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Marxism and Russia
A. Russia Against Europe in the 19th Century
The objective of one of the first battles waged by Marxist socialists in regard to the «role» of Russia in European politics was to refute the fallacious position according to which the deductions of historical materialism could not be applied to Russia. ... Our school never doubted that in Russia the same key would open that door which had seemed to be closed forever in the face of bourgeois society with the rout of Napoleons bayonets, an event which retarded historical development for a century.
For Russia just as for the other European countries, Marxism expected and urged the great Russian bourgeois revolution which would follow the path of the English and French revolutions, just as the one in 1848 which inflamed and shook all of Central Europe. Marx ardently expected, awaited and advocated the upheaval of the feudal mode of production in Russia, all the more so because in his eyes the land of the Tsar played the role of the bulwark of anti-liberal and anti-capitalist reaction in Europe. In the period of wars aiming at the constitution of bourgeois national states in Europe, a period which ended in 1871, each war was appraised by Marxism according to its ability to bring about a defeat and disaster to St. ...
In the historical doctrine of Marxism, the period in which socialists supported wars for the constitution of modern states, struggles for national liberation, and liberal revolutions closes for Europe in 1871. On the horizon stood the obstacle of Russia which as long as it remained would always bar the route of the proletarian insurrection against «the confederated national armies», sending its Cossacks to defend not only Holy Empires, but the capitalist parliamentary democracies as well, whose cycle of development in the West had been completed.
Marxism concerned itself with the social questions of Russia very early, studying its economic structure and the development of class contradictions. ... Immediately, therefore, a question is posed: was it possible to shorten the historical development in Russia, which had not yet reached the level attained by Europe at the beginning of the 19th Century and in 1848? ... Was it possible for Russia to leap over the capitalist mode of production? ... But in his first answer (1877), pointing to the bourgeois agrarian reform of 1861 and the abolition of serfdom (a reform which Bakunin, harshly criticised by Marx and Engels, had praised but which instead signified the final dissolution of the primitive communism of the Russian village) Marx said that this possibility was already in the course of being lost: «If Russia continues to walk along the path it has followed since 1861, it will lose the best chance history has ever offered a people and will suffer all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime [. ... And that, effectively, was all - with the failure and betrayal of the proletarian revolution in Europe, present-day Russia has fallen into capitalist barbarism. ...
Along with capitalist industry which in Russia was born from direct state investments rather than from a primitive accumulation, there appeared the urban proletariat and the Marxist working-class party. ... Its theoretical positions, represented in the first period by Plekhanov and then by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, are in full accord with European and international Marxism, most importantly on the agrarian question which is of prime importance in Russia. ... In Russia, the feudal mode presented the particularity of not being centrifugal, as had been the case in Europe and in particular in Germany. The central state power and the national army itself had been centralised in Russia for several centuries, which, up to the 19th Century, was a historically progressive condition. This centralisation had been established not only on the political level – as concerns the origin of the army, the monarchy and the state, whose forms were imported from outside Russia – but also on the level of the social structure. ... From this fact comes the Marxist definition of Russia as state feudalism, a state feudalism which so well withstood the attacks of the French democratic army that Marx for years went as far as to call upon the intervention of European, Turkish and German armies to destroy it.
In short, the passage from state feudalism to state capitalism in Russia proved to be shorter than the European passage from molecular feudalism to centralised capitalist states and from the first autonomous capitalism to a concentrated and imperialist capitalism. ... ] [content] [next]
These age-old forms explain why a bourgeois class comparable in strength to the Western bourgeoisies never formed in Russia. Consequently the grafting of the proletarian revolution onto the bourgeois revolution as Marxists expected seemed to be even more difficult in Russia than in Germany. ... In Russia, where the bourgeois class was politically absent, as was the small nobility, and where a rebellious clergy was lacking, could the task of the bourgeoisie be fulfilled instead by the peasantry? ... In the course of a century of polemics and class wars, Marxism never ceased to take exception to the monstrous perspective of a «peasant socialism». Our adversaries pretended that in Russia such a socialism would rise out of a movement of small peasants for a utopian egalitarian division of the land; the impotence of the bourgeoisie and the factor of a young proletariat would, according to them, allow the poor peasantry to take state control instead of the urban classes. ...
This subject is developed in our text Russia and Revolution in the Marxist Theory (4). ... In the Russia of today, only that part of agriculture organised into sovkhoses, which is the smallest part, is at this stage; the rest is still more backward. ... The adjective «democratic» and the noun «peasantry» are explained by the following words of Lenin: «Such a victory will not yet by any means transform our bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution»; «the social and economic reforms that have become a necessity for Russia do not in themselves imply the undermining of capitalism [. ...
As we have shown at the end of Russia and Revolution in the Marxist Theory (7), Lenins program was the seizure of power and dictatorship by the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution, against the bourgeoisie itself and with the support of the peasants alone. He supported this with two arguments: first of all the necessity of realising the proletarian revolution in Europe, a condition without which socialism could not be victorious in Russia; and secondly the necessity of avoiding a Tsarist restoration which would mean the restoration of the White Guard of Europe. ...
Russia was then allied with the democratic powers of France, England and Italy. ...
In our work on The Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today (8), particularly in the first part, we made use of the documents of the period in order to demonstrate the historical facts which led to the second revolution, that of October, the 4Oeth anniversary of which is being celebrated today. ... Later on in Russia power was firmly defended and preserved; but already it was no longer possible to settle the economic and social question in Russia according to the perspective of all Marxists, that is to say by the dictatorship of the international communist party over the productive forces which, in Europe, remained over-abundant even after the war. ... That did not prevent him from always insisting that in Russia power must be seized and held under a dictatorial form by the party of the proletariat supported by the peasants. ... But in the absence of a military victory of the counter-revolution two possibilities, not one, remained open: either the apparatus of power (the state and the party) would degenerate from within and adapt itself to the administration of capitalist forms while openly renouncing its wait and expectation of the world revolution (this is what actually happened); or the Marxist
party would maintain itself in power for a long period, devoting itself expressly to supporting the revolutionary proletarian struggle in all foreign countries and declaring with the same courage as Lenin that the social forms remained largely capitalist (and even pre-capitalist) in Russia. ...
Lenin had shown that the European and World War would have an imperialist character «for Russia included» and that the proletarian party must consequently openly practice defeatism, as it had done in the Russo-Japanese War which provoked the outbreak of the struggles of 1905. ... The development of the capitalist and industrial economy in Russia was insufficient to furnish a base for socialism, but it was sufficient to give an imperialist character to the war. ...
The importance of the three above points resides in the fact that precisely in Russia an exception in regard to the developed bourgeois countries could perhaps be accounted for by reason of a particular historical condition – the survival of medieval despotism. ... It is they who in excusing the ways which Russia was «obliged» to take because of pretendedly particular circumstances and local conditions, reveal the disgusting shame that is aroused in them by these great names which they make a big show of praising. ...
For Lenin, the revolution in the West was the oxygen that was indispensable for socialism in Russia. ... Germany was to have given the doctrine, the same doctrine which Leon Trotsky referred to in taking up for Russia the classic expression of the revolution in permanence. ...
In Lenins perspective (and with all of us following him) revolutionary Russia – industrially as backwards as Germany in 1848 – was in 1917 to hold up the flame of political victory and delight in all its splendour that doctrine which had grown in strength in Europe and the world. ... In this short outline of the results of our work we must now consider the other possible outcome, that of Russia remaining all alone with its brilliant political victory in hand. ... Trotsky was answered that for an isolated Russia Lenin had spoken of twenty years. We have shown that in reality Lenin spoke of twenty years «of good relations with the peasants», after which, even if Russia had not yet become socialist economically, the class struggle would break out between the workers and peasants in order to break up rural micro-production and agrarian private micro-capital, the true gangrene of the revolution. ...
In order to avoid a new proletarian defeat, it is indispensable that the theoretical restoration of Marxism must not wait until the third world conflict has already rallied the workers behind all their cursed flags (which was the situation that confronted Lenin and necessitated his tremendous effort after 1914). ... We can see this in the flocks who explain Russia by means of palace revolutions, the work of great men or traitors, demagogues or other swashbucklers. ...
Looking at Russia confirms that Stalin and his successors have industrialised that country in a revolutionary way at the same time that they have mutilated the world proletariat in a counter-revolutionary way; and Russia will be a reserve of productive forces for the future revolution, and only later a reserve of revolutionary armies. ... «Russia e rivoluzione nella teoria marxista», Il Programma Comunista, nos. ... «Struttura economica e sociale della Russia doggi», Il Programma Comunista, nos. ... For a brief eight months in Russian history--after the fall of the Romanov czars and before Lenin ushered in 74 years of Communist rule--Kerensky was the central figure in a doomed effort to bring democracy to Russia. ... Or was there a chance that this frail old man could, in his prime, have led Russia toward a constitutional democracy? ...
Alexander Kerensky had escaped from Russia in 1918, fully anticipating a quick downfall of the Bolsheviks, followed by his own return. ... As time went on, he grew more and more frustrated at the lack of primary source documents outside of Russia that could help him add scholarly detail. ... In the fall of 1965, Kerensky published his own expanded memoirs, Russia and Historys Turning Point (Duell, Sloan and Pearce), giving inscribed copies to each of his seminar students. ... "
Who was this man who stood in the eye of the hurricane that was Russia in 1917? Kerensky was a moderate socialist whose passionate, lifelong goal was to see a Western-syle constitutional democracy in Russia. ... Russia entered the conflict at its outset in 1914, holding down a vast Eastern Front against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. ... He would argue later that Russia was, for a few months, the freest country in the world. ... They had transported Lenin like a plague bacillus into Russia. ...
After further travels incognito between Petersburg, Helsinki and Moscow, Kerensky soon determined to escape from Russia, ostensibly to meet with Allied leaders and encourage action against the Bolsheviks. ...
But what about Kerenskys contention that Russia was ready for democracy in 1917--that it could have happened but for the treachery of a Kornilov and the villainy of a Lenin compounded by Allies pushing to the right and Germans pulling to the left? ... It seems that it would have taken a miracle for Russia to have gone from a near-absolute monarchy to a functioning democracy given the circumstances. ... "Because," she gasped, "he was the president of Russia.
Approximate Word count = 11270
Approximate Pages = 45.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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