Bloodstained — Notes

By Barry Pateman

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I’m really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950’s, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960’s in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in history. Barry has also contributed to and edited numerous books including “Chomsky on Anarchism”, a two book document collection with Candace Falk and many more titles, many on AK Press. We talk about anarchist history, community, repression, defeat, insularity, popular front with authoritarian Marxists, class analysis and how to beat back capitalism. Find Kate Sharpley Library at KateSharpleyLibrary.Net. (From: AshevilleFM.org.)


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Notes

[1] All quotations in this introduction are taken from the authors’ essays in this anthology.

[2] It is believed that Bukharin here refers to more than just Russian anarchism and Russian anarchists. In his pamphlet he makes no distinction and speaks in a global sense. On the other hand, Russian anarchists have the same ideas and programs as anarchists in other countries.

[3] See The ABC of Communism by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, Editorial Avanti!, Milan, p. 85.

[4] See Marx: “The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men’s Association” in Works of Marx, Engels and Lasalle edited by Avanti!, Milan, vol. 2. (English translation from Marx-EngelsLenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 110. (Note by English editor.)

[5] These and other statements, printed in quotation marks or in heavy type, are literal quotes from Bukharin’s pamphlet. On the other hand, the same things are reproduced in the above-mentioned ABC of Communism and elsewhere in The Program of the Communists published by Avanti! in 1920.

[6] In Bukharin and Preobrazhensky’s ABC of Communism they go even further: “Two or three generations of persons will have to grow up under the new conditions before the need will pass for laws and punishments and for the use of repression by the workers’ state.”

[7] We repeat that communist objections to anarchism, which we reprint in quotations or in heavier type, are genuinely from N. Bukharin.

[8] Bukharin is likewise critical of the antedeluvian idea of repartition of wealth, even should it be into equal shares. He is quite right, of course; but to include that in a general critique of anarchism is a real anachronism. One can find all that Bukharin says in this connection in any of the propaganda booklets or papers the anarchists have been publishing for the last forty years.

[9] See Luigi Fabbri: Dictatorship and Revolution (in Italian) p. 140.

[10] In contrast, the collectivists’ formula was “to each the fruits of his labor” or even “to each according to his work.” Needless to say, these formulas must be taken in their approximate meaning, as a general guideline, and absolutely not as dogma, as however they were employed at one time.

[11] V.I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution,” in The Lenin Anthology, Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 311398.

[12] Excellent anarchist analyzes of the Russian Revolution include: Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1970); Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth (London: Pluto Press, 1989); Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Detroit/Chicago: Black & Red/Solidarity, 1974); GP Maximoff, The Guillotine At Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution (Sanday: Cienfuegos Press, 1979); Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising (London: Solidarity, 1967); Goldman and Berkman, To Remain Silent is Impossible: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in Russia, Andrew Zonneveld, ed. (Atlanta: On Our Own Authority!, 2013).

[13] For the 1905 revolution, see Peter Kropotkin’s articles “The Revolution in Russia,” “The Russian Revolution and Anarchism,” and “Enough of Illusions” in Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology, Iain McKay, ed. (Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK Press, 2014). For his refusal to take sides in the imperialist Russo-Japanese War, see “La Guerre russo-japonaise,” Les Temps Nouveaux, 5 March 1904.

[14] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 313.

[15] Space precludes discussing every aspect of this, for further discussion see section H of An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ ) Vol. 2 (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2012).

[16] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 334.

[17] Ibid., 322.

[18] Ibid., 396.

[19] Ibid., 328.

[20] Ibid., 329.

[21] Ibid., 340.

[22] Ibid., 336.

[24] Ibid., 339.

[25] Marx later suggested (in 1881) that it was “merely the rising of a city under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it be.” Karl Max and Friedrich Engels, MarxEngels Collected Works (MECW) Vol. 46 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), 66

[26] Property is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology (Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK Press, 2011), 378–9; he had argued this from the very first days of the revolution: “we are all voters [...] We can do more; we can follow them step-by-step in [...] their votes; we will make them transmit our arguments [...]; we will suggest our will to them, and when we are discontented, we will recall and dismiss them,” 273.

[27] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 346.

[28] Ibid., 348.

[29] Property is Theft!, 447, 698.

[30] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 346.

[31] Ibid., 388.

[32] Proudhon, Property is Theft!, 407, 443–4, 724, 750, 763.

[33] Lenin, The Lenin Antholoqy, 347.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid., 344.

[36] Kropotkin, Direct Struggle against Capital, 446.

[37] Donny Gluckstein, The Paris Commune: A Revolutionary Democracy (London: Bookmarks, 2006), 478.

[38] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 385.

[39] Ibid., 28.

[40] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 19 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), 298.

[41] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 390.

[42] See Kropotkin’s “Socialism and Politics” and other texts included in Direct Struggle Against Capital.

[43] The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–71 (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1994), 108. That there was no real possibility of electioneering in Czarist Russia allowed the Bolsheviks to avoid the fate of their sister parties in the Second International.

[44] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 357.

[45] It may be the case that “every state is not ‘free’ and not a ‘people’s state’” but “Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies” (Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 323) only in private letters. Publicly, Der Volksstaat (The People’s State) was the central organ of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Germany between 1869 and 1876 and Marx and Engels regularly contributed to it. So the “opportunist” notion of a Volkstaat was associated with the party most influenced by Marx and Engels. Moreover, “People’s State” was used in the same way that modern-day Leninists use the term “Workers’ State” to describe their new regime. Opportunism does not lie, surely, in the words used?

[46] As Kautsky noted in 1919. Karl Kautsky and John H. Kautsky, The Road to Power: Political Reflections on Growing into the Revolution (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1996), 34, xlviii.

[47] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 392.

[48] Ibid., 387.

[49] This, by necessity, is just a selection of the evidence. See section H.3.10 of AFAQ for further analysis. For a similar account but from a more-or-less orthodox Marxist perspective, see Binay Sarker and Adam Buick, Marxism-Leninism — Poles Apart (Memari: Avenel Press, 2012).

[50] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 322, 360.

[51] Julius Martov, leader of the Menshevik-Internationalists, noted this in his important critique of Lenin in “Decomposition or Conquest of the State,” The State and The Socialist Revolution (New York: International Review, 1938), 40–1.

[52] Marx-Engels, MECW Vol. 50 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004), 276.

[53] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 362.

[54] Ibid., 358.

[55] Marx-Engels, MECW Vol. 47 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995), 74; This perspective is reflected a passage in a draft of Marx’s The Civil War in France found in Marx-Engels, MECW Vol. 22 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1986), 533.

[56] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 329.

[57] Proudhon, Property is Theft!, 226.

[58] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 340, 394.

[59] Ibid., 90.

[60] Ibid., 392.

[61] Kropotkin, Direct Struggle against Capital, 553; also see sections H.3.5 and 1.2.2 of AFAQ.

[62] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 340.

[63] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie (Paris : Stock, 1913), 135, 164, 329.

[64] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 361.

[65] La federation et I’unite en Italie (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), 27–8.

[66] Proudhon, La federation et I’unite en Italie, 33.

[67] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 219–220.

[68] Kropotkin, Direct Struggle against Capital, 509.

[69] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 329; “Attacks upon the central authorities, stripping these of their prerogatives, de-centralization, dispersing authority would have amounted to abandoning its affairs to the people and would have run the risk of a genuinely popular revolution. Which is why the bourgeoisie is out to strengthen the central government still further” and why the working class, “not about to abdicate their rights to the care of the few, will seek some new form of organization that allows them to manage their affairs for themselves,” from Kropotkin, Direct Struggle against Capital, 232, 228.

[70] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 343–44.

[71] Ibid., 395.

[72] Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism, Daniel Guerin, ed. (Edinburgh/San Francisco: AK Press 2005), 162.

[73] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 342.

[74] Ibid., 327.

[75] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 91–2.

[76] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 353.

[77] Errico Malatesta, Anarchy (London: Freedom Press, 2001) 42–3.

[78] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 383.

[79] Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 164; also see section H.2.1 of AFAQ.

[81] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 396.

[82] Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 195.

[84] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 98–9.

[85] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 395.

[86] “Letter to Albert Richard,” Anarcho-Syndicalist Review no. 62, 18.

[87] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 92.

[88] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 349.

[89] Ibid., 348.

[90] Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 181.

[91] “L’Action directe et la Greve generale en Russie,” Les Temps Nouveaux, 2 December 1905.

[92] Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the man and his influence (London: Panther History, 1969), 106; Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils 1905–1921 (New York: Random House, 1974), 77–9.

[93] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 397.

[94] Ibid., 385.

[95] Errico Malatesta, The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader (Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2014), 210; also see section J.2 of AFAQ.

[96] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 124–5.

[97] Kropotkin, La Science moderne et I’anarchie, 99–100.

[98] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 380.

[99] Malatesta, The Method of Freedom, 379, 385. Similarly, of the syndicalist unions only the CGT in France supported the war—unlike the vast the majority of Marxist parties and unions (significantly, the CGT was a member of the Marxist Second International).

[100] As regards Lenin’s rejection of Engels position, see “What Lenin Made of the Testament of Engels” by the ex-communist Bertram D. Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine (New York: The Dial Press, 1965).

[101] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 376, 377.

[102] Ibid., 383.

[103] Ibid., 380. Also see section H.3.14 of AFAQ.

[104] Ibid., 340.

[105] Ibid., 345.

[106] Ibid., 345.

[107] Ibid., 380.

[108] For a critique of Engels’s article, see section H.4 of AFAQ.

[109] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 353.

[110] Marx-Engels, MECW 23 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988), 423.

[111] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 381.

[112] See section H.3.13 of AFAQ.

[113] Proudhon, Property is Theft!, 377–8.

[114] Kropotkin, Direct Struggle against Capital, 32.

[115] Ibid., 165, 527.

[116] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 328.

[117] See section H.3.11 of AFAQ.

[118] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 24.

[119] Ibid., 28–9.

[120] Trotsky, Stalin, 305.

[121] For a critique of vanguardism, see section H.5 of AFAQ.

[122] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 344.

[123] While recognizing the need for anarchists to organize to influence the class struggle, Bakunin also recognized that people learn through struggle and draw socialist conclusions, see Basic Bakunin, 101–3.

[124] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 345.

[125] Ibid.

[126] V.I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 8 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1962), 474, 478, 480, 481.

[127] Quoted by Anweiler, 77.

[128] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 12 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1962), 43–4.

[129] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 7 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1962), 367.

[130] Ibid., 396–7.

[131] Space excludes a discussion of the false nature of such notions as shown by the limitations of the Bolshevik Party in 1917, see section H.5.12 of AFAQ.

[132] Trotsky, Stalin, 101.

[133] Ibid., 298.

[134] We quote exclusively from academic accounts of the new regime as these confirm the analysis presented by anarchists. For example, compare the accounts of bureaucratic paralyzes presented below to the summaries by Goldman in My Disillusionment in Russia on pages 99 and 253 and Kropotkin in Direct Struggle against Capital on 490 and 584.

[135] Given the size of Russian peasantry within the population, it would have been impossible for the Bolsheviks to gain a majority in the republic they had supported previously (and, indeed, they received 25% of the vote to the Constituent Assembly while the peasant party, the SRs, received 57%). Gaining a majority in the urban soviets elected by workers and soldiers was feasible and may explain Lenin’s new perspective in 1917. The new regime gave priority to urban workers and built in an institutional bias in voting of approximately five-to-one against the peasants. While fitting for a Marxist party and its prejudices against the peasantry, this helped to alienate the bulk of the population against the new regime—an alienation reinforced by numerous other Bolshevik policies such as the creation of “poor peasants’ committees” and the forced requisition of food (driven, in part, due to lack of goods to trade with the peasants, a lack Bolshevik economic policies made worse). Bolshevik attitudes to the peasants undoubtedly made the situation worse.

[136] S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 201. Also see section H.6 of AFAQ for a fuller discussion of these events.

[137] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 19.

[138] Robert V. Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism Vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 128–9.

[139] Charles Duval, “Yakov M. Sverdlov and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK),” Soviet Studies, XXXI, 1.

[140] Carmen Sirianni, Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy (London: Verso/NLB, 1982), 204.

[141] Richard Sakwa, “The Commune State in Moscow in 1918,” Slavic Review 46, 3/4: 437–8.

[142] Anweiler, The Soviets, 242.

[143] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 389.

[144] Ibid., 344. As Kropotkin noted, “It is often thought that it would be easy for a revolution to economize in the administration by reducing the number of officials. This was certainly not the case during the Revolution of 1789–1793, which with each year extended the functions of the State, over instruction, judges paid by the State, the administration paid out of the taxes, an immense army, and so forth,” from The Great French Revolution (Montreal/New York: Black Rose Books, 1989), 440.

[145] Leon Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed: The Military Writings and Speeches of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 1 (London: New Park Publications, 1979), 47.

[146] Israel Getzler, Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1967) 179; Vladimir Brovkin, “The Mensheviks’ Political Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918,” The Russian Review 42, 1; Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State: The First Phase, 1917–1922 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 191; Silvana Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 19181921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 366–7; Duval, Soviet Studies XXXI, 13–14.

[147] Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) 248–252; also see Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 238–43.

[148] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 393.

[149] Ibid., 316.

[150] Ibid., 326. This is not to suggest that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were happy with the bureaucracy they failed to anticipate. Quite the reverse as they denounced it repeatedly while flailing around for some kind of solution. Yet blinded by simplistic Marxist notions, they could think of nothing better than organizational and police methods—new bodies are organized to oversee the existing bureaucratic ones, only to become bureaucratic themselves; other bodies are enlarged or workers added to them, only for the problems to worsen; more centralization is implemented, resulting in more bureaucracy. The conflict with the bureaucracy is finally resolved after Lenin’s death—with the complete victory of the bureaucrats under Stalin who then uses the repressive techniques perfected under Lenin against the left-wing opposition and the working class within the party itself.

[151] Malle The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 95, 45–6, 218.

[152] Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia: Ideology and Industrial Organization 1917–1921 (London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 38.

[153] Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 94.

[154] Lenin, The Collected Works Vol. 27 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 316.

[155] Ibid., 267–9.

[156] Ibid., 340, 341, 354; Also see Maurice Brinton’s classic “The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control” for an excellent discussion of this subject in Maurice Brinton, For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004).

[157] Lenin, The Collected Works Vol. 27, 88–9.

[158] Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power, 396, 288, 442, 308; The Bolsheviks “allowed so-called committees of poor peasants to be represented at the congress” and this “blatant gerrymandering ensured a Bolshevik majority” according to Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War (London/New York: Longman, 1996), 176.

[160] Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920, Vol. 1, John Ridell, ed. (New York: Pathfinder, 1991), 151–2; Lenin made similar comments in the work Left-Wing Communism written for that Congress see The Lenin Anthology, 567–8, 571–3.

[161] Space excludes a detailed discussion of Menshevik and other opposition to the Bolsheviks beyond noting that the Menshevik’s official position was to oppose armed rebellions in favor of winning a majority in the soviets (any party members who participated in such revolts were swiftly expelled): “The charge that the Mensheviks were not prepared to remain within legal limits is part of the Bolsheviks’ case; it does not survive an examination of the facts,” Schapiro, 355.

[162] Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, 153–4.

[163] Lenin, The Collected Works, Vol. 30 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 456.

[164] Ibid., 503–4.

[165] Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin: Labor Protest and the Bolshevik Dictatorship (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996), 37.

[166] Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 109, 162–3, 135.

[167] Trotsky applied his ideas on the railway workers which led to the “ignorance of distance and the inability to respond properly to local circumstances [...] T have no instructions’ became all the more effective as a defensive and self-protective rationalization as party officials vested with unilateral power insisted all their orders be strictly obeyed. Cheka ruthlessness instilled fear, but repression [...] only impaired the exercise of initiative that daily operations required.” William G. Rosenberg, “The Social Background to Tsektran,” Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War, Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989), 369. Militarization was imposed in September 1920 which was followed by a disastrous collapse of the railway network in the winter. “The revolutionary tribunal and the guillotine could not make up for the lack of a constructive communist theory,” Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, 499.

[168] Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, 91.

[169] Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power: a study of Moscow during the Civil War, 1918–21 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), 190–1.

[170] William G. Rosenberg, “The Social Background to Tsektran,” 357.

[171] Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, 61–2.

[172] Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 233.

[173] Ibid., 232, 250.

[174] Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, 154.

[175] Ironically, the “run-down of large-scale industry and the bureaucratic methods applied to production orders and financial estimates” made the supply system based on glavki “unreliable” and instead the Red Army “started relying directly” on craft co-operatives, a sector which “developed to a large extent because it involved a smaller amount of bureaucratic procedure,” Malle The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 477–8.

[176] Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 271, 275.

[177] Rates of “output and productivity began to climb steadily after” January 1918, “[i]n some factories, production doubled or tripled in the early months of 1918” and “[mjany of the reports explicitly credited the factory committees for these increases,” Sirianni, Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy, 109. There is “evidence that until late 1919, some factory committees performed managerial tasks successfully. In some regions factories were still active thanks to their workers’ initiatives in securing raw materials,” Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921, 101. While this may be dismissed as speculation based on a few examples, we cannot avoid recognizing that turning the economy over to the bureaucracy coincided with the deepening of the economic crisis.

[178] Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, 24, 27, 30, 96–7.

[179] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 356.

[180] Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), 170.

[181] Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 20–1.

[182] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 373, 374.

[183] Ibid., 383.

[184] Ibid., 354.

[185] See section H.6.3 of AFAQ for an account of the massive and frequent labor protests—and subsequent repression—under the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks also clamped down even advisory bodies they themselves set up. In his 1920 diatribe against Left-wing Communism, Lenin pointed to “non-Party workers’ and peasants’ conferences” and Soviet Congresses as means by which the party secured its rule. Yet, if the congresses of soviets were “democratic institutions, the like of which even the best democratic republics of the bourgeois have never known,” the Bolsheviks would have no need to “support, develop and extend” non-Party conferences “to be able to observe the temper of the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among them to state posts,” see The Lenin Anthology, 573. Yet even these were too much for the Bolsheviks for during the labor protests and strikes of late 1920 “they provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik policies” and they “were discontinued soon afterwards,” see Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, 203.

[186] Aves, Workers against Lenin, 18, 90.

[187] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 364.

[188] Peter Arshinov, The History of the Maknovist Movement (London: Freedom Press, 1987); Michael Malet, Nestor Makhno in the Russian civil war (London: MacMillan Press, 1982.); Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack — The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921 (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004).

[189] Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia, xlvii.

[190] See section J.3 of AFAQ.

[191] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 316.

[192] Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936–37 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), 513–4.

[193] Leon Trotsky, “The Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism,” Their Morals and Ours (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), 59.

[194] Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, 379.

[198] An easy enough task after 1936, when some well-known anarchist “leaders” (sic!) entered the Popular Front government in Catalonia at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War—and were allowed to remain there by the anarchist rank and file. This action—in an area where the anarchists had a mass basis in the labor movement—irrevocably damned them, just as the development of the Russian Revolution had irrevocably damned the Mensheviks, as incapable of standing up to the test of events.

[199] Three statements from Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), first published in June 1920, will illustrate the point:
“The creation of a socialist society means the organization of the workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations and their labor reeducation, with the one unchanging end of the increase in the productivity of labor ...” (p. 146).
“I consider that if the Civil War had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of oneman management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less painfully” (pp. 162–163).
“We have been more than once accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our own Party ... In the substitution of the power of the Party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class ...” (p. 109).
So much for the “anti-bureaucratic” antecedents of Trotskyism. It is interesting that the book was highly praised by Lenin. Lenin only took issue with Trotsky on the trade union question at the Central Committee meeting of November 8 and 9, 1920. Throughout most of 1920 Lenin had endorsed all Trotsky’s bureaucratic decrees in relation to the unions.

[200] For an interesting account of the growth of the Factory Committees Movement — and of the opposition to them of the Bolsheviks at the First All-Russian Trade Union Convention (January 1918), see Maximov’s The Guillotine at Work (Chicago, 1940).

[201] At the Ninth Party Congress (March 1920) Lenin introduced a resolution to the effect that the task of the unions was to explain the need for a “maximum curtailment of administrative collegia and the gradual introduction of individual management in units directly engaged in production” (Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 124).

[202] Serge’s writings on this matter were first brought to the attention of readers in the UK in 1961 (Solidarity, I, 7). This text was later reprinted as a pamphlet.

[203] See Nicolas Walter’s article in Freedom (October 28, 1967) entitled “October 1917: No Revolution at All.”

[204] Lenin proclaimed so explicitly in his What Is To Be Done? (1902).

[205] In a statement to the tenth Party Congress (1921) Lenin refers to a mere discussion on the trade unions as an “absolutely impermissible luxury” which “we” should not have permitted. These remarks speak unwitting volumes on the subject (and incidentally deal decisively with those who seek desperately for an “evolution” in their Lenin).

[206] Poukhov: The Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921. State Publishing House. “Young Guard” edition, 1931. In the series: “Stages of the Civil War.”

[207] This resolution was subsequently endorsed by all the Kronstadt sailors in General Assembly, and by a number of groups of Red Army Guards. It was also endorsed by the whole working population of Kronstadt in General Assembly. It became the political program of the insurrection. It therefore deserves a careful analysis.

[208] The accusation was made in answer to a question put to Trotsky by Wedelin Thomas, a member of the New York Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials.

[209] Whom has history vindicated in this matter? Shortly before his second stroke, Lenin was to write (Pravda, 28th January, 1923): “Let us speak frankly. The Inspection now enjoys no authority whatsoever. Everybody knows that there is no worse institution than our Inspection.” This was said a bare eighteen months after the suppression of Kronstadt. (It is worth pointing out that Stalin had been the chief of the Rabkrin from 1919 till the spring of 1922, when he became General Secretary of the Party. He continued to exercise a strong influence over Rabkrin even after he had formally left it. Lenin, incidentally, had voiced no objection to Stalin’s appointment or activities in this post. That only came later. Lenin had in fact defended both Stalin and Rabkrin against some of Trotsky’s more far-sighted criticisms—see. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 47–48. (Note added in ‘Solidarity’, Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 27.)

[210] The entire life of this short lived journal was reprinted as an appendix to a book Pravda o Kronshtadte, (The Truth about Kronstadt), published in Prague, in 1921.

[211] Poukhov: The Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921, in series “Stages of the Civil War,” p. 95. “Young Guard” edition. 1931; State Publishing House. Moscow.

[212] This Kamenev was an ex-Czarist officer, now collaborating with the Soviet Government. He was a different Kamenev from the one shot by the Stalinists in 1936.

[213] Old Bolshevik. President of the Tsentrobalt (Central Committee of the Sailors of the Baltic Lleet) in July 1917. After October Revolution member of the Lirst Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars. Together with Antonov Ovseenko and Krylenko was put in charge of Army and Navy.

[214] Op. cit.

[215] Cossack villages. Regiment 560, also composed of Cossacks and Ukrainians, was fighting on the side of Kronstadt.

[216] So numerous were the latter that the Linnish Loreign Ministry started discussions with Bersine, the Russian ambassador, with a view to joint frontier guard patrols clearing the corpses from the ice. The Linns feared that hundreds of bodies would be washed on to the Linnish shores after the ice had melted.

[217] On 10th September 1937, Trotsky wrote in La Lutte Ouvriere, ‘the legend that would have it that Kronstadt 1921 was a great massacre.’

[218] Dan, T: Two years of roaming (1919–21) in Russian.

[219] In 1926 he became a Communist and returned to Russia.

[220] Yartchouk. The Kronstadt Revolt. In Russian and Spanish.

[221] According to the testimony of well-known Bolsheviks such as Llerovski and Raskolnikov.

[222] This idea was later developed by Hermann Sandomirski, a ‘soviet anarchist,’ in an article published in the Moscow Izvestia, on the occasion of Lenin’s death.

[223] In fact during Denikin’s offensive of 1919 they had told their members to enter the Red Army.

[224] Ida Mett’s quotations from Lenin are wrongly attributed to his article on ‘The Tax in Kind.’ This report was delivered at the 10th Party Congress, on March 15, 1921 (Selected Works, Volume 9, p. 107). In fact the quotations relate to an article on “The Pood Tax” (Selected Works, Volume 9, pp. 194–198). Ed. Solidarity.

[225] The Opritchniks were the personal guard of Ivan the Terrible and at the same time his higher political police force. During the seven years of their existence (1565–1572) they distinguished themselves by their ferocious activity.

[226] Archine = Russian measure of length.

[227] Bulletin of the Opposition, No. 56–57 (In Russian).

[228] It is untrue that the paper of the Kronstadters, the Kronstadt Izvestia ever spoke of ‘thousands of people killed’ in Petrograd.

[229] Officer cadets.

[230] Lutovinov committed suicide in Moscow, in May 1924.

[231] In his last book, written in the tragic context of an unequal struggle with his mortal enemy, Trotsky made what was for him a great effort at being objective. This is what he says about Kronstadt: ‘The Stalinist school of falsification is not the only one that flourishes today in the field of Russian history. Indeed, it derives a measure of sustenance from certain legends built on ignorance and sentimentalism, such as the lurid tales concerning Kronstadt, Makhno and other episodes of the Revolution. Suffice it to say that what the Soviet Government did reluctantly at Kronstadt was a tragic necessity; naturally the revolutionary government could not have “presented” the fortress that protected Petrograd to the insurgent sailors only because a few dubious Anarchists and S.R:s were sponsoring a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers in rebellion. Similar considerations were involved in the case of Makhno and other potentially revolutionary elements that were perhaps well-meaning but definitely ill-acting.’ Stalin by Trotsky. Hollis and Carter (1947), p. 337.

[232] Lenin. Selected Works. Lawrence and Wishart (1937). Volume 9, p. 97.

[233] Ida Matt is wrong in implying that Stalin was General Secretary of the Party at the time of the events she is describing. The post of General Secretary—and Stalin’s appointment to it (incidentally endorsed by both Lenin and Trotsky)—only took place in 1922. (Ed. Solidarity).

[235] Foreword to Antonio Tellez, The Anarchist Resistance to Franco (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 1991).

[236] For Berkman’s prison experiences see the new edition of Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Chico and Edinburgh: AK Press, 2016).

[237] Alexader Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth (Diary 1920–1922) (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925).

[239] One can see evidence of his depression both in Prison Memoirs and in his 1911 diary published in the 2016 edition of his Prison Memoirs.

[240] For a detailed account of the Preparedness Day bombing see Richard H. Frost. The Mooney Case (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968). Interesting new details about the bombing have come to light in Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich. Sasha and Emma (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012).

[241] Letter from Alexander Berkman to Michael Cohn, October 10, 1922, Alexander Berkman Papers, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

[242] Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (New York: Doubleday, 1923). Her title, changed by the publisher, was My Two Years In Russia.

[243] For a published run of the Russian prisoner support Bulletins mentioned in this piece readers are urged to read The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid (London/Oakland: Kate Sharpley Library/Alexander Berkman Social Club, 2010).

[244] Bulletin Of The Joint Committee For The Defense Of Revolutionists Imprisoned In Russia No 1, October 1923 page 1.

[245] Letter from Alexander Berkman to Lily Sarnov, July 22, 1924, Alexander Berkman Papers.

[246] Baldwin knew Berkman through his acquaintanceship with Emma Goldman who Baldwin had first heard speak in 1908.

[247] G.P. Maximoff, The Guillotine at Work: Twenty years of Terror in Russia (Chicago: Chicago Section of the Alexander Berkman Fund, 1940).

[248] Boris Yelensky, In The Struggle For Equality: The Story of the Anarchist Red Cross (Chicago: A. Berkman Aid Fund, 1958), 63.

[249] Ibid., 66.

[250] Letter from Emma Goldman to Alexander Berkman October 1924, Alexander Berkman Papers, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam.

[251] Letter from Andres Nin to Mauro Bajatierra, September 1922. Found in Reiner Tosstorff, “The Syndicalists and the Bolshevik Revolution,” Socialist History, No. 37 (2010).

[252] Boris Yelensky, The Struggle for Equality, 65.

[253] Bulletin Of The Joint Committee For The Defense Of Revolutionaries Imprisoned In Russia, MarchApril 1925, 1.

[254] See the website: gulaganarchists.wordpress.com.

[255] Among other works the Press has published excellent works on Russian anarchist history. For their current list go to https://thoughtcrimeink.com/books/publisher/black_cat_press.

[256] You can read much of Nick Heath’s work on the website Libcom (https://libcom.org). See also Nick Heath. The Third Revolution? Peasant and Worker Resistance to the Bolshevik Government (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2010).

[257] We should mention the work of Dmitry Rublev, Viktor Savchenko, Yaroslav Leontiev, Anatoly Shtirbul, the late Igor Podshivalov, Peter Riabov, Vadim Damier, Andrey Fyodorov, and last, but certainly not least, Pavel Talerov.

[258] Alexander Berkman, The Anti-Climax: The Concluding Chapter of My Russian Diary “The Bolshevik Myth” (np; Berlin, 1925), 28.

[259] The Anti-Climax, 26.

[260] Stalin. An appraisal of the man and his influence. Edited and translated from the Russian by Charles Malamuth. The first seven chapters and the appendix, that is, the bulk of the book, Trotsky wrote and revised himself. The last four chapters, consisting of notes, excerpts, documents and other raw materials, have been edited.

[261] See for instance, L. Trotsky’s “Dictatorship vs. Democracy,” New York, 1922; particularly from page 135 to page 150

[262] See, among other articles, P[ierre] Chaulieu [Cornelius Castoriadis], “Les rapports de production en Russie” (Socialisme ou Barbarie, 2 [May-June 1949]) and “L’Exploitation de la paysannerie sous le capitalisme bureaucratique” (Socialisme ou Barbarie, 4 [July-August 1949]) [T/E: “The Relations of Production in Russia” and “The Exploitation of the Peasantry under Bureaucratic Capitalism” appear in Castoriadis’s Political and Social Writings, vol. 1, 1946–1955: From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism, trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988)], as well as Claude Lefort’s “Le Totalitarisme sans Staline” ( Socialisme ou Barbarie, 19 [July 1956]; reprinted in Elements d’une critique de la bureaucratie [Geneva: Droz, 1971], pp. 130–90 [T/E: now available from Gallimard (Paris, 1979), pp. 155–235; abridged translation, “Totalitarianism without Stalin,” in The Political Forms of Modern Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, and Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1986), pp. 52–88; another abridged translation, also entitled “Totalitarianism without Stalin,” appears in A Socialisme ou Barbarie Anthology: Autonomy, Critique, Revolution in the Age of Bureaucratic Capitalism, trans. from the French and ed. anonymously as a public service (June 2016): http://www.notbored.org/SouBA.pdf]).

[263] We will publish, in our upcoming issues, some articles on the postindustrial Russian economy and society. [T/E: These articles were not published in Socialisme ou Barbarie.]

[264] Beyond the texts cited in note 1, see Editorial for the first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie (MarchApril 1949) and P[ierre] Chaulieu, “Sur le contenu du socialisme,” Socialisme ou Barbarie, 17 (JulySeptember 1955). [T/E: Both this editorial, “Socialism or Barbarism,” and the first part of “On the Content of Socialism” appear in the first volume of Castoriadis’s Political and Social Writings.]

[265] When we speak of a “historical function” in this context, we are not doing metaphysics, nor are we making a posteriori rationalizations. This is an abbreviation for saying: Either Russia would have developed a modern form of large-scale industry or the new State would have been crushed in some conflict or other (at the latest, in 1941).

[266] It is in this sense that there is an element of truth in the connection Trotsky establishes between bureaucracy and backwardness (a theme ponderously repeated today by [Isaac] Deutscher, for example). What one obviously forgets to add is that in that case it really is a matter of an exploitative regime that carries out the process of primitive accumulation.

[267] One quotation among a hundred: “And history ... has taken such a peculiar course that it has given birth in 1918 to two unconnected halves of socialism existing side by side like two future chickens in the single shell of international imperialism. In 1918 Germany and Russia have become the most striking embodiment of the material realization of the economic, the productive and the socioeconomic conditions for socialism, on the one hand, and the political conditions, on the other” (V. I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality,” in Selected Works: One-Volume Edition [New York: International Publishers, 1971], p. 444). [T/E: As when Castoriadis cited this passage in “The Relations of Production in Russia,” PSW1, p. 118, he omits Lenin’s parenthetical swipe against “Menshevik blockheads.” The careful reader might also note slight discrepancies between this English version of the quotation and that earlier one. My apologies. The above quotation is the one to be found in the volume cited. The version in PSW, vol. 1, came from another edition of Lenin’s Selected Writings, which I failed to alter after I changed the page citation to correlate with the one-volume edition.]

[269] Ibid., p. 260.

[270] Ibid., p. 162.

[271] Ibid., p. 109.

[272] Ibid., p. 161 (reading “much” for “such”).

[273] Ibid., p. 110.

[274] Ibid., p. 172 [T/E: We have retained the emphasis found in the French, but not in the English, translation].

[275] Ibid., p. 162.

[276] Ibid., p. 133.

[277] Ibid., p. 149.

[278] Ibid., p. 147.

From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org

I’m really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950’s, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960’s in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in history. Barry has also contributed to and edited numerous books including “Chomsky on Anarchism”, a two book document collection with Candace Falk and many more titles, many on AK Press. We talk about anarchist history, community, repression, defeat, insularity, popular front with authoritarian Marxists, class analysis and how to beat back capitalism. Find Kate Sharpley Library at KateSharpleyLibrary.Net. (From: AshevilleFM.org.)

(1870 - 1936)

Globe-Trotting Anarchist, Journalist, and Exposer of Bolshevik Tyranny

: He was a well-known anarchist leader in the United States and life-long friend of Emma Goldman, a young Russian immigrant whom he met on her first day in New York City. The two became lovers and moved in together, remaining close friends for the rest of Berkman's life. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "The state has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim -- to secure power and hold it, at any cost." (From: "The Kronstadt Rebellion," by Alexander Berkman, 1....)
• "...partizanship of whatever camp is not an objective judge." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "But the 'triumph' of the Bolsheviki over Kronstadt held within itself the defeat of Bolshevism. It exposes the true character of the Communist dictatorship. The Communists proved themselves willing to sacrifice Communism, to make almost any compromise with international capitalism, yet refused the just demands of their own people -- demands that voiced the October slogans of the Bolsheviki themselves: Soviets elected by direct and secret ballot, according to the Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R.; and freedom of speech and press for the revolutionary parties." (From: "The Kronstadt Rebellion," by Alexander Berkman, 1....)

(1922 - 1997)

Cornelius Castoriadis[a] (Greek: Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης;[b] 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997) was a Greek-French philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group. His writings on autonomy and social institutions have been influential in both academic and activist circles. (From: Wikipedia.org.)

Iain McKay is an independent anarchist writer and researcher. He was the main author of An Anarchist FAQ as well as numerous other works, including Mutual Aid: An Introduction and Evaluation. In addition, he has edited and introduced Property Is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology; Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology; and Kropotkin’s 1913 book Modern Science and Anarchy. He is also a regular contributor to Anarcho-Syndicalist Review as well as Black Flag and Freedom. (From: PMPress.org.)

(1901 - 1973)

Ida Mett (born Ida Gilman, 20 July 1901 in Smarhoń, Imperial Russia – 27 June 1973 in Paris, France) was a Belarusian-born anarchist and author. Mett was an active participant in the Russian anarchist movement in Moscow, and was arrested by Soviet authorities for subversive activities and escaped soon thereafter. From Russia, she fled to Poland, later Berlin, and eventually to Paris where she became active with Dielo Trouda Group and co-edited the Dielo Truda magazine. Mett wrote The Kronstadt Commune, a history of the rebellion at Kronstadt, in 1948. Published by the Spartacus publishing house, it subsequently re-awakened controversy over the events. She also authored The Russian Peasant in the Revolution and Post Revolution and contributed to various international periodicals. She died in Paris on 27 June 1973. (From: Wikipedia.org.)

(1877 - 1935)

Luigi Fabbri (23 December 1877 – 24 June 1935) was an Italian anarchist, writer, and educator, who was charged with defeatism during World War I. He was the father of Luce Fabbri. Fabbri was first sentenced for anarchist activities at the age of 16 in Ancona, and spent many years in and out of Italian prisons. Fabbri was a long time and prolific contributor to the anarchist press in Europe and later South America, including co-editing, along with Errico Malatesta, the paper L'Agitazione. He helped edit the paper "Università popolare" in Milan. Fabbri was a delegate to the International Anarchist Congress held in Amsterdam in 1907. He died in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1935. He was the author of: Dictatorship and Revolution (Dettadura e Rivoluzione), a response to Lenin's work The State and the Revolution; Malatesta's Life, translated by Adam Wight (originally published in 1936), this book was published again with expanded content in 1945. He also wrote oth... (From: Wikipedia.org.)

(1923 - 2005)

Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923, in Bombay – 10 March 2005, in London) was an Anglo-Greek neurologist and libertarian socialist intellectual. Under the pen-names Martin Grainger and Maurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for the British group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s. As a neurologist, he produced the accepted criteria for brainstem death, and wrote the entry on death for Encyclopædia Britannica. (From: Wikipedia.org.)

(1874 - 1943)

Otto Rühle (23 October 1874 – 24 June 1943) was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars as well as a student of Alfred Adler. (From: Wikipedia.org.)

(1873 - 1958)

German Father of Anarcho-Syndicalism

: Rocker was born in Mainz, Germany, son of a workingman who died when the boy was five years of age. It was an uncle who introduced him to the German SociaI Democratic movement, but he was soon disappointed by the rigidities of German socialism. (From: Irving Horowitz Bio.)
• "Where industry is everything, where labor loses its ethical importance and man is nothing, there begins the realm of ruthless economic despotism, whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "...our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a constant repression of the great masses of the people..." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "...economic exploitation has always gone hand in hand with political and social oppression. The exploitation of man by man and the domination of man over man are inseparable, and each is the condition of the other." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)

(1904 - 1981)

Paul Mattick Sr. (March 13, 1904 – February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions. Throughout his life, Mattick continually criticized Bolshevism, Vladimir Lenin and Leninist organizational methods, describing their political legacy as "serving as a mere ideology to justify the rise of modified capitalist (state-capitalist) systems, which were [...] controlled by way of an authoritarian state". (From: Wikipedia.org.)

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