John Medhurst - No Less Than Mystic - A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

Faced with the complete reversal of the Bolsheviks’ main justification for the October Revolution, Kautsky bluntly responded that they now governed “by virtue of the superiority of a centralised organisation over the unorganised popular masses and by virtue of the superiority of its armed forces”. This had come about because the Bolsheviks had replaced the Constituent Assembly, a representative body elected on an equal, direct and secret universal suffrage with an assembly–the Soviet Congress and local Soviets–based on “unequal, indirect, public, and limited suffrage, elected by privileged categories of workers, soldiers and peasants”. Kautsky predicted that this partial democracy run by one political party would inevitably mutate into a despotism, and would concentrate power so much that the revolution “necessarily leads to a Cromwell or a Napoleon”. 27

Lenin could not contain his anger that a prominent European socialist, with great influence on the left in Germany and elsewhere, should criticise the Bolshevik regime in this manner. He had nothing but contempt for “this windbag” and for the “irrelevant twaddle” with which he sought to “befog and confuse the issue, for he poses it in the manner of liberals, speaks of democracy in general and not of bourgeois democracy”. Lenin considered that Kautsky substituted “eclecticism and sophistry for dialectics”, and thus no longer correctly interpreted Marxism. His own interpretation was that “the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws”. 28

There was a far more attractive variant of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat–the “Commune State”–that inspired idealistic and libertarian communists both at home and abroad, most prominently Makhno, who had actually created one in southern Ukraine. In 1918 Lenin wrote that the Soviet state would represent

a higher form of democratic state, a state which in some respects, as Engels said, ceases to be a state, is no more a state in the proper sense of the word. This is a state of the type of the Paris Commune, which replaces an army and police force set apart from the people with an armed people.

In a 1917 article, “On Dual Power”, he predicted that in the new Soviet state “the officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either replaced with the direct power of the people […] becoming not only elected deputies but ones that can be removed at the first popular demand”. 29

Although this bore no relation at all to the state introduced by the Bolshevik government post-October, it flowed from Marx’s description of the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France (1871). In this important work Marx examined the legacy of the Commune and hailed its democratic structures and policies as a benchmark for future socialist revolution. He lauded its commitment to the election of state officials whose appointments were revocable at any time by popular referenda. But he made clear that “nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of the Commune than to supersede universal suffrage by hierarchic investiture”. 30

In 1920 Kautsky replied to Lenin’s contention that democracy per se had no special status outside of social conditions and was, in Western bourgeois countries, a con trick, a fetter on working-class emancipation. Kautsky conceded that Marxists did not accept that “the mere existence of democracy was sufficient for the liberation of the working class”. Of the Leninists he wrote,

They are telling us something we have known for half a century. Except our conclusion was simply that mere democracy is insufficient, not that it was detestable . This insufficiency is clear today wherever the proletariat is not ideologically independent. 31

He condemned the replacement of the democratic freedoms won by the February Revolution with a “proletarian aristocracy”, which was simply another social elite. In Salvadori’s view Kautsky’s attitude derived not only from democratic Marxism but also from an “ethical-cultural tradition with its roots in liberal humanism”. The rejection of that tradition for a morality of class-based realpolitik had been a disaster for the Russian socialist movement–with far worse to come.

The “social extermination” of Lenin’s fantasies was unleashed in all its fury by the Russian Civil War, which flared up into full-scale military conflict in June 1918. It had been simmering for many months, during which Trotsky, the new People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, began to create the Red Army from the remnants of the shattered Imperial Army. From the moment he took charge in March 1918, Trotsky dispensed with democratic procedures. The election of officers by men was immediately abolished. “The elective basis”, he wrote, “is politically pointless and technically inexpedient and has been set aside by Decree”. 1

The death penalty for disobedient soldiers, abolished in February 1917, was restored, as was the requirement to salute officers, all distinctions of rank, and separate living quarters for officers and men. Trotsky actively sought the cooperation of trained military specialists from the old Tsarist army, and guaranteed them status and respect within the new army. As Isaac Deutscher admitted, Trotsky “seemed to be burning all that he had worshipped and worshipping all that he had burned”. 2

In the first few months of 1918 Trotsky burned it all. As well as sweeping aside soldiers’ democracy and re-instating ex-Tsarist officers (if on a short leash), he abolished all partisan detachments and Red Guards in favour of a centralised military with formal Divisions and Regiments. Left Communists complained that he was destroying the liberties the soldiers had recently won. Mensheviks warned of a new Napoleon. But Trotsky’s reasoning mirrored Lenin’s abandonment of the utopian vision of The State and Revolution. Without a disciplined and efficient army the Bolshevik Revolution would succumb to its military enemies. To ensure the exTsarist officers confined themselves solely to military affairs, Trotsky assigned political commissars to shadow all officers from company commanders to Commander-in-Chief. The commander was responsible for training, strategic decisions and tactical deployment. The commissar was responsible for the loyalty of the commander, plus the political morale of the troops. Orders had to be signed by both. When disagreements arose, Trotsky intervened.

In May 1918 the Czech Legion, a contingent of the Czech Army stranded in Russia after the disintegration of the Eastern Front, was allowed to travel via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the Pacific coast to take ship for France. On the way they received garbled instructions from Trotsky to disarm. Fearing betrayal by the Bolshevik government, the Legion ignored the instruction, took over the trains and headed back into European Russia. Their plan was to liaise with a new anti-Bolshevik rival national government called the Committee for the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) based in the Volga region to the east of Moscow. Komuch was created by Right SR Constituent Assembly deputies in June 1918. These SRs, who represented the core of the old SR party in a way that the Left SRs did not, felt that after the national elections to the Constituent Assembly, in which they had emerged as the majority party, they were now the legitimate government of Russia.

They were not alone in thinking so and they quickly attracted a People’s Army around them. With the Czech Legion’s help Komuch took the key strategic city of Samara on the Volga river and from there the entire Volga region. Simbirsk and Kazan fell to Komuch forces in July and August. On 8th August the workers of the munitions factory of Izhevsk mutinied against the local Soviet and declared for Komuch. It was a critical moment. If anti-Bolshevik forces in the south and east linked up, Sovnarcom would probably fall. Trotsky, furious that Red Army detachments in the Volga region had fled when faced with the Czech Legion, issued a clear instruction to his commanders–“If any detachment retreats without orders, the first to be shot will be the commissar, the next the commander. Cowards, scoundrels and traitors will not escape the bullet”. 3