Russian revolution. A very short introduction

inadequate communications), climate (the risk attached to agriculture), geopolitics (the difficulty of defending frontiers), the underdevelopment of the market and the paucity of capital, the deeply ingrained patterns of peasant culture, the traditions of the bureaucratic state. The Bolsheviks, who had so categorically rejected Russia's heritage, found that the greater the distance they travelled from October, the more these forces madethemselves felt. This did not mean ? that they became captive to those forces, nor that impulses to

g revolutionary transformation exhausted themselves: Stalin's'revolution

I

e from above' was to prove the contrary. But in many areas one can see a

jg distancing from early iconoclasm and the beginning of a synthesis of

1 revolution and tradition.

i-

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Conclusion

In the most trenchant recent interpretation of Soviet history, Martin Malia has argued that the Soviet Union was an Mdeocracy' whose development was driven by the Bolshevik desire to realize a millenarian vision of communism through the abolition of private property, profit, the market, and civil society. Many agree with Malia that ideology constitutes the key to understanding the development of Soviet totalitarianism, but there is little agreement as to which particular elements in Marxism-Leninism are to blame. Some endorse Malta's view that the seeds of totalitarianism lay in Marx's aspiration to abolish private property; others point to his belief in class struggle as the motor of history or to his assertion that the proletariat must exercise a dictatorship during the transition to socialism. Others point to more general features of Marxism such as its claim to provide 'scientific* knowledge of the laws of history or its rejection of morality as a constraint on action. No doubt some, and possibly all, of these elements in Marxism played a part in shaping the course of Soviet history. The fact that there is uncertainty as to which particular elements were decisive, however, should make us pause before underwriting a view that in ideology lies the root of all evil. This is especially so when we consider that in 1917 the elements of Marxism that appealed were very different from those mentioned above; the promise to end inequality and exploitation, and the promise to abolish the state and vest power in the hands of the toiling people.

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It is beyond question that ideology was of central importance in determining the course of the Bolshevik revolution. All Bolsheviks -including Stalin - believed in the Marxist vision and it is impossible to comprehend the scale of their ambition, their astounding energy, and their ruthless determination unless one takes the ideas that inspired them seriously. Their victory in the civil war, for example, is inexplicable except in terms of their unwavering conviction that they were exercising dictatorship on behalf of a temporarily 'declassed* proletariat. However, the civil war also reminds us that Bolshevik ideology changed overtime, in many respects profoundly. In 1917 Lenin spent valuable time developing Marx's notion of the withering away of the state. By 1918 Lenin's State and Revolution was an irrelevance. Within months, Lenin had come to see in the massive strengthening of the state the sole guarantee of advance towards socialism. Not all Bolsheviks agreed-Through the civil war and into the 1920s, Bolsheviks understood their

с

Iideology in different ways - the barracks' vision of communist society

1associated with War Communism, the productivist vision associated

сwith NEP - and the sharp disagreements that arose out of these

9differing perspectives were just as important in determining the course

21. Demonstration: 'Let us direct our path towards the shining life.*

IK

Mof the revolution as the beliefs and values shared in common. By

presenting Bolshevism as monolithic and unchanging, the 'ideocracy' thesis radically simplifies the ways in which ideas - and conflict over ideas - shaped the conduct of the Bolsheviks.

If we look back on the developments described in this book, all too often it is the Bolsheviks' incapacity to realize their ends, their blindness ratherthan their vision, that is striking. After they came to power, they faced a huge array of problems for which Marxism-Leninism left them ill-equipped. Ideology could not tell them, for instance, whether or not to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Policy, therefore, was frequently the outcome of improvisation and pragmatism as much of the hallowed tenets of ideology. In other words, the relationship between belief and action was complex, influenced by a far larger range of factors than the 'ideocracy' thesis allows. If ideology was critical in shaping the institutions and practices of the Soviet state, so were geography, geopolitics, economic and political structures, the specific conjunctures thrown up by revolution, civil war, and a shattered economy and, not least, events that no one foresaw. All of these things were interpreted through the lens of ideology, so their significance is inseparable from the meanings with which they were invested. Nevertheless they exercised a weight of determination in their own right and cannot be reduced to ideology. Throughout the period we have looked at, the 'real world' - whether in the shape of a railway system brought to paralysis, the ravages of typhus, or a dazzling military offensive by Denikin- had a nasty habit of sneaking up on the Bolsheviks from behind, throwing into confusion their best-laid plans.

The story we have traced has been in part one about how possibilities opened up in 1917 were steadily closed off. As early as January 1918, key components of the 1917 revolution - power to the Soviets, workers' control of production, the abolition of the standing army - were jettisoned. By 1921 the Bolsheviks no Iongersawtheworking class as the agent of revolution, but the party-state and the Red Army. This narrowingof the meaning of the revolution had less to do with ideology

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than with the structural logic of the Bolsheviks' situation. In the teeth of determined political opposition and intense popular resistance, they came to rely on force. They had little difficulty justifying this in ideological terms, but the logic that drove them down the path to one-party dictatorship was structural more than it was ideological. Otherwise it is hard to explain why they formed a coalition with the Left SRs or displayed a certain fastidiousness in banning opposition parties outright. The belief that the end justified the means served them well, blinding them to the way in which means corrupt ends. In August 1919 the newspaper Red Sword proclaimed: 'Everything is permitted to us because we are the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enserfment and oppression but of general happiness and liberation from slavery.' Very quickly, however, liberation from slavery had been fatally subverted by the means chosen to achieve it.

? The meaning of the revolution also changed as it became embedded in g the Russian environment. By the 1920s, the Bolsheviks were responding e to many of the same pressures -the need rapidly to industrialize, to jg modernize agriculture, to build defence capability - that had motivated 1 Nicholas N's regime. These aims were now articulated very differently, but the objective exigencies of modernization made