It is important to stress that many members of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, including Lenin himself, had lived in the West and participated in the activities of Western social-democratic parties, while continuing to follow Russian affairs very closely. It might be said that they possessed political ‘dual nationality’ or, more precisely, that they lived in two different worlds politically. Lenin was a case in point. He was a Russian-German social-democrat and a member of the Executive Committee of the Second International. There is no reason to doubt his commitment to that side of the equation; and as with so many others, it was where he had acquired the conceptual tools he used to think about the world. However – and it was no secret to anyone – he was also moulded by Russia, which remained at the centre of his concerns. But this Russian universe was quite distinct from the West. As Lenin had discovered, notably by reading historians of Tsarist Russia, it was a multi-faceted conglomeration, whose components coexisted in the same space without moving at the same pace. Both his worlds were now entering into a long period of turmoil, beginning with the First World War and continuing in crises and revolutions. These events overtook the whole of Central and Eastern Europe – an economically underdeveloped, largely agrarian region, run or about to be run by dictatorial or deeply authoritarian regimes (with the exception of Germany and Czechoslovakia, whose democracy was actually more stable than the Weimar Republic). All these factors have to be encompassed in the matrix of the Soviet system. A further crucial point should not be forgotten: German Social-Democracy (in a sense, Lenin’s ideological alma mater) had rallied to its country’s war effort and aims, as had other socialist parties in their respective countries. The Second International, seemingly so powerful in 1914, split apart – a disaster from which European socialism never really recovered. The unprecedented slaughter and economic devastation produced by the war created expectations in many left-wing circles that it would be followed by a revolutionary crisis throughout Europe. They threw themselves into a search for prognoses and strategies that would lead to a revolutionary government in Europe. The role of Russia, and its own historical potential (as a backward country), was deemed of secondary importance.
An exchange of letters in 1915 between two Bolshevik emigres, Lenin and Bukharin, in which they argued about revolutionary prospects and strategy, offers a flavour of their high hopes and their thinking. At the time, Lenin, like Bukharin (a young, romantic revolutionary ten years his junior), was completely immersed in the prospect of a future revolution in Europe or even on a world scale. Often young, the Bolsheviks were preparing to play a decisive role in it. In all seriousness, Lenin and Bukharin discussed the possibility of resorting to a ‘revolutionary invasion’ of Germany to defend the revolution, but disagreed as to whether the backing of the German Left should be sought. Bukharin considered it indispensable: otherwise, he argued, there was a risk of nationalist unity being created in Germany and ‘our invasion’ failing. In this European revolutionary perspective, revolution in Russia seemed a secondary issue to Lenin, and Bukharin’s ‘our invasion’ referred to any revolutionary force in Europe – not some invasion from Russia. Lenin and Bukharin wondered whether the impossibility of establishing socialism in Russia (a hitherto commonly accepted idea) was still a problem. According to Bukharin, that would be the case if only some countries were affected by revolution. But if the revolution was to be pan-European, Russia would become just one part of a much broader entity; and in any case, national identities would dissolve.[1]
It emerges from this exchange that revolutionary strategy, and not just in Russia, would be imposed by… ‘Bolsheviks’ – a term that now seems to refer to European revolutionary parties, united in a new international organization, since the Second International was dead and its leaders bankrupt. What was occurring was a shift to the Left, with such ‘Bolsheviks’ taking the lead.
The thinking here is rather utopian and might seem to imply a ‘red imperialism’. But since the stage of current and future events was global, it was not about Russia (which, as everyone agreed, had no socialist potential), and certainly did not situate Russia at the centre of events and speculate about any expansionist advantages it might draw from them. Lenin’s orientation towards the revolutionary potential of Europe was to persist until the launch of the NEP in the Soviet Union. With the recession of revolutionary prospects in Europe, the feverish search for allies in some crisis-torn country, which was motivated not by the strength but by the extreme vulnerability of the new Russian regime, was abandoned. A very different Leninism then took the place of its predecessor.
1917: THE MAIN CAMPS
With all this in mind, we may jump forward to 1917 – a year that experienced a glorious spring, but a very harsh autumn. The brevity and intensity of these two seasons, and the contrasts between them, are striking, though there were of course more than two chapters in this highly compressed slice of history.
The exhilarating revolution that broke out in Russia in February-March 1917 was full of unusual features. Tsarist autocracy was not actually overthrown by anyone: it faded from the scene in the middle of a war, without any obvious alternative to take its place. The Duma, which enjoyed zero prestige, was incapable of taking over. It simply produced a provisional government and then retired from the public political stage. The government was not accountable to it and did not last. Thereafter, a new government was formed every two months. Since we are only concerned here with the bare essentials, we must underline the appearance – and then the disappearance – of three main players. First, there were the soviets, whose leaders – Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks – became (with or without the liberals) the central figures in successive provisional governments from May 1917 onwards. Next came the Bolsheviks, who initially played a merely subsidiary role in the soviets, but whose strength grew rapidly. Finally the future ‘Whites’, almost entirely absent at the outset, began to assemble their forces and soon became the third central protagonist. As for the liberals, they had their own agenda and switched allies accordingly.
The soviets – a unique phenomenon that had first emerged in 1905 – were in fact the only structure resembling something like state power. However, their leaders did not push them to assume power because, according to their analysis and ideology, the future regime was to be a liberal one. The two socialist parties gained a place in government thanks to the soviets, but were almost embarrassed by the fact. For example, the Mensheviks – most of them orthodox Marxists – based their whole strategy on the impossibility of socialism in Russia. For them, the only route ahead was capitalism and democracy; hence the sole indispensable ally was the propertied classes (the middle classes in current terminology). As Ziva Galili has shown, the Mensheviks were divided into various currents. Once in government, some of them revised their pre-revolutionary positions. Others worked in the soviets or stuck with their earlier views. There was also a minority led by Martov – the ‘internationalists’ – that preferred a purely socialist government supported by the soviets. It was opposed to socialist participation in the Provisional Government, which it considered too heavy a price to pay.[2]
2
Z. Galili, ‘Mensheviki i vopros O koalitsionnom pravitel’stve: pozitsiia “revoliutsionnykh oborontsev” i ee politicheskie posledstvia’,