Communism And The Russian Element

1. Socialist parties had always had trouble with hyper-radical wings. 10

2. Until the bolsheviks seized power in 1917, there was nothing Russian about the development of the communist groups except that the strongest man was a Russian with Mongol despotism

At the outbreak of the war:

• the Second International suspended itself via facti
• Lenin declared that:
  • it was dead
  • the time had come for more effective methods

It was natural for those who felt as he did to get together.

Opportunity presented itself at the 2 conventions that were held in Switzerland, at Zimmerwald (1915) and at Kienthal (1916).

The militants found it easy to rally to Lenin’s program of converting the imperialist war into an international revolution.

Lenin agreed that the international revolution was to be brought about by the individual actions of the national proletariats, and in the “advanced” countries first.

The second stage is from 1917 to 1927 from the rise of the bolsheviks to power in Russia to Trotsky’s expulsion from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (October 1927).

That decade witnessed the emergence of communist parties and of a Communist (the “Third”) International.

It also witnessed the (for the time being) definitive break with the socialist and laborite parties which, in the case of Germany, was embittered beyond remedy by the severely repressive measures adopted by the Social Democrats in power during the winter of 1918 to 1919.

It witnessed the forging of the Russian chain.

But during the whole of that decade, the chain neither galled nor distorted. It must be remembered that the bolshevik conquest of the rule over the most backward of all the great nations was nothing but a fluke. 11

To a certain extent Lenin himself recognized this. He repeated over and over again that final victory would be won only by the action of the revolutionary forces in more advanced countries and that this action was the really important thing. Of course he dictated to communists as he had done before, and he insisted on a strictly centralist organization of the Communist International—whose bureau took power to prescribe every move of the individual parties—but he did so in his role of communist leader and not in his role of Russian despot.

That made all the difference. The headquarters of the International were in Moscow, the actual leader was Russian, but policy was directed in a thoroughly internationalist spirit, without any particular reference to Russian national interests and on principles with which the communists of all countries substantially agreed. Though the personal relation between the Bureau of the International and the Political Bureau of the Soviet power 12 was then much closer than it was later on, the two were nevertheless much more nearly distinct agencies. Thus the International itself and the individual parties did not behave differently than they would have behaved in the absence of the link with Russia.

During that decade, therefore, the importance of the Russian connection, though great, did not amount to more than this.

1. A communist group would have low quality and quantity of membership. But it had backing from the Russian Empire.

2. Bolshevist reality notwithstanding—the terror, the misery, the confession of failure implied in the adoption of the New Economic Policy after the Kronstadt revolt—it was henceforth possible to point to a socialist system that “worked.”

The bolsheviks were masters in exploiting the fact that public opinion in England and the United States will swallow anything provided it is served up in the garb of familiar slogans.

This of course also redounded to the advantage of the other communist parties.

3. Communists believed in the imminence of a world revolution.

But in Germany, Austria and Italy the social structure was perilously near toppling and there-is no saying what would have happened in those countries and possibly farther west if Trotsky’s war machine had been in working order at that time and not engaged in the civil and the Polish wars. 15

The Communist International was founded in that atmosphere of impending life and death struggle. Many things which acquired a different meaning afterwards— such as the centralized management that has unlimited power over the individual parties and deprives them of all freedom of action—may then have seemed quite reasonable from that aspect.

The third stage I have dated from the expulsion of Trotsky (1927) because this is a convenient landmark in the rise of Stalin to absolute power. After that every actual decision in matters of policy seems to have been his, though he still met some opposition in the Political Bureau and elsewhere until the “trial” of Kamenew and Zinoviev (1936) or even until Yezhov’s reign of terror (1937). For our purpose this means that every decision was thenceforth the decision of a Russian statesman acting on behalf of national Russian interests as seen from the standpoint of a streamlined despotism. And this in turn, if correct, defines what his attitude to the “Comintern” (the Communist International) and to foreign communist parties must have been.

They became tools of Russian policy, taking rank within the huge arsenal of such tools and being realistically evaluated relative to others according to circumstances. Up to the present war which may revive it, the world revolution was a frozen asset. The surviving veterans as well as the neophytes of internationalist communism may have been contemptible. But they were still of some use. They could preach the glories of the Russian regime. They could serve as pins with which to prick hostile governments. They increased the bargaining power of Russia. So it was worth while to go to some trouble and expense in order to keep them in subjection, to supervise them by agents of the secret police, and to man the Comintern’s bureau with absolutely obsequious serfs who would obey in fear and trembling.

3. In all this (and in lying about it) Stalin followed the established practice of the ages. Most national governments have acted as he did and it is pure hypocrisy to profess specific indignation in his case.

The most obvious examples are afforded by the practice of governments who espoused a religious creed. As long as the respective creeds were sufficiently vital to motivate action, these governments often used foreign groups of the same creed for their purposes. But, as the history of the years from 1793 to 1815 is sufficient to prove, the practice is much more general than these examples suggest. No less standardized is the reaction— phraseological and other—by the governments which are affected by it: politicians of all types and classes are happy to seize the opportunity of calling an opponent a traitor.

But for the communist parties outside of Russia it was a serious matter to receive orders from a caput mortuum in the hands of a modernized tsar. Their abject servility raises two questions, one as to its causes and another as to its possible bearing on the future character and fate of revolutionary socialism.

The first question is perhaps less difficult to answer than it seems. All we have to do is to put ourselves in the communist’s chair and, taking account of his type, look at his situation in a practical spirit. He would not object to the Stalin regime on humanitarian considerations. He may even glory in the slaughter—some neurasthenic degenerates do, and others, the communists from failure and resentment, experience satisfaction at the sufferings of a certain class of victims. Moreover, why should he resent cruelties that do not prevent thoroughly bourgeois people from idolizing the regime? Why should he, on that ground, condemn bolshevism when the Dean of Canterbury does not? 16 Why indeed?

Again, there was hardly any reason for communists to object on the ground of Thermidorism. This phrase was first used by the opponents of the New Economic Policy but Trotsky adopted it later in order to stigmatize Stalin’s regime as “reactionary” in the sense in which the action of the men who overthrew Robespierre in 1794 was “reactionary.” But it is completely meaningless. After all, it was Stalin who collectivized agriculture, “liquidated” the Kulaks, reversed the New Economic Policy. In fact, like a good tactician, he suppressed opposition and substantially carried out the opposition’s program.

Finally, what the protecting power does at home is not of primary importance to the communist in another country as long as that power plays fair with him. And even if it does not play fair with him, what is 16 The sentiments expressed in the book by that ecclesiastic cannot be defended on the ground that the principles of the “Russian experiment” are one thing and the mode of its execution is another thing. For the really terrible point about the Stalin regime is not what it did to millions of victims but the fact that it had to do it if it wished to survive. In other words, those principles and that practice are inseparable.

he to do? The chain tightened and galled. But it also supported. The socialist parties would not have accepted him. The normal healthy- minded workman turned from him with a groan. He would have been at loose ends like Trotsky. He was in no position to do without the chain, 17 and in accepting his slavery he may have hoped—he may still hope—that junctures will arise in which he may be able to pull it his way…after the present World War perhaps…

The last point goes some way toward answering the second question. Certainly there is a possibility that Russian despotism will spread over the ruins of European civilization—or even beyond them—and that in this case the communist parties all over the world will be turned into Russian garrisons. But there are many other possibilities. And one of them is that the Russian regime will founder in the process or that in spreading over other countries it will acquire traits more congenial to the individual national soils. A special case of this kind would be that in the end the Russian element will have changed nothing in the future character of revolutionary socialism. To bank on this is no doubt risky. But it is not as foolish as it is to hope that our civilization will emerge unscathed from the present conflagration— unless of course this conflagration subsides more quickly than we have a right to expect.