by Norman Lowe
Did Lenin intend NEP as a temporary compromise – a return to a certain amount of private enterprise until recovery was assured; or did he see it as a return to something like the correct road to socialism, from which they had been diverted by the civil war? It is difficult to be certain one way or the other. What is clear is that Lenin defended NEP vigorously: he said they needed the experience of the capitalists to get the economy blooming again. In May 1921 he told the Party that NEP must be pursued ‘seriously and for a long time – not less than a decade and probably more’. They had to take into account the fact that instead of introducing socialism in a country dominated by industrial workers – the true allies of the Bolsheviks – they were working in a backward, peasant-dominated society. Therefore NEP was not a retreat – it was an attempt to find an alternative road to socialism in less than ideal circumstances. It would require a long campaign of educating the peasants in the benefits of agrarian co-operatives so that force would not be necessary; this would lead to the triumph of socialism. Roy Medvedev, a dissident Soviet historian, was convinced that these were Lenin’s genuine intentions, and that if he had lived another 20 years (to the same age as Stalin), the future of the USSR would have been very different.
NEP was moderately successful: the economy began to recover and production levels were improving; in most commodities they were not far off the 1913 levels. Given the territorial losses at the end of the First World War and the war with Poland, this was a considerable achievement. Great progress was made with the electrification of industry, one of Lenin’s pet schemes. Towards the end of 1927, when NEP began to be abandoned, the ordinary Russian was probably better off than at any time since 1914. Industrial workers who had a job were being paid real wages and they had the benefits of NEP’s new social legislation: an eight-hour working day, two weeks’ holiday with pay, sick and unemployment pay and healthcare. The peasants were enjoying a higher standard of living than in 1913. The downside of NEP was that unemployment was higher than before, and there were still frequent food shortages.
(h) Political problems were solved decisively
Russia was now the world’s first communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); power was held by the Communist Party, and no other parties were allowed. The main political problem now for Lenin was disagreement and criticism within the Communist Party. In March 1921 Lenin banned ‘factionalism’ within the Party. This meant that discussion would be allowed, but once a decision had been taken, all sections of the Party had to stick to it. Anybody who persisted in holding a view different from the official party line would be expelled from the Party. During the rest of 1921 about one-third of the Party’s members were ‘purged’ (expelled) with the help of the ruthless Cheka; many more resigned, mainly because they were against NEP. Lenin also rejected the claim of the trade unions that they should run industry. Trade unions had to do as the government told them, and their main function was to increase production.
The governing body in the Party was known as the ‘Politburo’. During the civil war, when quick decisions were required, the Politburo got into the habit of acting as the government, and they continued to do so when the war was over. Control by Lenin and the Communist Party was now complete (for his successes in foreign affairs see Section 4.3(a) and (b)). However, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was nowhere in evidence; nor was there any prospect of the state ‘withering away’. Lenin defended this situation on the grounds that the working class were exhausted and weak; this meant that the most advanced workers and their leaders – the Communist Party – must rule the country for them.
In May 1922 Lenin suffered a stroke; after this he gradually grew weaker, and was forced to take less part in the work of government. He later suffered two more strokes, and died in January 1924 at the early age of 53. His work of completing the revolution by introducing a fully communist state was not finished, and the successful communist revolutions which Lenin had predicted in other countries had not taken place. This left the USSR isolated and facing an uncertain future. Although his health had been failing for some time, Lenin had made no clear plans about how the government was to be organized after his death, and this meant that a power struggle was inevitable.
16.4 LENIN – EVIL GENIUS?
(a) Lenin remains a controversial figure
After his death the Politburo decided that Lenin’s body should be embalmed and put on display in a glass case in a special mausoleum, to be built in Red Square in Moscow. The Politburo members, especially Joseph Stalin, encouraged the Lenin cult for all they were worth, hoping to share in his popularity by presenting themselves as Lenin’s heirs, who would continue his policies. No criticism of Lenin was allowed, and Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. He became revered almost as a saint, and people flocked to Red Square to view his remains as though they were religious relics.
Some historians admire him: A. J. P. Taylor claimed that ‘Lenin did more than any other political figure to change the face of the twentieth-century world. The creation of Soviet Russia and its survival were due to him. He was a very great man and even, despite his faults, a very good man.’ Some revisionist historians also took a sympathetic view. Moshe Lewin, writing in 1968, portrayed Lenin as having been forced unwillingly into policies of violence and terror, and in his last years, in the face of ill health and the evil ambitions of Stalin, struggling unsuccessfully to steer communism into a more peaceful and civilized phase.
These interpretations are at opposite poles from what some of his contemporaries thought, and also from the traditional liberal view which sees Lenin as a ruthless dictator who paved the way for the even more ruthless and brutal dictatorship of Stalin. Alexander Potresov, a Menshevik who knew Lenin well, described him as an ‘evil genius’ who had a hypnotic effect on people that enabled him to dominate them. Richard Pipes can find scarcely a single good word to say about Lenin. He emphasizes Lenin’s cruelty and his apparent lack of remorse at the great loss of life which he had caused. The success of the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 was nothing to do with social forces – it was simply because Lenin lusted after power.
Robert Service probably presents the most balanced view of Lenin. He concludes that Lenin was certainly ruthless, intolerant and repressive, and even seemed to enjoy unleashing terror. But although he sought power, and believed that dictatorship was desirable, power was not an end in itself. In spite of all his faults, he was a visionary: ‘Lenin truly thought that a better world should and would be built, a world without repression and exploitation, a world without even a state. ... It was his judgement, woeful as it was, that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would act as midwife to the birth of such a world.’ He points out that with the introduction of NEP, the situation began to settle down. ‘The Cheka’s resources were limited and its repressive functions somewhat moderated. Religion was openly practised. Age-old peasant customs were left undisturbed. Whole sections of economic activity were released from state ownership.’ Perhaps it was one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century that Lenin died prematurely before his vision could be realized. Nevertheless his achievements make him one of the great political figures of the last century. In the words of Robert Service: ‘He led the October revolution, founded the USSR and laid down the rudiments of Marxist–Leninism. He helped to turn a world upside down.’
(b) Leninism and Stalinism
One of the most serious charges laid against Lenin by his critics is that he bears the responsibility for the even greater excesses and atrocities of the Stalin era. Was Stalinism merely a continuation of Leninism, or did Stalin betray Lenin’s vision of a society free from injustice and exploitation? During the early years of the Cold War, Western historians held the ‘straight line’ theory – that Stalin simply continued Lenin’s work. It was Lenin who destroyed the multi-party system when he suppressed the Constituent Assembly. He created the highly authoritarian structures of the Bolshevik Party, which became the structures of governm
ent, and which Stalin was able to make full use of in his collectivization policies and his purges (see Sections 17.2–3). It was Lenin who founded the Cheka, which became the dreaded KGB under Stalin, and it was Lenin who destroyed most of the powers of the trade unions.
Revisionist historians take a very different view. Moshe Lewin, Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen argue that there was a fundamental discontinuity between Lenin and Stalin – things changed radically under Stalin. Stephen Cohen points out that Stalin’s treatment of the peasants was quite different from Lenin’s merely coercive policies: Stalin waged a virtual civil war against the peasantry, ‘a holocaust by terror that victimized tens of millions of people for 25 years’. Lenin was against the cult of the individual leader, whereas Stalin began his own personality cult. Lenin wanted to keep the Party bureaucracy as small and manageable as possible, but Stalin enlarged it. Lenin encouraged discussion and got his way by persuading the Politburo; Stalin allowed no discussion or criticism and got his way by having opponents murdered. In fact, during the ‘Great Terror’ of 1935–9, Stalin actually destroyed Lenin’s Communist Party. According to Robert Conquest, ‘it was in cold blood, quite deliberately and unprovokedly, that Stalin started a new cycle of suffering’.
Robert Suny provides this clear summing up of Leninism and its relationship to Stalinism:
Devoted to Karl Marx’s vision of socialism, in which the working class would control the machines, factories and other sorts of wealth production, the communists led by Lenin believed that the future social order would be based on the abolition of unearned social privilege, the end of racism and colonial oppression, the secularization of society, and the empowerment of working people. Yet within a generation Stalin and his closest comrades had created one of the most vicious and oppressive states in modern history.
FURTHER READING
Acton, E., Rethinking the Russian Revolution (Edward Arnold, 1990).
Berkman, A., The Russian Tragedy (Consortium Books, 1989 edition).
Brown, A., The Rise and Fall of Communism (Vintage, 2010).
D’Encausse, H. C., Lenin (Holmes & Meier, 2001).
Ferro, M., Nicholas II: The Last of the Tsars (Viking, 1991).
Figes, O., A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (Penguin edition, 1998).
Fitzpatrick, S., The Russian Revolution (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 2008).
Hill, C., Lenin and the Russian Revolution (Penguin, 1971 edition).
Lewin, M., The Making of the Soviet System (New Press, 1994).
Lewin, M., Lenin’s Last Struggle (Michigan University Press, 2005).
Lieven, D. C. B., Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias (John Murray, 1996).
Lincoln, W. B., Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, 1918–21 (Da Capo, 1999).
Lowe, N., Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
Massie, R. K., The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995).
McCauley, M., The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (Longman, 2nd edition, 2007).
Nove, A., An Economic History of the USSR (Penguin, 3rd edition, 1992).
Pipes, R., The Russian Revolution, 1899–1919 (Harvill, 1993).
Pipes, R., Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919–1924 (Harvill, 1997 edition).
Radzinsky, E., Rasputin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000).
Read, C., From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and their Revolution,1917–21 (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Read, C., Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (Routledge, 2005).
Service, R., The Russian Revolution 1900–1927 (Macmillan, 3rd edition, 1999).
Service, R. Lenin: A Biography (Macmillan, 2000).
Service, R., Stalin: A Biography (Macmillan, 2004).
Service, R., Comrades: A World History of Communism (Macmillan, 2007).
Service, R., Trotsky: A Biography (Macmillan, 2010).
Smith, S. A., Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Suny, R. G., The Soviet Experiment (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2010).
Ulam, A. B., Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Fontana/Collins, 1965).
Volkogonov, D., Lenin: Life and Legend (Free Press, 1994).
Wood, A., The Origins of the Russian Revolution, 1861–1917 (Routledge, 3rd edition, 2003).
Yakovlev, A., A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (Yale University Press, 2002).
QUESTIONS
Explain why the tsarist regime was able to survive the 1905 revolution but was overthrown in February/March 1917.
How far would you agree that the February/March revolution which overthrew the Russian monarchy was a ‘spontaneous uprising’?
‘The Bolsheviks did not seize power, they picked it up; any group of determined men could have done what the Bolsheviks did in Petrograd in October 1917’ (Adam Ulam). Explain to what extent you agree or disagree with this view.
How far was popular dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government responsible for its overthrow in October/November 1917?
How far did the Tsar Nicholas II fulfil the promises made in the 1905 October Manifesto by the outbreak of war in 1914)
How far was Russia a modernized industrial state by 1914?
How far would you agree that the impact of the First World War on Russia was the main reason for the downfall of Nicholas II in 1917?
How far would you agree that Lenin’s leadership was the main reason for the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917?
In what ways, and with what success, did Lenin’s policies attempt to solve the problems facing Russia at the beginning of 1918?
Assess the reasons why the Bolsheviks were victorious in the civil war by 1921.
There is a document question about differing views of Lenin on the website.
Chapter 17
The USSR and Stalin, 1924–53
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
When Lenin died in January 1924, it was widely expected that Trotsky would take over as leader, but a complex power struggle developed from which Stalin emerged triumphant by the end of 1929. He remained the dominant figure in the USSR, in effect a dictator, right through the Second World War and until his death in 1953 at the age of 73. Immense problems faced communist Russia, which was still only a few years old when Lenin died in January 1924. Industry and agriculture were underdeveloped and inefficient, there were constant food shortages, pressing social and political problems and – many Russians thought – the danger of another attempt by foreign capitalist powers to destroy the new communist state. Stalin made determined efforts to overcome all these problems: he was responsible for the following:
Five Year Plans to revolutionize industry, carried out between 1928 and 1941;
collectivization of agriculture, which was completed by 1936;
introduction of a totalitarian regime which, if anything, was even more ruthless than Hitler’s system in Germany.
All his policies aroused criticism among some of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’, especially the speed of industrialization and the harsh treatment of peasants and industrial workers. However, Stalin was determined to eliminate all opposition; in 1934 he began what became known as ‘the Purges’, in which, over the next three years, some two million people were arrested and sentenced to execution or imprisonment in a labour camp for ‘plotting against the Soviet state’. There was a vast network of these camps, known as the ‘Gulag’. It is estimated that perhaps as many as ten million people ‘disappeared’ during the 1930s, as all criticism, opposition and possible alternative leaders were eliminated and the ordinary population were terrorized into obedience.
Yet brutal though Stalin’s methods were, they seem to have been successful, at least to the extent that when the dreaded attack from the West eventually came, in the form of a massive German invasion in June 1941, the Russians were able to hold out, and eventually end up on the winning side, though at a terrible cost (see Sections 6.2, 6.3 and
6.9). The western part of the country, which had been occupied by the Germans, was in ruins, and many people would have been happy to see the end of Stalin. But he was determined that his dictatorship and the one-party state should continue. There was a return to the harsh policies, which had been relaxed to some extent during the war.
17.1 HOW DID STALIN GET TO SUPREME POWER?
Joseph Djugashvili (he took the name ‘Stalin’ – man of steel – soon after joining the Bolsheviks in 1904) was born in 1879 in the small town of Gori in the province of Georgia. His parents were poor peasants; his father, a shoemaker, had been born a serf. Joseph’s mother wanted him to become a priest and he was educated for four years at Tiflis Theological Seminary, but he hated its repressive atmosphere and was expelled in 1899 for spreading socialist ideas. After 1917, thanks to his outstanding ability as an administrator, he was quietly able to build up his own position under Lenin. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin was Secretary-General of the Communist Party and a member of the seven-man Politburo, the committee which decided government policy (see Illus. 17.1).
Illustration 17.1 Joseph Stalin
At first it seemed unlikely that Stalin would become the dominant figure; Trotsky called him ‘the party’s most eminent mediocrity … a man destined to play second or third fiddle’. The Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov described him as ‘nothing more than a vague, grey blur’. Lenin thought him stubborn and rude, and suggested in his will that Stalin should be removed from his post. ‘Comrade Stalin has concentrated enormous power in his hands,’ he wrote, ‘and I am not sure he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. … He is too crude, and this defect becomes unacceptable in the position of General-Secretary. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job.’