Time to Reject Lenin [Archive]

The Grey Blur

18th May 2007, 00:07

I have absolutely no problem with people rejecting Lenin if they read his works first.

I also have absolutely no problem with people rejecting the Russian Revolution (though I do pity them), so long as they take into account the context that it was carried out in and the objective conditions that hindered it's development.

You betray your Liberalism, dogmatism and misunderstanding of Marxism in focussing on one individual.

1. dictatorship
The USSR was a federation of Soviets, direct democratic committees elected by workers soldiers and peasants. The main party in these was the Bolshevik party and it carried out the bureaucratic and revolutionary tasks.

2. the NEP(new economic policy)
War Communism was no longer viable as the peasants had been turned against the emobryonic worker's state by it.

the Cheka
Made up of workers and representatives of workers, a body to defend the revolution which was under constant and unrelenting attack from the reaction.

the Gulags
Prisons will still exist under Socialism, unless you are a utopian and believe they will disappear overnight.

massacre of the Kronstadt sailors
Ignoring the composition of the Kronstadt garrison (well-off peasants, officers, black hundreds, a minority of anarchists), how the local workers reacted (they refused to join the counter-revolution) and whether or not there was a "massacre" (estimates from bourgeois sources are exaggerated) the fact is that if the Kronstadt counter-revolution had been successful the gains of the revolution would have been swept back, the Whites penetrating this gap in the Red defence and ensuring a vicious wave of reaction and destruction of the working-class movement.

"The “Kronstadters” without a Fortress

In essence, the venerable critics are opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat and by that token are opponents of the revolution. In this lies the whole secret. It is true that some of them recognize the revolution and the dictatorship – in words. But this does not help matters. They wish for a revolution which will not lead to dictatorship or for a dictatorship which will get along without the use of force. Of course, this would be a very “pleasant” dictatorship. It requires, however, a few trifles: an equal and, moreover, an extremely high, development of the toiling masses. But in such conditions the dictatorship would in general be unnecessary. Some Anarchists, who are really liberal pedagogues, hope that in a hundred or a thousand years the toilers will have attained so high a level of development that coercion will prove unnecessary. Naturally, if capitalism could lead to such a development, there would be no reason for overthrowing capitalism. There would be no need either for violent revolution or for the dictatorship which is an inevitable consequence of revolutionary victory. However, the decaying capitalism of our day leaves little room for humanitarian-pacifist illusions.

The working class, not to speak of the semiproletarian masses, is not homogeneous, either socially or politically. The class struggle produces a vanguard that absorbs the best elements of the class. A revolution is possible when the vanguard is able to lead the majority of the proletariat. But this does not at all mean that the internal contradictions among the toilers disappear. At the moment of the highest peak of the revolution they are of course attenuated, but only to appear later at a new stage in all their sharpness. Such is the course of the revolution as a whole. Such was the course of Kronstadt. When parlor pinks try to mark out a different route for the October Revolution, after the event, we can only respectfully ask them to show us exactly where and when their great principles were confirmed in practice, at least partially, at least in tendency? Where are the signs that lead us to expect the triumph of these principles in the future? We shall of course never get an answer.

A revolution has its own laws. Long ago we formulated those “lessons of October” which have not only a Russian but an international significance. No one else has even tried to suggest any other “lessons.” The Spanish revolution is negative confirmation of the “lessons of October.” And the severe critics are silent or equivocal. The Spanish government of the “People’s Front” stifles the socialist revolution and shoots revolutionists. The Anarchists participate in this government, or, when they are driven out, continue to support the executioners. And their foreign allies and lawyers occupy themselves meanwhile with a defense ... of the Kronstadt mutiny against the harsh Bolsheviks. A shameful travesty!

The present disputes around Kronstadt revolve around the same class axis as the Kronstadt uprising itself, in which the reactionary sections of the sailors tried to overthrow the proletarian dictatorship. Conscious of their impotence on the arena of present-day revolutionary politics, the petty-bourgeois blunderers and eclectics try to use the old Kronstadt episode for the struggle against the Fourth International, that is, against the party of the proletarian revolution. These latter-day “Kronstadters” will also be crushed – true, without the use of arms since, fortunately, they do not have a fortress."

Hue And Cry Over Kronstadt (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm)

We should always have a critical mind and not merely submit to a pre-set "line" but this should lead you to draw the correct consclusions, not confuse you even more!
I hope you take the time to read and educate yourself.

bloody_capitalist_sham

18th May 2007, 00:13

NEP- Lenin's triumphant return to capitalism after the state proved too inefficent to run anything.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Grow another brain cell please

Lenin was awesome

1. dictatorship
2. the NEP(new economic policy)
3. the Cheka
4. the Gulags
5. massacre of the Kronstadt sailors

1. Lenin was elected, as were all the Bolsheviks, and formed the government as the majority party.

2. Things were messed up, the NEP provided breathing space so the revolution didn't starve to death. One step back, two steps forward.

3. Well, you do need police to tackle those nasty white counter revolutionaries. who, oh yeah, mounted a counter revolutionary war.

4. Well yeah there were labour camps, but you know, if your a white supporter, then fuck you anyway.

5. Trotsky did indeed pawn those peasant sailors. They favoured giving power to the small commodity producers a class enemy of the workers.

Prairie Fire

18th May 2007, 01:09

It is comforting that everyone defended Lenin.

whoknows

18th May 2007, 01:38

Ok, I'm here to be educated, so please do so but frame your aguements cooly and don't go off with one line condemations. Here are a few questions:
1. did the Bolshevik Party under Lenin close the Duma to all other parties but themselves?
2. If they did so was that Justifiable, and why?
3. If the Bolsheviks under Lenin did limit government to one party rule, is one party rule healthy? Please adress freedom of disent, and the ablity of the electorite to change or modify government. Can one party governments ever not decay into elitist power bases?
4. were the Bolsheviks during Lenin's effective service ever an elitest body?

I do not expect the nature and behavor of the party after Lenin's death to be adressed.
Don't call me names for asking questions, convert me to your viewpoint or try.
This site is a beautiful instrument for us to refine our knowledge and share it.

The Feral Underclass

18th May 2007, 12:48

I rejected Leninism after I stopped being a teenager.

LuÃs Henrique

18th May 2007, 14:10

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 18, 2007 11:48 am
I rejected Leninism after I stopped being a teenager.
Tomorrow? :D

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

18th May 2007, 14:14

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 17, 2007 09:50 pm
Reasons:

1. dictatorship
2. the NEP(new economic policy)
3. the Cheka
4. the Gulags
5. massacre of the Kronstadt sailors
Those are not valid reasons to "reject" Lenin.

The first two are contradictory; the fourth is an anachronism, and the fifth is totally blown out of proportion.

If you can't come with a valid, political, criticism of Lenin's work, then you haven't a case for "rejecting" him.

Luís Henrique

abbielives!

18th May 2007, 17:07

it's sad to see people cling to Lenin's perversion of communist theory

dictatorship is a valid reason to reject any leader, the elections in the soviet union were a joke because only one party ran canidates.

the economy was messed up becuase the bolsheviks were incompetent, see shorttage of fuel to heat homes during the winter

the Cheka existed to eliminate anyone who strayed from the party line.
the Army is what you use to fight counter-revolution

under socialism you may still have prisions but the number of people in them should go down, certainly there should be no left wing political prisioners.

1000 people killed is still a massacre, although that number is likely smaller than the actual size.

Vargha Poralli

18th May 2007, 17:28

it's sad to see people cling to Lenin's perversion of communist theory

Explain what is communist theory and explain how Lenin perverted it with valid reasoning first.

dictatorship is a valid reason to reject any leader,

Lenin was not a dictator.

the elections in the soviet union were a joke because only one party ran canidates.

No there were many parties before civil war and every one turned in to reactionaries. I don't cry for them.

the Cheka existed to eliminate anyone who strayed from the party line.

Cheka's main work was to fight against internal enemies of the revolution.

the Army is what you use to fight counter-revolution

Sure it was used.

under socialism you may still have prisions but the number of people in them should go down, certainly there should be no left wing political prisioners.

Give me a data that Lenin imprisoned only Left Wing prisioners.

1000 people killed is still a massacre, although that number is likely smaller than the actual size.

More number of people were massacared by the right wingers.

********************************

Really what is the point of this stupid thread ?

Wiesty

18th May 2007, 17:42

We are quick to attack people with alternative views.....

LuÃs Henrique

18th May 2007, 17:51

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 04:42 pm
We are quick to attack people with alternative views.....
Perhaps, but in this case we have no alternative view. We have a person passing his feelings as a view, which is a very different thing.

I am all for criticising Lenin. But it must be a reasoned critique, not OMG Lenin was teh EVIL!1

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

18th May 2007, 18:03

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 18, 2007 04:07 pm
it's sad to see people cling to Lenin's perversion of communist theory
Since you seem to be unable to explain your points about such perversion, that should be no surprise.

dictatorship is a valid reason to reject any leader, the elections in the soviet union were a joke because only one party ran canidates.

Sometimes there is no option, and a dictatorship is necessary. Would you that Robespierre tryed to be "democratic" with the Vendée?

the economy was messed up becuase the bolsheviks were incompetent, see shorttage of fuel to heat homes during the winter

Perhaps four years of an unwinable and impopular war had something to do with that, too?

Or do you line with those that consider that Lenin took a perfectly good country and ruined it?

the Cheka existed to eliminate anyone who strayed from the party line.
the Army is what you use to fight counter-revolution

When the counter-revolution takes the form of an armed uprising, yes, it can be faced with an army. How do you fight individual terrorism with the army? See Bush's experience!

under socialism you may still have prisions but the number of people in them should go down, certainly there should be no left wing political prisioners.

Do you know who were the people held prisoners during War Communism, and can you trust their claims of being left wing political prisoners?

1000 people killed is still a massacre, although that number is likely smaller than the actual size.

It is a massacre if there is no resistance, or if the resistance is completely outmanned and outgunned. Otherwise it is fight. What exactly did happen in Kronstadt? Was it a group of unarmed people making demands? Or was it a naval base, manned by soldiers and defended with guns and warships?

Luís Henrique

Leo

18th May 2007, 18:49

They favoured giving power to the small commodity producers a class enemy of the workers.

There were one or two petty-bourgeois demands among those of Kronstadt sailors, however their program was much less petty-bourgeois than NEP.

Ignoring the composition of the Kronstadt garrison (well-off peasants, officers, black hundreds, a minority of anarchists)

This is simply wrong, 90% percent of the people in Kronstadt were there during the October Revolution, those who were involved with Kronstadt were those whom Trotsky called "the reddest of the red" during the days of revolution.

...pawn those peasant sailors.

Sigh, the more I see all the self proclaimed Leninists, such as Stalinists, Hoxhaists, Trotskyists, Maoists: people who are unable to critically analyze the October Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who are unable to draw the lessons out of this experience, who defend and praise everything Lenin was involved with and who turn everything Lenin said into a dogma, the more I find it hard to read Lenin. Luckily Lenin did not have anything to do with all self-proclaimed Leninists (in fact he would be disgusted by the idea of "Leninism"). I mean come on, the man was fucking devastated because of the suppression of the workers of Kronstadt.

It is very disturbing to see people "defending" Lenin like this. I pity Lenin's memory.

sexyguy

18th May 2007, 20:02

Reasons:

1. dictatorship
2. the NEP(new economic policy)
3. the Cheka
4. the Gulags
5. massacre of the Kronstadt sailors abbielives,
Thanks for your observations. All five of them. Did you have to do a lot of your own research or did you get everything directly from capitalist press sources? I thought parts 2. and 5. were a bit long and could have been edited down. You are clearly destined to become a great revolutionary theoretician, but not as long as you have a hole in your arse.

Wiesty

18th May 2007, 20:26

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 01:02 pm

Reasons:

1. dictatorship
2. the NEP(new economic policy)
3. the Cheka
4. the Gulags
5. massacre of the Kronstadt sailors abbielives,
Thanks for your observations. All five of them. Did you have to do a lot of your own research or did you get everything directly from capitalist press sources? I thought parts 2. and 5. were a bit long and could have been edited down. You are clearly destined to become a great revolutionary theoretician, but not as long as you have a hole in your arse.
Does this mean che was never able to take a shit?

Labor Shall Rule

18th May 2007, 20:28

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 18, 2007 05:49 pm

They favoured giving power to the small commodity producers a class enemy of the workers.

There were one or two petty-bourgeois demands among those of Kronstadt sailors, however their program was much less petty-bourgeois than NEP.

Ignoring the composition of the Kronstadt garrison (well-off peasants, officers, black hundreds, a minority of anarchists)

This is simply wrong, 90% percent of the people in Kronstadt were there during the October Revolution, those who were involved with Kronstadt were those whom Trotsky called "the reddest of the red" during the days of revolution.

...pawn those peasant sailors.

Sigh, the more I see all the self proclaimed Leninists, such as Stalinists, Hoxhaists, Trotskyists, Maoists: people who are unable to critically analyze the October Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who are unable to draw the lessons out of this experience, who defend and praise everything Lenin was involved with and who turn everything Lenin said into a dogma, the more I find it hard to read Lenin. Luckily Lenin did not have anything to do with all self-proclaimed Leninists (in fact he would be disgusted by the idea of "Leninism"). I mean come on, the man was fucking devastated because of the suppression of the workers of Kronstadt.

It is very disturbing to see people "defending" Lenin like this. I pity Lenin's memory.

This is simply wrong, 90% percent of the people in Kronstadt were there during the October Revolution, those who were involved with Kronstadt were those whom Trotsky called "the reddest of the red" during the days of revolution.

That was an argument presented by Israel Getzler, who was relying completely on naval intelligence of the garrison that was questionable in content; it was gathered by speculators, who merely 'estimated' the relative size and stength of the fortress, while comparing through similar means the presence of the sailors throughout the entire Civil War. But even if the issue of the changing composition of the Kronstadt forces is put aside, the Kronstadt sailors who survived were very influenced by the crisis in the countryside. Petrichenko, a leader of the Kronstadt uprising of March 1921, was himself a Ukrainian peasant. He himself acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south who were in sympathy with the peasant revolts against the Bolsheviks. In the words of Petrichenko: "When we returned home our parents asked us why we fought for the oppressors. That set us thinking." Many memoirs of the rebels would detail that they derive from peasant origins, so I don't know if this argument truly has it's validity.

To be honest, I think the Bolsheviks were justified in crushing the rebellion, but I have my sympathies, I am playing devil's advocate here.

PRC-UTE

18th May 2007, 20:37

Originally posted by Permanent [email protected] 17, 2007 11:07 pm

We should always have a critical mind and not merely submit to a pre-set "line" but this should lead you to draw the correct consclusions, not confuse you even more!

Well said; that gets to the heart of the matter right there.

Too much truthiness out there, not enuf investigation or analysis. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness) :lol:

syndicat

18th May 2007, 20:50

Ignoring the composition of the Kronstadt garrison (well-off peasants, officers, black hundreds, a minority of anarchists), how the local workers reacted (they refused to join the counter-revolution) and whether or not there was a "massacre" (estimates from bourgeois sources are exaggerated) the fact is that if the Kronstadt counter-revolution had been successful the gains of the revolution would have been swept back, the Whites penetrating this gap in the Red defence and ensuring a vicious wave of reaction and destruction of the working-class movement.

The officers -- who were forced on the Kronstadt soldiers and sailors by the elimination, at Trotsky's insistence, of the previous practice of electing the officers of the Baltic Fleet -- had nothing to do with the rebuilding of the Kronstadt soviet and the 15-point demands approved by the battleship crews, and then made the program of the newly rebuilt soviet.

"Black hundreds" is a lie that the Bolsheviks knew was a lie when they propagated it, as part of their campaign to undermine popular support for Kronstadt. Not sure who "local workers" refers to. The workers in Kronstadt elected their own delegates to the new Kronstadt soviet (a conference of delegates). The rebellion in Kronstadt was in solidarity with the workers of St. Petersburg, who had been engaging in a mass strike wave til this was suppressed by the Bolsheviks imposing martial law and arresting strikers. The Kronstadt rebels demanded new elections to the soviets, and freedom for anarchist and all Left socialist organizations in speaking and publishing and running for soviet delegate. Being subject to recall had been a principle that Lenin had advocated in "State and Revolution" and Marx in "The Civil War in France".

As Isreal Getzler points out in his comprehensive hisrtory of the Kronstadt soviet, 95% of the sailors in Kronstadt in 1921 had enlished prior to the October 1917 revolution. ("Kronstadt 1917-1921").

They were the same people Lenin and Trotsky had called "the vanguard of the revolution" in 1917. If you read the actual articles published in their Izvestia (newspaper of their rebuilt soviet), you'll see they saw themselves as carrying forward the commitment to authentic soviet democracy. This is why they rejected the offer of aid from Victor Chernov, head of the SR Party in exile. As Lenin said in the discussion during the 10th party congress of the CP, which was going on at the time of the Kronstadt rebellion, "They don't want the whites but they don't want us either." The Bolshevik leaders knew perfectly well what the demands and political orientation of the Kronstaders were. The leading CP comissar in Kronstadt, Kuzmin, and 200 other party apparatchiks, including the local Cheka, escaped across the ice and duly reported to the party leadership on events in Kronstadt.

if this had been part of some "white hundreds" plot as Trotsky alleged, why didn't they break up the sea ice around the island? They would have been impregnable if they'd done that. And they could have used the fortress and battleship guns to do that. That is what General Kozlovsky advised them. Another part of CP propaganda at the time was to say that the whole thing was being run by Kozlovsky. In reality the rebels ignored Kozlovsky.

Lenin at the time said he'd met the Kronstadt sailors demands with the NEP. In reply a Kronstadt sailor wrote back, pointing out that they hadn't demanded "free trade". Most of the sailors' demands were political demands relating to reviving authentic soviet democracy. They also pointedly noted in the demands that they only supported peasants who could work without hired labor.

The Cheka was actually a violation of the soviet principle. During the period of the coalition government with the Left SRs in early 1918, the Commissar of Justice, nominally in charge of police and courts, was a Left SR named Steinberg. He tried valiantly to get control of the Cheka but he failed...because the Cheka only answered to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party. The Cheka's practice of arbitrary arrest and execution became especially grotesque in the summer of 1918, and tens of thousands were executed in the course of the next year and a half. People were often arrested because someone had denounced them based on things like personal grudges or not liking their appearance. This arbitariness of the Cheka was a form of state terrorism. A lot of this is discussed in Sheila Jackon's "The Russian Revolution".

The local soviets were not institutions of direct democracy. As Sam Farber points out in "Before Stalinism", the tradition of Russian Marxism -- Mensheviks as well as Bolsheviks -- didn't believe in participatory democracy. That means they didn't believe in the principle that the workers should make the decisions themselves. Rather "worker power" was interpreted as merely the right to elect leaders to office to make the decisions. And thus the soviets in the big cities had been structrued by the Mensheviks, who set them up originally in Feb/Mar 1917, in a highly top down way, with power concentrated in the executive commmittee, and later even more concentrated into a small group, the Presidium. The plenaries of the soviets were just talking shops, treated by the intelligentsia on the executive as a rubber stamp. This is described by leftist labor historian Pete Rachleff in "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" (http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm)

I think it's not a good critique, tho, to focus on specific events in isolation. It's better to look at the programmatic and strategic commitments of Leninism/Bolshevism, and how that shaped the choices they made, and how that would lead to the consolidation of a new dominating class. That way, rather than looking at undesireable consequences or events by themselves, you can try to understand how those things came about.

The Grey Blur

18th May 2007, 21:25

Isn't telling people to reject their politics a bit authoritarian?

You big Stalinist meanie.

Leo

18th May 2007, 22:10

That was an argument presented by Israel Getzler, who was relying completely on naval intelligence of the garrison that was questionable in content; it was gathered by speculators, who merely 'estimated' the relative size and stength of the fortress, while comparing through similar means the presence of the sailors throughout the entire Civil War. But even if the issue of the changing composition of the Kronstadt forces is put aside, the Kronstadt sailors who survived were very influenced by the crisis in the countryside. Petrichenko, a leader of the Kronstadt uprising of March 1921, was himself a Ukrainian peasant. He himself acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south who were in sympathy with the peasant revolts against the Bolsheviks. In the words of Petrichenko: "When we returned home our parents asked us why we fought for the oppressors. That set us thinking." Many memoirs of the rebels would detail that they derive from peasant origins, so I don't know if this argument truly has it's validity.

To be honest, I think the Bolsheviks were justified in crushing the rebellion, but I have my sympathies, I am playing devil's advocate here.

Petrichenko was actually of a Hungarian peasant background but he was himself a worker, and he was an engineer on the Kronstadt Marine Base since 1905.

It is, of course, impossible to know the exact details of the situation, but I think that Kronstadt was a class reaction. They have a point demanding equalization of the rations of all working people, for example, which demonstrates that they were disturbed by the rising "middle cadres".

I think that those two articles by the International Communist Current highlight the importance of drawing the lessons of Kronstadt:

http://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR003_kron.htm

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/104_kronstadt.html

syndicat

18th May 2007, 22:37

Permanent Rev:
Isn't telling people to reject their politics a bit authoritarian?

I'm sure this is tongue in cheek. but it's worth considering that collective self-management can't happen without deliberation and debate. This means people presenting their reasons, to try to persuade others.

if people don't hold their politics like religious dogma, then presumably they are open to reason. authoritarian control means no longer having to persuade others. bosses don't rely on having to persuade workers through an open discussion free of manipulattion. they tell them what to do. "You don't like working here, there's the door." That's their argument.

abbielives!

18th May 2007, 22:51

lenin perverted communist theory by:
1. trying to start before capital had broken down borders between nations, thus ingnoring the whole dialetical marteralism thing
2. creating a dictatorship and caling it 'dictatorship of the proletariat' we know that marx did not mean a totalitarian state by this because he refered to parliamentary england as a dictatorship of the bourgeois

the Chekists
from the FAQ:
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append35.html

The Russian anarchists were at the forefront of the struggle between the February and October revolutions in 1917. As socialist historian Samuel Farber notes, the anarchists "had actually been an unnamed coalition partner of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution." [Before Stalinism, p. 126] The anarchists were the "allies" of the Bolsheviks before they took power as both shared the goals of abolishing the provisional government and for a social revolution which would end capitalism.

This changed once the Bolsheviks had taken power. On the night of April 11th, 1918, the Cheka surrounded 26 Anarchist clubs in Moscow, in the insuring fighting Anarchists suffered 40 casualties and 500 were taken prisoner. The Petrograd anarchists protested this attack:

"The Bolsheviks have lost their senses. They have betrayed the proletariat and attacked the anarchists. They have joined . . . the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. They have declared war on revolutionary anarchism. . . . We regarded you [Bolsheviks] as our revolutionary brothers. But you have proved to be traitors. You are Cains -- you have killed your brothers . . . There can be no peace with the traitors to the working class. The executioners of the revolution wish to become the executioners of anarchism." [quoted by Paul Avrich, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution, p. 113]
Fifteen days later similar raids were carried out in Petrograd. This repression, we must note, took place months before the outbreak of the Russian Civil War (in late May 1918). In May of that year, leading anarchist periodicals (including Burevestnik, Anarkhia and Golos Truda) were closed down by the government. The repression continued during the war and afterwards. Many imprisoned anarchists were deported from the "workers' state" in 1921 after they went on hunger strike and their plight was raised by libertarian delegates to the founding congress of the Red International of Labour Unions held that year.

Unsurprisingly, the Bolsheviks denied they held anarchists. French anarchist Gaston Leval accounted how Lenin had "reiterated the charges made by Dzerzhinsky [founder of the Bolsheviks secret police, the Cheka] . . . Those in prison were not true anarchists nor idealists -- just bandits abusing our good intentions." Leval, having gathered the facts, indicated this was not true, making Lenin backtrack. [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 213]

other left wing prisioners in included the Makhnovists

as to Kronstadt, yes there was a rebellion but afterwards many were rounded up and imprisoned or shot

yes the civil war/blockade played a factor, but more was due to Bolshevik incompatance
from Living My Life:

The razverstka (forcible collection of food) drains the peasantry to feed Petrograd, they are told; fertile Ukraine is forced to ship carloads of provisions northward, yet the population of the cities is starving. A goodly half of the provisions somehow vanishes along the route, the rest reaching, in the main, the markets rather than the hungry masses;

Meanwhile I turned to Zinoviev. "Forests within easy reach of Petrograd," I said; "why must the city freeze?" "Any amount of fuel," Zinoviev replied; "but of what avail? Our enemies have destroyed our means of transportation; the blockade has killed off our horses as well as our men. How are we to get at the woodland?" "What about the population of Petrograd?" I persisted. "Could it not be appealed to for co-operation? Could it not be induced to go en masse with pick and ax and ropes to haul wood for its own use? Would not such a concerted effort alleviate much suffering and at the same time decrease the antagonism against your party?" It might help to diminish the misery from cold, Zinoviev replied, but it would interfere with the carrying out of the main political policies. What were they? "Concentration of all power in the hands of the proletarian avant-garde," Zinoviev explained

The fact is, the russian revolution was a failure in which the left was victorious but ultimitly shot it self in the foot

Herman

18th May 2007, 23:09

Your clearly defined sources, your extensive search for the truth on Lenin, your very marxist analysis of the material conditions of 1917 Russia and your well written essay have convinced me that Lenin was an evil tyrant who caused World War I, World War II and the big bang.

bloody_capitalist_sham

18th May 2007, 23:34

Abbielives, i believe there were actually anarchists elected in the soviets and subsequently joined the Bolshevik party.

They died or were put in prison in the purges just like loads of Leninist chaps were.

Cheung Mo

19th May 2007, 00:09

If the bourgeoisie is so progressive, why was Karl Marx advocating gender equality long before Gloria Steinem was born...The only form of feminism that is of any value is Marxist Feminism: It provides a first-hand critique of the subjugation and exploitation faced by woman as a result of capitalist and pre-capitalist methods of social organisation.

Bourgeois identity politics is a joke: One cannot equate Andre Boisclair, Pim Fortuyn, and Svend Robinson merely because they are socially libertine homosexual males.

The Grey Blur

19th May 2007, 00:32

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 12:38 am
Ok, I'm here to be educated, so please do so but frame your aguements cooly and don't go off with one line condemations. Here are a few questions:
1. did the Bolshevik Party under Lenin close the Duma to all other parties but themselves?
2. If they did so was that Justifiable, and why?
3. If the Bolsheviks under Lenin did limit government to one party rule, is one party rule healthy? Please adress freedom of disent, and the ablity of the electorite to change or modify government. Can one party governments ever not decay into elitist power bases?
4. were the Bolsheviks during Lenin's effective service ever an elitest body?

I do not expect the nature and behavor of the party after Lenin's death to be adressed.
Don't call me names for asking questions, convert me to your viewpoint or try.
This site is a beautiful instrument for us to refine our knowledge and share it.
I'm going to answer these questions tomorrow comrade, or someone else should. I'm just too tired tonight.

LuÃs Henrique

19th May 2007, 02:33

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 18, 2007 09:51 pm
lenin perverted communist theory by:
1. trying to start before capital had broken down borders between nations, thus ingnoring the whole dialetical marteralism thing
So what should he have done?

The Russian workers, peasants and soldiers uprose against a regime that was butchering them in an unwinable war. Do you suggest that the bolsheviks told them, "hey, the conditions are not mature for your uprising, let's call back the bourgeois so that they can develop capitalism in Russia"?

And I love the way that the NEP becomes a treason. Wait - were the conditions not mature for socialism? Wasn't it necessary to develop capitalism first, to go for socialism only after? What the hell was wrong with the NEP, then?!

Lenin's - and the bolshevik's - crime seems to be to have tried, instead of sitting on their chairs like good phylistines telling the workers that their revolt was doomed to disaster...

Luís Henrique

abbielives!

19th May 2007, 15:05

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 10:09 pm
Your clearly defined sources, your extensive search for the truth on Lenin, your very marxist analysis of the material conditions of 1917 Russia and your well written essay have convinced me that Lenin was an evil tyrant

well, im glad you see the truth now

abbielives!

19th May 2007, 15:10

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 19, 2007 01:33 am

So what should he have done?

The Russian workers, peasants and soldiers uprose against a regime that was butchering them in an unwinable war. Do you suggest that the bolsheviks told them, "hey, the conditions are not mature for your uprising, let's call back the bourgeois so that they can develop capitalism in Russia"?

And I love the way that the NEP becomes a treason. Wait - were the conditions not mature for socialism? Wasn't it necessary to develop capitalism first, to go for socialism only after? What the hell was wrong with the NEP, then?!

Lenin's - and the bolshevik's - crime seems to be to have tried, instead of sitting on their chairs like good phylistines telling the workers that their revolt was doomed to disaster...

Luís Henrique

the question was how did Lenin pervert marxist theory, not do i agree with said theory

Labor Shall Rule

19th May 2007, 15:57

1. trying to start before capital had broken down borders between nations, thus ingnoring the whole dialetical marteralism thing

This is Menshevism--adhering to the fact that the workers and poor peasants should of sat back during the misery and destitution of the First World War while they were placed under the most severe of malnutrition and the brutalized suppression of war. It is holding that we should wait until the initial stage of capitalist production is in full swing within their country--a simple impossibility in the case of Russia, since finance capital was tied to the large-landed proprietors, tying the small strata of the bourgeoisie with the old remnants of the aristocracy, ultimately perverting historical development.

2. creating a dictatorship and caling it 'dictatorship of the proletariat' we know that marx did not mean a totalitarian state by this because he refered to parliamentary england as a dictatorship of the bourgeois

Through the October Revolution, with the revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the workers seized control of the state apparatus through the Soviets. They not only established a high degree of civil rights for women, Jews, and homosexuals for the first time in not just Russian history, but human history altogether, but also issued decrees that called for worker's control of production, the abolishment of private property, and made all public officials recallable and accountable. That is not a 'dictatorship' of a single personality, but rather the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

This changed once the Bolsheviks had taken power. On the night of April 11th, 1918, the Cheka surrounded 26 Anarchist clubs in Moscow, in the insuring fighting Anarchists suffered 40 casualties and 500 were taken prisoner. The Petrograd anarchists protested this attack:

This was a reprisal against the Black Guards, who recently went on a mass looting of several armed caches, food granaries, and financial institutions. That is banditry, not 'anarchism'.

The razverstka (forcible collection of food) drains the peasantry to feed Petrograd, they are told; fertile Ukraine is forced to ship carloads of provisions northward, yet the population of the cities is starving. A goodly half of the provisions somehow vanishes along the route, the rest reaching, in the main, the markets rather than the hungry masses;

They 'disappear' half of the way? I don't think anti-communist historians have even drawed such an accusation; that is ahistorical garbage.

syndicat

19th May 2007, 17:54

someone: "2. creating a dictatorship and caling it 'dictatorship of the proletariat' we know that marx did not mean a totalitarian state by this because he refered to parliamentary england as a dictatorship of the bourgeois"

reddali:

Through the October Revolution, with the revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the workers seized control of the state apparatus through the Soviets. They not only established a high degree of civil rights for women, Jews, and homosexuals for the first time in not just Russian history, but human history altogether, but also issued decrees that called for worker's control of production, the abolishment of private property, and made all public officials recallable and accountable. That is not a 'dictatorship' of a single personality, but rather the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

1. in regard to "workers control". you need to understand that "kontrol" in Russian has a weaker meaning than "control" in English. Lenin's decree on "workers' control" of Nov. 1917 only called for workers committees to "check" management, require them to "open the books", and a veto on hiring and firing. This decree merely legalized the situation that actually existed, a situation created by worker struggle. Lenin's decree most definitely did NOT favor worker management which the Bolsheviks were opposed to. See Maurice Brinton's "The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control":
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/s...1/bolintro.html (http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html)

2. abolition of private property in means of production occurred only via statist nationalization in the summer of 1918, in response to the onset of the civil war. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not trust the private owners to not sabotage in support of the whites.

3. if the officials were recallable and accountable, why did the Bolsheviks refuse to recognize the results of the soviet elections in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia in the sprin of 1918? and wasn't the Kronstadt rebellion basically exercizing the workers right of recall? After all, their main demand was for new soviet elections.

4. when the Kronstadt soviet voted to expropriate private property and institute workers self-management in Kronstadt in Jan 1918, the Bolsheviks voted "No" along with the Mensheviks. this decision was carried out at that time because the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were in the minority. see Israel Getzler, "Kronstadt 1917-21"

abbielives!

19th May 2007, 18:08

i don't think the peasents should have sat on their hands, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a deviation from marxist theory.

russia was never a dictatorship of the proletariat as defined by marx, it was dominated by the elite of the communist party

the seizure of weapons/food was a legitamite attack on the new Soviet elite, the tsars replacements

given that she was actually there, i think she knows what she is talking about.
futher legitimized by the fact that she was pro-bolshevik when she arrived in Russia and opposed when she left

sexyguy

19th May 2007, 20:49

the seizure of weapons/food was a legitamite attack on the new Soviet elite, the tsars replacements
Could this bandit attitude be the reason that counterrevolutionaries got themselves shot by the Cheka?

Labor Shall Rule

19th May 2007, 21:12

I have noticed that the decree is commonly perversed by many anarchist sources.

Draft Regulations on Worker's Control (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DRWC17.html)

I will admit, it did call for the opening of books, and the mere evaluation of enterprises in which workers did not yet seize control over management, but I don't think you are reading within the fine lines of the decree, paticularly the first clause.

Lenin, Draft Regulations on Worker's Control:
1. Workers' control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials shall be introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises employing not less than five workers and office employees (together), or with an annual turnover of not less than 10,000 rubles.

After Lenin announced his revisions, it was finally passed through Milyutin and Larin on the Council of People's Commisars, but they wished to remove the clause that I just quoted, and Lenin went on to denounce their editing as going against "revolutionary workers' control", and published his own written decree in Gazeta Vremennogo Rabochego i Krestyanskogo Pravitelstva (Gazette of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government), which seemed to have a positive reaction amongst it's many subscribers. The All-Russia Central Executive Committee issued a decree that contained the same text that was originally presented by Lenin himself.

After this event, some form of workers control was increasingly in effect in over 573 factories and mines, with a combined work force of 1.4 million workers. Whether you hold that the Bolsheviks were detrimental to worker's control, you can not ignorantly close your eyes to the fact that through their involvement, they helped to develop enormous strength in the factory committees. Through the aftermath of the October Revolution, they immediately evolved quickly into complex structures involved in virtually every aspect of daily life. They formed subcommittees that were responsible for the security of their factories, food supply, culture, health and safety, the improvement of working conditions, and the maintenance of labor discipline through the discouragement of drunkenness.

if the officials were recallable and accountable, why did the Bolsheviks refuse to recognize the results of the soviet elections in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia in the sprin of 1918?

In the spring of 1918, the Germans controlled all Bolshevik strongholds in the Ukraine and the Baltics; paticularly Kiev and Riga, the French controlled Odessa, the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had set up a government in Samara and Saratov that had the protection of the Czechoslovak Legion, which had militarily established a presence on most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Lake Baikal to the Ural Mountains regions; which were also Bolshevik strongholds. In Omsk, the Socialist Revolutionaries and Cadets, with the leadership of Avksentiev, Boldyrev, V. A. Vinogradov, P. V. Vologodskii, Zenzinov, and Admiral Kolchak, was also established. Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks also established control over key regions of worker's control. In November, General Alekseev, the old Tsarist Commander-in-Chief, began to organize a Volunteer Army in Novocherkassk, killing thousands of workers and the institutions that they created with it.

So, I don't know if that account of 'soviet elections' is true or not, or if it was truly organized and established on a national level, due to the fact that most of European Russia was under the wave of counterrevolution and imperialist intervention.

Labor Shall Rule

19th May 2007, 21:16

the seizure of weapons/food was a legitamite attack on the new Soviet elite, the tsars replacements

This 'legitimate' attack would of permitted not only the massacre of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of revolutionary workers at the hands of progromists and pseudo-fascists, but would of also starved an entire population into submission.

syndicat

19th May 2007, 21:46

in the region where the Bolsheviks were defeated in 19 of 22 cities in soviet elections, the Bolsheviks refused to leave office. they either simply kept the old Exec Committee in place, refusing to recognize the results of the elections, or they replaced the soviets with a Military Revolutionary Committee. They used the cheka or sympathetic military bodies they controlled to maintain themselves in power.

reddali questions this on the grounds that much of European Russia was controlled by the German/Austrian imperialists etc. But obviously if the Bolsheviks remained in power in these cities, these were not areas where the German/Austrian forces were in control, which were in Ukraine or the Baltic states or other areas on the fringes. the Bolsheviks abandoning soviet democracy in the spring of 1918 in discussed by Farber in "Before Stalinism" as well as in a number of other books.

and by the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks moved to the next step, of using the Cheka for outright suppression of the competing Left tendencies within the working class. obviously this also abrogates worker democracy. this is discussed by Sheila Jackon in "The Russian Revolution" and a number of other books.

reddali quotes the draft decree on workers control but he never explains what "workers control" meant or what it amounted to. as i've pointed out, it did NOT mean that workers or elected committees of workers held management power. on the contrary, it referred to mere surveailance or checking of management, forcing the employers to "open the books", checks on hiring and firing. These were things the workers had already conquered thru struggle prior to the passage of the decree.

in Nov. 1917, at the time the decree was passed, the St. Petersburg regional soviet of factory committees issued a "pratical manual on workers control" which pushed for the extension from mere control to expropriation and workers' management, and the invoking of regional and national congresses of factory committees to take over economic planning. these initiatives were opposed by the Bolsheviks. this is documented in "Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton.

i've already mentioned that the vote by the Kronstadt soviet to expropriate all the businesses and place them under worker management in Kronstadt was opposed by the Bolsheviks. their faction voted "no" when this came up for vote in Jan 1918. this is documented in Israel Getzler, "Kronstadt 1917-21".

abbielives!

19th May 2007, 22:15

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 08:16 pm

the seizure of weapons/food was a legitamite attack on the new Soviet elite, the tsars replacements

This 'legitimate' attack would of permitted not only the massacre of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of revolutionary workers at the hands of progromists and pseudo-fascists, but would of also starved an entire population into submission.

as we can see with the Mahknovists that is simply not the case
of course they took the guns where else werethey supposed to get them, certainly the bolsheviks would not arm them willingly

Coggeh

19th May 2007, 22:19

I don't see how you can criticize the Lenin's NEP, because it was the oh so great "anarchist" peasantry rebellion that brought Lenin to the realization to change his policy of war communism .

in the region where the Bolsheviks were defeated in 19 of 22 cities in soviet elections, the Bolsheviks refused to leave office. they either simply kept the old Exec Committee in place, refusing to recognize the results of the elections, or they replaced the soviets with a Military Revolutionary Committee.

They were defeated by reformist bourgeois parties like the Mensheviks , "The majority have no right to do wrong" I know i sound like some authoritarian dick, but Lenin's actions were in the interests of the revolution and were completely justifiable.

This is just another typical attack on Lenin of which I've seen time and time again increasingly lately , the betrayers of the Left see fit to attack time and time one of the most important people for the progression of socialism .

Lenin did what he had to do to preserve the revolution if elections were counted for we would have had the same old backwards Russia we'd seen in the time of the tsar .

Labor Shall Rule

19th May 2007, 22:35

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 08:46 pm
in the region where the Bolsheviks were defeated in 19 of 22 cities in soviet elections, the Bolsheviks refused to leave office. they either simply kept the old Exec Committee in place, refusing to recognize the results of the elections, or they replaced the soviets with a Military Revolutionary Committee. They used the cheka or sympathetic military bodies they controlled to maintain themselves in power.

reddali questions this on the grounds that much of European Russia was controlled by the German/Austrian imperialists etc. But obviously if the Bolsheviks remained in power in these cities, these were not areas where the German/Austrian forces were in control, which were in Ukraine or the Baltic states or other areas on the fringes. the Bolsheviks abandoning soviet democracy in the spring of 1918 in discussed by Farber in "Before Stalinism" as well as in a number of other books.

and by the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks moved to the next step, of using the Cheka for outright suppression of the competing Left tendencies within the working class. obviously this also abrogates worker democracy. this is discussed by Sheila Jackon in "The Russian Revolution" and a number of other books.

reddali quotes the draft decree on workers control but he never explains what "workers control" meant or what it amounted to. as i've pointed out, it did NOT mean that workers or elected committees of workers held management power. on the contrary, it referred to mere surveailance or checking of management, forcing the employers to "open the books", checks on hiring and firing. These were things the workers had already conquered thru struggle prior to the passage of the decree.

in Nov. 1917, at the time the decree was passed, the St. Petersburg regional soviet of factory committees issued a "pratical manual on workers control" which pushed for the extension from mere control to expropriation and workers' management, and the invoking of regional and national congresses of factory committees to take over economic planning. these initiatives were opposed by the Bolsheviks. this is documented in "Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton.

i've already mentioned that the vote by the Kronstadt soviet to expropriate all the businesses and place them under worker management in Kronstadt was opposed by the Bolsheviks. their faction voted "no" when this came up for vote in Jan 1918. this is documented in Israel Getzler, "Kronstadt 1917-21".

in the region where the Bolsheviks were defeated in 19 of 22 cities in soviet elections, the Bolsheviks refused to leave office. they either simply kept the old Exec Committee in place, refusing to recognize the results of the elections, or they replaced the soviets with a Military Revolutionary Committee.

Do you have a source? I wouldn't deny that they replaced some functions of the local soviets with that of a Military Revolutionary Committee; in many rural centers, the soviets were drawn as unaccountable since the peasantry was unwilling to surrender their grain in many circumstances, and the local bodies acted as the suitors of this social stara.

reddali questions this on the grounds that much of European Russia was controlled by the German/Austrian imperialists etc. But obviously if the Bolsheviks remained in power in these cities, these were not areas where the German/Austrian forces were in control, which were in Ukraine or the Baltic states or other areas on the fringes. the Bolsheviks abandoning soviet democracy in the spring of 1918 in discussed by Farber in "Before Stalinism" as well as in a number of other books.

First off, you are addressing me, not to a jury that is accusing me of a horrible crime, so don't refer to me in such a disrespectful way. I asserted, through historical evidence as cited from the Austro-German occupation of these areas, that the Bolsheviks didn't have control of these cities, so that falsifying babble about "19 out of 22 European cities" is absolute garbage.

and by the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks moved to the next step, of using the Cheka for outright suppression of the competing Left tendencies within the working class. obviously this also abrogates worker democracy. this is discussed by Sheila Jackon in "The Russian Revolution" and a number of other books.

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries resigned their position in the Soviet Governmentt after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, something the Bolsheviks had to ascend to or else the revolutionary state would be destroyed. Kaplan, the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist, favored the Constituent Assembly, a bourgeois instrument of power, over the Soviets. It would be like supporting an assembly composed of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats at the height of the American Civil War. Kaplan had a reactionary and backward position. She reminds me alot Charlotte Corday, and while Corday echoed pretty sentiments with her Girdonist backers, she was a threat to the revolutionary government of France, murdering Jean Paul Marat. Some Socialist Revolutionaries backed the Greens in the Ukraine, but a good amount aided the whites, and other bourgeois or Czarist counter revolutionists. It is a shocking revelation that the Bolsheviks did not suppress the Socialist Revolutionaries when they encouraged the Lativans to support the Kerensky-Krasnov uprising and drive into Petrograd, or when they financially and politically supported many local Cossack armies who initiated the bloody 'White Terror' that took the lives of tens of thousands of Bolsheviks and workers, or even when they set up their mirror governments with the Czechoslovak Legion. Lenin and the Bolsheviks made a sincere effort to include the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the Soviet government, Kamenev and Zinoviev threatened to leave the party if they were not included, President Wilson organized a 'peace conference' between the factions fighting in the Civil War that the Bolsheviks willingly accepted with hopes of 'building bridges' with the bourgeois parties but the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries denied participation, so I don't think it is justified to accuse Lenin of 'wiping out' worker's democracy, when these parties certainly did not represent it, and when he made a non-stop effort to include them in the Soviets.

reddali quotes the draft decree on workers control but he never explains what "workers control" meant or what it amounted to. as i've pointed out, it did NOT mean that workers or elected committees of workers held management power. on the contrary, it referred to mere surveailance or checking of management, forcing the employers to "open the books", checks on hiring and firing. These were things the workers had already conquered thru struggle prior to the passage of the decree.

Have you read my post? Did you read that link? I even quoted a clause that called for 'worker's control over all production and raw materials', which Lenin wrote in Izvestia was 'through the factory committees'. Sometimes I think talking to an anarchist about the Russian Revolution is like talking to a Neo-Nazi about the accomplishments of the Jewish people.

Labor Shall Rule

19th May 2007, 22:48

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 19, 2007 09:15 pm
as we can see with the Mahknovists that is simply not the case
of course they took the guns where else werethey supposed to get them, certainly the bolsheviks would not arm them willingly
Give me a break, I would recommend that you don't even get into the Mahknovists. The Soviet Republic; the dictatorship of the proletariat, was on the throes of being defeated. The White Army was advancing, using the planes, tanks, machine guns, field guns, rifles, and millions of shells and bullets it received from the Western powers. Denikin broke through Makhno’s lines and advanced about thirty miles into the Red Army’s rear. Over the next three days, the White Army opened a made massive leaps in Makhno's territory. Soon the whole Red Army was in retreat. In the meanwhile, they were calling for soldiers in the Red Army to desert and for the overthrowing of the Soviet state, while also preventing grain collection and attacking any supply trains that passed through his territory, and even temporarily allying themselves with Denikin's forces. They call us traitors, but I think that is quite a testament of their credibility.

It was the Red Army, with it's five million troops in sixteen armies, that fought along a 5,000-mile front, and that produced all their own weaponry, that truly beared the burden of combating counterrevolution. Makhno's army had an estimated 30,000 troops, never left Ukraine, relied on the Bolsheviks and occupying armies for it's weapons, and resorted to tactics of 'harassing the rear' pf the bulk of the White Army, but never taking it on and experiencing sacrifices.

rouchambeau

20th May 2007, 01:10

I'm no fan of Lenin, but this is a pretty ridiculous thread.

Why hasn't anyone trashed it?

syndicat

20th May 2007, 03:08

reddali:

I asserted, through historical evidence as cited from the Austro-German occupation of these areas, that the Bolsheviks didn't have control of these cities, so that falsifying babble about "19 out of 22 European cities" is absolute garbage.

You mean there were no cities in European Russia that were controlled by the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918?? European Russia refers to Russia...not Ukraine or the Baltic states. It refers to that part of Russia west of the Ural mountains.
This is discussed by Farber in "Before Stalinism" and by Vladimir Brovkin in "The Mensheviks After October".

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries resigned their position in the Soviet Governmentt after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, something the Bolsheviks had to ascend to or else the revolutionary state would be destroyed. Kaplan, the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist, favored the Constituent Assembly, a bourgeois instrument of power, over the Soviets. It would be like supporting an assembly composed of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats at the height of the American Civil War. Kaplan had a reactionary and backward position. She reminds me alot Charlotte Corday, and while Corday echoed pretty sentiments with her Girdonist backers, she was a threat to the revolutionary government of France, murdering Jean Paul Marat. Some Socialist Revolutionaries backed the Greens in the Ukraine, but a good amount aided the whites, and other bourgeois or Czarist counter revolutionists. It is a shocking revelation that the Bolsheviks did not suppress the Socialist Revolutionaries when they encouraged the Lativans to support the Kerensky-Krasnov uprising and drive into Petrograd, or when they financially and politically supported many local Cossack armies who initiated the bloody 'White Terror' that took the lives of tens of thousands of Bolsheviks and workers, or even when they set up their mirror governments with the Czechoslovak Legion. Lenin and the Bolsheviks made a sincere effort to include the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the Soviet government, Kamenev and Zinoviev threatened to leave the party if they were not included, President Wilson organized a 'peace conference' between the factions fighting in the Civil War that the Bolsheviks willingly accepted with hopes of 'building bridges' with the bourgeois parties but the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries denied participation, so I don't think it is justified to accuse Lenin of 'wiping out' worker's democracy, when these parties certainly did not represent it, and when he made a non-stop effort to include them in the Soviets.

The reason the Bolsheviks included the Left SRs in the government is because they had to. The Left SRs were the majority in the peasant congress when it met in Nov. 1917, after the Right SRs walked out.

I wasn't talking about the Right Mensheviks and Right SRs who joined the opposition government backed by the Czech legion in June 1918.

The Left Mensheviks controlled the Menshevik party after Nov. 1917 and expelled the right Mensheviks due to their tendency to support armed struggle against the soviet government, which the Left Mensheviks opposed. It was typically the Left Mensheviks who won the soviet elections in the 19 Russian cities I referred to earlier in the spring of 1918, sometimes in alliance with SRs. But the Mensheviks' refusal to support armed struggle against the Bolshevik government didn't prevent their suppression. This is discussed in "Before Stalinism" by Farber and "The Mensheviks After October" by Vladimir Brovkin.

And the mere fact the Left SRs quit the government does not warrant using state terrorism to wipe them out.

The syndicalists also took a stance of avoiding violent struggle against the soviet government, and of trying to participate in the unions and soviets, and organize in the workplaces. This didn't stop them from being put in prison, their press suppressed, etc. In the case of the Union of Maximalists, the cheka used a frame up to come up with reasons for banning them, as Israel Getzler mentions in "Kronstadt 1917-21". The other anarchists were also repressed.

Have you read my post? Did you read that link? I even quoted a clause that called for 'worker's control over all production and raw materials', which Lenin wrote in Izvestia was 'through the factory committees'.

Did you read my reply? Your quote doesn't say what "workers control" means. I explained what it meant in the workers control decree of Nov 1917. It meant surveillance of management, checking on them, the right to ask for "opening the books." It didn't mean that the workers would possess the actual authority to run industry. Lenin and the Bolsheviks tended to oppose that, tho sometimes they were forced to go along when workers ignored orders from the center and expropriated some enterprise on their own initiative.

The Bolsheviks had a poverty-stricken conception of "proletarian power."

Labor Shall Rule

20th May 2007, 05:37

You mean there were no cities in European Russia that were controlled by the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918?? European Russia refers to Russia...not Ukraine or the Baltic states. It refers to that part of Russia west of the Ural mountains.

By the spring of 1918, they were literally encircled by hostile foes in what you refer to as 'European Russia'. Hell, you could read wikipedia or a bourgeois textbook and they would even tell you that. So, I doubt the historical validity of that argument. I would also like to make it clear that the Baltics and Ukraine was considered to be a part of Russia, and many Soviets were located in those localities also.

This is discussed by Farber in "Before Stalinism" and by Vladimir Brovkin in "The Mensheviks After October".

You quote that book as if it was the Bible--you seem to be forgetting that Farber is a Leninist himself.

The Left Mensheviks controlled the Menshevik party after Nov. 1917 and expelled the right Mensheviks due to their tendency to support armed struggle against the soviet government, which the Left Mensheviks opposed.

If only declarations of opposition to 'armed struggle' corresponded with reality? Denikin personally stated that he was conversing with Martov himself. If they were so morally opposed to the violence permeated by the proto-fascist thugs who were killing tens of thousands of Jews, workers, and communists on a daily basis, they would of broke off from their party at the first sign of the indignation of the steady alliance that existed between the two groups. This 'Left' Menshevik faction was active in the Georgian government; Nikolay Chkheidze and E. P. Gegechkori welcomed Generals Alexeev, Denikin, Romanovsky, Dragomirov, Lukomsky, the well-known monarchist Shulghin, and others, to a conference that they had in Tbilisi with the aspiration of ajoining the divided White Army.

And the mere fact the Left SRs quit the government does not warrant using state terrorism to wipe them out.

I don't think you understand the enormous complexity of the situation--they were a bourgeois party that did not wish to cooperate with the Soviet govenment, and they later, through provided evidence, went on to collaborate with the White Army, which was starving and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. That is treasonous, and toleration of such behavior during such a time of dire conditions is political suicide. The stakes were really that high. You can compare the struggle the Partisan leagues had against the Nazis to the Bolsheviks against the Whites. The Whites were just as ruthless, just as anti-semetic (you know they had something called progoms right? And you know it was the Bolsheviks who were the first ones, besides the socialist bunds to speak out against anti semitism?) They raped and killed Jews, the so-called "Christ killers". Its easy to say we can't harm the innocent, and hopefully we will try not to.

But moral codes are hard to follow exactly in those situations. You know what? I propose that you should be appointed as chairman of a commission to draft a moral code for civil warfare. Both sides pledge not to ever kill innocent people! And inasmuch as rifles, hand grenades and even bayonets unquestionably exercise a baleful influence upon human beings, upon innocent people, as well as upon democracy in general, the use of weapons, fire-arms or si de-arms, in the civil war is strictly forbidden. And so long as this code remains unaccepted by the oppressors, the fascists will seek to gain victory by every means. And you will be dupped. Like I said, it's easy for you to make these sorts of moralistic ahistorical judgments. But war was never reasonable. It is barbaric, anti-human, and one of the most disgusting things we have to endure.

The Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, no matter what their orientation, were funders and active foot soldiers of counterrevolution. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, wrote a report based on information granted to him by a Menshevik authority, that stated:

Lord Curzon:
The status of the Mensheviks is unbearable; the party newspaper was recently suppressed by the Chekists and there was a raid [on a] meeting all. According to my informer, the upper echelons of the party are engaging in dialogue with Admiral Kolchak, and even granting Denikin permission to build up forces on the steppes of Georgia. As for in the cities themselves, they have taken their agitation underground. Night after night the counter-revolutionaries [have] held secret meetings to plot against the Bolsheviks, but never once was a serious attempt made to carry through the conspiracy. The starving condition of the people quite paralyzed their will-power, but their remaining net has to lay with tactical support from the insurgent armies

Once again, I don't think that we appease any party that openly sides with the enemy in war time.

syndicat

20th May 2007, 05:56

I mentioned the elections to the city soviets in the spring of 1918, and how the Bolsheviks lost in most of the provincial cities and industrial centers in European Russia. This is described in detail in Chapter 5 "The Elections to the City Soviets" in Alexander Brovkin, "The Mensheviks After October." Here is a quote about Bolshevik practice when in power in the provincial soviets:

Even among those who were eligible to vote -- workers, soldiers, peasants -- the principle of one man, one vote was not always practiced. The Bolshevik-controlled Executive Committees often packed the soviet assemblies with representatives of "revolutionary organizations", changed the norms of representation, and refused to hold new elections.

The food crisis was a major issue in the elections. The Bolshevik practice of stopping people from traveling out of the towns, to get food from relatives often, was unpopular.

In the industrial city of Kostroma soviet elections were held on May 23, and the Mensheviks won, doubling their representation. But the Bolsheviks refused to relinquish their seats on the Executive Committee. Brovkin, p. 132

on April 1 the Bolsheviks' opponents won the majority in the soviet elections in Riazan. in both this city and Kostroma the Bolsheviks simply declared martial law.

Tula and Yaroslavl are two other cities where the Mensheviks defeated the Bolsheviks in the soviet elections on April 9. The Mensheviks won 48 of the 98 seats and the SRs 13 in Yaroslavl. The Bolsheviks called in the Red Guards to disband the soviet.

in the elections in Orel in mid-May the Menshevik-SR alliance won 162 seats to 62 for the Bolsheviks and supporters, and 20 for the Left SRs. in Tambov the city soviet was simply disbanded. (Brovkin p 146)

in the late sprin and early summer the Menshevik-SR bloc won the elections to the soviets in the industrial city of Nizhni Novgorod, and in Tsaritsyn (now called Volgagrad), and Kazan (in the Volga region).

the Menshevik/SR bloc also won the city elections in Vologda and Arkhangelsk.

in Izhevsk, where there had been a Menshevik majority on the soviet, the Bolsheviks insisted on new elections but in the elections in May only 22 Bolsheviks were elected out of 170 delegates. That soviet was also disbanded.

in Syzran the newly elected soviet with a Menshevik-SR majority was disbanded and its chairman arrested.

Brovkin says that the Bolsheviks relied in these provincial towns on radicalized soldiers to represent them on the soviets and run the local administration. but they proved to be not very competent.

the general crisis of a loss of popular favor that faced the Bolshevik party in the spring of 1918 led to the decision to expell the Mensheviks and other parties from the country's parliament, the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets.

Labor Shall Rule

20th May 2007, 06:58

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 04:56 am
The food crisis was a major issue in the elections. The Bolshevik practice of stopping people from traveling out of the towns, to get food from relatives often, was unpopular.

In the industrial city of Kostroma soviet elections were held on May 23, and the Mensheviks won, doubling their representation. But the Bolsheviks refused to relinquish their seats on the Executive Committee. Brovkin, p. 132

on April 1 the Bolsheviks' opponents won the majority in the soviet elections in Riazan. in both this city and Kostroma the Bolsheviks simply declared martial law.

Tula and Yaroslavl are two other cities where the Mensheviks defeated the Bolsheviks in the soviet elections on April 9. The Mensheviks won 48 of the 98 seats and the SRs 13 in Yaroslavl. The Bolsheviks called in the Red Guards to disband the soviet.

in the elections in Orel in mid-May the Menshevik-SR alliance won 162 seats to 62 for the Bolsheviks and supporters, and 20 for the Left SRs. in Tambov the city soviet was simply disbanded. (Brovkin p 146)

in the late sprin and early summer the Menshevik-SR bloc won the elections to the soviets in the industrial city of Nizhni Novgorod, and in Tsaritsyn (now called Volgagrad), and Kazan (in the Volga region).

the Menshevik/SR bloc also won the city elections in Vologda and Arkhangelsk.

in Izhevsk, where there had been a Menshevik majority on the soviet, the Bolsheviks insisted on new elections but in the elections in May only 22 Bolsheviks were elected out of 170 delegates. That soviet was also disbanded.

in Syzran the newly elected soviet with a Menshevik-SR majority was disbanded and its chairman arrested.

Brovkin says that the Bolsheviks relied in these provincial towns on radicalized soldiers to represent them on the soviets and run the local administration. but they proved to be not very competent.

the general crisis of a loss of popular favor that faced the Bolshevik party in the spring of 1918 led to the decision to expell the Mensheviks and other parties from the country's parliament, the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets.

The food crisis was a major issue in the elections. The Bolshevik practice of stopping people from traveling out of the towns, to get food from relatives often, was unpopular.

I don't think this would change with the Mensheviks--if it did, it would be with the roads opened after they permitted a detachment of White Guards to victoriously march into the town. It would be through the defeat of the working class, rather than it's victory, that the food crisis would end. It should be noted that the food crisis was the inevitable result of the grain blockade and foreign blockade, combined with the chaos that insued as a result of the bloody and risky civil war, in which the steaks were at it's highest boiling point, and a simple mistake could result in the immediate defeat of the working and toiling people of Russia. These 'relatives' were footsoldiers of counterrevolution, as shown by their withhelding of grain from the cities with the hopes of driving up prices to their own benefit.

In the industrial city of Kostroma soviet elections were held on May 23, and the Mensheviks won, doubling their representation. But the Bolsheviks refused to relinquish their seats on the Executive Committee.

It had population of under 100,000 people at the time of the Civil War, and it was always a hotbed of Menshevism. They did not necessarily condemn the actions of Kerensky shortly after the failed putsch of Kornilov, and went on to merely engage in a one-day strike that the party leaders directly ordered this to present an image of being opposed to the attempt of crushing 'Red Petrograd'. According to Trotsky, it was one of the most socially conservative areas in all of Russia at time:

Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution:
These waves of bitter feeling raised up no little slime from the bottom. In Kostroma. province “a Black Hundred and anti-Jew agitation is observed." Criminality is on the increase. A waning of interest in the political life is noticeable, with many workers, with a semi-proletarian status due their relinquishing ties to their rural property in surrounding areas, resorting to the corrupt observances of Tsereteli.

I think that if this is one of those '19 out of 22' cities, you are nitpicking at small centers that are not heavily erroded by capitalist production, thus you see a lower level of activity and consciousness on the part of the laborer.

Riazan is, more or less, the same story. Menshevism was already rampant prior to the seizure of power by the workers. This city, also, was a temporarily launching point for Polish forces who were received as 'liberators' by the population.

Where is, by any chance, Brovkin getting his sources? I don't think I have ever heard of a soviet being 'disbanded' in it's entirety. I also don't see a problem with rounding up supporters of fascist suppression at a delicate moment of civil war.

Brovkin says that the Bolsheviks relied in these provincial towns on radicalized soldiers to represent them on the soviets and run the local administration. but they proved to be not very competent.

What are soldiers? Oh yeah, they are workers and peasants that were conscripted forcefully under the Tsar that later went on to serve for the Red Army. This means that they have family members and friends, who have offered their encouragement, and not to mention, their social ills are on the same level as such, so it is a miracle that we did not see massive desertions and revolts by these troops if the workers were as 'anti-Bolshevik' as you claim them to be. You are also discrediting the fact that millions of workers were involved in the war effort--concerted to destroy all forces of counterrevolution through participation on the railroads, on the agricultural plots, in the weapon factories, and the construction roads and bridges, which they simply could of 'laid off' due to their hatred of the Bolsheviks, but they chose to go under their banner.

I think the Mensheviks should of been barred from political participation months before the Bolsheviks did so--but preferences are not something that are taken into consideration, but rather objective conditions, and how our preferences could be reflected under them. That is, after all, the crux of this debate--while I adhere to the fact that worker's democracy did exist but was diminished by the forces of counterevolution and global imperialism, and that the revolutionary leadership assumed a role out of this emergency situation that became increasingly reliant on the bureaucracy that it was fostering, which lead to the rise of Stalin, and the replacement of the revolutionary dictatorship with a bureaucratic nightmare. I view the context of these two situations-the revolutionary dictatorship and the bureaucracy, through a truthful different perspective. Sometimes you need to take extraordinary measures to fight counterrevolutionaries. If you dont, you render us impotent. You disarm us. The difference between the Cheka and the NKVD is that the former was used in defense of the revolution, the latter to service a party aristocracy. Fighting ruthlessly against 14 imperialist nations and their internal allies is a world of difference then the killing of socialists and scores of known innocent people. So spare me your decontextualization; your false accusations that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were out randomly hunting for the blood of weak workers, making them the same as Stalin, does not float the boat of historical truth.

LuÃs Henrique

20th May 2007, 13:18

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 19, 2007 05:08 pm
i don't think the peasents should have sat on their hands, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a deviation from marxist theory.
Come on. When you call it a "perversion" (and give it as a reason to "reject Lenin"), you are obviously making the point that it was a bad thing. Otherwise you would have called it an improvement...

Which essentially means that my point stands. You support the Menshevik position in 1917, and, contradictorily, would like the Stalinist policy of 1929 being put into practice in 1921.

Time to reject your analysis, it is very lacking.

Luís Henrique

syndicat

20th May 2007, 16:34

So spare me your decontextualization; your false accusations that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were out randomly hunting for the blood of weak workers, making them the same as Stalin, does not float the boat of historical truth.

What a lot of bullshit. Brovkin says that issues that motivated working class voters in the elections were not only the food supply problem but also police brutality and unemployment. The syndicalists gained at the expense of the Bolsheviks during early 1918 also.

As I pointed out, the Left Mensheviks, who did not "support the counterrevolution", supported the soviets at this time, even tho it was contrary to their original program, because that is what the workers wanted. To say the Left Mensheviks should have been suppressed is to say you don't really support worker democracy.

You also don't talk about the suppression of the Left SRs, syndicalists, anarchists, and maximalists.

It should be noted that the food crisis was the inevitable result of the grain blockade and foreign blockade, combined with the chaos that insued as a result of the bloody and risky civil war, in which the steaks were at it's highest boiling point, and a simple mistake could result in the immediate defeat of the working and toiling people of Russia. These 'relatives' were footsoldiers of counterrevolution, as shown by their withhelding of grain from the cities with the hopes of driving up prices to their own benefit.

These "foot soldiers of the counterrevolution" were the base of the Left SRs, who were in a coalition government with the Bolsheviks at the time. Moreover, when your talk about a "bloody civil war" you're getting things out of order. the elections to the soviets i'm talking about happened in the spring, April-May. the civil war didn't get underway til June-July.

nor is it clear that the Bolshevik's policy in regard to the food supply was not itself a contributing cause of the problem. they created the state grain monopoly and their attack on the peasantry in May, before the civil war. the state grain monopoly created a huge black market, which drove up prices. a better solution might have been organizing the direct relationship between people in the cities and the peasantry, not attacking the peasantry.

Labor Shall Rule

21st May 2007, 04:23

The Mensheviks of Russia were the exact same thing as the Democratic Party in the United States. They were a bourgeois party, that, through the evidence that I provided, chose to support the forces of counterrevolution at a time of the utmost destitutions and most intense of armed conflict. As an anarchist, I hoped that you wouldn't consider a capitalist party as a willing proponent of worker's democracy? I think that, if anything, it is you that is in opposition with the values of worker's democracy, since you hold that a capitalist party should hold a seat on it. They tried to undermine them, as proven by their policies throughout the Russian Civil War. Voline, an anarchist, placed an emphasis on the policy of "suspicion of all political parties" in Makhno's program due to a recent strangle placed on a local soviet in Ukraine by the Germans that the Mensheviks openly permitted after being elected to an important position. These are not good guys.

syndicat

21st May 2007, 07:27

abbielives!

21st May 2007, 14:57

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 09:48 pm
Denikin broke through Makhno’s lines and advanced about thirty miles into the Red Army’s rear. Over the next three days, the White Army opened a made massive leaps in Makhno's territory.

this would be the time the Red army withdrew it's troops from the flank allowing Denkin through
at it's high point the Makhnovists numbered over 100,000
the Makhnovists sucessfully defend their territory for 5 years 1917-1922, until the bolsheviks betrayed them yet again.
after the Soviet victory over a million Ukrainians died as a result of bolshevik forced wheat "requisitioning"

Labor Shall Rule

22nd May 2007, 05:49

The Mensheviks were a Marxist political party. They were the other faction in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at the time of the split in 1903. The Left Mensheviks in particular shared a number of assumptions in common with the Bolsheviks. Calling them a "capitalist political party" is sectarian.

They were proponents of the 'two-stage' theory; that it was necessary to go through a stage of capitalist development, rather than skipping this stage by assigning this historic role to the proletariat themselves, and they were financers of counterrevolution. That is not 'sectarian'.

I don't agree with a political organization like Democratic Socialists of America, to take an example, but i would not propose suppresion of their political rights. DSA would be a present-day equivalent of the Mensheviks.

I think their programme never proposed a predmeditated stage of capitalist bondage and that they never supported pseudo-fascists that were slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews and workers.

I don't think that you understand my position, Syndicat. To me, the party has a definite role in raising consciousness, being a catalyst for struggle and unifying separate sections of the working class. However, the goal of the worker's movement is not the rule of the socialist party but the self-emancipation of the proletariat through it's organizations. It is the working class organizations - Soviets, workers councils, factory commitees, that should be the basis of the new socialist society. The socialist party is one of many revolutionary parties participating in worker's democracy within those revolutionary workers organizations (and this is exactly how the Bolsheviks functioned in the Petrograd Soviet in the confrontation between Soviet power and the vestiges of capitalism within Kerensky's Duma). I don't hold some tenacious view of enslaving the working class-I do not hold with the credo that the "vanguard party" was, by definition, the most advanced section of the working class and therefore rule by the "vanguard party" was the rule of the working class. Such beliefs in the "divine right" of the party do not lead to socialism but only to the party becoming the nucleus of new class rule. This I believe, no matter what you have thought from what I have wrote within this thread, was a fault in the Bolshevik party.

So when the Bolsheviks put limits on Soviet democracy, preventing workers from electing representatives from other revolutionary parties, I see the end of socialism. There were other moves by the Bolsheviks, replacing factory commitees with one-man management, that were also ruinous to worker's democracy. They even moved against democracy within the Bolshevik party itself in the 10th Party Congress. Many of these repressive moves by the Bolsheviks were justified then by the harsh conditions of the civil war; as you have read from what I dwelled on so specifically, millions were starving in the cities, the enemy was vicious and unrelentless, and a foreign blockade had left Russia in a state of destitution. It is highly unlikely that workers democracy of any kind would have survived in the Soviet Union without material aid from a revolution in a higher-developed country, such as Germany, France, Spain, or Britain. It is also hard to keep voting when people are starving afterall. But I hold that I think a new revolution against the emerging party-state bureaucracy was necessary, does that make me a 'syndicalist', 'anarchist', 'left communist', or anything of the likewise? 'Bolshevism' is not as black and white as you hold it to be.

As a matter of fact, I more respectively usher from a faction of the Bolshevik party that urged for an attack on the bureaucratic apparatus and the re-establishment of worker's democracy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm), then the actual Left Opposition. It was banned by the party, but they later joined the Left Opposition with Trotsky in 1926. Shlyapnikov, Medvedev, and Chelyshev, active members of the Workers' Opposition, were later butchered by Stalin since they represented the remnants of the old revolutionaries - thus the purges. G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group, who in my opinion, were far more honest than the Workers' Opposition, was also disbanded, and Miasnikov was also imprisoned and later shot.