of course, his person, into a prescription for curing the ills of German socialism" (p. 106). All of this is difficult to square with the "geographically determined theorizing" of a man who proceeded rapidly "to shed the mantle of the Russian leader for that of the true internationalist" (p. 183). A close study of Lenin's writings, especially after 1902, suggests a strong and growing "Eastern orientation" in his thought and provides fairly compelling evidence that Lenin's theorizing about the revolution in Europe and the world revolution was an adjunct of his struggle for the revolution in Russia. Not without reason was Lenin called the "Slavophile" by his political opponents! Second, the method used by the author in advancing his argument calls into question his thesis. Not only is his presentation frequently disjointed and his translations of Lenin's writings not always precise and reliable, but at crucial points in his argumenta- tion, the author lifts citations out of context and-apparently having concluded that Lenin's own words lack the necessary clarity-proceeds to explain to the reader (some- times in parentheses within the citation) what Lenin really meant. Moreover, aside from a brief quotation, the reader is told nothing about a manuscript (in Page's possession) by Y. Vacietis, the commander of the Latvian Sharpshooters, which is the main basis for the argument that it was the Latvians who were the "midwives of the revolution." After a reading of this book, which unfortunately is also marred by a large number of typographical errors, the argument that Lenin's revolutionary theorizing focused on Rus- sia until 1914, on Germany during 1914-19, and on Asia after 1919-at least for this reader-remains a proposition quod esset demonstrandum. Generally speaking, the por- trait of Lenin which emerges from this work is too harsh and unidimensional to be credible.

Rolf H. W. Theen Purdue University

George Leggett. The Cheka-Lenin's Political Police: The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (December 1917 to February 1922). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. xxv, 514 pp. $22.50.

Of the many books on the Soviet political police, few deserve as close attention and as high praise as this book by George Leggett. At a time when the head of the KGB is elevated to the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, this book on the organization from which the KGB ultimately emerged illuminates for us another dimen- sion of the change of leadership which took place in the USSR and provides us with an insight into the essence of the political process in the Soviet Union and its history. This is a book on the first political police under the Soviet government, an organization that was crucial in eliminating all political opposition during the most difficult years of the Soviet regime, when its very ability to survive was in doubt. It is a book about an organ- ization, the CheKa, and through this organization we see the men who created it, the process by which it established itself as a powerful organization in the USSR, and its use by the Communist Party to secure the Party's rule over Russia. Mr. Leggett starts his book with a discussion of the origins of the CheKa, since this is a problem that bothered Soviet leaders then and bothers Soviet historians today. The CheKa, i.e., All-Russian Commission to Combat Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage, is said to have been formed by a resolution of the Sovnarkom in December 1917. As Leggett shows, in fact the CheKa was delivered illegitimately by a governing body that was not authorized then to do what it did. The reason, states Leggett, was "Lenin's self-imposed dilemma," because Lenin "was willfully making revolution in the wrong place at the wrong time-even by Marx's criteria." In 1917 it was easy to seize power from the weak Provisional Government, but to retain power was quite a different matter. And what power did Lenin want? "Power shared with none, and relying upon the armed forces of the masses." However, Russia's backwardness, the small size of its proletariat, and its social and political structure in 1917 were factors acting against the assumption of power by the Bolshevik Party. To overcome these obstacles to unlimited power and to impose the Party's rule on a turbulent society, Lenin created a state-organ of oppression. This organ not only acquired more power than its predecessor-the tsarist Okhrana-but for a time seemed even to be more powerful than its creator and even to endanger the Party itself. As Leggett examines the circumstances of the CheKa's establishment, he shows that at the beginning the CheKa was only one such organ among many commissions, commit- tees and staffs created for the same purpose. At the end, only the CheKa survived to pro- vide a most necessary service to the Soviet government and to Communist rule in Russia. The immediate, practical purpose for the establishment of the CheKa -was "internal security," i.e., to assure the safe and unobstructed operation of the Soviet government and its leading personalities and to help in maintaining order in Petrograd. These were not simple tasks, and the machinery set up for their implementation (i.e., the CheKa) was not limited by any binding legal framework. Moreover, unlike the tsarist police, the CheKa was established not as a defensive organ, but as an offensive one. The CheKa, in the words of one of its leading functionaries, did not judge its enemies, but destroyed them. In other words, not only was the CheKa not subordinate to the law and legal process, but it set its own laws. The CheKa did not wait for crimes against the state to be committed, but rather destroyed those who the CheKa thought were the opponents of the regime before they did anything illegal. Leggett does not devote much space to the methods by which the CheKa eliminated its enemies. His book belongs to a different genre, not that of Evgenia Ginzburg or Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. It does not focus on the prisons or forced labor camps; its point of view is not that of the victim; it has no interest in what happened in Russian society in connection with the existence and activity of the CheKa. Although in one paragraph the book deals with torture, especially by the Ukrainian Cheka, and does refer to the question of the number of arrests and killings, its main portion is devoted to long discussions of the history of the CheKa as a bureaucratic and political organization. Most of the book, then, is on the politics of Soviet repression and on the organization of the means of repression. As told by Leggett, it is a fascinating story in spite of its dryness. From the moment the first Soviet government was established, the CheKa had to compete with two Peo- ple's Commissariats-that of Justice and that of Internal Affairs. This was a bureaucratic struggle over subordination and jurisdiction. It was also personal and political struggle for power. The CheKa won its battle against the People's Commissariat of Justice when the latter was in the hands of the Left SR Party. Even a rebellion from within by SR members of the CheKa's Collegium was crushed and the CheKa. survived. Later it fought against the Bolshevik People's Commissariats of Justice.and Internal Affairs. The reader is led through the maze. of committees and commissions, special investigations, confer- ences and conventions, decisions and resolutions of the Party and of the government, at the end of which the Cheka emerges stronger than ever, restrained only by its head, Dzerzhinskii, and by the Party's undisputed leader, Lenin. Lenin was the most important personality in the history of the Cheka. He wanted it established; he used it against his political enemies; he approved its methods; he gave it priority over all other government and Party organs except the Central Committee. The man who understood what Lenin wanted, and turned the CheKa into such an instrument was Feliks Dzerzhinskii. Through the whole book the figure of Dzerzhinskii dominates the story, for it was his iron will and exceptional organizational ability that forged the CheKa. Other members of the CheKa and of the Party who were involved with the Che-