Chronology of the German/Bolshevik Collaboration in the Russian Revolution, by Dave Fryett

Chronology of the German/Bolshevik Collaboration in the Russian Revolution, by Dave Fryett

I was moved to write this timeline after watching a video which featured British Marxist, Alan Woods. It's entitled "The April Theses: Lenin rearms the Bolsheviks," and his understanding of Lenin's Theses and their context differs substantially from my own. Insupportable and tendentious though his view is, it is not unfamiliar. All too often one encounters an autonomic, slackjaw acceptance among Lenin's partisans of any pronouncement he and his party might offer. Seldom do Lenin's writings or deeds receive the critical attention they require to be properly understood, nor will his devotees entertain that Saint Vladimir could ever be disingenuous, this despite his being a head of state. Revolutionary moments have been pitiably short, precarious and few, the Left--all of it--must excavate these complex events coolly and objectively. There is an unseemly, fawning credulity which has enveloped Lenin's legacy which must be overcome. The real man presents us with the most profound questions about cross-class/cross-border alliances, the structure of socialist polity, the pros and cons of Left party politics, determining the limits if any of solidarity, how to balance preservation of socialism at home against the risks and benefits of inducing revolution abroad, and many others. However, we are blocked from exploring these monumentally important issues by Alan Woods and the other members of the cult of St. Vladimir of Smolny who insist upon a false history of the Russian Revolution.

Woods states that the Theses "rearmed" the Bolsheviks, which is prattlesome and silly, but fails to mention that Lenin's new views were a wrenching reversal from those he had been assiduously promoting for decades. He also insists that the suggestion that Lenin was a German agent is profane. It was the jostling of untruth and semi-truth which struck me as it was the Germans who--not metaphorically but literally--armed the Bolsheviks. Lenin wasn't a German agent, he conspired with them to what each perceived to be their mutual advantage. The history of the Russian Revolution cannot be properly contemplated let alone understood absent a discussion of this conspiracy.   

Historiography is by its nature interpretive. Standard Left histories are influenced by theoretical predispositions as are any others. The conventional Left version of the Russian Revolution, certainly that accepted by Leninists, contains in my view a number of errors of interpretation. Most conspicuous is the integral role played by Germany in bringing the Bolsheviks to power and its near complete absence from the narrative. Party-line exegeses invariably bring the curtain down on the Bolshevik/German conspiracy the moment Lenin and company are seated on a sealed train and sent back to Russia. It's as though the German ruling class provided safe passage, loaded him up with suitcases full of money--literally suitcases full of money!--and bade him "Bon voyage, Ilyich, bon chance mon ami." We know, have known since the 1950s, that this is not the case. The Germans and Bolsheviks acted in concert throughout 1917 and beyond. The conspiracy with Germany set the Bolsheviks on a course, perhaps determined that course, which led to acts and policies which would come to define Bolshevism and provide grist for the pro- versus anti-Bolshevik debate--a dispute which fractured the global Left at a critical juncture, and one which continues to glow. These thoughts are briefly examined in my previous blogpost. My goal here is not to produce an exhaustive timeline of the Russian Revolution, but only to introduce and/or highlight events which are often omitted, ignored, or whose significance is underestimated.

There are two facts which must be acknowledged for the Russian Revolution to be properly examined:

1) The Bolsheviki never had mass support. From their putsch in October, 1917, to the dissolution of the Bolshevik state some 70 years later, they were a minority government.

2) They entered into a conspiracy with the German Empire from which they received extensive, manifold assistance, and without which they could not have seized power.

The notion, ubiquitous in Leninist lore, of a mass popular movement sweeping their champion and his party into power is a conceit, and one which cannot survive even the most perfunctory investigation. Together, and because it served their diverse interests, the Bolsheviks and the Germans planned and executed the coup d'état which brought Lenin and cohort to power. From the February Revolution of 1917, when the conspiracy began, to the putsch in October, the conspirators acted in synchronous fashion. Whether such unnatural alliances in the end serve the interests of the social revolution or impede them is a question of no small importance, but one which I will not address here. My purpose is to demonstrate that the role of Germany in the Russian Revolution is far greater than Lenin's mythmakers ever concede, and that the consequences of that collusion influenced, perhaps profoundly, Bolshevik rule in both the short and long term. The domestic policies of the Bolshevik state were those of a government without broad support, with enemies Left and Right, and its foreign policies reflected its exigent need for allies. From before their first day in power, the Bolsheviks needed to buy loyalty at home and abroad, and the bureaucracy, the food detachments, the purges, the slave-labor camps, the Stalin v. Trotsky clash, and perhaps even the murder of Trotsky must be seen in that light. Again, my aim is not to justify or condemn any of their controversial, Left-splitting practices, but to provide context.

Leninists are understandably defensive when the relationship between the Bolsheviki and the Germans is broached, but broached it need be. Usually, Lenin's supporters are wont to dismiss the assertion that their leader was a German spy as false and vulgar, and to leave it at that. Was Lenin a faux Marxist? A German mole? A pretend revolutionary sent back to Russia by his handlers to thwart the revolution and establish a client state for the German Empire? Certainly not. An unlikely convergence of interests occurred: Lenin wanted to found a socialist state in Russia, and Germany wanted Russia out of the war so it would no longer have to fight on two fronts. They were never comrades, never had the same motives or goals, but they were in a position to help each other, and so they did. Such is real politik. Lenin entered into a Faustian bargain with the avowed enemies of socialism, and it lasted until Ebert comes to power in Germany. Thereafter, the Bolsheviks followed a "Policy of Maneuver," as Lenin dubbed it, wherein they endeavored to make themselves useful to the capitalist states and, when that failed, they tried to play one against the other in order to prevent their uniting against Russia.

The terms of the Versailles Treaty were so onerous upon Germany they led its foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, to re-normalize relations with Russia and to sign the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922. The actual degree of cooperation was not made public as Germany was in violation of the Versailles Treaty. This happy, semi-clandestine arrangement continues in earnest until Hitler puts and end to it.

If such matters are not worthy of our attention then what is? This history needs to be told and its paradoxes honestly confronted, whatever discomfort it may cause in some quarters.
 

1) The Russian revolutionary group known as the People's Will, in sequential iterations, ends up splitting into two parties, a decidedly smaller Marxist one which forms the RSDLP and a non-Marxist, socialist group which became the PSR which enjoyed widespread support among the peasantry. The main points of contention are the role of the peasants, whom Marx once called a "sack of potatoes," and the need for Russia to pass through a capitalist stage before coming to socialism. The RSDLP believed that the workers were the revolutionary class and that capitalism was a necessary precondition for socialism in Russia. The PSR saw revolutionary agency in the peasantry and the proletariat and wanted to move directly from tsarism to socialism. Among the leading figures in the RSDLP is Lenin who loudly supported his party's policies. Lenin does postulate that the peasantry has some revolutionary agency, but only in hastening the bourgeois revolution.

The RSDLP splits in two over organizational issues with a smaller faction, the Bolsheviks, forming around Lenin, and a larger group, the Mensheviks, headed by Julius Martov.


2) In 1902, Lenin publishes What is to be Done, in which he argues for a vanguardist party. Marx believed that the income gap between owners and workers would widen, political disputes would sharpen, and during the course of struggle the proletariat will develop revolutionary class consciousness and effect the social revolution. (It must be noted that in Brumaire Marx seems to retreat from this scenario suggesting instead that the workers will blunder into socialism when the only viable option available is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. That is to say without reaching revolutionary class consciousness beforehand. However, I think it fair to ignore this for the purpose of this essay as this is not the basis of Lenin's critique.) Lenin, on the other hand, asserts that the proletariat, of its own, will never reach revolutionary class consciousness but only trade union consciousness, and a vanguard is needed to lead the workers to revolution. This is the role and duty of the revolutionary workers' party.

This is revisionism of the highest order, and with no small amount of theoretical and practical consequences. Marx clearly believed in a mass movement of the largest class which would seize power and inaugurate the "rule of the vast majority in the interests of the vast majority." Marx condemned Blanqui and his belief in a militant minority making revolution on behalf of the working masses. Blanqui argued that capitalism held working people in so deep a state of physical and mental subjection that they were too ignorant and defeated to launch a revolution. Marx explicitly denounced this view. Lenin offered highly nuanced expostulations as to why his view was Marxist and not Blanquist, but a long-closed door had been re-opened. The role of the Marxist party and leader had been redefined. 

There was immediate opposition to Lenin's views, most eloquently expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, and initially he did not garner much support. However, the Left today, pitiably small and insignificant as it is, is dominated by Leninists. Hitherto, the Libertarian Left espoused the anti-party, anti-statist, mass-movement, control-from-below view (as we still do), and the Blanquist the authoritarian, centralist, minority, top-down approach. Marxism occupied the middle ground with many shades of opinion within. Lenin caused a tectonic shift which pushed Marxism and the socialist Center to the Right, and with the success of his party in seizing state power, his views became the dominant ones. 


3) The February Revolution: WW1 is going poorly for Russia and the tsar decides to take personal control of the army. Traveling back from the front the railway workers' union stops the train and will not let Nicholas return to Petrograd. He abdicates. A provisional government is formed under Prince Lvov, but soon Kerensky would become its head. The Progov, for as long as it lasts, is nominally under the control of the workers' councils, aka the soviets.


4) Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, is contacted by German intelligence. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had opposed WW1 from the beginning. The Mensheviks and the PSR supported Russian engagement in the war as they thought that it might topple the Romanovs and other royal houses in Europe (which it did). The German High Command wanted to end the war on the eastern front so that it could concentrate its forces for a do-or-die offensive in the west. Depending on whom you read, either Parvus or Fritz Platten approached the Germans suggesting they propose a deal to Lenin in which Germany would help the Bolsheviks seize power in exchange for Russia withdrawing from the war. Lenin accepts and is given a lot of money and safe passage through Germany to Russia. However, this secret was poorly kept and as he arrives at the train station to depart, the Russian exile community turns out to jeer. Lenin, Radek and company are called traitors to the revolution and charlatans.
 

5) In Sweden, Lenin meets with prominent Swedish communists. Radek disembarks here and remains in Scandinavia eventually settling in Copenhagen. There he is given a luxury apartment, a motor car, and a driver. German money will there be laundered through a condom factory (you can't make this stuff up) run by Hanecki (aka Ganetsky, aka Jakob Fuerstenberg) and find its way to the Bolsheviks. It may or may not be relevant but Radek and Hanicki had been members of the Polish communist party, SDKPiL. Poland was a part of the Russian empire and as such the SDKPiL was an unhappy part of and subordinate to the RSDLP. The Luxemburg/Lenin rift begins during this period over a split between Luxemburg and her then lover, Leo Jogiches, on one side, and the party head Josef Unschlicht, Radek, and Hanecki on the other. Lenin supported the latter. 

It became acrimonious and at one point Luxemburg accused Radek and Unschlicht of being police agents, and she claimed to have evidence. It was decided to hold a hearing which Lenin would chair, however it never came to pass as the war happened and Zimmerwald happened and the hearing got shelved. This incident is almost never discussed anymore and when it is it is regarded as Luxemburg's error. However, there does seem to be a long-standing relationship between the German Empire and Radek/Hanecki. It's nature is far from determined, but Luxemburg despised Radek, even refusing to sit at the same banquet table with him. Thus it is beyond bizarre that when the Bolsheviks come to power Lenin would send Radek--of all people--to Germany to liaise with Luxemburg and the Spartacists. Infer what you will, but the Russian and German Revolutions are connected in ways which are not yet fully understood.

Whether it was Parvus or Platten who suggested the conspiracy, Platten organized the train journey and would go with Lenin all the way to Russia.

6) Lenin publishes what are commonly called his April Theses. To quote my previous blogpost:

"Soon after jumping into bed with German capital Lenin produces his April Theses, which is the greatest reversal of opinion that perhaps the world has ever seen. Lenin's wife noted that her husband was strangely quiet and withdrawn while composing these theses, and when she finally read them she wondered 'if Ilyich had lost his mind.' For years Lenin had maintained that Russia had to undergo a capitalist stage before the workers' revolution could take place and resisted Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Now, he reverses. Forever had Lenin advocated for a vanguardist party to lead the proletariat to revolution and to rule in its aftermath...Now he not only endorses the soviets, but lobbies for the adoption of the anarchist slogan of 'all power to the soviets'...No wonder Nadezhda thought her husband had gone mad."

This must have been a bitter pill to swallow. The soviets are essentially anarcho-syndicalist organizations, a Left tendency which Lenin had spent years forcefully denouncing. They were workers' councils, whose delegates did not come from a special class of managers or viziers or party wonks, but were workers themselves drawn from their own ranks and accountable to the co-workers who deputized them. The soviets were organs of worker power and to that Lenin had counterposed a unitary, centralized, party dictatorship in series of very public debates with Plekhanov and Axelrod and Bogdanov and Martov and Luxemburg and Trotsky etc. Soviet power--real soviet power--is utterly incompatible with the rule of a political party. It must have roiled him to abandon a position which was his principal theoretical contribution to Marxism.    

Throughout the summer, the now substantially enlarged Bolshevik press pounded away on five bullet points (adapted from my previous post):


1) Withdrawal from the war, but peace without annexations or indemnities.

2) Democratization of the army, by which they meant soldiers choosing their officers. Also the right of soldiers to demand explanations, post-battle, for any order and to replace/remove officers found to be unsatisfactory.

3) Worker management of industry. Not the oversight of party officials who would run the economy and appoint managers to oversee workplaces, but actual worker control of industry.

4) Peasant seizure of all land without compensation, and for the formation of peasant land committees with full autonomy to apportion and alott.

5) (brace yourselves) The convocation of the Constituent Assembly (yes!), and for it to be the governing body once duly elected and seated.


Gone is the previous insistence on a capitalist stage of development, the centralization and nationalization of land and industry, and a the rule of a political party. These changes aligned with the wishes of the workers, peasants, and armed forces. This new populist line undifferentiated the Bolsheviks from the PSR on that issue which was most important to the peasants. Land seizures had been going on since February and the peasantry would oppose any party who did not recognize their right to hold these fields in perpetuity and to manage them as they saw fit. Critically, however, the Bolsheviks remained distinguishable from the Mensheviks and SRs in their opposition to the war and the Progov. No modern-day pollster or campaign strategist could not have crafted a better program. Lenin saw which way the puck was going, swallowed his pride, and followed it. One couldn't devise a more crowd-pleasing platform.

Pander? These revisions were insincere of course, as subsequent events would confirm. Whether Lenin came to these embarrassing reversals himself or whether they were suggested/mandated by his German benefactors is unknown, but before February the Bolsheviks were a tiny presence, the smaller faction of the smaller revolutionary party. Certainly to openly oppose soviet power would be to consign oneself to infamy. Now, with this newly minted party line and awash in German money, weapons and all the condoms they could ever hope to engorge, The Bols buy printing presses and expand rapidly, tripling in size in a matter of months. They emerge for the first time as a nationwide political party.

Chided that he was now endorsing the PSR land program he had so viciously condemned as "childish," Lenin managed to bleat that he still favored nationalization, but that one had to tailor one's program to the will of the people. This from the prophet of vanguardism who advocated a party dictatorship "unbound by law, custom, morality or public sentiment." It had to hurt at least a little.

They also expand the Red Guards.


7) In early September, the Germans take Riga, the Latvian capitol. They were now but a few hundred kilometers from Petrograd. Kerensky recalls General Kornilov from the front to defend the city. Kerensky comes to believe that Kornilov will use the opportunity to overthrow him and establish a military dictatorship. Kerensky now does the inexplicable: he calls upon the Bolsheviks--his most implacable enemies--to defend the capitol from Kornilov.

Stunning. Why on earth would he turn to the Bolsheviks! The answer is they are, thanks to their German financiers, the best armed force in the city. The Bolsheviks agree but demand that all state weapons and munitions in the city be turned over to them so they could arm their workers and prepare them to fight. Believing Kornilov to be the greater danger, Kerensky agrees. The Bolsheviks now control all arms in the city save those held by those soldiers and sailors stationed in Petrograd. With these soldiers, the Bolsheviks fraternize and train for the upcoming battle with Kornilov.

As fate [?] would have it, Kornilov was not planning a coup, and in any case his army unit was stopped by the same railwaymen who deposed the tsar, and Kornilov's soldiers gladly disarmed as, again, there was no planned coup. In the end it was a false alarm which was precipitated by the German Army's capture of Riga, and resulted in the Bolsheviks' possession of just about every weapon in the city. The Red Guard now grows into a considerable paramilitary force.


8) In early October, the Germans launch Operation Albion in which they capture a clutch of Russian-controlled islands in the northern Baltic and now menace Petrograd. The Progov announces it will retreat to Moscow. The Petrograd soviet, headed by Trotsky, a long-time friend and one-time roommate of Parvus and now a Bolshevik despite his decades-long, bitter war of words with Lenin, declares the soviet will stay and fight.

Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks, armed with its new populist rhetoric and lots of German funding, had made progress in Petrograd and now had a majority in the city soviet. It now forms the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) ostensibly to defend the city from the anticipated German attack, but Trotsky crafts the motion such that the committee's mandate included defending the revolution against internal enemies as well. It should come as no surprise that the MRC was dominated by Bolsheviks.

But, wouldntcha know it, this turns out to be yet another false alarm. It was believed by all that those islands were seized to be a staging ground for an assault on Petrograd, but it never came. Two false invasion alarms in five weeks, the fog of war...
 

9) October 25, 1917, The MRC launches a coup and overthrows the Progov claiming that it was plotting against the revolution with White forces and that Kerensky (brace yourselves) was working in cahoots with the Germans (that's false alarm number three). The only force capable of opposing the Bolshevik putsch were the soldiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the machine gun unit camped in the heavily industrialized Vyborg district home to the most revolutionary workers, and the sailors. None had any care for Kerensky, had luke-warmed to the Bolshevik populist party line and, most importantly, each armed group were solidly in the revolutionary fold. Critically, the putsch was launched by the PS--not, putatively, the Bolsheviki--and in the name of saving the revolution. The Bolsheviks, being armed to the teeth, didn't need the little help they received from soldiers and sailors. All that was required was that the armed forces not oppose them, and they didn't.

The committee began under the auspices of the PS, but the Bolsheviks had organized MRCs throughout Russia, sometimes through local soviets and sometimes independently but always under the guise of national defense. The "official" MRC, acting as an organ of the PS, was headed by Trotsky. The larger, independent, nationwide, Bolshevik MRC was led by Lenin. In the temporary absence of any state apparatus, the Bolshevik-led PS votes to appoint the Committee of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) to safeguard the revolution just until the long-awaited elections to the Constituent Assembly can be held and then they would step aside. The Sovnarkom is made up entirely of Bolsheviks with Lenin as its chair.

When Trotsky had become head of the PS, he issued a call to the All-Russian Soviet (national) to call new elections. This was the supreme soviet in the land and its Central Executive Committee was dominated by Mensheviks and SRs. They balk at taking orders from a lower soviet and drag their feet. Trotsky threatens that the PS will convene the body on "its own moral authority," thereby violating the principle of soviet power and the authority of the worker-selected delegates to conduct their own affairs. Fearing the worst or thinking they are giving the Bolsheviks enough rope (depending on whom one reads), the CEC agreed, and scheduled it for 20 October which got delayed until the 26th.

It was to open in the afternoon and when it did the delegates were informed that the PS had overthrown the Progov. The deed was done.


10) On 26 October, Lenin makes a famous public speech in which he reaffirms the party bullet points, but behind the scenes he had already ordered the shuttering of multiple soviets including the post office. On the 25th, before the Bolsheviks launched their putsch, Lenin ordered the anarchist, Menshevik, and PSR press shut down (though oddly not the Rightist press). When the Left groups learned about the coup in the morning and went to their printing offices they found them surrounded by Red Guards.

They had already taken the telegraph service, so now the Bolsheviks control all the major information channels.

Lenin stresses that their coup was undertaken to safeguard the revolution, and was only a temporary measure until the Constituent Assembly could seat.

Kerensky marshals his forces but is defeated at Gatchina. Thereafter, Lenin opposes the Constituent Assembly.


11) Elections to the CA are held under the auspices of the new government. The minutes of Bolshevik meetings reveal that Lenin wants to gerrymander the vote to the favor of his party as the tsar had done in Duma elections. Advised that this would be impossible, St. Vlady suggests that they just cancel it. The leader of the pack doesn't get his way but his desire to rig the election attests that the Bolsheviks were unpopular and they knew it--despite what their apostles have been claiming ever since. The vanguard party cannot muster a quarter of the votes with the PSR the clear winners. Embarrassed, the Bolsheviks risibly claim that the results were misleading as many of the votes cast for the PSR were intended for the Left SRs who were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks and who would later enter into an alliance with the ruling party. This despite that 1) the election was conducted by Lenin's party so if what they claimed had occurred they would be to blame, and 2) the split within the PSR had occurred before the election, and 3) where separate Left SR and Right SR ballots were issued it was the latter who garnered the lion's share of the votes. Additionally, in such a vast country, the election took weeks and it was months before all the results were in. The Bolshevik called the election before votes from the far eastern jurisdictions--where Lenin and co. had virtually no support--were tallied. The Bolsheviks got only 23pc of the vote, and that number was artificially high. Sadly for the vanguard, it was clear that at least four of five Russians did not support Bolshevik rule.

Lenin fiercely resisted cries for a coalition government of all the socialist parties, even when they came from within his party. The railway union, which had played an important role in the February revolution and the Kornilov Affair, were advocating not only for a coalition government but also that Lenin and Trotsky be banned from any office in the socialist government, so great was their distrust of the putsch leaders. They also demanded that the MRC be disbanded. This was an enormous problem for the Bolsheviki as that union was large, powerful, immensely popular due to their revolutionary heroics, and in control of the critically important national railway system. They could do to Lenin what they had done to Tsar Nicholas. The minutes of Bolshevik party meetings at the time reveal Lenin convulsively ranting against the railway union screaming "let them shriek, I will set the [Kronstadt} sailors on them." Eventually the railwaymen would be appeased by the admission of the Left SRs to the government and the elimination of the MRC. However, neither Lenin nor Berlin wanted anything but a Bolshevik dictatorship. The Left SRs were the most militant of all the revolutionary factions and not easily dissuaded from their convictions. Nor could they be bought or bullied. I believe the terms of the peace treaty between the Bolsheviki and the Germans had been discussed before the Germans lined Lenin's pockets and put him on that train. This is not the consensus view, but I find it impossible to believe that the Germans sent Lenin to Russia to secure peace without there being an agreement of what that peace might entail. Correct or not, the Bolsheviks did not launch their putsch to share power with another party, otherwise they could have joined the Progov. I believe that the Germans and the Bolsheviki knew that when the terms of the brutal Brest-Litovsk Treaty were announced that an uprising would occur, and that the Left SRs would be among the leaders of that insurgency. Now they sat alongside the Bolsheviks in government.


12) Peace negotiations with Germany begin in Brest-Litovsk. I have read many accounts of these proceedings and in each case a vignette is presented in which the Bolsheviks were stalling and the Germans growing impatient. I believe this to be in error--both were stalling. Eventually, so the story goes, the Germans finally set the terms unilaterally and issue an ultimatum. Trotsky says he hasn't the authority to agree and will have to return to Russia and get approval. He arrives on the very day the CA is to open.


13) The Bolsheviks are determined to shutter the CA. They station machine guns at strategic locations around the city. For the first but tragically not the last time the Bolsheviks open fire upon revolutionary workers and peasants. Their press claims that they fired warning shots high into the air to disperse "counterrevolutionaries" but, unfortunately, some of those bullets came down and killed a "few" of them. About forty were slain, however, the Constituent Assembly was shut down. I believe that this would have been impossible if the treaty terms had come public before the CA convened. I believe the treaty negotiations were a charade and neither side had any desire to finalize them before the CA issue had been resolved.  


14) The terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty were uniquely parasitic. Russia was to surrender about a third of its people and most of its mines, oil fields, and railways. It would also have to pay the largest indemnity the world had ever seen. The treaty essentially turned Russia into a vassal state for the German Empire, and it was left to Lenin to sell this ghastly, quisling treaty to his party and his country.

He begins by stating that Russia needed peace at any cost as it no longer had an army with which to fight the Germans and there was no popular support for it. Both assertions are false, yet to this day they are almost universally accepted. His problem is that the treaty's provisions are so cruel that even the party members who want peace cannot support these terms. Failing to garner enough votes, Lenin changes tact and begins to argue for a "respite" rather than peace. He also argues that (brace yourselves, Trots) in the mean time the Bolsheviks can build socialism in one country. (Yes, that's right. Lenin coins the term, here advances the argument, also puts the case forth in selected writings, and Stalin cites these sources when he advocates for the policy a decade later. Yes Trotniki, get over it, Stalin was right, Lenin is the originator of the theory of socialism in one country. Please, please, please don't tell me of the many occasions when he said the opposite. Once in power, he was the lone proponent of the theory. The Stalin/Trotsky clash was about power, policy was pretext. In the end the point is moot as the Bolsheviks never managed to produce socialism in one party let alone one country.)

This new approach likewise falls on deaf ears. Just at this moment, the German Army surges forward and occupies some Russian territory. Lenin then argues that they simply had to give Germany whatever it wanted and if Russia didn't the Germans would just take what they wanted anyway. Not exactly an heroic position, but then Germany takes some more land and then Trotsky, who had been resisting, decides to side with Lenin. Others follow, and the obscene treaty passes. And the German Army stops advancing.


15) Meanwhile down in the Ukraine: After February, the Ukrainians asserts their autonomy. The Central Rada (Ukrainian word for council or soviet) co-existed with the Progov in Russia fairly harmoniously, but the latter contained elements which did not favor the break-up of the Russian Empire and the independence of Ukraine and other Russian possessions. Nevertheless, a wary peace existed between them.

The CR was critical of the Bolshevik putsch but was ultimately supportive of them as the Bolsheviks endorsed the right of subject nations within the Russian Empire to independence. This good will was broken when Lenin writes a "manifesto" to the Rada which recognizes Ukraine's right to independence, but makes demands with which no sovereign government could comply, including a preposterous demand for the Ukrainians to cease disarming Red Guards and Russian troops in their territory. It ends stating that if no satisfactory answer is received within 48 hours a state of war will exist between them, which is quite a bold threat coming from a nation which claims to have no army.

The manifesto is a sham, every word a contrivance. In it, among other inanities, Russia accuses the Ukraine of allowing safe transit to White forces when these troops were chased across the Ukraine by the (non-existent) Russian Army. In their press, the Bolsheviks argue that while the CR has legitimacy in the Ukrainian countryside, they have no authority in cities like Kyiv as there ethno-Ukrainians are a minority.

When the CR didn't respond in the alotted time, Ukrainian Bolsheviks, independently or at the behest of Russia, seize Kharkiv and declare a rival government. Half a million German/Austrian troops, half a million!, invade and decimate the Ukrainian Bolsheviks and install Pavlo Skoropadski as Hetman. Hetman is a Tartar title, the invaders here make clear that they are not appointing a liberal or a socialist, but a warlord.

Let's review: as a result of the manifesto, the CR is gone, the Ukrainian Bolshevik faction is all but eliminated, and an anti-communist aristocrat is now the warlord of a strategically important neighbor on Russia's southern border--not good. However, incongruously, while explicitly denouncing Bolshevism, the Hetman does support the reintegration of Ukraine on a federal basis with Russia. As puppet warlords go, it seems Skoropadski is pretty flexible. He stocks his cabinet with pro-Bolshevik ethno-Russians, and promises lots of grain to Germany.

I ask you, dear reader, do you think Lenin and the Germans were colluding: the execrable manifesto with its absurdist demands; the Ukrainian Bolsheviks providing the pretext for an invasion of a country whose grain a starving Germany desperately needs; an oddly cooperative Hetman willing to move the Ukraine back into the Russian orbit, What do you think? This scenario begins with the ridiculous manifesto and ends with a Bolshevik-friendly government installed in the Ukraine. Luck or Plan?

But Lenin wouldn't sacrifice his supporters in Ukraine, you say. If one has doubts one should read Melograni's Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution or Chaqueri's The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921: Birth of the Trauma. Lenin never prioritized world revolution over the preservation of Bolshevik rule in Russia--never.


16) Howls of condemnation arose from every Left camp when the terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty were published. The obsequious transfer of so many human and material resources, so much wealth, from the revolution to its enemies elicited charges of betrayal and launched a new round of speculation on Lenin's bona fides. However, the Bolsheviks did retain power, and the treaty gave Germany a continued stake in the Bolshevik regime as should the latter fall the successor government would likely void the larcenous treaty and attempt to regain the lost territory.


17) Having survived the first weeks in power, the initial Bolshevik foreign policy is one of self-preservation. The deal they offer is this: if you do not intrigue against us, we will offer you generous trade terms, business opportunities within Russia, and we will not agitate in your country (by agitate the Bolsheviks mean promote revolution). This is hardly a regime looking to expunge capitalism at home or ignite revolution abroad. Perhaps Lenin's prudence was warranted, but the lack of discussion of these topics and the year-over-year mass production of Left historiography which ignores these facts is not. From day one, Lenin prioritized Bolshevik power over exporting world revolution.

Did this help or hinder the workers' movement? Was the so-called Soviet Union a step forward or backward? Good or bad? Did the Bolsheviks save the revolution in Russia or betray it? Would an all-out revolutionary war launched from Russia have succeeded? (And, yes, there was an army, and, yes, the soldiers voted for an offensive revolutionary war against Germany. And, yes, several regional/local soviets also passed decrees calling for a revolutionary war.) How would we define success? It certainly would have broken the alliance with Germany upon which Bolshevik rule depended, would it be worth the risk? And whose risk would it be?  In "The Russian Tragedy," Rosa Luxemburg, writes in sympathy with the Bolsheviks and Brest-Litovsk, but cautions that there are limits to following a course of revolutionary self-preservation and it is better to lose an engagement with the class enemy than to betray our people and principles, did the Bolsheviks exceed those limits? How far is too far? What exactly are the limits? Lenin's supporters insist he husbanded his resources brilliantly, assessed the field of forces perspicaciously, and charted the proper course to bring a truly socialist party to power and preserve the revolution. True or false? Lenin signed treaties with capitalist and even fascist states, is this ever acceptable? He signed an agreement with Mussolini and called the fascist d'Anunzio "the only real revolutionary in Europe" while Rosa Luxemburg languished in a German prison, is that too far? Is she not a real revolutionary?  Is it okay that the Bolsheviks leveraged the global workers' movement to secure their rule in Russia? Those states to which Lenin promised he would not foment revolution, did they ever demand more? Did any of them ask for more than mere non-intervention but assistance is suppressing revolutions in their countries/empires? The Bolsheviks conspired with a pro-British government in Persia to destroy the Jangalis and the Gilan Soviet Socialist Republic (read Chaqueri), and weeks later announced the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, coincidence? A similar event occurred in Turkey, and, I believe, in Ukraine. All around Europe revolutionary factions reached out to Lenin, some of whom begging him to launch a revolutionary war, and his reactions (read Melograni) were lackluster at best. He directly counseled the Italian communists not to make revolution. He had the same advice for the Bavarians. Had Lenin pushed west socialist revolutions would have broken out in countries from Ireland to the Balkans. Would these combined efforts have triumphed? The Bolsheviks established the first socialist state in history, but in so doing did they miss the greatest opportunity we have ever had, or can ever expect to have, to achieve world revolution?

Lenin said he had no army nor was there support for revolutionary war because he did not want to wage one, not because he didn't have an army. This is one of many, many lies he told. He may have been wise not to engage in a revolutionary war. I believe he looked at the likelihood of success, its potential magnitude, and the international consequences of its failure or incomplete victory, and weighed them against the possibility of counterrevolution in Russia, the capitalists coming to power, a tsarist restoration etc., and decided real risks outweighed presumptive rewards. He judged it prudent to stay on the German payroll rather than bite the hand that holds his party aloft. Hence all the lies and insipid patter about socialism in one country etc.

Was he right? If we are any kind of revolutionaries, we should try to answer that question.

However, we cannot get anywhere if large swaths of the Left blindly, oafishly accept anything which Lenin said as fact. He had his reasons for lying, maybe good ones, but issue endless streams of lies he certainly did. Our task is to examine them and try to come to some kind of consensus about where he was right and where wrong. The conspiracy with the German Empire, without which the Bolsheviks could not have risen to power, set the limits of their prerogative. This is a subject which should be acknowledged and discussed. Time is awasting.