May Day Books Blog: Bloc Against Bureaucracy

“Lenin’s Last Struggle,”by Moshe Lewin, 1968

This book shows that in his last days Lenin saw into the future of the USSR. It is the moment when the 1917 Revolution began to change form. Lenin feared a split in the leadership, a ‘split’ that eventually took a most bloody form, culminating in Stalin’s personal dictatorship after the 1938 show trials. In 1923 he saw a Stalin holding too much power in his hands, an insight that was confirmed in spades. He perceived a Great Russian chauvinism which ultimately led to the deportation of whole minorities as collective punishment. He feared a break between proletariat and peasantry, which became concrete in forced collectivization. He opposed a growing bureaucracy that he and Trotsky blocked against, which later became the power in the USSR, overriding the working-class, the Old Guard, as well as Marxist and Party norms.

This illuminating book tracks Lenin’s last political struggles in 1921-1923, which concerned preserving the state monopoly of foreign trade, changing the structure of the upper levels of Soviet governance, estimating the personal quality of the leaders of the Party and especially the treatment of nationalities and national regions in the new USSR, in this case related to Georgia. The most salient fact is Lenin’s alliance with Trotsky over some of these issues against a Central Committee faction led by Stalin. This resulted in the long-suppressed ‘Testament of Lenin’which openly called for Stalin’s removal as Party secretary and suggested Trotsky as the best, though not perfect, alternative. Lenin also wanted Stalin’s allies Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze removed as well, breaking their hold on key organizations.

THE PARTY CHANGES

Lewin, a former Red Army soldier and collective farm worker, now a professor, wrote this book in 1968 when some key documents were still secret, like the results of Lenin’s investigation into Georgia. Vilkova in “The Struggle for Power – Russia in 1923” had access to newer documents, as she covered the same period from the same point of view.

As Lewin points out, the Civil War bled and heavily damaged the Soviet working class.The Soviet councils lost their working-class majority due to death, injury, military or administrative duty and just plain survival. As a result of this bloodshed, the Party replaced the class, as even Lenin understood.Lewin maintains that the centralist methods of winning the Civil War also impacted how it functioned later, giving certain organizations within the Party immense power against working-class, democratic norms.

Lewin illustrates how former Czarist and bourgeois functionaries, along with former Red Army military commanders worked in the apparatus, with many of the latter becoming leaders in their areas. The Party at this point attracted careerists, peasants and new workers, many of whom had little political education. The NEP, which developed a layer of agricultural capitalists and traders, was also important in this regard. Lenin saw the changes and warned against the ‘petit-bourgeoisification’ of the Party. He especially wanted to see a class census of the state bureaucracy, but it was held back from him by Stalin.

In Lenin’s discussion of ‘state capitalism’ during this period, Lewin understands it to refer to Lenin’s hope that the workers’ state could use big capital’s methods of organization and technology to develop the economy. In effect, the workers’ state would work with and manage some capitalist firms. This nomenclature was discarded after 2 years when that outlook failed, as capital was not interested in collaboration.This should disappoint the anarchists who insist these quotes prove the USSR was ‘state capitalist.’

What is interesting in the story is the portrait of Stalin’s personal methods – scuttling away in hiding when out-numbered; acting like a rude and vicious bully when angry or he had the upper hand.Stalin was oddly in charge of Lenin’s doctors and he used this position to block Lenin in several ways during his illnesses. His satrap to the Georgians, Ordzhonikidze, struck a member of the Georgian Central Committee, and the complaint disappeared from the Control Commission files.Little things that indicate something more.

The Commissars Vanish

THE ISSUES

Stalin and centrists like Kamenev and Zinoviev wanted a USSR where the Russian Communist Party directed affairs of the Communist Parties in the 5 other Republics. Lenin wanted a USSR where each Republic was represented in a new governing body. In the end Lenin allied with the leaders of the Georgian CP who had been stripped of their posts and ordered to Moscow by Stalin. Stalin and his bloc wanted a relaxation of the monopoly of foreign trade; Lenin and Trotsky wanted to retain it. They did not want foreign capitalists forming direct connections with those in the Soviet Union, thus further increasing capitalist power during the NEP.

Stalin took advantage of the changes in the Party membership to build a personal base loyal only to him. Lenin wanted a Party not inundated with petit-bourgeois and bureaucratic elements, which understood Marxism and workers’ democracy. This is why he suggested reorganization of the various branches of government and Party. Stalin and his supporters claimed to be building communism. Lenin instead detected the growth of a bureaucracy in the Party and state, principally around Stalin and his cohort. In this he asked for a ‘pact against bureaucracy’ with Trotsky, who agreed. That struggle lasted the rest of Trotsky’s life, though Lewin points out Trotsky made a ‘rotten compromise’ in regards to Stalin and his allies which sealed his fate.

Lenin literally called his investigation of the ‘Georgian Affair’ a clandestine conspiracy, as he had to do it in secret. He enlisted Trotsky on his side at the conclusion of his research.

In the end, after Lenin’s death, the overwhelming hostility against Trotsky by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin at this key moment (the first two in the future ‘Joint’ opposition with Trotsky and the latter in the ‘Right’ opposition) also sealed their own fates. Kamenev and Zinoviev were executed in 1936, while Bukharin, the originator of ‘socialism in one country’ served Koba/Stalin until he ‘confessed’ and was shot in 1938. At that point all rivals had been liquidated.

Lewin covers Lenin’s published future plans during this period on the international situation; on the development of the peasantry; on a reorganization of the upper levels of the government. Lenin in his last days had always understood the Russian revolution would start an international wave. But he knew the Soviet revolution was isolated after the failed revolutions in Germany and Hungary; the lost civil war in Finland and the smashed mass strike wave in Italy.In March 1923 he wrote, “We, too, lack enough civilization to enable us to pass straight on to socialism. ”Russia straddled both areas of the world and he increasingly looked for aid from the east, to China and India, as possible allies. Again, he saw into the future.

In contrast to his earlier attitude of hostility to production, service or sales cooperatives, Lenin advocated a rural cultural revolution – peasants learning to read and write – and voluntary rural cooperatives as roads towards unity with the urban working class and a future socialism.

Regarding the government, Lenin advocated cutting down on duplication and excessive committees.He wanted to enlarge both the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (CCC) to 100 – weakening the small 7-member Politburo dominated by Stalin.He railed against the Workers and Peasants Inspection (RKI) developed by Stalin, calling it an overgrown ‘haven of ineptitude.’He wanted a vastly trimmed-down one, to be combined with the CCC, so one place would hold the best technical and administrative experts. These experts would also have a connection to power. Yet the temporary 1921 prohibition of factions ended up eviscerating the independent life of the democratic Party Congress, which Lenin does not mention.This ban later became permanent under Stalin. Additionally the CCC/RKI was appointed, not elected.As Lewin points out, none of Lenin’s prescriptions solidly countered the increasing role of a narrow, elite and corrupt bureaucracy in the USSR.

This is an excellent book that reveals Lenin’s far-seeing and factual thinking in this dark and difficult time. It reveals Lenin charting a sensible program that was not followed and ignored by those in power. Instead the same individuals created a cult around Lenin for their own benefit. As part of this they preserved his body for public view like some Christian relic.

Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left:“The Struggle for Power – Russia in 1923” (Vilkova); “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives” (Cohen); “The Ghost of Stalin” (Sartre); “Fear”(Rybakov); “The Unwomanly Face of War,”(Alexievich); “The Lacuna” (Kingsolver); “Did Someone Say Totalitarianism? (Zizek).