DAVID RIAZANOV and RUSSIAN MARXISM* Few Bolshevik

COLUM LECKEY (Pittsburgh, USA) DAVID RIAZANOV AND RUSSIAN MARXISM* Few Bolshevik thinkers achieved such wide acclaim and respect as the vet- eran revolutionary and historian David Riazanov. As founder and director of the Marx-Engels Institute, author of numerous books, articles, and pamphlets on the theory and history of Marxism, and editor of the first definitive edition of the works of Marx and Engels, Riazanov. held a preeminent position among Russian Marxist intellectuals in the 1920s. An outspoken and sarcastic nonconformist with a long history of irritating just about every lu- minary of Russian Social Democracy, Riazanov was a quintessential political maverick. Nonetheless, in the 1920s most Bolsheviks still viewed him as an irreplaceable asset. Before 1917, the job of editing the Marx-Engels Nachlass had belonged primarily to the German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky, whom nearly all orthodox Marxists revered as Marx's and Engels' direct successor in theoretical matters and who hence was the natural choice to preside over the legacy's publication. With the establishment of Soviet power and the decisive fracturing of European socialism into moderate and revolutionary wings, it became one of the Bolshevik regime's paramount ideological tasks to prove to Western Marxists that Bolshevism was consistent with the tenets of Marxist orthodoxy. Controlling, publishing, and interpreting the Nachlass thus fig- ured as a pivotal tactic in justifying the Bolsheviks' claim to the mantle of orthodox Marxism. It fell to Riazanov, the world's leading expert on the Marx- . .. Engels, corpus, to publish the full literary heritage of Marx and Engels' which, so it was assumed, would confirm the founders of scientific socialism as unbridled foes of evolutionary social democracy and the spiritual forebears of Bolshevism. _ Ironically, in January 1931, shortly after Riazanov had begun to publish the works,: he was dismissed from his post at the Institute and arrested on charges of assisting a group of Mensheviks in their alleged plot to overthrow the regime. Riazanov became the first Bolshevik intellectual to fall in the so- called."cultural revolution." Few of his colleagues and admirers could have seen this coming, but a flood of venemous criticism came from them shortly thereafter anyway, effectively erasing his name from the history of Russian *The author wouldlike to thank ProfessorRichard He!Ue. the three anonymousreaders for RussianHistory,,and especially Professo??illiam..Çhas? and Orysia Karapinkaof the History Departmentat the Universityof Pittsburghfor theirencouragement. advice and comments,,*.' 128 Marxism for the next two generations. Despite the services he had rendered to Bolshevik ideology and revolutionary Marxism over the years, the aging scholar's nonconformist reputation and long-standing connections with Men- shevism no doubt played a key role in determining his fate. Be that as it may, his unexpected removal made it clear to intellectuals of all political persua- sions that not even the most prestigious Bolshevik thinkers were exempt from the cultural onslaught, and, perhaps more menacingly, that the Party line would soon dominate every aspect of cultural life. , Riazanov has attracted little serious attention from scholars in either Rus- sia or the West, a fact which may seem surprising considering his prominence among Bolshevik intellectuals. Western scholars by and large accept the opin- ion of Riazanov's contemporaries at face value without explaining exactly what he accomplished to deserve such praise. References typically take pass- ing note of his towering intellect,l an alleged and oft-quoted insult to Stalin,2 his unflagging resistance to Party authorities,3 and especially his irrepressible eccentricities. Even specialists on Soviet historiography of this period con- sign Riazanov to relative background status, overlooking his scholarly work and underscoring instead his resistance to the rising tide of partiinost' after 1928.4 The general impression, not altogether inaccurate, is that of an embat- _ fle4 and isolate4 scholarly administrator, cornered in his Institute and locked in a hopeless sparring match with the forces of Stalinism. But Riazanov was not merely a loser in a personal squabble with his pro- fessional rivals, nor, as Trotskii and Victor Serge maintained, an annoying gadfly for Stalin to swat.5 This essay aims to penetrate beyond these charac- terizations in order to bring to light Riazanov's specific place in the history of Russian Marxism and to offer reasons for his sudden downfall. It argues that the source of his prestige rested on his ability to articulate the communistic and proletarian essence that Bolsheviks assumed lay at the heart of Marx's teachings. True, Riazanov continued the "codification" of orthodox Marxism 1. LeonardSchapiro, The CommunistParty of theSoviet Union (New York: Vintage, 1971), 398; BertramD. Wolfe,Three Who Made a Revolution(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 499-500. 2. Isaac Deutscherreports that in the 1920sRiazanov once said to Stalin: "Stop it, Koba, don't make a fool of yourself.Everybody knows that theory is not exactly your field." See Stalin, APolitical Biography (New York: Vintage, 1960), 290. 3. Robert V. Daniels,The Conscienceof the Revolution(Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniv. Press, 1961), 379Adam ; B. Ulam, TheBolsheviks (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 544-45. 4. John Barber,Soviet Historians in Crisis (New York: Holmesand Meier, 1981);George Enteen,The Soviet Scholar Bureaucrat: M. N. Pokrovskyand the Societyof MarxistHistorians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1978); Jonathan Frankel, "Party Genealogyand the SovietHistorians," Slavic Review 25 (1966):563-603. 5. Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary,trans. and ed. Peter Sedgewick(London: OxfordUniv. Press, 1963), 250"Delo ; t. Riazanova,"Biulletin'oppozitsii, vol. 2: 1931-33(New York:Monad Press, 1973),21.. .

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