief stages.

For the moment, however, the big planned coups of the Smolny government...{bolshevik headquarters..] have been successful. Since it depended on the support of the Red Guard and of marines—rather than on the army proper—and thus had control of the streets, it was not very difficult for the government to send the Constituent Assembly, whose opening looks more and more like a farce, home after little more than twenty-four hours and, in place of this unacceptable body, to summon the Convention, which supports the government unconditionally.

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.* 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. Those arrested last week include Shamanski, the president of the Red Cross. There is no means of knowing how many other people may have shared this fate, as only very few cases are admitted

publicly and the government presumably 'works' mainly in secret.

The great sensation of the last few days was the murder of the ex-Ministers Shingarev and Kokoshkin. Because of their poor state of health, these two men had been taken from the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul to a hospital, where they were shot by marines on the night after their admission. Kokoshkin was shot dead, but Shingarev only died after several hours suffering. At first sight, the crime bore all the marks of a simple political murder, but the governing clique denies any complicity, claiming that, on the contrary, the murder was contrived by the opposition in order to secure for themselves a weapon against the Bolsheviks. Mirbach

1 The Kaiser's marginal remark: 'We shall have to do the same with our gutter-press.'

[Dave B]

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.

[Dave B]

Another source for the shooting of protesters against the closure of the constituent assembly is from.

THE TWELVE WHO ARE TO DIE

THE TRIAL OF THE SOCIALISTS-REVOLUTIONISTS IN MOSCOW

Published by the Delegation of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists

Berlin 1922

With a preface from Kautksy


…It is sufficient to recall such events as the shooting up of the workers' demonstration in defence of the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd, January 5, 1918;….




It is available in a garbled but readable format at;

http://archive.org/stream/cu31924028354102/cu31924028354102_djvu.txt

And preface;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1922/xx/twelve.htm

the boook is an interesting document as it gives us a very rare contemporary SR perspective on the Bolshevik Revolution etc.

And is packed full of otherwise un-discussed material.


And let them speak for themselves so to speak.


There is some background on the trial from Lenin.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/feb/20c.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/apr/09.htm