Download Lenin historiography reading questions

LENIN HISTORIOGRAPHY READING QUESTIONS
David R. Marples, Lenin’s Revolution: Russia 1917-1921
Lenin: Background and Views
 There has been a debate over whether Lenin’s revolution paved the way for Stalin’s
cruel and bureaucratic regimes. This has not been resolved because it is difficult to
discern how Lenin would have government in peacetime, in good health and wit ha
stable economy.
 According to Soviet sources, Lenin became a revolutionary upon the execution of his
brother Alexander.
 Lenin had an incisive and analytical mind and a domineering nature
 He became a Marxist in 1889 at age 19- some say because of his work in the legal
system, he saw how it favoured the privileged class.
 In 1895 Lenin met Grigori Plekhanov, leader of the Russian Marxists. He greatly
influence Lenin.
 Working for this older group of exiled Marxists, Lenin and Tsederbaum (Martov) began
to incite the workers to take action. The authorities exiled them to Siberia during 18971900.
 While in exile, Lenin married Krupskaya. This period seemed to have been a
constructive period of his life. He was able to write and communicate freely, and
received a salary from the gov’t.
 When in exile, Lenin wrote The Development of Capitalism in Russia. It anticipated the
increasing stratification of the Russian peasantry, and their eventual alliance with the
working class (proletariat). Lenin believed that the system of the village community
would be destroyed by capitalist development and thus could not serve as the basis for
a social revolution (as the Populists maintained). Lenin targeted the populists (he
though their goal would results in small scale peasant capitalism) and the group known
as the Economists (who he thought were perverting the laws of Marxism with an
argument that the plight of the workers could be fixed by legal means, unions and social
benefits- Lenin saw such views as detrimental to the revolutionary movement).
 After the first congress of the RSDWP held in a house in Minsk, the attendees were
arrested by the Ohkrana.
 In 1900 the Social Democrats established a paper called the Iskra (the Spark). This
positive devlopement was to be offset by internal rifts instigated by Lenin.
 When Lenin returned from exiled he criticized the Economists and wrote his most
famous polemical work What is to be Done? This work reads like a programme for
revolutionary action, but also reflects Lenin’s disillusionment with the chosen class for
such action- the proletariat. The traditional Marxists view was the bourgeoisie first rising
up against the feudal aristocracy as a result of the capitalist period, followed by a
struggle between the proles against their bourgeois masters.
 The Marxists believed that the role of a revolutionary party was to help this process
along, but Lenin believed the proles would do nothing and the RSDWP must take power
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on behalf of the workers. The party must be highly centralized and composed of a small
group of revolutionaries
Adam B. Ulam saw this programme as a “blueprint for a dictatorship” and Robert V.
Daniels perceives it as part of Lenin’s drive for personal authority.
His emphasis on democratic centralism and rigid discipline in order to take power
horrified his contemporaries (Plekhanov, Martov, Trotsky) as they though it would result
in a dictatorship.
At the second RSDWP congress in Brussels, the party split in two factions the majority
Bolsheviks and the minority Mensheviks under Martov. Why didn’t Lenin listenbecause he was tired on the endless debate between the revolutionaries and he
believed the workers did not have a natural inclination towards revolution (shortly to be
proved inaccurate- Bloody Sunday)
What gave Lenin authority over the Bolsheviks he was a fanatic, a man of discipline
and willpower. He had no family or social life outside of politics. Soviet works portrayed
Lenin as a man concered with the plight of the workers, and the inhumanities and
inequalities of capitalism. However there is little that is humanitarian in his writing,
rather it is incisive, vindictive and argumentative.
Lenin wanted power, he wanted it for his party alone with himseld as leader, and he
would analyse the political situation and choose the methods by which this might best
occur. This goal seemed to be his main motivation. He was not hardly a passive
follower of Marx, but rather adapted the doctrine to the political situation of Russia.
Revolution or Coup D’État?
 With the collapse of the Soviet Union and de-Leninization, most western accounts say
that the events of 7 November constituted a coup-d’etat by a minority party and these
events brough great misfortune to the people of Russia. With the opening of the
Russian archives, new revelations have surfaced that demonstrate the ruthlessness of
Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin.
 In the time from April-October 1917, taking power was paramount in Lenin’s mind.
 Lenin did not create the conditions for Bolshevik rule; he merely took advantage of
them, coming to power at a time when no other party was willing to take such a radical
step.
o There was no longer any support for the Provisional Government and all crucial
decisions had been delayed pending the convocation of the constituent body
there was little reason to prolong its existence.
 By the time of Nov 7, the Bolsheviks were the most popular party. After the Bolsheviks
failed power grab in July (July Days), Lenin felt that there was only one moment at
which the party could take power.
 The Mensheviks and the SRs were too confined to dogmatic (inflexible) Marxism and
were too closely linked to the Provisional Government to engineer a successful
takeover. The Bolsheviks could have shared power with fellow socialists but Lenin
didn’t want to get caught up in debate.
 Why did the Provisional Government fail so abjectly:
o It was always a temporary government without a popular mandate
o On many occasions (ex. Order No.1) it proved powerless to take action against a
rising revolutionary sentiment
o It failed to deal with the three basic problems in Russia:
 The continuation of the war
 Food for the population
 The Land question in the countryside
o The other socialist parties had cabinet members in the provisional gov’t which
fore ever tied them to the gov’t unpopular decisions such as continuing the war
(launching the Kerensky offensive), arresting Red Guards during July Days,
rounding up Bolshevik leaders, restoring death penalty at the front.
o It was not a difficult or unpopular decision for Lenin to take power when the
possibility arose in November.
 The Revolution 7 November may not have been noted for the bravery of its leader. It
saw little bloodshed, and most citizens in Petrograd were unsure of what actually
happened. However it was still a revolution undertaken by force by a popular party. It
resulted in change of government, and overall was a popular revolution even though it
created an even more undemocratic government (in respect to the transitional
government)
The Pipes Debate
 Pipe’s The Russian Revolution refocused the debate on Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. A
highly critical account of how the Bolsheviks came to power, their cruelty and
viciousness, and the personal failing of the once revered V.I. Lenin. Pipes has been
criticized for his anti-Lenin stance.
 For five decades after the revolution an orthodox interpretation pervaded in the West,
which maintained that an illegal government had been established in Petrograd that
used violence and terror to preserve itself.
o This interpretation focused on the political aspects of the Bolshevik takeover
o Ignored social issues and the growing rift between rich and poor in Russia
o It argued that the provisional government collapsed as a result of a conspiracy
by the Bolsheviks- a party that did not represent its followers
o If this interpretation is correct all the evils associated with the Soviet regime
originated with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, not Stalin.
 By the 1970s and 1980s revisionist theory challenged the orthodox view by assessing
the impact of workers, soldiers and peasants on the course of events in 1917. For
example they mentioned that Lenin in particular was not anxious to seize power in the
Spring of 1917 and there were deep rifts in the party. These historians have indicated
that the Bolsheviks were much closer in their views to the aspirations of the workers
and soldiers than previously thought.
 Pipes book which was published in 1990 reasserted the traditional view in a unique way.
He ignores other viewpoints Part 1 argues that the Tsarist government was a
patrimonial system which evoked little patriotism or loyalty but was constructed over
centuries and perhaps appropriate for Russian conditions. In Part 2, Pipes demonstrates
both contempt and intense hatred for intellectuals (i.e. The Bolsheviks and their leader
Lenin). Pipes books seems to depict everyone as a villain with the exception of Nicholas
II and Kornilov (right wing leader of attempted coup). The chief villain is Lenin, who is
portrayed as rigid, cowardly, single minded and contemptible.
 Most controversial part he says the Bolsheviks staged three attempted putsches in
1917. This disregarded eyewitness accounts and Lenin’s personal intervention to
restrain the masses.
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Pipes claims that the Bolshevik regime was the precursor of Stalinism and German
“Nazism” and Lenin’s hatred for the bourgeoisie was analogous to Hitler’s hatred of the
Jews.
Pipes ignores the social and economic forces in Russia at the time and argues that Lenin
and his followers were solely responsible for the ruthless state and dictatorship that
emerged.
It is unfair to depict Lenin’s motive being only the desire to seize power.
Lenin’s Achievements and Failures
Critical factors that resulted in the success of the Bolsheviks:
 The popularity of the Bolsheviks in the autumn of 1917
 They made promises that appealed to the broader population
 The association of their rivals (the Mensheviks and SRs) with the government
 The unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to use the Soviet as a means to take power
Marple’s Thesis: The revolution very much belonged to Lenin even though he did not play a
major role in the events of 7 Nov. Also, the Bolsheviks in opposition were very different from
the Bolsheviks in power (prior to the Nov 7 revolution their were attuned to the mood of the
populace).
 In Nov 1917, the provisional government was on its last legs, and the Bolsheviks also
had a majority in both the Moscow and Petrograd soviets.
 Lenin did not want to share power with any other socialists. The increasing bureaucracy
in the party was a consequence of Lenin’s desire to rule alone and remain in power.
This was a socialist revolution that excluded the majority of socialists from decision
making.
 The civil war may have created the unity necessary for Lenin to stay in power, so they
could pose as defender of the revolution in a struggle against the class enemy
 It may also be interpreted that the civil was a result of Lenin’s manoeuvring:
o Excluding the other socialist parties who later joined the whites
o Giving into German demands at Brest-Litovsk and making a deal with them
instead of working with the Entente Entente later fought against the
Bolsheviks in civil war.
 Lenin and Trotsky decided to deal with the Germans for the time being since they
expected revolutions would shortly occur throughout Europe however they never
succeeded
 In 1921, the Bolsheviks introduced the New Economic Policy, banned factionalism in
party ranks, the Cheka was appearing in new forms and the party was growing into a
swelling bureaucracy.
 In the countryside where Lenin’s party had never had solid support, he could have
maintained the worker-peasant alliance, but instead chose to rely on the worker while
turing viciously on the peasant. (Failure)
 War communism resulted in the entire collapse of the economy and labour mobilization
tactics deprived the Bolsheviks of key support in cities, military and naval bases. (failure)
 At various times Lenin was prepared to take the most dramatic punitive measures, to
make an example of class enemies or to order mass executions when a milder
punishment would have made little difference (The brutal murder of the Romanov
family- all the children too)
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In his pamphlet What is to be Done? He outlines a flexibility in Marxism that would
bring him to power. But once in power Lenin became chilling and ruthless- it may have
kept him in power but the utopian goals of Socialism could never be implemented.
However in retrospect, the Bolsheviks were the only party that agreed to fulfill the
wishes of the populace (food, end war, land). Ultimately they may have failed to live up
to early expectations because they were seduced by power. Everything Lenin did was to
ensure that his party remained the government – socialist rivals were outlawed, a siege
mentality developed, force and repression were used- these became the main
characteristics of the early Soviet regime.
Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
Reflections of the Russian Revolution
1. a. According to Pipes, the 1917 Revolution was not an event, or even a process, but a…
 a sequence of disruptive and violent acts that occurred more or less concurrently but
involved actors with differing and in some measures contradictory objectives
b. How does Pipes support his view that the 1917 Revolution was a “conservative revolt”
 it began with conservative Russians revolting as a result of their disgust by the
Crown’s familiarity with Rasputin and the mismanagement of the war effort. The revolt
spread to liberals who feared that if the monarchy remained in office, revolution would
be inevitable.
c. Trace Pipes’ understanding of sequence of events
 In February 1917 after the Petrograd riots, the generals (hoping to prevent the
mutiny from spreading to the war front) convinced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. With
the collapse of the imperial authority, the social discontent and the radical intelligentsia
moved to the forefront in shaping the following events. In the spring and summer the
peasants seized and divided up property among themselves. The rebellion spread to
the soldier on the front (who deserted), to the workers (who took control of industrial
enterprise) and to ethnic minorities (who wanted greater self rule). These group’s
attack on the country’s social and economic structure by fall 1917 left Russia in anarchy.
d. What do these 1917 events demonstrate about :
(i) The Russian Empire demonstrated that the Russian Empire was a fragile, artificial
structure held together not by organic bonds connecting rulers and ruled, but by
mechanical links provided by the bureaucracy, police and army. Its 150 million
inhabitants were not bound by strong economic interests or national identity.
(ii) a Marxist Revolution discredits the Marxist notion that a revolution always results
from social (class) discontent- even though this social discontent existed at the time, the
immediate factors causing the regime’s fall and the resulting turmoil were
overwhelmingly political.
2. According to Pipes, how did the following contribute to the Russian Revolution
a. The Tsar and his advisors the decline in the prestige of stardom in the eyes of
a population accustomed to being ruled by an invincible authority. After a
century and a half of expansion, Russia suffered many humiliating defeats in the
late 1800s to 1917 (Crimean war, Russo-Japanese War, WWI with Germans).
The reforms in 1905 neither made tsarism more popular with the opposition nor
raised its prestige of the tsar. What mattered in Russian leaders were that they
could inspire fear in friends and foes- Nicholas II fell not because he was hated,
but because he was held in contempt.
b. The Peasantrymade up 80% of Russia’s population, they were an unsettling
element since they were an obstacle to change as well as a permanent threat to
the status quo. The Russian peasants were considered to have been oppressed
under the tsar’s rule, but on the eve of the Revolution, he enjoyed full legal and
civil rights and owned (communally) 9/10 of the country’s agricultural land and
the same proportion of livestock and was bettor off than his father and freer
that his grandfather. However the peasants were isolated from the country’s
political, economic and cultural life and never were affected by the
Westernization initiates by Peter the Great. To the peasants (who descended
from the Serfs) the state had always been a malevolent force that took taxes
and recruits but gave nothing in return. He felt no patriotism or attachment or
the government. Felt estranged from the conservative establishment as well as
the radical opposition. These alienated and potentially explosive peasants
immobilized the government, which believed that it was docile only from fear,
and would interpret any political reforms as weakness and rebel. Serfdom was
not slavery, but serfs had no legal rights and hence no sense of law. Serfs never
had known freedom, which prevented them from acquiring the qualities of a
true citizen- Rostovtseff felt this was a principal cause of Bolshevism. They
could not conceive government based on principle, life was a war of all against
all- this attitude fostered despotism. When despotism ceased to be viable,
anarchy ensued, and once anarchy had run its course it gave rise to a new
despot
c. Industrial workers a potentially destabilizing group (few of them assimilated
revolutionary ideologies and were excluded from leadership position in parties).
Since they were generally new to the cities that still held rural attitudes. They
were not socialists but rather syndicalists (believe that they had a right to the
factories and the villagers had a right to land) who were not interested in
politics (like the peasants)- they were under the influence of a primitive, nonideological anarchism. Also, industrial workers only made up a mere 2% of the
population. Soviet historians wanted to find evidence of worker radicalism in
pre-revolution Russia, but Pipes concludes that it never existed.
d. Intelligentsiaintellectuals craving power. A major factor in the revolution, the
intelligentsia had great influence n Russia. The ranking system of the tsarist
government excluded members of the intelligentsia, which made them
susceptible to schemes of social reform. Because of the lack of representative
institutions and free press, combined with the spread of education, the
intelligentsia claimed the right to speak on behalf of a mute people- even
though the workers mistrusted the intellectuals. Stressing the inequality in
society was a means for the intelligentsia to gain popular support, but even if
these inequities were fixed, they would still maintain their revolutionary
aspirations. Many members of left wing parties held this belief. They had an
uncompromising hostility towards the tsar- they were revolutionaries not for
the sake of improving conditions for the people, but for the sake of gaining
dominance over the people and remaking them in their own image.
“It was cultural and political short comings…that brought about the collapse of tsarism not
“oppression” or “misery”.
3. a. How does Pipes support his argument that the 1917 February (March) Revolution
was not a workers revolution? He claims that the true protagonist was actually the
army, and the industrial workers only played a role of a chorus, amplifying the actions of
the army. The mutiny of the garrison at Petrograd sparked disorder among the civilian
population unhappy over inflation and shortages (Nicholas could have quelled the
mutiny if he used force like Lenin- Lenin’s sole concern was holding power, while
Nicholas cared for Russia). The tsar yielded to not to a rebellious populace but to
generals and politicians who persuaded him to abdicate in order to save the army and
avert a humiliating surrender. Clearly, unlike Lenin he was not solely concerned with
holding power, because abdicated from a sense of patriotic duty. The social revolution
followed the abdication- soldiers, peasants, workers and ethnic minorities pursued their
own aims, making the country ungovernable by the provisional government. Lenin rose
to power on that anarchy- he promised every discontented group what it wanted: “land
socialization”, worker controlled factories, peace, and national self-determination for
minorities. All these pledges were violated soon after they served their purpose- to
undermine the provisional government.
b. According to Pipes, why was the 1917 October (November) Revolution a “classic
coup d’etat”
The October Revolution was secretly being prepared for months prior, and genuine
revolution are not scheduled and cannot be betrayed. The ease with which the
Bolsheviks toppled the Provisional Government has caused many historians to claim
that the October coup was inevitable. Also, Lenin was very concerned about the timing
of the coup- if it were a real revolution, the timing would be up to the forces of history.
Even Trotsky later said that if he nor Lenin were in Petrograd, there would have been no
October Revolution. Furthermore, the masses acted as spectators in the so-called
revolution and ignored Bolshevik appeals to storm the Winter Palace. Trotsky said that
the October “revolution” was accomplished by at most 25,000-30,000 persons (in a city
of 400,000 and a country of 150 million).
4. a. How does Pipes support his view that “Lenin owes his historical prominence not to
his statesmanship, which was of a very inferior order, but to his generalship (successes
and failures)He conquered his own country through his innovation, the reason for his
success was militarizing politics (he was the first leader to treat politics as warfare),
giving him a significant advantage over his enemies. Militarizing politics and politicizing
warfare enabled him first to seize power and then hold on to it. However, this did not
help him build a viable political and social order- he was so used to storming all “fronts”
that even after he gained undisputed authority over Soviet Russia, he had to invent new
enemies to fight and destroy: now the church, the SRs, the intelligentsia. This
belligerence became a everlasting feature of the Communist regime.
The Bolsheviks ceased to be socialist Utopians once it became obvious that the ideal
was unattainable. Utopian communities believe in cooperative commonwealths, the
Bolsheviks on the other hand did not care to obtain any agreement, but dismissed any
display of individual or group initiative as counterrevolutionary. They also showed a
constitutional inability to deal with opinion different from their own except by abuse
and repression. They should be regarded not as utopians but as fanatics.
b. What does the term Marxism mean to Pipes?it means two propositions: that as
capitalist society matures it is doomed to collapse from inner contradictions, and that
this collapse (revolution) is effected by industrial labour (the proletariat). At every stage
in its history, the Communist regime in Russia did whatever it had to without regard to
Marxist doctrine, even as it cloaked its actions with Marxist slogans. Lenin succeeded
because he was free of the Marxist scruples that inhibited the Mensheviks. Although the
underpinnings of Bolsheviksm were Marx’s theories, Bolshevik practices were
indigenous since nowhere else in the West has Marxism led to such totalitarianism.
Marxism had libertarian and authoritarian strains- which would prevail depended on the
country’s political tradition. The Russian political tradition was for the ruler to be the
subject and the land to be the object- this fused with the Marxist concept of
“dictatorship of the proletariat “. Marx’s notion of dictatorship was vague, so in Russia
it was filled with the historic legacy of patrimonial. It was the grafting of Marxist
ideology onto the sturdy stem of Russia’s patrimonial heritage that produced
totalitarianism. The Bolsheviks distorted Marxism in every conceivable way, first to gain
power then to hold on to it.
5. Pipes compares the link between tsarist Russia and the Communist regime using the
concept of patrimonialism, particularly the four pillars of tsarist patrimonialism.
How does Pipes use the “four pillars” to support his argument that “the Bolsheviks
found models not in the writings of Marx, Engels, or other Western socialists, but in
their own history…”
a. Autocracy (personal rule) traditionally, the Russian monarch held full
legislative and executive powers and administered with the help of a
bureaucracy that owed allegiance to his person rather than to the nation or the
state. Lenin followed this model from his first day in office. As a concession to
democracy, he gave the country a constitution and representative bodies, but
only performed ceremonial function (the constitution was not binding on the
party and the country’s true ruler and parliament were not elected. Lenin
resembled the most autocratic tsars, Nicholas I and Peter I as he insisted on
personally attending to all the little details of state affair, as if the country was
his own.
b. The autocrat’s ownership of the country’s resources beginning with
natinoalizing land and industries, the government took over all assets, and a
single leader was in control of the government, Lenin was the de facto owner of
the country’s material resources. Industries were run fort the state by state
appointed managers, urban real estate was nationalized and with private
commerce outlawed, the Soviet regime controlled all legal wholesale and retail
trade. These measures demonstrated that like Russia’s sovereigns, Soviet
leaders not only ruled the country but owned it.
c. The autocrat’s right to demand unlimited services from his subjects The
Bolsheviks reinstituted obligatory state service- in Muscovy the subjects of the
tsar had to work for him either directly (in army or government) or indirectly (by
cultivating his land). The Bolsheviks “universal labor obligation” was enforced
by threat of execution. In regard to the peasants, the Bolsheviks re-introduced
the old practice of tiaglo (forced labour such as lumbering or carting) for which
they received no compensation. Like 17th Russia, no inhabitant was allowed to
leave the country.
d. State control of informationThe Bolshevik secret police was adopted from the
Tsarist Ohkrana. The Tsarist state police developed sophisticated methods of
surveillance, and infiltrated society with informers. Many crimes were not
considered crimes in any other European country- such as expressing a desire
for political change. The Tsarist police became very powerful after the
assassination of Alexander II. The Russian Revolutionaries who came to power
adopted the methods of the Tsarist police (by the 1980s the KGB distributed
staff manuals prepared by the Okhrana a century earlier). In the early 1800s,
Russia was the only European country to enforce preventative censorship, but
was abolished in 1906. However, the Bolsheviks reinstituted the most
oppressive tsarist practices, shutting down every publication that did not
support their regime, and censoring all forms of intellectual and artistic
expression.
Even though the Bolsheviks did not want to have anything in common with the Tsar’s
regime, they emulated the Tsar’s practices because of forces of circumstances- they rejected
democracy when they abolished the Constituent Assembly and had not choice than to
govern autocratically which meant ruling the people in a manner they were used to. Lenin’s
regime was reminiscent of the most reactionary reign of imperial Russia, that of Alexander
III (under which Lenin had grown up) as many of the Bolshevik practices replicated the
“counter-reforms” of the 1880s and 1890s. Revolutionaries still must build the new order
from human material molded by the past and sooner or later they succumb to the past
themselves.
6. Explain Pipes’ understanding of the relationship between Lenin and Stalin.
 Western Communists, sympathizers and Soviet historiography after 1956 insist that
Stalin not only did not continue Lenin’s work but subverted it.
 Actually Stalin did not seize power after Lenin’s death but ascended to it, initially
under Lenin’s sponsorship.
 Contrary to Trotsky’s claim, Lenin had Stalin carry on much of the day-to-day
business of government and to advise him on a variety of domestic and foreign
issues, Because of Stalin’s patronage, by the time Lenin fell ill in 1922, Stalin was
the only person to belong to all three organs of the Central Committee: The
Politburo Orgburo and Secretariat. Using Lenin’s rules preventing factionalism,
Stalin repressed criticism of his position on grounds that it was not directed at him
but at the party and thus served the cause of counterrevolution.
 Even though in later years Lenin became disappointed with his protégé (mainly
rudeness and impatience), but earlier he did almost everything in his power to
promote Stalin’s ascendancy. He never saw Stalin as a traitor to his brand of
Communism.
 Pipes disproves the significane of he once difference separating the two men- that
Lenin did not kill fellow communists and Stalin did on a massive scale. To 99.7% of
his compatriots (those not belong to the order of the elect), Lenin showed no
human feelings whatever- sending tens of thousands to their death. A high Cheka
official wrote how Lenin made a short shrift of party members who complained of
the merciless of the Cheka and mocked the humanness of the capitalist world.
 Pipes says that the difference between the two men was that Lenin’s insiders were
to Stalin outsiders- the people who owned loyalty not to Stalin but to Lenin and
competed with him for power- and to them Stalin showed the same inhumane
cruelty that Lenin used against his enemies.
 Stalin was a true Leninist (he followed Lenin’s political philosophy and practices).
Every indgredient of Stalinism (except mudering fellow communists) was learned
from Lenin including collectivization and mass terror.
 Stalin’spersonal qualities (his megalomania, vindictiveness and paranoia) shoult not
obscure the fact that his ideology and means of operation were Lenin’s. A man of
little education had no other source of ideas.
 Even if another leader succeeded Lenin, he would have most likely lead the Soviet Union
down the same path as Stalin had given the realities of the power structure at the time.
By diffusing democratic impulses in the party and imposing a top-heavy command
structure, Lenin insured that the man who controlled the central party apparatus
controlled the party and through it, the state (that man was Stalin)
7. What reasons does Pipes offer to argue that the Communist regime was a “monumental
failure”
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The revolution inflicted staggering human losses on Russia. From 1917 to 1922, the
casualties of the Revolution- actual and due to the deficit in births (based on the
projected population of 160 million in 1922)- were over 23 million (2.5 times the human
deaths in WWI). 2 million deaths each from combat and epidemics and 5 million deaths
from famine. The heaviest losses were in the age group 16-49, where 29% of the males
were eradicated by August 1920.
The Bolsheviks only success was staying in power. They failed to export communism in
the 1920s and failed to construct a socialist society at home- Lenin had ruined the
economy through expropriation and terror.
He expected the Communist Party to provide disciplined leadership to the nation,
instead he saw political dissent. To repress the workers who turned their backs on the
Communists and the peasants who rebelled, staying in power meant turning to police
measures.
The governments actions became impeded by the bloated and corrupt bureaucracy and
the voluntary union of nations turned into an oppressive empire. Mussolini saw
Bolshevism as a vast terrible experiment that had miscarried and Yeltsin noted the sigh
of relief the world felt when communism collapsed.
Failure was inevitable: Bolshevism was an daring attempt to subject the entire life of a
country to a master plan. It swept aside everything humans have learned over
millennia.
Communism failed because it followed the erroneous Enlightenment theory that man is
merely a material compound, devoid of either soul or ideas and a product of a malleable
social environment. Though man is not an inanimate object but a creature with his own
aspirations and will. To demonstrate this truth required tens of millions of dead, and
incalculable suffering for the survivors and the ruin of a great nation. This flawed
regime stayed in power without the support of its people, like Tsarism (which lasted ten
times longer).
The Bolsheviks tried to remake human beings and refashion society without their
mandate. The excesses of the Bolsheviks (their readiness to sacrifice countless lives for
their own purposes) were a violation of both ethics and common sense. They ignored
the very real means of the well-being and live of people and failed to recognize that the
ends are unattainable.
John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
The Russian Revolution: A Tremendous Failure
1. According to Lukacs, how was the Bolshevik Revolution so polar different than the
French Revolution?
The Russian revolutions were the consequences of a great European war, and the
French Revolution resulted in a great European war. The Bolshevik revolution did not
spread beyond Russia, unlike the French one. The French revolution flowed into the
countries of west Europe, but the Russian Revolution was Russia’s retreat from Europe,
the shrinking of Russia’s domains. Beyond France, the French armies triumphed;
beyond Russia, the Russian armies lost and retreated. The doctrines of the Bolsheviks
were even more drastic than those of the French.
2. According to Lukacs, why were Lenin and Trotsky “fools” compared with Stalin?  they
did not have a inkling of statesmanship, without much comprehension of human nature,
without the slightest understanding of nationalism- all of these matters Stalin felt,
learned and then possessed. Lenin and Trotsky believed that the Communist Revolution
would repeat itself in the western border regions of Russia and later in Germany. The
opposite occurred, in many Eastern European countries (Poland, the Baltic nations,
Finland) the Communists and the Red Army were defeated and Lenin lost about
everything the tsars had gained in 200 years. Lenin and Trotsky’s international
communism failed (most attempts to spread communism to Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan
and China failed). Stalin did not share the belief in Internation Communism- one of the
reasons he was able to get rid of Trotsky.
3. According to Lukacs, the “man who gained more from the specter of International
Communism was Hitler”. How does Lukacs support this? People in the west feared
international Communism in the years after the Revolution because of the horrors they
heard were occurring under Lenin, the attempted coups in Munich and Budapest, and
the Red Scare in 1919-1920 in the U.S. Anti-Communism (more than anti-Semitism) was
the source of Hitler’s main appeal to conservatives. During the worst of the economic
crisis in Germany, the vote fort he Communists only rose slightly while the Nazi share
rose from 3 percent to more that 43% in March 1933. Before becoming Chancellor,
Hitler emphasized the dangers of Communism. In Nov 1932, he told Hindenburg that
the Bolshevization of the masses proceeds rapidly, even though this was not true, he
knew this kind of argument would impress Hindenburg and most conservatives. After
his victory, Hitler said that the Nazis strength has prevented the Red revolt from
spreading across Germany and to Germany’s Catholic Bishops he said that the defense
of Europe against Bolshevism in the Nazi’s task. Hitler’s assertion of anti-Communism
got him very far with potential international adversaries (appeasement etc).
4. According to Lukacs, how did Roosevelt and Churchill view Stalin differently? 
Democratic and liberal statesmen like Roosevelt saw Stalin and his Soviet Russia
representing a crude pioneer vision and version of a worker’s democracy, yet unsuitable
for Americans, though still admirable to some extent. Roosevelt saw his US to be
somewhere between Stalin’s Russia and Churchill’s old Britain. However, Churchill saw
Stalin as a new kind of Russian tsar, ruling a people and a society who were well behind
the Western Democracies, not ahead of them- a view more realistic than that of
Roosevelt and of most Americans at the time.
5. Summarize Lukacs’ view of the importance of the psychology of anti-Communism and
anti-Communists. Anti-communism was popular because it was nationalist. The most
popular appeals of anti-Communism seldom coincided with the greatest threats of
Communism- this suggests that anti-Communism was much more enduring than the
Communists’ appeal. The highest levels of anti-Communism in America (which often
was synonymous with American patriotism), the top peaks of American military
preparation, occurred during the period when the Soviet Union was in retreats- the
1950s and 1980s. Dogmatic anti-Communists continued to prosper long after dogmatic
believers in Communism had ceased to exist.
6. How does Lukacs support his assertion that the Bolshevik Revolution “turned out to be a
great benefit to the West, or at least to Europe, and certainly to Russia’s neighbours” 
If Russia had stayed in WWI a little longer, the defeat of Germany would have come
earlier and Russia would have been one of the victors- cashing in on the wartime
promises Britain and France had made to keep Russia in the war. Conferences like Yalta
and Potsdam would have occurred after WWI, with Russia keeping power and influence
in Eastern Europe. At 1914, conditions of life in Russia were improving- capitalism had
begun to rise, social mobility was increasing and Russia’s resources were beginning to be
exploited- Russia was on her way to become something like a pseudocapitalist
economy/constitutional monarchy. All of this was swept away by the Communists,
causing Russia to fall behind Europe and the West, especially after WWII.