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Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary movement
From Marx to Trotsky the theory of permanent revolution has been the basis for revolutionary strategy and programme. The RDG believes we need a new version of the theory for revolutionary democracy communist politics in the 21 st century.

The following is an unpublished and incomplete article on the Russian revolution which identifies the fifth stage in the Russian democratic revolution 1917-21

The end of the Civil War represented a great victory for the working class and the Bolshevik government. It meant that the democratic revolution could continue or resume its forward march. But this would very much depend on the kind of policies pursued in the struggle -between the classes. At this point it is necessary to take stock of the situation. First of all there was a very serious economic situation. Industrial production had fallen sharply and so too had productivity.

(See Kritzam (Die heroische periodi der grossen russischen Revolution)

This was due to a combination of factors including the foreign blockade, severe shortages of raw materials, food and fuel as well as absenteeism, a sizeable proportion of which was due to physical exhaustion from hunger. This was added to the general chaos and sabotage by the employers. The attempt to centrally control grain supplies was repeatedly undermined by the actions of millions of peasants alongside the black market. Added to this was the fact as in any war economy the army was absorbing a massive proportion of output typically between 40-75% of many industries (Cliff 4:85).

These circumstances were exceptionally harsh. Serge comments that "winter was torture (literally) for the townspeople: no heating, no lighting and the ravages of famine. Children and feeble old folk died in their thousands. Typhus was carried everywhere by lice, and took its frightful toll" (Serge Memoirs:116).

The working class had been seriously weakened in terms of its weight in the population and its experience and cohesion. The number of industrial workers fell from 3 million in 1917 to 1.25 million in 1921, a drop of nearly 60%. The number of agricultural workers fell even more sharply from 2.1 million to 34,000. Meanwhile the number of peasant households rose from 16.5 million in 1918 to 24 million in 1920 (Cliff 3:143). But it was not just a question of numbers. To some extent the 'old' working class had been dispersed into the army or into the countryside. A new one was emerging lacking some of the experience and tradition. The working class was enfeebled, so much so that Lenin from 1919 began to speak of the declassing of the industrial working class.

At the same time there was a massive expansion in bureaucracy. By the end of 1920 there were over 5.8 million state officials. Lenin in December 1920 quoted Radzutakis' thesis that "the state apparatus of economic management, gradually gaining in size and complexity, has been transformed into a huge bureaucratic machine which is out of proportion to the scale of industry (Lenin CW 32:38). Lenin summed up the situation in 1922 when he said 'we took over the old machinery of state and that was our misfortune. Very often this machinery operates against us. In 1917, after we seized power, the government officials sabotaged us. This frightened us very much and we pleaded: 'please come back'. They all came back but that was our misfortune. We now have a vast army of government employees, but lack sufficiently educated forces to exercise real control over them" (Lenin a"1 33: 428).

Out of necessity the democratic dictatorship of the working class had become a highly centralised military dictatorship in which the democratic features of the state between October 1917 and March 1918 had disappeared. 'The Soviets indeed", says Serge, "which had been so lively in 1918, were now no more than auxiliary organs of the party: they possessed no initiative, exercised no control and in practice represented nothing but the local party committees" (Serge Memoirs of x a revolutionary: 118).

The Red Army, the main instrument of the new state, had begun life as a volunteer democratic army. Full power was in the hands of soldiers committees. Top commanders were elected by Congresses of Committees. All ranks and titles, privileges and saluting were abolished. But as the civil war began, "the Bolsheviks were very quickly forced to retreat from the ideal of a democratically structured army" (Cliff Vol. 3:154). When Trotsky took over the army it was centralised and formal discipline reimposed. Soldiers' committees were no longer tolerated and military specialists re-employed. Political Commissars were appointed whose job it was to oversee the Officers and carry out political propaganda and education. In the course of the Civil War the army grew from 1 million to 3 million soldiers and came to hold a more important position rather different from the original intention.

Another product of the civil war was the growth in numbers and power of the Cheka, the secret police. At the beginning of 1918 they had 120 employees and by 1919 they had 31,000 (Cliff 3:153). The power of the Cheka was virtually unlimited especially at the most dangerous moments of the civil war. They acted as an inquisition with secret proceedings, which excluded any right of defence or any control by public opinion (Serge: Memoirs: 377). Most Bolsheviks saw it as a necessary evil and there was genuine fear that the Cheka could rise above the party. Indeed the Cheka's local commissions were dissolved early in 1919 but were revived again in the middle of Denekin's and Kolchak's offensive.

Finally, there was, in relation to the state, the political monopoly of the Bolsheviks. As Kamenev told the 9th Party Congress in 1920"The Communist Party is the government of Russia. The country is ruled by the 600,000 party members". Back in 1917, the revolutionaries had assumed a multi-party Soviet democracy. The civil war changed this until a one-party system had emerged. It would be wrong to blame the Bolsheviks for this. It was a product of special circumstances. At first all the other parties were hostile to the October insurrection. But only the Cadet (i.e. liberal) Party was openly supporting counter revolutionary violence. The Cadets were suppressed, although one of their newspapers was still being openly published in the summer of 1918 (Cliff 3:164). The case of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) was more difficult. They tended to split and vacillate. Their right wings began supporting the Cadets whilst their left wings were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. But these alignments shifted with the fortunes of war until all opposite parties were made illegal. The anarchists found themselves with a particularly difficult dilemma. On one hand they opposed the military dictatorship as ardent libertarians n the other, the danger of a White victory was even worse. In the end after acrimonious debates and splits a large majority gave varying degrees of support to the Bolshevik regime. (Paul Avrich - The Russian Anarchists - Princeton 1971:195-6)

The Bolshevik programme of March 1919 made it clear that the restrictions on the rights of other parties were only temporary.

Serge sums up the situation at the end of the civil war and at the beginning of the final stage of the democratic revolution. 'What with the political monopoly, the Cheka and the Red Army, all that now existed of the 'Commune-State' of our dreams was a theoretical myth. The war, the internal measures against counter-revolution, and the famine (which had created a bureaucratic rationing apparatus) had killed off Soviet democracy. How could it revive and when?" (Serge Memoirs: 133). By November1920 it was a revolution victorious, but a revolution in danger.

The end of the civil war was a turning point. This required a new policy. We must say at this point, with the benefit of hindsight, what that programme could and should have been in order to see more clearly the problems that arose. First it was necessary to re- emphasise Lenin's proposition that a socialist economy was impossible without the German and European revolutions and the support of the peasantry. Neither of these conditions were fulfilled. Therefore the only possible option on the economic front was to restore the health of 'state capitalism' or the mixed economy as Lenin had himself proposed in early 1918. Second this would present dangers to the working class unless the factory committees were restored to supervise management and independent trade unions created so that workers could organise their own self-defence against the excesses of state capitalism. Finally, none of this would re safe without rebuilding the political power of the working class through Soviet democracy. This we consider to have teen the programme for a final victory of the Russian workers in the democratic revolution. Let us now consider the position of the working class as well as that of the Bolshevik party.

The most obvious sign of danger was the political gap, which was growing between the Bolshevik government and party and the rest of the population. Dissatisfaction was widespread amongst the peasants. "So long as the civil war continued, the peasants on the whole tolerated the Bolshevik regime as the lesser evil compared with White restoration. However resentful they were of the grain restoration they were far more fearful of the return of the former landowners" (Cliff 4:129). Now they began to rebel. Waves of peasant uprisings swept rural Russia. Serge says, "we knew of fifty rallying points for peasant insurrection in European Russia alone" (Serge Krondstadt, 1921:5). In February 1921 the Cheka reported 118 separate peasant rebellions.

The urban workers were also dissatisfied. They "resented the elimination of workers control and the eclipse of collegial administration in the factories. They resented the authority of the specialists and, even more, their high wages and privileges of all sorts. They resented the introduction of the piecework and bonus systems. They had been prepared to tolerate hunger and cold and an ? of what they saw as the gains of the revolution so long as the civil war seemed to justify exceptional measures. Now, however, in late 1920 and early 1921, they had reached the limits of their tolerance" (Harding, Vol.2: 264).

The Bolshevik party had through the course of the revolution been closely in tune with both the working class and its most class conscious section. Could the party find the correct path, which would restore unity around a new programme? On the plus side the party was still internally democratic so that the moods, aspirations, and demands of the workers would enter the party through worker- Bolsheviks. The gap between party and class would be represented in factional platforms and inner party struggle. On the negative side there were ideological barriers to finding the correct course of action.

The two main ideological barriers were the 'civil war mentality' and so-called 'war communism'. It should not be surprising that the party which had led a civil war, many of whose cadres had been killed and those who had not, had been close to execution or worse, would be marked by the experience. Serge explains a small incident, concerning a problem with a small street market. "I shall have the covered markets pulled down and the crowds dispersed", said Mikhail Laihevich, an old Bolshevik and Red Army commander. Comments Serge, "the only solution he could envisage for any problem was a resort to force" (serge Memoirs: 117). "Political life was pursuing the same line of development: indeed it could hardly do otherwise. The tendency to override economic difficulties by compulsion and violence led to the growth of general discontent" (Serge Menoirs:118). Trotsky, who had been a Red Army commander, was somewhat prone to the same disease. This was evidenced in a pamphlet written by Trotsky in May 1920. Here he considers his civil war experience of mass mobilisation, which he generalises into a plan for the militarization of the entire soviet workforce for a single national economic plan (see Trotsky's 'Terrorism and Communism' and Harding, Vo12:256). The Bolsheviks had necessarily resorted to force, military discipline and terror to win the civil war. This could become the easy option in peace time especially for battle-hardened militants.

Second was the theoretical problem of 'war-communism'. As we argued before, this system from 1918-20 was a bastardised form of capitalism. We could call it militarised capitalism, whose closest parallel was the war economy in Britain during the Second World War. The common features of capitalist economies geared for war include centralisation and planning, rationing and the suppression of the free market, the incorporation of trade unions into the state and the growth of bureaucracy. The number one priority is that all production is mobilised for the war effort.

The peculiarity of the Russian version was that the capitalists themselves supported the enemy. As quislings, they used their power to bring about the collapse of capitalist economic relations. The only answer to this was expropriation, sweeping nationalisation not usually necessary in war economies. In the course of this, the forces of production were being retarded. This is proven by the facts on output, productivity and the size of the working class.

Extreme centralisation was thus a defensive measure to hold the economy together and to resist the collapse. It could only be a stop-gap. "There was no unified economic plan. The war was given priority and improvisation was substituted for rational planning". It was "anarchistic because of the 'shock' (udarni ?) campaigning methods, by which the authorities rushed from bottleneck to bottleneck, creating new shortages while seeking feverishly to deal with others" (Cliff 3:92). It was also extremely bureaucratic. People sought their own solutions. AS Serge says, "in order to eat it was necessary to resort daily and without interruption, to the black market; the communists did it like everyone else" (Serge Memoirs:115).

The working class understood only too well a system of subsistence wages and military discipline at work. It was tied up with the question of democracy. For as Serge says, ''as long as the economic system remained intolerable for nine-tenths of the population, there could be no question of recognising freedom of speech for any Tom, Dick or Harry, whether in the Soviets or elsewhere" (Serge Memoirs:118). The fact was that whether you called this system 'capitalism' or 'communism' the workers resented it and would only tolerate it as a temporary measure. By contrast the theorists identified the system as ‘communism’, which naturally they sought to maintain. Trotsky had just written that this system would last over several decades if the transition to a genuine unfettered socialism was to be assured. Bukharin considered the present mode(? )

Serge testifies to the theoretical confusion. "Bank notes were no longer worth anything, and ingenious theoreticians spoke of the caning abolition of money. There was no paper or coloured ink to print stamps, so a decree was issued abolishing postal charges: "a new step in the realisation of socialism" (Serge Memoirs:115). Bukharin was the theorist most enthusiastic about war communism as real communism, followed by Trotsky. Lenin was more ambiguous. In 1919 he defined the economic system as communist, but as Cliff argues he contradicted himself saying that the system was very primitive and far from real communism (Cliff 3:94).

Communism is a superior form of social organisation to capitalism. Whereas so-called 'war communism' was a retreat even from the state capitalist or mixed economy that Lenin had proposed in March 1918. We can agree therefore with Maurice Dobb and E.H. Carr whose generally accepted view was that "war communism was forced on the Bolshevik leadership by the Russian civil war and that the various theoretical arguments posted by the Bolshevik leadership in support of war communism were "no more than flights of leftist fancy" (Soviet Economic Performance, Gregory and Stuart: 38 and Dobb Soviet Economic Developrent:122).

The danger facing the revolution was summed up by Rosa Luxemburg when she said it "begins only when they (the Bolshevik leaders) make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon then by these fatal circumstances (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks - Waters:394). This danger was nowhere more obvious than in the trade union debate.

Trotsky's view of socialism and his experience leading the Red Army led him to advocate the trade unions should became instruments of the state. After all if a communistic society existed what need would workers have to defend themselves? Therefore trade unions should no longer see themselves as champions of workers grievances but became "organisers of labour discipline" (see Trotsky's "Terrorism and Communism"). Harding notes with irony that it was later to be "the final bitter paradox... that just these formulations, in almost the same words, were to be used by Stalin to justify his ruthless dictatorship" (Harding Vol.2:257). This was not simply a debating point, for Trotsky had been appointed to supervise rail and water transport. He was soon in conflict with trade union officials whom he threatened to imprison as part of a general shake up of trade union staff.

The trade unionists were very annoyed about this. Already the Central Committee had reserved the right to install its appointees to Union Executives. At the Ninth Party Congress in March 1920. Trotsky had pursued his favourite themes of the militarization of labour, one~ management and incentive schemes. By December 1920 the trade union leadership had had enough. They went to Lenin and complained bitterly and left him in no doubt that relations were strained to breaking point. Lenin intervened in the debate, which was now building up against Trotsky although he had previously supported Trotsky's 'shake-up' policy.

Lenin began to argue for "the principles of trade union autonomy and the right to strike" (Serge Memoirs:123) because he came to see the proper role of trade unions was to safeguard working people "combating bureaucratic distortions of the Soviet apparatus, safeguarding the working people's material and spiritual interests in ways and means inaccessible to the apparatus" (Lenin CW 32:100). Lenin believed that Trotsky was making theoretical errors. The first of these was to confuse the party with the trade unions. The trade unions were important because they represented the broad mass of workers. without this independent check the party could run ahead and isolate itself. Trotsky's proposal would destroy the check and balance mechanism of that relationship. Second Trotsky's argument was also flawed because the state was not a workers' state but rather a "workers' state with a bureaucratic twist to it" (Lenin CW 32:24). Consequently trade unions must defend workers from the state. As we shall see the debate over the proper role for trade unions was also to become the focus for the "Workers' opposition" .

The dissatisfaction of the trade union leaders soon received direct expression from the workers themselves. In January and February 1921 a series of strikes swept across the industrial regions. In February the strike wave culminated in a near general strike in Petrograd. On February 28th the giant Putilov works stopped and Menshevik speakers were given a sympathetic hearing (Harding 2:262). At first the issues were economic, protesting against food shortages rationing and clothing, but "political demands were also put forward for the restoration of political and civil rights" (Cliff 4:131). The workers' struggles placed the question of democracy back on the agenda.

At the same time a faction was emerging in the Bolshevik party led by Shliapnikov, Kollantai and Medvedev. It gained considerable support amongst the party rank and file and union militants. Its strength lay in the fact that it articulated working class grievances. Its inspiration was the 'golden age' of workers' democracy in the first six months of soviet power. This period had "acquired almost mythological status in the minds of many workers and union activists. That was their realm of freedom when workers' control had brought a new sense of dignity, a sense of the significance of the rank and file worker as master of his own dignity. For many industrial workers, probably the great majority, that, primarily, was what the revolution had been all about - an end to bossing - as Lenin himself had once put it" (Harding Vol.2:23). Therefore workers saw one-man management as a sign that the gains were at an end 'with the important difference that now the manager was to enjoy even greater arbitrary or dictatorial power than he ever had before" (Harding Vol. 2:263).

The Workers' Opposition believed that "the revolution was doomed if the party failed to introduce radical changes in the organisation of work, restore genuine freedom and authority to the trade unions, and make an immediate turn towards establishing a true soviet democracy" (Serge Manoirs:123). The pamphlet published before the party's 10th Congress in March 1921 (see Raya Dunayevskaya - Marxism and Freedom:202) states that "there can re no self activity without freedom of thought and opinion ... we (the party - our addition) give no freedom to class activity. We have ceased to rely on the masses, hence we have bureaucracy with us. That is why the Workers' Opposition considers that bureaucracy is our enemy, our scourge and the greatest danger to the future of the Communist Party itself" (Cathy Porter: Kollantai:365).

The Workers' Opposition was a genuine reflection of working class opinion, which in the most general sense was pointing in the right direction. Unfortunately, it was stronger on criticism than on sound solutions. E.H. Carr describes its programme as "a hotch potch of current discontents, directed in the main against the growing centralisation of economic and political control" (Carr ). Their underlying theory was not that national socialism was impossible but that they were proceeding to it too slowly. In an article in Pravda, January 28th 1921 called "it's time to analyse matters" Kollantai accused the party of "betraying the proletarian by insisting on a slow transition to socialism" (Porter -Kollantai p.361). A utopian economic theory did, of course, manifest itself in their practical proposals. They proposed "transfer of the control of industry and production from the state to the trade unions" (Carr)

That the equivalent of the TUC should run the economy is a syndicalist proposal, which was immediately attacked, quite correctly. It was a mirror image of Trotsky's idea that the trade unions should be incorporated into the state, for either way the trade unions become "responsible". In what was still a basically capitalist economy, the role of the trade unions was to remain' irresponsible' as independent defenders of workers' interests. Hence Cathy Porter's biography of Kollantai admits that "the programme of the Workers' Oppos1.t1.on was certainly somewhat muddled as Lenin was of course the first to point out" (Porter:365).

Meanwhile storm clouds were gathering in Krondstat. The rebellion must be seen in the context of the situation of the Russian workers. Discontent was being expressed publicly by the Workers' Opposition and by a strike wave, which was virtually a general strike in Petrograd. "Strikes and demonstrations broken up by Red soldiers, were by the end of the month turning into demonstrations against the army itself" (Porter Kollantai: 362). Harding explains that "in a very real sense the Krondstadt rising was inspired precisely with the desire of the Krondstadt sailors to carne to the aid of the Petrograd strikers. The lockouts, withdrawal of rations, attempts to starve the workers into submission and the intimidation of their leaders carried out by the Petrograd Soviet were well known in Krondstadt (Harding Vol.2:269).

Added to this was a general climate of talk about democracy. Zinoviev had spoken at the eighth Congress of Soviets in December 1920 of the need "to re-establish the principle of election in the workers and peasants democracy" (Harding Vol.2:269). It is, of course, a characteristic of revolutionary periods that the masses are unwilling to wait for promises to materialise. They would rather just create it for themselves, intervening directly in political affairs.

New life was breathed into the Krondstadt Soviet. Whole new organisations sprung up staffed by the sailors, the townspeople and the garrison. Great open air meetings were held in Anchor Square, an echo of the past. Krondstadt became once again a vibrant centre of political life. They announced their programme to the workers of Russia.

(1) Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.

(2) Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.

(3) The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisation.

(4) The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Krondstadt and the Petrograd District.

(5) The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and

sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.

(6) The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.

(7) The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its

ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end.

(8) The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.

(9) The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.

(10) The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises...

(11) The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after

them themselves and do not employ hired labour.

(14) We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.

(15) We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided that it does not utilise wage labour. (Ida Mett The Krondstadt Commune : 6)

The reaction of the Bolshevik leaders to this critical moment in a period of crisis must be described as panic. Serge blames Kalinin, President of the Republic's Executive and Kuzmin for the brutal bungling which sparked the rebellion. Kalinin was met by the Krondstadt garrison with music and welcoming salutes; once informed of the sailors demands he treated them as rogues and traitors merely out for themselves, and threatened them with merciless reprisals. Kuzmin shouted that the indiscipline and treason would be smashed by the iron hand of the proletariat. They were chased away with a chorus of booing" (Serge Memoirs:126).

The scene was set for the tragedy. "Right from the first moment, at a time when it was easy to mitigate the conflict, the Bolshevik leaders had no intention of using anything but forcible methods” says Serge (Serge Memoirs:126). A plan to crush the rebellion was put into operation. First news was spread that Krondstadt was in the hands of the Whites under a counter-revolutionary General Kozlovsky who had seized the garrison through conspiracy and treason. "The truth seeped through little by little past the smokescreen put out by the press which was positively berserk with lies" (Serge:126). "Later" says Serge "we discovered that the whole of the delegation sent to explain the issues to the Petrograd Soviet and people was in the prisons of the Cheka" (Serge Memoirs:127). He goes on to explain the shock of discovering that the party and the socialist press had blatantly lied. Then the campaign against the Petrograd strikers was immediately stopped. Promises were made to the workers and emergency food supplies were distributed.

The government began to prepare for mi1itary operations. They issued an ultimatum to the mutineers saying, according to Serge, "surrender or you will be shot down like rabbits" (Serge Merroirs:129). However, the mobilisation of the Red Army units proved difficult. Regiments had to be regrouped and reorganised. Some units refused to fight "Many indeed had to be disarmed and arrested, many more were machine-gunned by their own officers for refusing to continue to fight (Harding Vol.2:271). Dybenko, Kollantai's husband, was placed in charge of one of the regiments confronting Krondstadt. He notes that "overwhelming numbers of Red Army soldiers announced that they did not wish to fight their 'little brothers'; how most of his soldiers still regarded the Kronstadt sailors as those most devoted to the revolution and themselves shared the same grievances that had caused the sailors to revolt" (Porter Kollantai:364).

On March 7th 1921 military operations were begun and by March 18th all resistance had been crushed. Some of the rebels escaped to Finland and others put up furious resistance in street fighting and died shouting "Long live the world revolution" and "Long live the Communist International" (approximately a third of Krondstadt Communists had joined the revolt and a further 40 per cent had been neutral). Hundreds ended up in the prisons of the Cheka.

In order to assess Krondstadt politically we need to examine the options. Apart from crushing the rebellion there were two other possible options. The first was the fall of the Bolshevik government itself. Serge, who sympathised with Krondstadt eventually, and after much anguish, sided with the Party for this reason. The democratic demand for freely elected Soviets was being turned by anarchists, who played an active role, into a counter-revolutionary demand for "Soviets without Communists". Serge recognised that the Bolsheviks were the one stable force who stood for the gains of October 1917 against the restoration of bourgeois democracy (Mensheviks and SRs). The option of an anarchist government was not only a contradiction but

would have meant collapse. As Serge says, "it was only a short step to chaos and through chaos to a peasant uprising, the massacre of communists, the return of émigrés, and in the end, through sheer force of events, another dictatorship this time anti-proletarian ... Dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinin testified that the émigrés had these very perspectives in mind" (Serge Memoirs:129).

The second outcome was through a negotiated compromise. Many of the demands could and should have been conceded. Indeed later some were in the guise of the NEP. The democratisation process would have given afresh impetus to the working class and could have created renewed support for the Bolsheviks. This more difficult path of negotiation was the only option to take the revolution between the devil (bureaucracy) and the deep blue sea (anarchy). Attempts were m3.de by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to mediate. The politburo at first decided to negotiate but in fact no negotiations took place. Lenin and the Bolshevik government were in no mood to gamble. The rebellion was crushed swiftly and ruthlessly.

In March 1921 the communist Party held its 10th Party Congress. E.H. Carr describes it as "decisive in the history of the Party and the Republic" (Carr:20). "It met at a moment when the easy hope born of the triumphant conclusion of the civil war had been dashed, when economic crisis had appeared in the stark form of failing fad supplies and when political insurrection had raised its head for the first time since the summer of 1918" (Carr:20S). The overriding theme was the need to close ranks and stop infighting. As a consequence fateful decisions were taken.

Whilst the Red Army was preparing to storm Krondstadt, Lenin launched an attack against the Workers' Opposition and 'factionalism'. All factions (i.e. party groups with separate platforms) were banned. The Workers' Opposition was declared an anarcho-syndicalist trend "incompatible with membership of the Russian Communist Party" (Carr:204). The Congress added a secret rider, famous as 'point seven', giving new powers to the Central Committee over Congress. Carr describes this as "a milestone in the development of the power of the party machine" (Carr:206). Ominously he observes that "for the first time Stalin's hand may with some plausibility by discerned in crucial party appointments" (Carr: 210).

As if to illustrate the contradictions the Party also passed resolutions recognising that "militarization" and "extreme organisational centralism" had been necessitated in the party by the civil war and calling for "workers democracy within the party" (Carr:209). But these proved feeble aspirations compared to the fateful decisions. Cliff comments that "even in the darkest days of the civil war factions had not been banned in the Bolshevik party" (Cliff 4:138). As Serge says, "the state of siege had now entered the party itself" (Serge Memoirs:118).

The events of March 1921 mark the end of the Russian democratic revolution. Both the 10th Party Congress and the Krondstadt events are an historical dividing line. Krondstadt was a tremendous shock. In Bukharin's words it was "the collapse of our illusions" (Harding 2:274). For Lenin it was "like a flash of lightning which threw more of a glare upon reality than anything else" (Lenin CW 32:279). Harding describes the events and the response to then as "the crucial turning point in the history of the Russian revolution" (Harding Vol.2:275). And so it was. Working class democracy never recovered either in the state or in the party. It was the last time the masses intervened. The stuffing was knocked out of the democratic revolution. The way was cleared for the growth of bureaucracy.

The sequel to the March events was the introduction of the New Economic policy (NEP). The demilitarisation of war-capitalism (termed 'war communism') was essential to revive economic life. In a country like Russia with its peasant economy then state capitalism (i.e. mixed economy) would be a step forward from war capitalism. And so it proved, as the productive forces revived.

For those who held the illusion that bureaucratic war capitalism was a type of Communism then the NEP was a step backwards, indeed a betrayal of socialism. On this economic question Lenin was much closer to reality than the utopians. But the real problem was political. An NEP under workers' democracy is one thing. A post-Krondstadt NEP would be different altogether. The former would strengthen the working class, whereas the latter would only strengthen the bureaucracy. The tragedy of the NEP was that it came too late (as Serge himself ventured to suggest).

The irony was that Lenin was very soon to begin his own lonely struggle against the growing bureaucracy. Indeed Lenin's attacks on bureaucracy were to become "more bitter and trenchant than that set out by the Workers' Opposition group, membership of which had, at Lenin's insistence, been declared inconsistent with membership of the party" (Harding 2:295). But without the masses, Lenin was doomed to failure, just as later were Trotsky and Zinoviev etc. After March 1921 the masses who overthrew the Tsar, made possible the October uprising and won the civil war, were to disappear as an independent force. The national democratic revolution ended in defeat.

[Dave Craig – unpublished and incomplete]

Siding with Murdoch - Weekly Worker

Fact and Fiction - what's happened in the SSP? - Socialist Unity Network

RCN Statement on the Split in the Scottish Socialist Party - Republican Communist Network