Lenin as Precedent for Stalinism

The occasion of Le livre noir du Communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression) appearing on French bookshelves in 1997 resulted in a public sensation and political firestorm for that country. A recounting by several academics and journalists of the destruction and misery wrought by real life communist regimes across the globe resonated all too well with an electorate whose representatives had deemed it necessary on multiple occasions to ally themselves with the Communist Party in order to establish and maintain a parliamentary majority. In one incident, National Assembly deputies of the left and right (the latter of which cited The Black Book) traded barbs over the "criminal past" of then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's coalition partners which Jospin felt obliged to defend. The result was a walkout of many rightists and a furor in the media over the book.¹ The sensation, in a country whose native Communist Party is one of the oldest, largest, and most slavish in its devotion to Moscow (in deliberate contrast to the "Eurocommunist" deviance of the Spanish and Italian parties in particular), would follow on a smaller scale to dozens of countries in which it was subsequently translated and published. Most controversial were the conclusions of Stéphane Courtois, the book's primary editor, stated openly and up front-communism was responsible for the murder of 100 million human beings in the twentieth century and therefore surpassed in quantity the magnitude of fascism's atrocities, whose "race" genocide is a moral equal to that of communism's "class" genocide, thereby equating the established Marxist-Leninist regimes from Russia to Cuba to Afghanistan collectively with Hitler's regime.²

In contrast with this work, the 2002 appearance of Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million was accompanied with little more than a sigh by reviewers who broadly panned it. Amis, a well-known novelist, has no professional training or particular expertise on the subject of Soviet history-having merely felt a personal interest of late-and the book's historical portions are characterized primarily by a retread of long-known secondary sources and no new scholarship. The book purports to seek an explanation for the seeming, apparent double standard applied to fascism and communism, whereby one is treated solemnly as an unquestionably unique evil in human history and the other effects not nearly the same amount of scope of derision, often instead devotion, apologia, and occasions of deprecating humor unappreciative of the monumental connotations for so many victims. Hence, "laughter" in the face of Stalin's victims, often but not always estimated to total around 20 million, (much) more or less. The book was criticized as being a self-indulgent memoir laced with amateurish history containing no new revelations or insights, either into Soviet history or the parallel succession of western intellectuals who fawned over the regimes and its various leaders from the safety of their bourgeois western comforts. Anne Applebaum, herself subsequently a renowned author on the subject of Soviet atrocities, focuses in a review of the book for Slate.com not so much on its historical inaccuracies as its singular focus on Amis's long-time friend Christopher Hitchens-of a Trotskyist (and thus avowedly anti-Stalinist) disposition-as a representative of western duplicity in the face of such monstrosities. The result, writes Applebaum, is that the left is spared of having to account for not appreciating "the full horror of Stalinism while it was happening."³

There is certainly a point to be made on this question, quite apart even from Amis's book. The facts of Stalin aren't quite part of "popular knowledge, or popular culture, or public debate,"⁴ as Applebaum points out, but they are closest to what is generally received about the Soviet Union's bloody history-Stalin killed millions by execution, in famine, and in prison labor camps. But there is a subtext to this argument which Applebaum does not seem to fully appreciate-one which has quietly slipped in implication from one contention to its opposite over time-and bears directly on this paper's thesis.

From the amateurish opining of Amis to the incendiary prose of Courtois and his more disinterested compatriots a message is discerned, that a popular capacity for imagining Stalinist tyranny is far from an adequate understanding of the nature of either the Soviet Union itself or communism in general. It is important beyond Amis's personal justifications that we should focus on such a figure as Hitchens-not in spite of his Trotskyism and forthright denunciations of Stalinism but precisely because of it, for the legacy of death and misery neither properly apportioned to one man, one leader, or one era. In this respect we should recognize in someone such as Hitchens's idol Trotsky not merely dissent but profound hypocrisy, because despite the ideological and personal rift which developed between Trotsky and Stalin there is in both a blood-soaked legacy which unreservedly claims the true inheritance of an ideal epitomized by the first Soviet tyrant-not Stalin after all but Vladimir Lenin.

Before it is possible to determine what events serve as precedents for Stalinism, however, there must be some recognition of what exactly is meant by "Stalinism" in the first place. It is difficult to define shortly and succinctly, not least of all because there are many interrelated components and because the term itself is often used (albeit justifiably) as a pejorative and byword for many brutal or dictatorial regimes with often only tangential relationships to the USSR of Stalin's day. American Heritage Dictionary defines "Stalinism" as the "bureaucratic, authoritarian exercise of state power and mechanistic application of Marxist-Leninist principles associated with Stalin."⁵ [Emphasis mine.] The association aspect is important as "Stalinist" was not a preferred self-description of the Soviet Union and its fellow travelers, rather "Marxist-Leninist". Stalin himself contributed little more than a parenthetical note to the foundational theories of communism but was essential in forwarding the practical application of socialist principles to actual governance, whether on the question of internal repression of enemies or Soviet relations to the wider world.

It is mainly on the latter point that the Trotskyist split developed, as Stalin's insistence on the development of "socialism in one country" not dependent on the Sovietization of western industrial powers was viewed by some as a betrayal of proletarian internationalism. But this did not change in any fundamental sense the reality of relations between the Soviet Union and the west from that which existed prior to Stalin's accession. In the early 1920s, with the civil war winding down the Soviet regime found itself in a state of crisis precipitated by its disastrous economic policies, harsh repression of political opposition, and the failure of one revolutionary campaign after another, from the Spartacist uprising in Germany to the recent Soviet incursion into Poland. Lenin, who appreciated the failure of European revolution thus far, sensed a pragmatic need for stable relations with the west even as its ultimate goal remained the subversion of the very powers it would now do business with. Robert Service's biography of Lenin notes, "One thing was clear to him: the Comintern had to be put straight about the need to avoid any kind of insurrectionary impatience that might endanger Soviet Russia by encouraging France and the United Kingdom to organise an anti-communist crusade."⁶ Lenin realized that reckless initiatives on the part of western communists would expose a direct line to Moscow and lead to renewed efforts to topple the Bolshevik regime. It was with this recognition that the Comintern would become subjugated to the whims of the Soviets who believed that securing their national interests was the primary task of world revolution should it ever succeed to any extent. Lenin became muted with western audiences even as he assured his comrades he was no less devoted to the international struggle. Stalin, who never abandoned the Leninist concept of inevitable war between the communist and capitalist powers, would have differing ideological assumptions from that with which Lenin's reign began with but nonetheless find himself at the helm of an ever-increasing communist sphere, and not by accident.⁷

Much more direct is the line which follows from the very basis of the Soviet state to the culmination of the worst years of Stalin. While Marx and Engels anticipated righteous revolutionary violence, the question of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" remained a vague abstraction which remained to be elucidated by future Marxists. Lenin obliged, and in case it was unclear from State and Revolution what is in store for societies which adhere to Marxist-Leninist principles, he gave a more succinct explanation of dictatorship in 1920, while already in power: "The scientific term 'dictatorship' means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no other meaning but this".⁸

It is from the presumption of righteousness combined with this articulated formula for unlimited and unrestrained government that Lenin, Stalin, and the rest would derive their authority but it does not explain what happened and why. To do this one must first understand how the abstract hatred for particular "classes" of humanity led to murder en masse of individuals held to be of those classes. "Civil war" in Russia meant not merely a military war between two equidistant political forces, but as well a campaign of eradication against various social elements held to be essential to the task of socialism. This meant not only were thousands upon thousands of people put to death on the basis of belonging to opposition political groups but that details of people's life-their profession, their background, where they lived, what they possessed-would make them a target for elimination. Scorn was reserved not merely for the remnants of the aristocracy and "bourgeoisie" of the old regime who remained hostile to the tasks of socialism (or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time) but as well for groups particular to Russian society such as the peasant kulaks-defined as being better off and forming a center of resistance against the regime but primarily serving as an amorphous classification of society which was affixed to any peasant of whatever status who was hostile to the Bolsheviks, excusing failures of agriculture and attempting to encourage envy and class consciousness on the part of peasants. On August 10, 1918, as the regime anticipated an uprising in Nizhni Novgorod, Lenin gave orders on it should be violently preempted. The language reveals not only his personal viciousness but how targets were to be chosen by classifications and not merely by the actions of individuals:

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. The interests of the whole revolution demand such actions, for the final struggle with the kulaks has now begun. You must make an example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so. Reply saying you have received and carried out these instructions. Yours, Lenin.

P.S. Find tougher people.⁹

This anticipates the wider "dekulakization" campaigns which were to be launched by Stalin in successive years. While Lenin believed these were all organized, premeditated counterrevolutionary conspiracies against the Bolsheviks, for the most part these represented spontaneous protests against the regime's requisitioning and conscription policies-arbitrary and fixed quotas were set for grains and foods to be handed over by communities which, if met, meant that people could buy manufactured goods. As the requisitions increased, so too did protests and rebellion.¹⁰ The result was a famine among Russian peasants which eclipsed all others before it and any thereafter save in the Ukraine under Stalin during the 1930s collectivization. Food shortages afflicted the cities too, where cuts in rations added a spark to the fire of workers which had were fed up with the experiments in militarized labor which had meant the brutal suppression of strikes and harsh punishments for tardiness or absenteeism.

Not even a year had passed in the life of the Bolshevik regime before the first concentration camps appeared. Trotsky first suggested their use in July 1918 to pacify Czech war prisoners as well as force the bourgeoisie to do menial labor. At this point the normal prisons were becoming overcrowded and chaotic and the regime perceived a need to separate its more hated classifications of enemies from the ordinary prison population. Concentration camps thus appeared on the list of measures to be taken on the first decree on Red Terror in September of that year. By the end of the next year there were 21 camps and by the following, 107.¹¹ The backbone was being constructed for what would ultimately become known as the "gulag" system, a vast administration of forced labor camps which served to profit the regime at the expense of millions of lives. They would reach their apex in the Stalin years but not be dismantled in their entirety until the entire Soviet system itself was collapsing.¹²

Perhaps the event most ingrained in the west's consciousness as it pertains to Soviet history is the "Great Terror", the wave of mass executions set into motion with great fanfare in the 1930s. One reason for this is that a great public spectacle was made of trying and sentencing several prominent communist leaders who were forced into confessing to invented charges of treason and conspiracy against the Soviet state. Stalin's formulation of the "aggravation of class struggle", according to which the remnants of the old exploiters would make more pitched efforts to destroy the Soviet state as socialism progressed-meant that enemies were to be found within the party itself. Party members were by no means the only victims of Stalin but are simply the better known as a face can be put to a Tukhachevsky much more easily than a peasant who is liquidated under the pretense that he is hoarding livestock.

Terror itself was an integral and anticipated feature of government for the Bolsheviks from day one, with the Cheka (full name, "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage") having been established in December of 1917 under the ruthless leadership of "Iron" Felicks Dzerzhinsky for the purpose of suppressing the various enemies of the party, which would extend from social undesirables and assorted monarchists and anarchists to the suppression of all non-Bolsheviks and others with the decree On Red Terror in September 18, 1918. Nonetheless, in the nascent regime Lenin never felt compelled to initiate a purge of the leadership, despite expressing his disdain for all other Soviet leaders towards the end.

This hardly serves to excuse the precedent of mass political violence which Lenin set in any case, and in one sense the suppression of opposition can almost be viewed as the long-term culmination of an inter-party struggle-Lenin did not fear most the liberals or monarchists, after all, but other socialist groups which had similar or greater popularity than his own-not only Socialist Revolutionaries of Left and Right but the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party which had parted ways with the "majority" Bolsheviks in 1903. Lenin's suppression of "factionalism" was meant to ensure that inter-party rifts-which followed after his death-would not destroy the Bolsheviks at a time when they were weakest. How Lenin might have dealt with the opposition Stalin faced to his leadership in subsequent years, when the regime was secure, is therefore mere speculation. Richard Pipes, a specialist in Russian and Soviet history, argues that any such distinction when comparing Lenin to Stalin is small: "Toward outsiders, people not belonging to his order of the elect-and the included 99.7 percent of his compatriots-Lenin showed no human feelings whatever, sending them to their death by the tens of thousands, often to serve as an example to others....The difference between the two men lay in the conception of the "outsider". Lenin's insiders were to Stalin outsiders".¹³

Nevertheless, a legend has developed over the years, which Trotsky's followers were the most adamant in recounting, that Lenin, in his final days, having promoted Stalin to the highest posts in the country, realized something was particularly wrong about him and warned against his tendencies. Actually, Lenin was attempting to get Stalin removed from his position, but railed in his last testament against all of the Soviet leadership, not only Stalin but Trotsky, as well Zinoviev, Bukharin, and others (who would meet the same fate at Stalin's hands as Trotsky). His charges were multitudinous but had no bearing on and demonstrated no remorse for the foundation of Bolshevik rule-Lenin did not renounce the one-party state, ideological intolerance, mass terror, or world revolution. His charges have little to do with a prophecy for the worst connotations of Stalinist rule-repression, executions, prison camps, famine-all of which had precedents. Stalin was telling the truth, for once, when he claimed the legacy of Lenin.

¹Stéphane Courtois, et al, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. xi.

²Ibid, p. 9.

³Anne Applebaum, "The Gulag Argumento", Slate, Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC., 2002.

⁴Ibid.

⁵The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, The Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

⁶Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 433.

⁷Brian Crozier, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1999), 71-199. Crozier argues that friendly moves were utilized to great effect by Stalin to delay war and placate allies while advancing the ultimate course of expansion to follow. It was with this in mind that the Comintern itself could be completely "dissolved" in the middle of the war and yet there be no real difference one way or the other to the projection of Soviet power or the spread of "world revolution" as it were. "The early postwar years would soon demonstrate that while Trotsky (and Lenin) had merely preached world revolution, Stalin was actually on the road to achieving it." (p. 71)

⁸Vladimir Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), Volume 31, p. 340-361.

⁹Quoted in Courtois, et al, p. 72.

¹⁰Courtois, et al, p. 92.

¹¹Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), p. 8-9.

¹²Ibid, p. 552-563

¹³Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 507-508.

¹⁴Service, p. 465. As Service notes, "The hypocrisy here was stunning. Lenin too had ruled with insufficient care (Stalin), had been addicted to administrative methods (Trotsky) and Pyatakov), had opposed revolutionary over-optimism (Zinoviev and Kamenev) and had exhibited a dubious grasp of Marxist orthodoxy (Bukharin). Yet Lenin now contended-and obviously believed-that only his comrades were guilty of these inadequacies."