The Bolshevik Party in Conflict the Left Communist

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The Bolshevik Party in Conflict the Left Communist Ronald I. Kowalski THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN CONFLICT THE LEFT COMMUNIST OPPOSITION OF 1918 STUDIES IN SOVIET HISTORY & SOCIETY General Editor: R.W. Davies The Bolshevik Party in Conflict The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 Ronald I. Kowalski Senior Lecturer in Russian History Worcester College ofHigher Education in association with the M Palgrave Macmillan MACMILLAN © Ronald I. Kowalski 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 All rights reserved. No reproduction. copy or transmission of this publication may be made without prior permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced. copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988. or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. 33--4 Alfred Place. London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1991 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Filmset by Wearside Tradespools. Fulwell. Sunderland British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kowalski. Ronald I. The Bolshevik Party in conflict: the left Communist opposition of 1918. - (Studies in Soviet history and society). I. Soviet Union. Political events. 1917-1924 I. Title II. University of Birmingham. Centre for Russian and EastEuropean Studies III. Series 947.0841 ISBN 978-1-349-10369-0 ISBN 978-1-349-10367-6 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-10367-6 To my mother and father Contents Acknowledgements IX Introduction The Rise and Fall of the Left Communist Movement 11 2 The Debate on Imperialism 24 3 Brest-Litovsk 60 4 The Agrarian Question 83 5 The Organisation of Industry 99 6 Politics and the State 120 7 The Strength of the Left Communist Movement: Moscow, the Urals and the Ukraine 145 8 Conclusion 183 Appendices 189 Notes and References 194 Bibliography 228 Glossary of Russian terms and abbreviations used in the text 237 Index 238 vii Acknowledgements As this work neared completion my realisation of the mani­ fold debts that I had incurred grew. My colleagues in the History Department at Worcester College of Higher Educa­ tion have tolerated with patience and good humour my frequent frustrations. In particular, I am indebted to my head of department, Ted Townley, for his consistent sup­ port, and to Dil Porter for his comradeship throughout this project. The History Department of Indiana University of Pennsylvania where I spent the academic year of 1988-9 as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher provided me with the practical facilities with which to finishthis work. To the many libraries and their staffs that placed themselves at my disposal I am also grateful, but to none less than Kate Gardner, former deputy librarian at Worcester, whose uncomplaining pursuit of numerous rare materials is greatly appreciated. My thanks also must go to the British Academy, under whose auspices I was able to spend a fruitful two-month period of research in Moscow where I had the good fortune to unearth numerous local and regional newspapers unavailable in the West; and to the Twenty-Seven Foundation for a small grant which helped me in my study of the Moscow Left Communists. To the participants of a Soviet Industrialisation Project Seminar (SIPS) of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) in the University of Birmingham in March, 1985, and of the Twelfth Conference of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution (SGRR), lowe a collective debt, for their critical yet encouraging response to the papers on the Left Communists that I presented. Maureen Perrie read and commented on part of this work, while Evan Mawdsley scrutinised a briefer exposition of the basic theses presented in it. Their help, and that of Professor R. W. Davies and, in particular, of Richard Sakwa for their critique of the entire manuscript, enabled me to expunge a number of historical, and verbal, atrocities that otherwise would have eluded me. Needless to say, they do not necessarily agree with my conclusions which together with whatever other shortcom­ ings are to be found are my own. Chapters 1 and 7 in large ix x Acknowledgements part are based on an earlier paper, 'The Left Communist Movement of 19 18: A preliminary analysis of its regional strength', published in the journal of the SGRR, Sbornik(now renamed RevolutionaryRussia), 12 (1986). I am obliged to the editor of this journal for permission to reproduce much of this material here. Finally, I thank my family: my parents, for their support and encouragement over many years; my children, Anna and Helen, for their forbearance in the last few years as I strove to come to terms with the Left Communists; and above all to Jenny, without whose constant support and understanding this book would never have been completed. R.I.K. Indiana, PA Introduction It remains rather surprising that some seventy years after its appearance the Left Communist movement, in Stephen Cohen's view perhaps 'the largest and most powerful Bolshe­ vik opposition in the history of Soviet Russia', 1 should have suffered from such relative neglect. In the West, admittedly, historians often have discussed the conflict within the party in the firsthalf of 19 18 between Lenin and his faction on the one hand and the Left Communists on the other, but invariably in the context of more �eneral studies, of the revolution, the party, or its leaders. In consequence, our understanding of the Left Communist movement continues to be partial, lacking the breadth and depth of treatment that its importance seemingly warrants. For example, almost all that has been written about it has been confined to examin­ ing the conflict at the centre, within the leading echelons of the party. The nature of the movement at the regional and local levels has not been examined in any systematic way, although general allegations that the Moscow region, the Urals and Ukraine were bastions of Left Communism have received widespread currency.3 Moreover, there has been an over-emphasis on the Left Communists' clash with Lenin on the questions of separate peace with Germany, and, subse­ quently, of the organisation of industry. This has occurred at the expense, certainly, of any sustained discussion of their bitter disagreements over agrarian policy (a remarkable omission given the significance of this issue in what was still a predominantly peasant society) and, to a lesser extent, their conflict concerning the structure of the revolutionary state. Despite the absence of an adequate study of the Left Communist movement itself, Western historiography has witnessed several bold attempts to provide a theoretical framework in which to situate not just Left Communism, but the various other factions which emerged in the Bolshevik party, before the iron heel of Stalinism descended upon it. In his pioneering work on Communist opposition Robert Daniels argued that by 19 17 two distinct currents existed within the party, the 'Leninists' and the 'Leftists', the former 1 2 The Bolshevik Party in Conflict emphasising 'power' and 'revolutionary pragmatism', the latter 'principle' and 'revolutionary idealism'. He continued, however, that it was rather misleading to attempt to diffe­ rentiate them solely by reference to traditional distinctions between the political right and left on 'a simple unilinear scale'. Both factions after all were clearly on the left of such a scale, inasmuch as they both aspired to radical, nay revolu­ tionary, political, social and economic change.4 To under­ stand the distinctions between them he suggested that it was necessary to refer to another scale, measuring degrees of hardness and softness. The 'Leninists', he contends were 'hard', in the sense of being 'the most aggressively power conscious and tough-minded people'. The 'Leftists', on the other hand, were located on the soft side of the scale, albeit divided into two groups: the 'Ultra-Left', such as the Work­ ers' Opposition, and even the Democratic Centralists, the 'more utopian and emotionally democratic' of them; and the 'moderate Left', Leon Trotsky and his supporters, 'less carried away by enthusiasm and more prepared to resort to force'. He appears to be uncertain on which side of this scale to locate the Left Communist movement itself, assigning it to the mid-point of his hard-soft axis.5 While recognising Daniels' 'important contribution to the understanding of early Bolshevik thought', more recently J ames McClelland has argued that his model has tended to obscure the fact 'that there were two Bolshevik positions which were equally leftist, idealistic and bold, but which were diametrically opposed to each other in the content of their programs as well as their methods'.6 He submits that both leftist currents envisaged radical socio-economic transforma­ tion, leading to similar 'anticipated utopias', yet differed fundamentally 'in the routes they proposed to travel in order to reach them'. One current, the utopian, 'argued for im­ mediate and drastic changes in the existing culture and social structure on the premise that socialism could be built only after the masses, through widespread autonomy and crash educational and cultural programs, had acquired a truly proletarian class-consciousness'. The other, 'revolutionary heroic', current 'maintained that ... a massive build-up of the economy, rather than the psychological transformation of the masses, was the most urgent prerequisite for the Introduction 3 construction of socialism'. 7 In other words, the utopian Left gave priority to 'proletarian cultural revolution' as the essen­ tial prerequisite for the construction of socialism, while the 'revolutionary heroic' Left emphasised the prime necessity of industrialisation per se.8 McClelland does not attempt to apply his model to the Left Communist movement itself, alleging that the distinction between these two leftist currents only crystallised fully during the civil war.
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