Chapter Five: Bolshevik Leaders’ Miscalculations

MENTION has already been made of the theory of the Russian Communist Party that the achievement of Socialism did not need to wait on the growth of the workers’ understanding.

On an extreme interpretation such a theory would have been compatible with a belief on the part of the Russian Communist Party that its seizure of power in November 1917 could be followed by the early inauguration of Socialism in Russia alone, and in Western Europe and America many of their uninformed admirers, as well as frightened defenders of capitalism, believed this to be true.

If the leaders of the Russian Communist Party had any such idea they were soon undeceived. But another belief they held was hardly less fantastic. They were soon to find that the peasants had no intention of co-operating in the government’s plans which were opposed to their desire to secure unfettered ownership of land by dividing up the big estates. Faced with peasant hostility, the government had to institute forcible requisition of food in order to feed the town population.

In sympathy with the peasants’ resistance to the requisition, sailors at Kronstadt naval base passed a resolution in February 1921 seeking relaxations. When these were refused they mutinied. Lenin’s government – which the Kronstadt sailors had actively helped in the struggle for power in 1917 – brought in troops and smashed the mutiny with artillery fire.

Among industrial workers, apathy and resistance to government policies were also to add to the difficulties of reconstruction. Lacking support for Socialism inside Russia the Russian government still believed  that it could count on the decisive support of the workers in Britain, France and Germany. It viewed its own situation as that of holding power for a short interim period until the workers of the West took revolutionary action and came to Russia’s aid. Lenin in his pamphlet ‘The Chief Task of our Times’ dismissed the idea that Russia could itself stand up to the power of “international imperialism”. He stressed that Russia’s struggle, if it was to succeed, had to be conducted “in conjunction with the revolutionary proletariat of Germany, France and England. Till then, sad and contrary to revolutionary traditions as it may be, our only possible policy is to wait, to tack and to retreat”.

RUSSIA DEPENDENT ON HELP FROM OUTSIDE

Lenin’s fellow Communist Party leader Trotsky, in an address delivered on 14 April 1918, spoke of their aim to establish “a common brotherly economic system … so that all should work for the common good, that the whole people should live as one honest, loving family”, but he added that it could only be done with help from outside.

“All this can and shall realise completely only when the European working class support us.
“Comrades, we should be wretched, blind men of little faith, if we ever for one single day, were to lose our conviction that the working class of other countries will come to our aid, and following our example will rise, and bring our task to a successful conclusion.”
(‘A Paradise in this World’, page 18.)    

When the Russians issued their call for a general armistice they addressed it to the ‘class-conscious workers’ of the western countries; but most of those workers were not class-conscious and the reasons Trotsky gave for his ‘faith’ that they would revolt rise in revolt rested on all sorts of things except the one that mattered, their understanding of Socialism. What he countered on was the war-weariness of the soldiers and civilians and discontent about high prices and unemployment. It was an appeal to the politically-immature workers of the West to come to the aid of the politically-immature workers and peasants of Russia  – to establish Socialism, a world-wide system which only a few in any country wanted.

The work of spreading an understanding of socialism widely among the workers of Europe had not been done. The great majority were at best indifferent to socialist principles, at worst hostile, as was to be shown nine months later at the General Election in Great Britain in which Tory-Liberal-National Labour ‘Victory’ coalition was returned by an overwhelming majority against the official Labour Party and other opposition candidates who, though not socialist, were expected to take a more or less sympathetic attitude to the new Russian government.

The new government under Lloyd George then embarked on armed intervention in Russia and supported the reactionaries who were to wage civil war to overthrow Lenin’s government. Appeals made to British workers to refuse to make or ship arms to Russia for use against the government forces received little response.

The workers in France, Germany and elsewhere were equally unready for Socialism and the Russian government had to fall back largely on its own resources.

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