The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organisational Change 1917–1923

251 Pages·1979·27.29 MB·English

by  Robert Service (auth.)

THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN REVOLUTION
THE BOLSHEVIK
PARTY IN
REVOLUTION
A Study in Organisational Change
1917-1923
ROBERT SERVICE
C Robert Service 1979
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1979
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1979 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and &singstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
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Photoset in Great Britain by
Bristol Typesetting Co Ltd, Bristol
British LibraryCatalogaiqiDPublicationData
Service, Robert
The Bolshevik party in revolution
l. Rossil'skaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia rabochaia
(Bol'sheviki)-History
I. Title
329.9'47 HN6598.S6
ISBN 978-1-349-03773-5 ISBN 978-1-349-03771-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03771-1
This book is sold subject
to the standard conditions
of the Net Book Agreement
TO MY PARENTS
Contents
Acknowledgements
Vlll
Introduction I
I The Tides of Revolution II
(I86I-I9I7)
2 The Bolsheviks Advance 37
(February I9I7-0ctober I9I7)
3 Victory in Defeat 63
(November I9I7-May I9I8)
4 The Alarm is Sounded 85
Qune I9I8-March I9I9)
5 The Battle is Won ll2
(April I9I9-March I920)
6 Defeat in Victory 134
(April I920-March I92I)
7 The Bolsheviks Retreat I 59
(March I92I-December 1922)
8 The Winds of Bureaucracy 185
Qanuary I923-January I924)
Conclusions 200
Maps 214
Notes and References 2I7
Index 239
Acknowledgements
The relief felt in dispatching this manuscript to the publishers is
equalled only by the sense of gratitude owed to the friends who
have helped me to reach such a position. The Russian Studies
Department at Keele is an academic microcosm of peaceful
coexistence. Genia Lampert, the late Katia Lampert, Joe Andrew,
Roger Bartlett, Chris Pike and Valentina Polukhina have offered
encouragement and advice on a broad spectrum of matters
Russian and Soviet. Joe and Roger took comradely solidarity to
the point of reading the draft chapters. I should also like to thank
Charles Duval, Roger Pethybridge and Rick Twyman for their
assistance in tackling particular problems which would otherwise
have eluded me. And, collectively, the delegates to the Fourth
Conference of the Russian Revolution Study Group in January of
this year provoked a number of last-minute reformulations. Peter
Frank of Essex University has over the years lent his wealth of
expertise, energy and enthusiasm to this project. And Adele Biagi,
my wife, has edited the book since its first draft, purging its pages of
the more horrific (and more ludicrous) excesses of historio
graphical and typographical deviation.
All remaining distortions and falsifications are my own.
R.J.S.
Keele
Easter Saturday 1978
Introduction
This is a history of the Bolsheviks and their organisa tiona!
development in the early era of the Soviet state. It is not an act of
homage to certain leaders or factions. Nor is it an exercise in
demonology. Its collective subject is the Bolshevik party as a
political and social whole, as a total organisation in pursuit of
revolutionary change in the former Russian empire. Its unifying
theme is an internal metamorphosis. The Bolsheviks passed
through a momentous transformation, organisationally as well as
politically, within half a dozen years of seizing power through the
October Revolution. Attitudes and behaviour which had seemed
so deeply embedded in the party of 1917 were to disappear forever
by 1923. The shockwaves of the process spread out far beyond the
limits of the period and the boundaries of the Soviet Union. The
following chapters seek to describe and explain what happened.
To this day the Bolshevik past attracts the political scientist and
the historian like a great magnet. It offers the world's first example
of a political party taking hold of the reins of government in the
name of a socialist programme. U ntil1917 the Bolsheviks had been
all but unknown outside the Russian empire. They started out in
1903 as the more radical of the two main wings of the Russian
Marxist movement. It was they who in 1905, a year of travail for
the Romanov autocracy, helped to lead an armed uprising in
Moscow; and it was they who in 1914, shortly before the outbreak
of the First World War, had headed the upsurge of strikes and
demonstrations which again shook the monarchy. The body politic
never fully recovered from its battering and was finally felled in the
February Revolution of 1917. Not that the Bolsheviks were alone
in working amid the urban crowds which compelled the emperor's
resignation. But what set them apart from most other socialist
groups in the country was their subsequent refusal to give support
to the newly established Provisional Government, dominated as it
2 THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN REVOLUTION
was by liberal politicians. In April the Bolshevik party proclaimed
its commitment to bringing about a further revolution, a socialist
revolution which might spark off a conflagration which would
consume the capitalist system all over the globe. The tide of
economic ruin, social dislocation and political discontent surged
onward. The factory labour force wanted better conditions of life
and work, the peasantry desired the possession of all agricultural
land, and the soldier conscripts yearned for the day of demobili
sation. Throughout the country these groups created a network of
elective institutions, known as 'soviets' or councils, to represent and
defend their sectional interests. In October 1917 the Bolsheviks,
having at last gained a majority in them, ousted the Provisional
Government by force and set up their own administration.
The steep trajectory of this rise to power contrasts sharply with
the deep undulations of the party's political fortunes in its early
years in government. The revolutions in Europe, in which so much
hope had been reposed, failed to occur. At home the same
economic and social problems that enabled the Bolsheviks to
advance their cause before the October Revolution shortly turned
out to be less tractable than they had supposed. Even industrial
workers showed signs of political disillusionment. Despite its many
achievements, the Soviet government confronted a profound crisis
in midsummer 1918. Ironically, it was the invasion of central
Russia at that moment by counter-revolutionary armies which
facilitated its survival. Workers volunteered to join the nascent
Red Army; labour discipline was reimposed in the factories;
political order was introduced in town and countryside. The Civil
War, which lasted until 1920, was a hard-fought affair and left
society exhausted and bled white. And yet the Bolshevik leaders,
still desirous of an expansion of the revolution westwards, felt
confident enough to hurl the victorious regiments of the Red Army
into Poland. The domestic troubles of 1918, which had been post
poned by the Civil War, re-emerged. Industrial strikes, rural revolts
and a naval mutiny convulsed the government. Nothing short of
concessions to private enterprise could stave off prolonged turmoil.
In 1921 it was decided to introduce a New Economic Policy.
Numerous small factories were denationalised and the peasantry
was again permitted to trade its grain on the open market. The
government, in its quest for capital investment, tried to persuade
foreign firms to take out leases in enterprises in the Soviet republic.
By 1923 most hopes of a rapid advance to a fully socialist society
INTRODUCTION 3
had reluctantly been laid aside. Such was the transfonnation of
Bolshevik policies since the October Revolution.
No less remarkable were the changes which had occurred in party
life. In 1917 the Bolsheviks had still been coping with the initial
problems of creating a mass political party. To their ranks they
were admitting, with scarcely any 'vetting' arrangements, thou
sands upon thousands of new members-mostly persons who were
working-class by occupation, skilled or unskilled. Territorially the
Bolsheviks continued to be based predominantly in towns and
industrial settlements (though their strength also increased in the
garrisons and on the war fronts in the same year). The process of
organisational separation from other Marxist groupings was
somewhat sluggish: as late as midsummer it was reported that
'joint committees' were a widespread phenomenon. Nor was there
a well-established system of subordination and discipline along the
hierarchical chain of executive bodies stretching from the Central
Committee at the apex to the primary 'cells' at the base. Tension
and conflict were the rule, not the exception. If anything,
committees tended to be called to account from below rather than
from above. Rank-and-file members and lower activists could not
only make their views known at the general open meetings but also
re-elect their representatives at frequent intervals. The committees
themselves managed, by and large, to supervise and control their
own officials. Most decisions of importance were preceded by a
discussion of some kind; few leaders succeeded in acting in
opposition to the viewpoint of their committee colleagues over a
lengthy period.
An internal metamorphosis had happened by 1923. Certainly
the Bolsheviks remained a mass political party; but nearly all the
other salient features of party life in earlier days had become
greatly altered or removed altogether. 'Vetting' arrangements
now accompanied the efforts to recruit new members and, to an
increasing extent, were being applied to persons who already
belonged to the party. Only a minority of Bolsheviks were
currently employed in jobs involving manual labour. The network
of Bolshevik groups had come to include most small townships and
a growing number of rural areas. Subordination to higher
authority was the paramount characteristic of the party's organisa
tional condition. Disciplinary sanctions were vigorously invoked as
a matter of daily habit, almost as a reflex action in cases of
disobedience. It was still claimed that committees were elected