(18) Internationalism in the Soviet remembrance of the October Revolution

Today is the actual anniversary of the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks' initial seizure of power took place during the night of October 25-26 (Old Style) which is November 6-7 in the New Style calendar adopted by the new government which took effect on February 1, 1918 (New Style).

Part of the challenge in understanding the Russian Revolution is that the past has been continually reinterpreted. That happens with all historical events, of course. But the interpretations of Soviet history were not only very, very many in number. But some of those interpretations were perceived by the players as very high stakes.

David Brandenberger's Fate of Interwar Soviet Internationalism: A Case Study of the Editing of Stalin's 1938 Short Course on the History of the ACP(b) Revolutionary Russia, 29:1 (2016) is focused on one instance of that process. Nikita Khrushchev in his famous 1956 "secret speech" critiquing Stalin included a passage adressing Stalin's claims about the authorship of the Short Course, the book being a central piece of the official Soviet outlook, in the context of how Stalin had directed the preparation of a later hagiographic biography of himself (Text from The cult of the individual - part 4 Guardian 04/26/2007):

But even this phrase did not satisfy Stalin: The following sentence replaced it in the final version of the Short Biography: "In 1938, the book History of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks), Short Course appeared, written by comrade Stalin and approved by a commission of the central committee, All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks)." Can one add anything more?

(Animation in the hall.)

As you see, a surprising metamorphosis changed the work created by a group into a book written by Stalin. It is not necessary to state how and why this metamorphosis took place.

A pertinent question comes to our mind: if Stalin is the author of this book, why did he need to praise the person of Stalin so much and to transform the whole post-October historical period of our glorious Communist party solely into an action of "the Stalin genius"?

Did this book properly reflect the efforts of the party in the socialist transformation of the country, in the construction of socialist society, in the industrialisation and collectivisation of the country, and also other steps taken by the party which undeviatingly traveled the path outlined by Lenin? This book speaks principally about Stalin, about his speeches, about his reports. Everything without the smallest exception is tied to his name.

And when Stalin himself asserts that he himself wrote the Short Course, this calls at least for amazement. Can a Marxist-Leninist thus write about himself, praising his own person to the heavens?

I'm not especially concerned here with the exact role of Stalin in preparing the Short Course. But in the course of describing it, Brandenberger talks about the internationalist position that was reflected in the drafts prepared by the committee for Stalin's review. Stalin's edits on the Short Course, in Brandenberger's account, removed much of the internationalist focus focus from the text and instead gave more emphasis to the leadership of the Communist Party, a change reflecting Stalin's priorities of the moment.

Brandenberger describes the kind of internationalism that was part of Soviet ideology:

Propaganda and indoctrination played a central role in the Bolshevik movement from its earliest days. The party leadership’s demands in this regard changed after the October 1917 revolution, of course, when it set about transforming itself into a ruling institution. Mass agitation and indoctrination now became major priorities as the party sought new slogans and rallying calls with which to mobilize Soviet society. That said, the process of adapting Marxist-Leninist ideology and the party’s revolutionary experience into an appealing, accessible and evocative propaganda line turned out to be easier said than done. Ultimately, what Henry Steele Commager has referred to as ‘the search for a usable past’ preoccupied the party leadership well into the 1930s. Over the course of this long process, one of the few constants in the official line was its emphasis on the centrality of internationalism to the Soviet experiment. [my emphasis]

Initially, there were high hopes by Lenin and other Communist leaders immediately after the October Revolution that there would be other revolutions in Europe, Germany in particular. It didn't wind up happening. But it wasn't a completely unrealistic expectation. The Marxist theories dominant in the Second International assumed that a socialist revolution in a "backward" country with many more peasants than industrial workers would not be able to maintain itself without assistance from a socialist revolutionary government in a rich country. And until 1917, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was generally viewed as the world's leading party in the pursuit of socialism.

The writers of the Short Course draft described the initial period of the revolution this way:

Invoking the global dimensions of the Bolshevik experience in the introduction to their manuscript, they then promptly returned to the subject shortly thereafter in order to declare that that at the turn of the twentieth century Russia stood at the epicentre of the worldwide revolutionary moment. Industrialization was more rapid in Russia than elsewhere, conditions were more oppressive and the working class was more aware of how little it had to lose. V. I. Lenin argued in this regard that Russia represented a weak link in the international capitalist system and offered an ideal site for revolution. What was needed was a disciplined revolutionary vanguard of radicals – a position that led Lenin and his Bolsheviks into conflict with more conciliatory, ‘opportunistic’ Menshevik elements within Russian Social Democracy. Lenin clashed with the Second Communist International during these years on account of the unwillingness of Social Democrats such as Karl Kautsky and August Bebel to endorse his revolutionary activism. Even leftists like Rosa Luxemburg did not automatically side with Lenin.

Even this account reflects post-1917 priorities and perceptions. It requires imagination to argue that "at the turn of the twentieth century Russia stood at the epicentre of the worldwide revolutionary moment," although the 1905 revolutionary outbreak in Russia did attract considerable interest and attention in other countries of Europe. Some of it sympathetic, some of it horrified.

Brandenberger continues that account:

The fall of the Russian autocracy in February 1917 gave Russian Social Democrats an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Second International and resume their commitment to worldwide revolution. According to Iaroslavskii and Pospelov, however, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries refused to capitalize on the extraordinary disruption that the war was causing, revealing their parochial, bourgeois orientation. Lenin, by contrast, continued to press the case for a new International and socialist revolution, both in exile and upon his return to Russia in April 1917. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government that October, Iaroslavskii and Pospelov quoted Stalin as attributing the victory to three international factors. First, the revolution had taken place at a time when the world’s major imperialist powers were preoccupied by their own internecine conflict. Second, the ongoing war led many in foreign lands to sympathize with the Russian revolution’s call for a cessation to the ongoing hostilities. Third, the war had created a revolutionary crisis throughout the combatant countries that won the Bolsheviks new allies in the struggle against imperialism.

That view of matters does give an idea of how for many people in other countries, the October Revolution was viewed with sympathy and hope. That may be more difficult for people to envision now. But czarism had been dearly hated by European democrats, including socialists, for a century or more. After Russia's defeat of Napoleon's invasion and the establishment of a restorationist peace with the Treaties of Paris of 1814-1815, Russia was widely perceived as a bulwark of royalist and reactionary regimes in continental Europe. And Russia had indeed played that role in the democratic revolutions of 1848.

Iaroslavskii and Pospelov framed the 1918–21 civil war in global terms, tracing it to international imperialism’s attempt to suppress the threat of world revolution. Hardfought Bolshevik victories against both foreign and domestic enemies in 1918 contributed to the collapse of the old order in the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. Soviet power was then at least briefly established in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Caucasus. In Germany, the communist Spartacists under Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht rose in rebellion before being betrayed by local Social Democrats. In Hungary, communists also briefly took power, while other movements emerged in Switzerland, France, Poland, the United States and elsewhere. Although these risings faltered due to right-wing reaction, left-wing weakness and Social Democratic treachery, they proved Lenin to have been right about the revolutionary nature of the international situation. Eager to support such radicalism, Lenin quickly founded the Third Communist International – the Comintern – to serve as the ‘military headquarters’ of the world revolutionary movement.

Again, the authors were writing an official history, not a scholarly treatise. And that during the time of the Great Purges of 1934-1938. But its a good description of how the international role played by the October Revolution was viewed by the Soviet Communists at the time of the revolution and afterward.