Dave Sherry - Russia 1917: Workers' Revolution and the Festival of the Oppressed

I've already reviewed Dave Sherry's new book on the Russian Revolution for Socialist Worker, and I hope you'll read that in conjunction with these additional comments. Having read Sherry's book for a second time I wanted to add a few more thoughts.

As the centenary progresses, more and more books are being published. But Sherry's book is by far the best I've read. In part this is because he puts great emphasis on the role of ordinary people in the Revolution. But it is also because he gets across the grand sweep of events - the way in which the Revolution was a process, where things happened and peoples ideas changed. Political organisations that failed to grasp this, were unable to adapt to new circumstances lost their ability to shape things as their support vanished. Take this summary of the February events:

For the Mensheviks, years of mechanical adherence to the orthodox formula, that Russian socialism would have to wait until capitalism was fully developed and assumed complete political power, blinded them to the developing situation. Their attempt to half the revolution... left the Mensheviks into supporting the new capitalist government... The paradoxical character of the February Revolution, a bourgeois' revolution undertaken by workers and soldiers, brutally exposed the social weakness of the bourgeoisie, once the crutch of the Tsarist state had been knocked out from under it.

In a sense the Revolution fed itself. As workers and peasants collectively began to understand their immense power. The "act of ridding Russia of its monarchy gave people a sense of how society can be changed, and when the Provisional government refused to stop the war, it failed to stop the momentum for revolutionary change."

Sherry explains this process well, and shows how the Bolshevik party led by Lenin, were able to both shape and learn from the movement. This wasn't inevitable and the party almost made the same mistake as the Mensheviks in the post-February period. Sherry shows that Lenin's arrival in Russia in April led to a row that redirected the Bolshevik organisation towards workers' revolution. But crucially this could only happen because the Party was so rooted in working class organisations and struggles. It was the reality of revolution as experienced by the working class, principally in Petrograd, that meant Lenin's instincts were accepted by the bulk of the Bolshevik Party.

Towards the end of the book, after summarising the numerous revolutions and mass working class actions that have taken place world wide since 1917, Sherry reminds us that only the Russian Revolution in 1917 led on to a workers' state, albeit briefly. As he writes:

Without Lenin and the Bolsheviks it is inconceivable that a coalition of workers, soldiers and peasants would have taken power in 1917. The absence of revolutionary leadership and such a bold socialist workers' party in all the other revolutionary upheavals that have challenged capitalism through the last 100 years, explains why 1917 is unique. Times change but we can still learn from the past. That is why it is such a tragedy that Lenin's real legacy has been hidden or distorted by what passes for bourgeois scholarship.

And there has never been such a need for such revolutionary organisation. The Russian Revolution matters not because of historical curiosity, but because "it provides an alternative view of what is possible when society polarises and socialists organise to offer hope and unity in place of fear and division". If you only read one book on 1917 it should be this one, because these lessons are crucial today for a new generation of socialists. As Dave Sherry concludes:

Across the world there is a revolt against the people at the top of society - the one percent. It can go left or right and it is the job of all of us who want a better, safer world to shape it and pull it in a socialist direction.

Related Reviews on 1917

Smith - Russia in Revolution
Lenin - Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?
Serge - Year One of the Russian Revolution
Cliff - Lenin: All Power to the Soviets
Smith - Red Petrograd
Trotsky - Lessons of October

Related Reviews of books by Dave Sherry

Sherry - Empire and Revolution: A Socialist History of the First World War
Sherry - John Maclean
Sherry - Occupy!

S.A. Smith - Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928

S.A. Smith's Red Petrograd is one of the best books I've ever read in the Russian Revolution, so I had high expectations of this one. Sadly I was disappointed, even though there is much that I found of interest in it, and even for people like myself who have read widely on the subject there is significantly new material.

This review is not the place to rehearse the story of the Revolution itself. Following a useful discussion of Russian history. Smith moves to the story of 1917. Given the criticisms of the October Revolution by the right, it's worth quoting Smith's conclusions about events:

The seizure of power is often presented as a conspiratorial coup against a democratic government. It certainly had the elements of a coup, but it was a coup much advertised, and the government it overthrew had not been democratically elected. It is noteworthy how few military officers were willing to come to the aid of the government... The coup would certainly not have taken place had it not been for Lenin; and thanks to the decision of the moderate socialists to postpone the Second Congress, hi plan to present the latter with a fait accompli was achieved. But the execution of the insurrection was entirely Trotsky's work, cleverly disguised as a defensive operation to preserve the garrison and the Petrograd Soviet against the 'counter-revolutionary' design of the Provisional Government. in the last analysis, however, the Provisional Government had expired even before the Bolsheviks finished it off.

Following this, Smith looks at how the Bolsheviks' attempted to build on their success, and the various aspects of the consequences. There are useful discussions of how the Bolshevik's support for the right to self determination played out. Thirteen new states were created out of Russia between October 1917 and December 1918, for instance. But Smith also highlights how this went wrong - for instance the way that the Bolshevik's had to keep Ukraine by military not political means. There are also some fascinating sections on the way the Bolsheviks related to Muslims, invited to "order their national life 'freely and without hindrance'" in November 1917.

All of this is excellent material and there are some fine stories and quotes from the period. But the problem is Smith's framing of the material. Smith rightly sees the economic and political damage caused by the Civil War as a key turning point for the Revolution. While he notes that both sides committed "terror", he does acknowledge that the motivations were very different and that Red Terror was often in response to the brutal reality of the Whites.

But I think Smith underestimates the impact of the Civil War one the base of the Bolshevik's and their strategies. For instance, when discussing the Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolsheviks, Smith highlights the context, but neglects to point out that the Kronstadt sailors were not the same force that had been a bastion of the Revolution. They were much depleted by the Civil War and other political roles and had been watered down by an influx of new recruits. Smith's argument makes it looks like a key revolutionary force had changed sides, when this was not the case.

More problematic is the continuity that Smith places on the Bolsheviks before the seizure of power and long afterwards. There are two aspects to this. Firstly Smith frequently discusses the Bolsheviks before the Revolution (or in its early stages) and the strategy perused by Stalin as though it were the same organisation. Secondly I think he places the "Great Break", the rupture between Stalin's strategy and the old Bolshevik revolutionary strategy much too late. He argues that this was in 1928, but it is clear by then, that the policy being pursued by Stalin was already very different.

The Bolsheviks, who had so resoundingly rejected Russia's heritage in favour of proletarian internationalism, found that the greater the distance they travelled from October, the more they were hemmed in by these deep structuring forces. They did not become wholly captive to those forces, nor did revolutionary energies exhaust themselves, as Stalin's revolution from above' demonstrated, but in many areas the more utopian ideals of the early years were gradually abandoned and a new synthesis of revolutionary and traditional culture crystallised... It came about... because the Bolsheviks were transformed from a party of insurrection into a party of state builders.

But this confusing argument suggests a continuity between 1917 and the 1930s, which is inaccurate. The reality was there was a massive break, that required the liquidation of the old Bolshevik party and Stalin rebuilding a new one in his own image.

Smith effectively argues that it was the nature of Lenin and the Bolshevik organisation he crafted that led to the centralisation of power. "Lenin had ruled by virtue of his charisma, rather than his formal, position and he bequeathed a structure of weak but bloated institutions that relied for direction on a strong leader". There is some truth to this, but it is not the whole story and while Smith doesn't ignore the other problems he down plays them. Thus while he does acknowledge the strategy of international revolution that the Bolsheviks hoped would solve their problems, he doesn't underline that this was actually quite realistic. In fact there is little mention here of the German Revolution, nor the other revolutions that shook Europe post 1918. Oddly there is precious little on the Comintern, before or after Stalin, except a few brief discussions.

Smith is also prone to some sweeping statements that undermine some of his better analysis. Stalin, he notes, "had read Machiavelli". So what? I suspect most intellectual Marxists of the period had. Lenin's great work State and Revolution is dismissed as having "utopian flights of fancy" in which a "cook or housekeeper could learn to run public affairs". It wasn't that much of a flight of fancy given that Soviets were being set up across Russia in their hundreds and supported by millions of workers and peasants while Lenin wrote it.

Ultimately I was left disappointed by the book. It has much of interest, but at times feels like a crude assault on Bolshevism (and Lenin in particular - hence an unreferenced quote saying Lenin described avant-guard art as "absurd and perverted"). The author concludes by arguing that the importance of the Revolution was not in its actuality (he suggests the Great Break was more important than the Revolution that preceded it), nor in the hope that workers in power would led to an end to inequality and exploitation. He argues that the Revolution's answers to these problems were "flawed".

Smith clearly sees capitalism as leading to war and environmental destruction, but dismisses the only political organisation that has created a fundamentally different workers state, arguing that their revolution "wrought calamity". Yet the reality was the calamity was a consequence of the counter-revolution that strangled the revolution and the failure of international revolution to break the chains that bound Russia in isolation.

That said, Smith can, and does celebrate what the revolution meant for ordinary people and millions of others around the globe. I can agree with him about how 1917 lifted people, and taught them to look further afield, before the revolution was defeated and drowned in blood. One example from Smith's book will suffice.

Yet the campaign to liquidate illiteracy awoke a thirst for knowledge on the part of newly literate readers. A poor peasant sent a letter to the Peasant Newspaper: 'Send me a list of books published on the following subjects because I am interested in everything: chemistry, science, technology, the planets, the sun, the earth, the planet Mars, world maps, books on aviation, the number of planes we posses, the number of enemies the Socialist Republic has, books on comets, stars, water, the earth and sky'.

Related Reviews

Lenin - Will the Bolsheviks Maintain State Power?
Serge - Year One of the Russian Revolution
Smith - Red Petrograd
Cliff - The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Star: Trotsky 1927-1940
Lewin - Russian Peasants and Soviet Power

V.I. Lenin - Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?

Written just a few days before the October Revolution of 1917 when the Provisional Government was finally evicted from office and Soviet Power became the sole ruling body across Russia, this is a powerful and fascinating read. Lenin writes polemically with the confidence and authority that comes from being the leader of a mass revolutionary organisation numbering more than 250,000 members and supported by millions more ordinary workers, peasants and soldiers.

In the opening pages Lenin tackles those from the left and right who argue that a Soviet government cannot work and that workers are not able to run society. He answers these arguments clearly, in a language that's not marred by academic phrase-mongering but is designed to win over ordinary people to his argument. Lenin is persuasive and at times funny, but most importantly he's also urgent. The time for argument is over, now is the time for action. In part this reflects an argument with those to the right of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet majority, but it is also a polemic with those who are vacillating within the Bolshevik party itself.

Despite it's short length, there is much here of interest. Such as Lenin's suggestions about how a socialist society could function, and how it might, for instance, deal with problems such as the lack of technical skills:

The rich must receive from the union of workers or clerks which is most nearly related to their sphere of activity and employment book, They must receive weekly, or at any other regular periods, a certificate from this union that they are doing their work conscientiously - without this they will not get their bread card or food products in general. We need good organisers in the banking business and in the work of unifying various concerns (in these matters the capitalists have more experience and work is done more easily with experienced people)... We shall give all such workers work in accordance with their strength and ability.

What shines through from his writing is an absolute faith in the ability of ordinary people to make the revolution and to run society.

The most important thing is to instil in the oppressed and labouring masses confidence in their own power, to show them by actual practice that they can and must themselves undertake regular, most strict, orderly, organised distribution of bread... milk, clothing, dwellings and so on, in the interests of the poorest.... an honest, courageous, universal first move to hand over the management of the country to the proletariat and semi-proletariat will cause such an unheard of revolutionary enthusiasm in the masses, will multiply so many times the popular forces in the struggle... that much that seemed impossible to our narrow old bureaucratic forces will become practicable for the million-numbered masses, beginning to work for themselves and not for the capitalist, not for a boss or official and not under compulsion of the stick.

Lenin defends the need for revolution, not simply to sweep away the old, corrupt, imperialist order, but also to allow the full liberation of working people. If you've only read Lenin's theoretical writings, this is a revealing book - a revolutionary leader, in the midst of mass revolution talking to ordinary people about how they can change the world. Its definitely one to read, or re-read in the centenary year of 1917.

Related Reviews

Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Krausz - Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography
Cliff - All Power to the Soviets, Lenin 1914-1917
Serge - Year One of the Russian Revolution

Victor Serge - Year One of the Russian Revolution

Victor Serge is one of the most important figures to come out of the Russian Revolution. A Belgian/French anarchist he was already immersed in revolutionary politics long before the 1917 revolution, and traveled to Russia in 1919 to see events for himself. Once there he quickly aligned himself with the Bolsheviks and proceeded to both document the revolution and serve as one of its leading figures. A brilliant author his novels and non-fiction are powerful arguments of the need for Revolution, as well as defenses of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks.

Year One of the Russian Revolution is a history of the early years after the revolutionary year of 1917. Serge begins with historical context to the Revolution stressing the importance of the earlier 1905 revolution and Lenin's Bolshevik organisation to the eventual successful seizure of power in October 1917. Serge careful documents the historical development of Russia - the role of the peasantry and their changing circumstances, the industrial development of the major cities of Petrograd and Moscow (often with massive French loans) and then, the collapse of the Russian economy during World War One.

There is a good over-view of 1917 itself, but those looking for a detailed account of this must look elsewhere. That said it is worth noting that one of Serge's central arguments is that the seizure of power in 1917 was not a coup by a minority of revolutionaries, but a movement that was supported by the vast majority of workers and peasants.

But the bulk of the book is a historical account of what takes place in the immediate aftermath of the seizure of power and the start of the counter-revolutionary civil war. The demand for peace is the central question, but a separate peace with Germany provokes the anger of Russia's former allies. Germany itself uses the opportunity to try and seize vast areas of land to obtain more food for its own military forces. In addition, the absolute hatred of the ruling classes for the revolution forms the basis for the begins of the Imperialist assault on Revolutionary Russia itself.

Serge really brings to life the debates of the era. The struggles within the Bolshevik leadership about how best to bring peace, as the likes of Lenin and Trotsky thrash out a strategy to best defend the fledging workers power, are amazing to read, and one can only feel the tragedy of knowing that Russia was to become even more isolated with the failure of the German Revolution. On a slightly less serious note, the account of Trotsky besting the rhetoric of the German generals at Brest-Litovsk are hilarious.

As it became clearer and clearer that the Revolutionary leadership was not going to collapse, the old ruling classes, together with their friends abroad became more and more prepared, in the words of Serge to "view democratic illusions more and more as a watered down variety of Bolshevism. It was waiting for its own moment."

Serge fills this book with little known bits of history. Writing in Russia in the late 1920s he would have had access to sources that few other historians can have read. Despite having read extensively about the period, I have never read of the events in Finland when counter-revolutionary forces decimated a new government installed on the back of a movement by workers in that country. While relatively radical, in that workers were intended to have real input into production and politicians were more accountable than in any other democratic country, this did not stop the whole of the left being smashed by the counter-revolutionary forces. Men, women and children were murdered in the name of re-establishing "order".

Such realities were to form the basis of the counter-revolution and the blood baths that followed the white armies and the imperialist invasions. Serge quotes Leon Trotsky defending the violence that revolutionaries resorted to in defence of their state,

Now that workers are being charged with committing cruelties in the civil war, we must reply, instructed by our experience: the only unpardonable sin whic hthe Russian working class can commit at this moment is that of indulgence towards its class enemies. We are fighting for the sake of the greatest good of mankind, for the sake of the regeneration of mankind, to drag it out of the darkness, out of slavery.

Repeatedly Serge emphasies the violence of the counter-revolution, which purely numerically, had far more enemies that the revolutionaries, and spilt far more blood. Indeed, Serge bemoans the softness of the revolution, which in its early months frequently let its enemies off, despite the most awful counter-revolutionary actions. Only to see them reappear at the head of invading armies months and years later, slaughtering men, women and children. Indeed, "terror" was not the immediate response of the revolutionary leaders, as Serge points out:

The Moscow Junkers who massacred the workers in the Kremlin arsenal [October 1917] were simply disarmed. It took ten months of bloodier and bloodier struggles, of plots, sabotage, famine, assassinations; it took foreign intervention, the White terror in Helsinki, Samara, Baku and the Ukraine; it took the blood of Lenin before the revolution decided finally to let the axe fall! This in a country where over a whole century the masses had been brought up by the autocracy in the school of persecutions, flogging, hangings and shootings!

Reading this during the centenary year of the Russian Revolution I was struck by the contrast between "official" accounts of the Revolution which focus on the "terror" of the Bolsheviks while neglecting the historic context or the violence with which the ruling class tried to regain its lost wealth and power. Serge's book is more than a brilliant history of the Revolution, it is a polemic that reminds us that the ruling class will not give up their position without a bloody struggle. If we want a socialist world, where people are not put before profits, than we will need to learn the lessons of history and be prepared for the violence with which their side will defend their privilege.

The tragedy was that Stalin's rise to power destroyed that vision. Genuine revolutionaries like Victor Serge lost their lives, or fled into exile. When Serge was arrested his unpublished follow up manuscript Year Two of the Russian Revolution was confiscated. We can only hope it remains as yet undiscovered in some former Stalinist vault.

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, I'm reading, or re-reading, some of the classic works about 1917 - click on the 1917 tag to find these reviews, together with earlier ones published on this blog.

Related Reviews

Serge - Memoirs of a Revoltuionary 1901 - 1941
Serge - Revolution in Danger: Writings from Russia 1919-1921
Serge - Conquered City
Smith - Red Petrograd
Cliff - All Power to the Soviets