hist_img:
trotsky, kautsky and brandgás (640x380)
The civil war historical period between the revolution and first NEP is known has a segment called "War Communism" (1918-21). The political history starts with the October Revolution Bolsheviks overthrowing the eight month old caretaker Russian Provisional Government led by Kerensky, which replaced the abdicated Tsar Nicholas II following the February Revolution. The military history is primarily of a Red Bolshevik Army and White army of anti-Bolshevik allies including remnants of the empire, Mensheviks, liberals, anarchists and national liberation factions. This all happened with the WWI backdrop of rampant, global imperial intervention and economic upheaval. The period ends with the establishment of the USSR run by the party through planned economics and market reforms in 1922.
The politics of "War Communism" were authoritarian controlled by the Supreme Economic Council and social democracy was suspended. One way to read this history is about the inevitability of authoritarianism in state communism (or socialism with national characteristics). Another way to read it is through contemporary civil rights. Russia's War Communism was alongside America's First Red Scare (of raids and deportations) and the entrenched European conscript armies. After this period of war and reconstruction, civil liberties expanded in all of these places. In the USSR, War Communism was a transitional period to state communism.
The defense and debate of War Communism was done in real time within the Communist left. The Bolsheviks--Lenin and Trotsky--defended the use of mass violence in service of the dictatorship of the proletariat against White bourgeoisie factions. State communism was questioned by the Second International, destroyed as it was by the nationalism of world war. Karl Kautsky was the most prominent member of the fading international. He took issue with the tactics of the Bolsheviks and War Communism which he described as "terrorism." Lenin and Trotsky defended distinguished between individual terrorism and class action. From the liberal internationalist perspective of Kautsky, activating militant proletarians is not socially democratic. From the Bolshevik perspective, militant proletarians are democratic when they act as a class. Moreover, the militant class of proletarians is the only thing that can dislodge the entrenched social structure of bourgeoisie capital and international finance that had replaced the Tsar.
The Russian thread of terror continued into the Stalinist period. It is the thing that emerges during show trials and mass purges. The Bolshevik concession to violence--which might have been justified or necessary--became part of the Soviet state, into the KGB and through to Putin himself. If the Russians had managed revolution via Kautsky's liberal politics, any subsequent period (Stalinist or otherwise) might first turn to the ballot before considering class terror.
Today's revolutionaries must consider the long term effects of their actions as well as the historical instructions of their teachers. With that in mind, here is social democrat Kautsky, militant vanguardist Trotsky and some Canadian brandgás in the sand hills of Wisconsin.
image credits:
Kautsky -- "Portrait photograph of the Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky (1854-1938)" circa 1910s; photo is public domain (PD) by date.
Trotsky -- (translated from Russian) the photo is titled "Trotsky (Троцкий) reads a newspaper titled 'Truth' („Правда“) in Vienna" circa 1910; photo is public domain (PD) by date.
sources (timeline):
Kautsky. "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" Vienna August 1918. -- accused Bolsheviks of terror and civil war because no universal sufferage.
Lenin. "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" Moscow November 1918 -- accused Kautsky of Liberalism, no revolutionary spirit. To Lenin the dictatorship fo the proletariat had a monopoly could use violence against the bourgiousie.
Kautsky. "Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of the Revolution" June 1919.
Trotsky. "Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky" May 1920. -- there is a distinction between class action and individual terror.
