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Elite and Society

Evan Mawdsley and Stephen White

in The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev: The Central Committee and its Members 1917-1991

The Central Committee was never a ‘representative’ elite. Like other revolutionary elites, it was disproportionately male and well educated; but it was generally more representative of the mass ... More

The Central Committee was never a ‘representative’ elite. Like other revolutionary elites, it was disproportionately male and well educated; but it was generally more representative of the mass membership and of the population as a whole than the national party leadership. A system for the distribution of material benefits gradually developed to service its requirements, one that came increasingly to identify Central Committee members as a privileged group of a kind that had been characterized by Trotsky as a bureaucracy. But there were internal divisions and internal safeguards that helped to prevent the formation of an exploitative as well as politically dominant group.Less

Totalitarian Millennialism: The Bolshevik Apocalypse (1917–1935 ce)

Richard Landes

in Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience

This chapter traces how the dynamics of apocalyptic disappointment, led millennial ideologues (Bakùnin, Lenin, and Trotsky) to turn the politique du pire into coercive purity, setting the stage for a ... More

This chapter traces how the dynamics of apocalyptic disappointment, led millennial ideologues (Bakùnin, Lenin, and Trotsky) to turn the politique du pire into coercive purity, setting the stage for a shift from the revolution occurring in the industrial West to the agrarian East. Totalitarianism, in this context, arises from the unintended consequence of an apocalyptic movement that took power, and, with the failure of its expectations of a spontaneous millennium, carved out the “perfect” society from the body politic. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism, the phenomenon of “fellow travelers” as a (post-)apocalyptic phenomenon, and the contribution of apocalyptic paranoia to the spread of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, setting the stage for Hitler's emergence after WWI.Less

Democracy and State Power

Marc Mulholland

in Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism

The arrival of mass suffrage, in countries with governments responsible or irresponsible to elected parliaments, gave rise either to ‘umbrella’ pan-class parties, or sectional parties of class or ... More

The arrival of mass suffrage, in countries with governments responsible or irresponsible to elected parliaments, gave rise either to ‘umbrella’ pan-class parties, or sectional parties of class or nationality and/or religious identity. These gave rise to variations in circumstance determining the likely degree of socialist-liberal cooperation. On balance, socialists and liberals did cooperate, but only to a limited extent. The 1905 Revolution in Russia re-opened the debate about possibilities for overturning entrenched state power. It was also important in revealing the likelihood that liberal revolution could easily displace bourgeois leadership and present opportunities for socialists basing themselves upon the proletariat. Debates on this matter involving Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, Karl Kautsky, and Leon Trotsky are examined. Whether militarism and imperialism was inherent in capitalism was debated by Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, and Lenin: Lenin's conclusion that bourgeois liberalism was defunct is foreshadowed.Less

The POUM and the Trotskyists

Burnett Bolloten

in The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution

This chapter looks at the activities of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) in the Catalan political arena, as well as its efforts to dissociate itself from Trotskyist accusations. ... More

This chapter looks at the activities of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) in the Catalan political arena, as well as its efforts to dissociate itself from Trotskyist accusations. Formed in September 1935 through the fusion of the Izquierda Comunista and the Bloque Obrero y Campesino, the POUM grew to be a powerful force in the region. A vigorous advocate of Socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, an unrelenting critic of the Popular Front and of Stalin's trials and purges, the POUM would find itself denounced as “Trotskyist.” Despite the fact that some of its leaders had once maintained connections with Leon Trotsky, the POUM was not a Trotskyist party, and it frantically attempted to prove it was not in numerous articles and speeches.Less

Introduction

Sabine Dullin

in Men of Influence: Stalin's Diplomats in Europe, 1930-1939

The political history of the Soviet Union has for a long time been disembodied because of a lack of archive material, apart from the omnipresent figures of Stalin and his rival Leon Trotsky. Behind ... More

The political history of the Soviet Union has for a long time been disembodied because of a lack of archive material, apart from the omnipresent figures of Stalin and his rival Leon Trotsky. Behind them, there existed a shadowy bureaucracy that was nothing more than a generalised and reified concept. The political system that Stalin created in the 1930s has partly remained an enigma. Were they fanatics, believers, lucid individuals who were prisoners of the system, or opportunist apparatchiks, who were either cynical or manipulated? In moving from the general to the particular, from outside the country to within, in examining the paradoxes of one man, Maxim Litvinov, and a group of senior civil servants, the diplomatic corps, this book seeks to unravel the human contradictions within a largely inhuman system.Less

Malyutochka

Christoph Irmscher

in Max Eastman: A Life

In 1922, Max Eastman travels to Europe to take part in the Genoa Conference, where he meets his future wife, Eliena Krylenko, sister to Nikolai Krylenko, later Stalin’s Commissar of Justice. A ... More

In 1922, Max Eastman travels to Europe to take part in the Genoa Conference, where he meets his future wife, Eliena Krylenko, sister to Nikolai Krylenko, later Stalin’s Commissar of Justice. A prolonged stay in Moscow, where Max tours the Kremlin and attends the Fourth Congress of the Third Communist International, leads to his gradual disenchantment with Bolshevism, though not with Trotsky, whose biography he writes. Living in Sochi on the Black Sea, Max perfects his command of Russian and begins work on a novel. He develops his concept of “social engineering” against Stalin’s attempt to make a religion out of the Communist Party. After marrying Eliena, Max leaves Moscow and lives on the Côte d’Azur and in Paris, implementing his free love philosophy and completing books on Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. After he publishes Lenin’s “Testament,” with its criticism of Stalin, Trotsky disavows him. In Vienna he meets Freud, who encourages him to write a book about “America the miscarriage.”Less

Clare Sheridan: A Sculptor in the Kremlin

David Ayers

in Modernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution

This chapter narrates the visit to Moscow of the sculptor Clare Sheridan, cousin of Winston Churchill, who caused a scandal when she accepted an invitation to the Kremlin to create busts of the ... More

This chapter narrates the visit to Moscow of the sculptor Clare Sheridan, cousin of Winston Churchill, who caused a scandal when she accepted an invitation to the Kremlin to create busts of the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin and Trotsky. Her account of the sittings, first published in the Times and subsequently as a book, offered a remarkable account of her sittings, notably her dealings with Trotsky. As a consequence of her visit she was rejected by British high society and accepted a role as a correspondent which took her to Ireland, where she interviewed Rory O’Connor at the Four Courts, Italy, where she was assaulted by Mussolini, and Turkey, which became one of the sites in her first, semi-autobiographical novel, Stella Defiant. The novel, subtitled ‘The Passionate History of a Modernist Woman’, narrates its protagonist’s repudiation of modernism in favour of communism, and subsequent rejection of the latter in favour of Islam.Less

The Criterion, the English Trotsky and the Idea of Europe

David Ayers

in Modernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution

This chapter narrates the moment in which T.S. Eliot came to identify the Russian Revolution as the main event of the war and the motive for a re-evaluation of Europe’s position in the world. Eliot’s ... More

This chapter narrates the moment in which T.S. Eliot came to identify the Russian Revolution as the main event of the war and the motive for a re-evaluation of Europe’s position in the world. Eliot’s review of Trotsky in the Criterion introduces an account of the extensive and prominent publication of Trotsky’s works in Britain and responses to them by such figures as Maynard Keynes and even Stanley Baldwin, and the chapter concludes with an account of Valéry’s role in shaping Eliot’s thought on Europe, in the famous essay which he wrote for Middleton Murry’s Athenaeum.Less

Trotsky in Mexico: Artists United, Artists Divided, 1930–1940

Stephanie J. Smith

in The Power and Politics of Art in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Chapter Three focuses on the ongoing debates between Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, including their central disagreements over Leon Trotsky and his significance to global revolution, to ... More

Chapter Three focuses on the ongoing debates between Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, including their central disagreements over Leon Trotsky and his significance to global revolution, to analyze the multiple roles of culture within Mexican society and the profound connections between art and politics during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. This chapter examines the importance of art and artists in Mexico’s post-revolutionary state formation to argue that the radical artists and government officials utilized art and culture as a medium to negotiate larger issues whose general relevance fell well beyond art’s more traditional influence. Chapter 3 also utilizes the arrival of Trotsky to Mexico in January 1937 to highlight a crucial time in Mexico’s history when the artists influenced Mexico’s politics in profound and lasting ways.Less

The “Tragedy of Organization”

in Philip Selznick: Ideals in the World

This chapter considers the two major influences on Selznick's early thought about politics and sociology: Leon Trotsky and Robert Michels. Trotsky represented both the incarnation and the failure of ... More

This chapter considers the two major influences on Selznick's early thought about politics and sociology: Leon Trotsky and Robert Michels. Trotsky represented both the incarnation and the failure of exalted ideals. He also identified a specific culprit for that failure: the Soviet bureaucracy. To an extent unprecedented and uncomfortable within orthodox Marxism, the concept and machinations of bureaucracy had dominated the Trotskyist worldview by the time Selznick was initiated into it. The message from Michels had a similar subject but broader implications. The propensity of bureaucracy to undermine cherished ideals was not, on his analysis, a conjunctural, tactical danger, a temporary backstep ultimately to be overcome. It was, as it were, ontological, written into the nature of political life and above all into the need for organization in politics.Less

Revolution from the Inside: Trotsky's Conception of the Process

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

One reason why Russian radicals were interested in Marxism at the turn of the century was the attraction of its quasi-scientific laws of progress towards utopia, even though the doctrine was ... More

One reason why Russian radicals were interested in Marxism at the turn of the century was the attraction of its quasi-scientific laws of progress towards utopia, even though the doctrine was difficult to apply to a country that seemed unprepared for proletarian revolution and socialism. Leon Trotsky articulated a broad theory of the nature of revolution, but the events which he tried to understand and in which he was involved actually led to his downfall. For Trotsky, revolution was a long but interconnected process of political and social struggle. This chapter explores Trotsky's conception of the process of revolution in the context of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It discusses Marxism in Russia and its flawed notion of revolution, Karl Marx's theory of revolution, the connection between revolution and capitalism, Trotsky's “theory of permanent revolution” or “uninterrupted revolution,” Thermidor and the rise of postrevolutionary dictatorship in Russia, and Trotsky's view of the War Communism.Less

Socialist Alternatives in the Crisis of 1921

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

The Russian revolutions of 1917 were driven by socialism, embraced by revolutionaries of whatever party affiliation as a utopian antithesis to present reality rather than a projected set of ... More

The Russian revolutions of 1917 were driven by socialism, embraced by revolutionaries of whatever party affiliation as a utopian antithesis to present reality rather than a projected set of institutions. Marxism failed to clarify the meaning of socialism as Marxists, subscribing to the doctrine of the natural transition from capitalism through socialism to “communism,” did not give much attention to the details of the future society. The civil war provided an opportunity to formulate definite conceptions for the road ahead. This consideration of future alternatives was initiated by the so-called Trade Union Controversy that featured three competing platforms: the Leninists, the Trotskyists, and the Workers' Opposition. It was the centrists that presented the first clear position on the trade unions, beginning with Leon Trotsky's call for the militarization of labor early in 1920 that was criticized by the Ultra Left. The Ultra Left's position did not sit well with either Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin offered the two most systematic rationales for War Communism in Terrorism and Communism and The Economics of the Transformation Period, respectively.Less

Trotsky on Democracy and Bureaucracy

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

Leon Trotsky was a fierce enemy of Leninism prior to the Russian Revolution, but also its most ardent exponent in the revolution and in the civil war. His political outlook changed dramatically ... More

Leon Trotsky was a fierce enemy of Leninism prior to the Russian Revolution, but also its most ardent exponent in the revolution and in the civil war. His political outlook changed dramatically during the succession struggle that erupted in 1923. Trapped between the rigidity of his theoretical commitments to Leninism and Marxism and the bitter political adversity that hounded him in mid-career, Trotsky took the Communist Party leadership to task for violating the workers' democracy that was supposed to be the Communist norm. In 1928, Joseph Stalin broke with Nikolai Bukharin's right wing of the party, a decision that had little immediate impact on Trotsky's thinking despite the capitulation of many of his supporters. Before his expulsion from the USSR, Trotsky considered writing a more systematic treatise on the problem of bureaucracy. During his exile, he continued to follow the factional and doctrinal infighting among Communists outside the Soviet Union.Less

The Left Opposition as an Alternative to Stalinism

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

Both Western historians and Soviet writers have often considered Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism as the forerunner of Stalinism rather than an alternative to it. According to this interpretation, Joseph ... More

Both Western historians and Soviet writers have often considered Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism as the forerunner of Stalinism rather than an alternative to it. According to this interpretation, Joseph Stalin came out the winner in a purely personal struggle for the leadership role, but this analysis fails to take into account the distinctive sources and premises of the Left Opposition in comparison with the Communist Party's Leninist and Stalinist leadership. Between 1923 and 1927, the Left Opposition tried to change the direction of Russia's national policy, which it accused of ruining the goals of the Bolshevik Revolution. Left Bolshevism, before and after the revolution, differed from the position represented by Vladimir Lenin, in terms of membership: it was made up of intellectuals who had been in emigration. The Left Opposition believed in the virtue and mission of the working class and advocated industrialization, which was inseparable from the question of agriculture and the peasantry. Both Left and Right viewed the peasantry as both a problem and a resource for progress toward socialism.Less

The Communist Oppositions and Post-Stalinist Reform

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

During the first dozen years of Soviet rule, the Communist oppositions encompassed all the waves of criticism in the Bolshevik/Communist Party that resisted the decisions and policies of Vladimir ... More

During the first dozen years of Soviet rule, the Communist oppositions encompassed all the waves of criticism in the Bolshevik/Communist Party that resisted the decisions and policies of Vladimir Lenin and of the leadership that succeeded him. Their story sheds light on the Soviet background of post-Communist Russia and their travails highlight the multistage revolutionary process that created and shaped the Communist regime. In addition, their historical existence challenges the ideological assumption that the only way to understand Lenin and Leninism properly is Joseph Stalin's way. Leon Trotsky has often been represented as the first Stalinist, a notion that stems from the image he established during the period of War Communism as the ultimate militarist and apologist for terror. The rightists, the party of Thermidor, did their best to adapt Marxism and proletarian dogma to the reality of a predominantly peasant country. In contrast, Stalin focused on exploiting the economic difficulties of the New Economic Policy to enhance his personal power. It was up to Boris Yeltsin to reject the October Revolution and the practice of a tempered socialism.Less

Past and Present

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

The collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991 and the disintegration of the Russian Empire have forced a reconsideration of Russian history. There are different interpretations of the now ... More

The collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991 and the disintegration of the Russian Empire have forced a reconsideration of Russian history. There are different interpretations of the now defined history of the Soviet system. Nevertheless, all writers on Russian history must address the problem of Russia's national identity, the so-called “Russian idea.” A leading proponent of the simplest, straight-line view of the Soviet experience is Dmitri Volkogonov, a military intellectual in the Soviet Army who became a colonel-general and chief of the military commissar system in the 1980s. In 1990, Volkogonov published his four-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, followed by biographies of Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin and his posthumously published history of the Soviet system in which he provides sketches of its seven leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev.Less

The Grand Surprise and Soviet Studies

Robert Daniels

in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

The academic pursuit known as “Sovietology” failed to predict the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991. Sovietology is the specialized study of the Soviet Union from the standpoint of ... More

The academic pursuit known as “Sovietology” failed to predict the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991. Sovietology is the specialized study of the Soviet Union from the standpoint of history, economics, geography, political science, and occasionally sociology and anthropology. From the perspective of political science, Sovietology focuses on leadership politics and behavior. The much-maligned totalitarian model was not simply a creation of Cold War propaganda. Totalitarianism was invoked by anti-Stalin Marxists such as Leon Trotsky and Rudolf Hilferding to distinguish Stalinism from socialism. Soviet studies helped to defuse the politicians' hysteria about Communist expansion with empirical knowledge of the system's past and current problems. Communism is generally seen as a utopian experiment founded on the Machiavellian theory of Marxism-Leninism.Less