Lenin and the Russian workers' Revolution THE RISE OF BUREAUCRACY

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After Lenin's death the Stalinists made an icon of him and the working class on Continued next week Street market in the carly 20s.. the NIP fostered a new merchant class Stalin continue Lenin's work? Con tinuing their O'Mahony and Andrew Hornung argue that fact Stalin negated al that Lenin fought for HE VICTORY in Russia in 117 had been very easy most bloodless. The diffi ulties began afterwards.

Civil war erupted. From 918, to the internal enelies in arms against the evolution were added the rmies of intervention sent y no less than 14 states to xtinguish the proletarian evolution in Russia. The Soviet state was forcd to defend itself and to uild up from scratch a ew, Red, Army. This was ccomplished under the ›adership of Trotsky, 'ommissar for War, and ne workers' state fought a ing war in which civil war ras inextricably linked with ar against intervention.

In July 1918, the Left ocial Revolutionaries, easant-based party which ad initially formed a coalion government with the lolsheviks, organised ebellion. An SR militant, ora Kaplan, shot Lenin ailing to kill him but injur. 1g him very seriously:

In response the Bolsheiks launched a Red Terror. • special organisation, the Cheka', a revolutionary olice, was set up to fight ounter-revolution. No nercy was shown to the nemies of the workers' tate.

The Bolsheviks, who had regun by abolishing the leath penalty, now did not lesitate at summary execution counter-revolutionaries. Steeped in the history of revolutionary truggles, they understood hat the proletarian revoluion, in those conditions, hough it - ned a building , society where violence aginst people would be unthinkable, a socialist socety, needed arms and ruthlessness prevent a ounter - revolutionary iloodbath.

Writers on Stalinism tolay, as for example Solzh'nitsyn, confuse the ruthessness of the revolutionıry working class with the ater counter-revolutionary jutchery of Stalinism. Thus n 'The Gulag Archipelago' he list of crimes begins in 918 and runs all through he Stalinist period. In eality there is no ontinuity.

Whatever mistakes may lave been made, the Red 'error of the revolutioniry years was the violence of workers and peasants n revolt against capitalsm, directed against he bourgeoisie and their agents and presumed agents. The Stalinist terror was the violence of an uncontrolled and self-serving bureaucratic caste, in detence of its own privileged position, against the working population in general and genuine Communists in particular.

There is as much difference between the two as between the violence of a slave against his or her master, and the violence of the master against the slave.

In March 1919, the work bore fruit which the Bolsheviks had begun when the Second International collapsed. A new, Communist, International was founded in Moscow.

Russia, the burning heart of the world proletarian revolution, the object of hate and fear on the part of the world's bourgeoisie, combined its attempt to break out of encirclement with the attempt to establish a world party of the proletariat on firm political foundations.

In the fire of the revolutionary upsurge then flaring in Europe, the new International attempted to build revolutionary parties out of the debris or hulks of the old Second International Parties, and, more importanily, out of thelewly revolutionised proletarlan masses.

At the first Congress of the Communist International no major party was represented except the Russian. The real founding congress was the Second, in 1920.

The organisation had gained mass support in Italy, France and Germany. It was becoming clear that there would have to be a long struggle and not, as sometimes appeared in 1919, a quick victory throughout Europe.

The International turned its attention to the task of remoulding and rebuilding the European labour movement on revolutionary organisational and political foundations. All the great issues of communist politics were discussed at the Second, Third and Fourth Congresses (those held before Lenin's death).

The national and colonial question, the revolutionary party, the question of the united front of workers' organisations, trade unionism and revolutionary politics, and the question of women... Far from Moscow issuing orders, as it was to do later, the future and conduct of the Soviet state itself was seen as a subject for discussion and deliberation by the world communist movement.

The struggle for Bolshevism had meant an irreconcilable battle against all those tendencies weakening the proletariat as a revolutionary force. The new world party of the proletariat was to be built in the same way - founded on a Marxism now enriched with the fundamental experiences of the struggle against Bernsteinian revisionism, social chauvinism, and the Kautsky centre, and enriched also with the experience of the victorious workers' revolution in Russia.

From the Second World Congress in 1920, an increasing part of the basis of the Comintern was the analysis of the experience of the defeats suffered by the revolution in Europe.

The complex interaction between revolutionary victory in Russia, whose precondition was the existence of Lenin's party, and the defeat of the European revolution, because of the absence of such parties, now manifested itself within the victorious revolution.

During the years of civil war and intervention, the Russian economy had beem devastated. The working class, always a small part of the population, had been virtually uprooted from its social role and transformed into the personnel of the new state and the new army, or dispersed to the villages to try to avoid starvation. The soviets were reduced to shells during the civil war and the Red Terror.

A system known as War Communism had been in operation. Essentially this had been a system of direct state seizure and distribution of goods.

The peasaniry wers ai-ing to alon ide cirec: susie ace- •TZ? =7 ę a cc¿ 100-200* 820 = Ts5 : • lanciorcs ettér 072their heads. But the ena of the Civil War inevitably led to intensified frictions and tensions, and to peasant rebellions.

The peasants' ambivalence towards the revolution which gave them the land, but also appropriated their produce, was well expressed in the widespread peasant support for the 'Bolshevik' Trotsky, military leader against the landlords' armies, and hatred of the 'dirty Jew' Lenin, leader ot the 'Communists' who sent out the expropriation squads from the towns.

Market

In 1921 the Bolsheviks reacted to this, and to the prospect of a period in which the Russian workers' state would be an isolated revolutiunary by introducing the New Oco nomic Policy'.

This was essentially a policy of limited restoration of free market relations inder the strict regulatio and control of the workers state. But this in turn led, by the middle '20s, to a large scale degeneration of the state itselt, raising it to a degree of independence in which it balanced between the newly licensed merchants and traders and rich peasants on one hand, the other.

The harmful effects os the Bolshevik party of bese developments, rooted as they were in the extremel backward conditions Russia, made worse bI civil war, were already vis ible by the early 20s. They took the form of growing bureaucratism within the Bolshevik part! the transformation of increasingly dominars section, which had a power base in the state apparats. into a stifling bureaucrac! J. V.Stalin. a second-rani leader of the rerottsios. and from 1922 bolder of Ita newiT-стедє posttos genere secrecam of tox pare Di-sce-et EC I I0 SATEA : STE S00E S07 ÷ S $:7E SEE =751 080 =CIDE IT -ICET dezorane- I3SZ $ isolation. It grounded isself in material privileges, and the preservation and extension of those privileges quickly became its first rule of existence.

Its domination was made easier because at the 10th Party congress in March 1921 party democracy had been severely curtailed and organised factions banned. Simultaneously all parties were banned, even those like the Martov Mensheviks who now accepted the revolution and were Soviet opposition.

Intended as a temporary measure to aid the party through the dangerous period of transition to the New Economic Policy, it became permanent and ultimately shaded off into the Stalinist ice age in which nobody but 'Great Leader' himself dared utter an independent word.

opposition to the bureaucracy there crystallised out of the old Bolshevik party a determinedly revolutionary section, dedicated to maintaining the revolutionary perspectives of the party and fighting for restoration of party democracy and later of soviet democracy.

Lenin was one of the first in the field against the bureaucracy.

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Organiser no.112 December Jeff Evans repo