The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State First Phase · 1917–1922

417 Pages·1977·21.251 MB·English

by  Leonard Schapiro (auth.)

Published by Macmillan in association with the
London School of Economics and Political Science
THE NATIONALISATION OF BRITISH TRANSPORT
Michael R. Bonav ia
LIVES, LIBERTIES AND THE PUBLIC GOOD
George Feaver and Frederick Rosen (editors)
PEASANTS AND GOVERNMENT IN THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
Graeme J. Gill
THE ARMY AND THE CROWD IN MID-GEORGIAN
ENGLAND
Tony Hayter
PARLIAMENT, PARTY AND THE ART OF POLITICS IN
BRITAIN, 1855-59
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OIL AND EMPIRE: BRITISH POLICY AND
MESOPOTAMIAN OIL, 1900-1920
Marian Kent
ECONOMIC CRIME IN EUROPE
L. H. Leigh
MEN AND CITIZENS IN THE THEORY OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Andrew Linklater
NESTOR MAKHNO IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR
Michael Malet
THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
C. A. W. Manning
GRAHAM WALLAS AND THE GREAT SOCIETY
OPINION CONTROL IN THE DEMOCRACIES
Terence H. Qualter
THORSTEIN VEBLEN AND THE INSTITUTIONALISTS
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THE DIPLOMACY OF BIOLOGICAL DISARMAMENT
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ARISTOTLE ON EQUALITY AND JUSTICE
HOBBES AND LOCKE
W. von Leyden
Also by Leonard Schapiro
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
THE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF THE SOVIET
UNION
RATIONALISM AND NATIONALISM IN RUSSIAN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLITICAL THOUGHT
* TOTA LIT ARIANISM
* POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN ONE-PARTY STATES
(editor)
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF IVA N TURGENEV
* THE SOVIET WORKER (editor with Joseph Godson)
THE ORIGIN OF
THE
COMMUNIST AUTOCRACY
POLITICAL OPPOSITION
IN THE SOVIET STATE
FIRST PHASE • 1917-1922
LEONARD SCHAPIRO
Remola itaque justitia quid sunt regna nisi
magna latrocinia?
Saint Aúgustine
Second Edition
M
in association with
MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan
PRESS
TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
©Leonard Schapiro 1955, 1977
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First edition (published by G. Bell and Sons Ltd
and the London School of Economics
and Political Science) 1955
Reprinted 1956, 1966
Second Edition 1977
Reprinted 1987
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Schapiro, Leonard
The origin of the Communist autocracy:
political opposition in the Soviet state:
first phase 1917-1922.-2nd ed.
I. Soviet Union-Politics and
government-1917 -1936
I. Title
322.4'2'0947 DK265
ISBN 978-0-333-44140-4 ISBN 978-1-349-09509-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09509-4
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
This is the story of how a group of determined men seized
power for themselves in Russia in 191 7, and kept others from
sharing it; and of the consequences which ensued both for
themselves and for their political rivals when it became evident
that they enjoyed but little popular support. These arc the
bare bones. The flesh and blood of the story are to be found
in the passions which animated the actors in the drama.
For all of those who figure in my narrative were revolutionaries.
I have scarcely touched on the opponents of the Bolsheviks
in the battlefield whose aim was to restore the overthrown
monarchical regime, but have confined myself to political oppo
sition during the active years of Lenin's life after the revolution.
The Bolsheviks believed passionately, though I think erron
eously, that they were carrying into effect a revolution of the
kind which had been written of by Marx. The Mensheviks,
marxists of a different kind, believed the Bolsheviks' reading
of the sacred books to be wrong, and their action accordingly
premature. The Socialist Revolutionaries, not being marxists
at all, were inspired by doctrines derived from an entirely
different tradition. Among the Bolsheviks, different groups
at different times challenged the particular lines along which
Lenin strove to guide the policy of the party. But, I repeat,
all were revolutionaries. Hence, the struggle between the
various groups and individuals never took the form of a
straightforward struggle by force of arms in which the stronger,
or more popular, or more skilful, or more righteous side won.
That is what makes the story one of particular human interest,
and also gives it its true quality of tragedy.
It is strange that the story of political opposition to Lenin
has never before, so far as I am aware, been told in detail
or as a whole-there are several good short accounts of aspects
of it, incidental to more general histories of the Russian revolu
tion and civil war. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that we
have all been inclined to accept the bolshevik revolution as a
marxist revolution in character and pattern. Hence, those who
accept marxist doctrine as true tend to dismiss the elimination
v
vi THE ORIGIN OF THE COMMUNIST AUTOCRACY
of the Bolsheviks' political opponents as an inevitable step
in the victory of the party of the proletariat, and not therefore
of outstanding interest. But even those who reject marxism,
or keep an open mind about its dogmas, have tended, I believe,
to accept, however much they may disapprove, the elimination
of all political opponents as an inevitable consequence of
trying to put marxism into practice-and therefore once again
as not of particular interest. I think there are at least two
very good reasons for trying to examine the story of political
opposition to the Bolsheviks as far as possible outside the frame
work of marxist categories and terminology. First, because
the difference of doctrine between Lenin in practice and Marx
in theory is at any rate sufficient to raise serious doubt whether
the political doctrines of the two men were really one and the
same. For example, Marx does not say, so far as I am aware,
that one revolutionary party should eliminate and destroy
all other workers' and peasants' parties and establish itself
in sole power. Again (as Mr. John Plamenatz has recently
pointed out) to make a 'proletarian' revolution first and then
to set about creating an industrial society afterwards, makes
nonsense of historical materialism. Secondly, whether it was
marxist or not, there seems no doubt to me that Lenin's
doctrine of action also had deep roots in Russian revolutionary
tradition and Russian history. Of course, Lenin believed him
self to be a marxist. No doubt he believed, and certainly
was able to persuade his own followers, that the developments
of his policy, with all the empirical changes and inconsistencies,
were all fully justified by the principles enunciated in this
or that work of Marx or Engels. But I have been repeatedly
struck with the peculiarly Russian character not only of
Lenin's doctrines, or policies, but often also of his opponents'
reactions to them. There is nothing surprising or novel about
this. It is only one further demonstration of the chimaera
of economic determinism in its extreme form, which supposes
that all men will everywhere react in the same way at a given
stage of economic development. But it seemed to me a very
good reason to try to see the political events of the early
years of communist rule in Russia untrammelled by any kind
of marxist assumptions or idiom.
I have indeed often been impressed by the dissonance which
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION vii
the usc of marxist categories sets up when applied to Russian
conditions, in accounts of the Russian Revolution. In what
sense, for example, were the Mensheviks a 'bourgeois' party,
as, of course, they are by definition in Leninist jargon? They
drew their support mainly from trade unionists, and not very
prosperous trade unionists at that. There was nothing more
'bourgeois' about their supporters than there was about their
leaders, who were of the purest 'intelligentsia'- that peculiar
Russian social phenomenon, which transcended all class
divisions, and provided the leadership for all but the most
right-wing political parties:- liberal, radical, socialist, or
communist. Again 'kulak' is quite intelligible as a term of
abuse, to be applied to any peasant, rich or poor, who does
not like communism. It is however somewhat misleading to
identify the peasant supporters of the Socialist Revolutionaries
with the 'kulaks'. Of course, these peasants disliked the
communist regime. But to identify their political outlook with
the class background implied in the term 'kulak' (and even
non-marxist writers occasionally sin in this respect) is to fly
in the face of facts. For even the 'medium' peasants, who
supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, at most owned a few
acres and one horse (if they were lucky); and the Socialist
Revolutionaries were generally as much, if not more, hostile
than the Bolsheviks to the few really rich exploiter peasants
the 'kulaks' in the true sense of this term.
I have therefore attempted to study the history of the Bol
sheviks and their opponents without the distorting marxist
framework-in short, to look at the principal characters con
cerned as human beings, and not as exponents of this or that
theory, or as-representatives of this or that class interest. I
have tried, without, I hope, ignoring economic and social
factors not to let them obliterate what is after all the key to
any historical situation-the men who thought or acted in
this way or that. Lenin's policy of eliminating his political
opponents naturally involved a good deal of cruelty and in
justice. This I have thought it right to assess and describe.
Again, if a political party which does not enjoy the support
of the majority of the population wishes to keep in power,
it is forced to take certain liberties with its own doctrines,
and to enforce the strictest discipline on its members. I have
viii THE ORIGIN OF THE COMMUNIST AUTOCRACY
tried to assess the impact of these developments on the ranks
of the Bolsheviks. Finally, no minority can keep power by
force alone, without the aid of other factors. One such factor
which I have tried to assess was the effect of the hesitation,
doubts, and scruples of Lenin's opponents.
I hope I shall not be reproached for not writing a history
of the Russian Revolution. For this I have not attempted
to do. I have tried to cover some new ground, and have
therefore had to resist the temptation of going outside my
own selected subject more than was barely necessary to make
my material intelligible. Economic and social history of the
period, foreign policy, nationality problems, or the develop
ment of institutions are only touched on to the extent necessary,
as it seemed to me, to illuminate the main conflicts with
which I am concerned. Those who are primarily interested
in these aspects of the history of the U.S.S.R. must look
elsewhere, in the several excellent works which have been
devoted to them. My own Cinderella has not hitherto
occupied the stage by herself. She is entitled for once not
to be crowded out by the other more familiar performers.
The difficulty which besets the writing of any contemporary
history is that it is not easy at so short a distance of time to
see facts uncoloured by the living political issues which affect
our daily lives. The position of the historian becomes even
harder when he has to deal with a revolution which has had
a deep, emotional impact on his own generation. No one
of my generation will readily forget that impact in our uni
versities, and in public, literary, and political life, nor the
hopes which were raised among so many by what appeared
to them at first to be a new and more just form of society.
This was a good, even a noble, reaction. So, I think, was
the no less emotional reaction against some of the tyrannies
and cruelties of the Soviet regime on the part of those who
did not believe in the new society with quite so naive a faith.
But all this was very bad for historical truth. It is not the
deliberate pro- or anti-communist distortions which matter
they can usually be spotted and discounted by anyone at all
familiar with the subject. More serious arc the unconscious
effects which the emotional impact of Russian communism has
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ix
had on quite a number of historians. I think four schools of
writers on Soviet history (outside the Soviet Union, of course)
can be distinguished. There is first the 'no alternative' school.
This school accepts as a fact that, however regrettable it may
have been, there was no possible alternative to Lenin and the
Bolsheviks-cxcept, perhaps chaos. (There was chaos enough
under Lenin, in all truth!) This view is coloured by the
realization that for centuries the Russians had lived under an
autocracy and had had no experience of free government. It
may, for all I know, be quite a correct view-my quarrel with
it is that it is an unverifiable assumption which has tended more
than any other to distort the proper study of opposition to
Lenin. For what, after all, upon such an assumption, did
opposition matter, except possibly as a symptom of weariness,
or of the natural disillusionment of all revolutionaries after the
revolution has been accomplished? I have tried to make no
such assumption. There are very good reasons why the Bol
sheviks succeeded, and I have tried to analyse them. But I do
not think that either historical necessity, or some fatality which
predestines Russians to live forever under totalitarian rule, need
be invoked.
Another school of historians of Soviet Russia is what might
be called the 'things were different under Lenin' school.
Their view has been widely encouraged by the vast literature
by and around Trotsky. The facts do not, I think, bear it out
very far. But my conclusions must speak for themselves.
The third school, which owes much to the influence of marxism,
tends to portray Soviet society as having issued, like Minerva,
fully armed from Lenin's forehead, with no earlier pedigree.
This is a view much encouraged by Soviet writers, of course,
but it has not been without influence on some non-Russian
historians. I have tried to remain true to my determination
not to be circumscribed by marxist categories. I have there
fore tried to sec the two Russian revolutions as phases in
Russian history, not as a new epoch built entirely afresh on
the ruins of the old.
Finally there is the school which sees Soviet society from
its inception purely in terms of power-seizing power, and
keeping it. It is quite a useful corrective to the other schools,
but it is nonetheless wrong. I should guess that there probably