Lenin's Aggressive Unoriginality, 1914-1916

Lenin received a severe shock in 1914 when the main parties of the socialist Second International supported the war effort of their respective governments. But the shock did not lead to his rejection of the prewar Marxist orthodoxy but rather to an outraged affirmation of this orthodoxy against those who (in Lenin’s view) had betrayed it. Lenin’s rhetorical stance can therefore be described as ‘aggressive unoriginality’. Lenin insisted that the key themes of ‘Left Zimmerwald’—the name given to the socialist current of which he was the principal spokesman from 1914 to 1916—were based squarely on the prewar consensus of ‘revolutionary Marxists’, particularly as expressed by Karl Kautsky. Among these themes are the underlying idea of a revolutionary situation, the assumption that the war had created a revolutionary situation, and the claim that ‘socialist patriotism’ during the war represented the triumph of prewar opportunism. Lénine a reçu un choc sévère en 1914 quand les principaux partis de la Deuxième Internationale socialiste ont soutenu l’effort de guerre de leurs gouvernements respectifs. Toutefois, le choc ne l’a pas amené à rejeter l’orthodoxie marxiste de l’avant-guerre mais plutôt à affirmer outrageusement cette orthodoxie contre ceux qui, de son point de vue, l’avaient trahie. La posture rhétorique de Lénine peut ainsi être décrite comme ‘banalement agressive.’ Lénine soutenait que les thèmes clés de la ‘Gauche de Zimmerwald’ – le nom donné au courant socialiste dont il était le principal porte-parole entre 1914 et 1916 – étaient fondamentalement basés sur le consensus d’avant-guerre des ‘Marxistes révolutionnaires,’ comme pouvait l’exprimer en particulier Karl Kautsky. Parmi ces thèmes figurent l’idée sous-jacente d’une situation révolutionnaire, l’hypothèse que cette situation révolutionnaire a été créée par la guerre, et l’argument selon lequel le ‘patriotisme socialiste’ d’alors correspondait au triomphe de l’opportunisme de l’avant-guerre

“A revolução democrática antiburguesa”: uma leitura da Revolução Russa

I propose a new category to describe the Russian revolution of 1917: the “anti-bourgeois democratic revolution.” “Soviet power” was actually proclaimed in during the February revolution in 1917. The basic force behind this new power or sovereign authority—the workers, soldiers and peasant who made up the constituency of the soviets—was hostile to the burzhui both in its narrow meaning of industrial owners and in its wider meaning of the tsenzoviki (an abusive term for the educated elite that derived from property requirements or “census” for voters). The central aim of this revolution was to carry out the vast program of reforms earlier denoted by the term “democratic revolution”—first and foremost, land to the peasants and liquidation of the pomeshchiki (gentry landowners) as a class. Commitment in a positive way to socialist institutions was much less powerful than a negative attitude toward the bourgeois as individuals as well as toward bourgeois values.Proponho uma nova categoria para descrever a Revolução Russa de 1917: “revolução democrática antiburguesa”. O “poder soviético” foi proclamado, de fato, durante a Revolução de Fevereiro, em 1917. A força básica por trás desse novo poder ou autoridade soberana – os trabalhadores, soldados e camponeses que constituíam o eleitorado dos sovietes – era hostil à burjúi tanto em seu sentido estrito de proprietários industriais como em seu sentido mais amplo de tsenzoviki. O objetivo central dessa revolução era realizar o vasto programa de reformas anteriormente denominado pelo termo “revolução democrática” – antes de tudo, terra para os camponeses e liquidação dos pomiéschiki (aristocracia rural) enquanto classe. O comprometimento positivo com as instituições socialistas era muito menos poderoso do que uma atitude negativa em relação à burguesia, não só enquanto indivíduos mas também enquanto valores burgueses

Campaignism: An Essential Theme in the History of the Left [Review essay of: Kevin J. Callahan: Demonstration Culture. European Socialism and the Second International, Leicester, Troubador Publishing, 2010. XXXII, 324 pp. – ISBN 978-1848763838]

Kevin J. Callahan: Demonstration Culture. European Socialism and the Second International, Leicester, Troubador Publishing, 2010. XXXII, 324 pp. – ISBN 978-1848763838

Bread and authority in Russia, 1914-1921

Between 1914 and 1921, Russia experienced a national crisis that destroyed the tsarist state and led to the establishment of the new Bolshevik order. During this period of war, revolution, and civil war, there was a food-supply crisis. Although Russia was one of the world's major grain exporters, the country was no longer capable of feeding its own people. The hunger of the urban workers increased the pace of revolutionary events in 1917 and 1918, and the food-supply policy during the civil war became the most detested symbol of the hardships imposed by the Bolsheviks.Focusing on this crisis, Lars Lih examines the fundamental process of political and social breakdown and reconstitution. He argues that this seven-year period is the key to understanding the Russian revolution and its aftermath. In 1921 the Bolsheviks rejected the food-supply policy established during the civil war; sixty-five years later, Mikhail Gorbachev made this change of policy a symbol of perestroika. Since then, more attention has been given both in the West and in the Soviet Union to the early years of the revolution as one source of the tragedies of Stalinist oppression.Lih's argument is based on a great variety of source material - archives, memoirs, novels, political rhetoric, pamphlets, and propoganda posters. His new study will be read with profit by all who are interested in the drama of the Russian revolution, the roots of both Stalinism and anti-Stalin reform, and more generally in a new way of understanding the effects of social and political breakdown