Bolshevik Leaders Research Articles

Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar

Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar

Barbara Falk, Sowjetische Städte in der Hungersnot 1932/33

The 1932/33 famine in the Soviet Union, which carried away the lives of an estimated six to eight million people, has always been studied primarily as a rural cataclysm, tragic consequence of the forced collectivisation of agriculture and the ensuing confrontation between the Bolshevik leadership and the peasantry. The general validity of this emphasis notwithstanding, the famine did, however, not remain exclusively confined to the rural areas. In Sowjetische Stadte in der Hungersnot 1932/33 ...

Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard s> Rhodes (review)

148 SEER, 83, I, 2005 his role in the offerand alwaysdenied it. Benegdoes not addressthis episode here, but Hauner dealswith it satisfactorilyin the Introductionand Notes. Now, how much of the presentpublicationis new and originalmaterial?By no means all of it, as much of the documentation that Benes used in the composition of it in 1940 has subsequentlyappeared in the publishedBritish, French and German diplomatic papers, but what is a disconnected story scattered through the voluminous tomes of three different documentary publicationsbecomes a connected and coherent storyin Beneg'spresentation of it here. The complete andwell-editedset of Benes'smemoirsatwhich Hauner aims (includingMnichovske dny)should be a significantcontribution to scholarship. The documentation and notes provided by the editor of this volume are professional,authoritativeand useful.The copy-editingand proofreading,on the other hand, fall conspicuouslybelow acceptable scholarlystandards:e.g., Benes is said to have conferredwith PresidentRoosevelt in May 1928 (p. viii, it was 1939, of course);a dispatch of Frenchminister Lacroix in Prague has been 'tempered with' (p. xxii, n. 34; p. xxiii, n. 38); 'the new republic of Slovakia,which was diplomaticallyby most European governments'(p. xix); 'to prevent the Chamberlain-Hitler deal, which he rightly feared would be much worst'(p. xxiv);'hence is hesitationto finalisehisversion of Munich for the Memoirs' (p. xxv, n. 42); 'on of the principal conditions' (p. ii); 'extinguishment'(p. I39). There aretoo many othersuchproblems(p. 25, 28, 40, 50, 52, III, I27, I67). Let us hope for a closer perusal of the micro-editing in subsequenteditions. Charlottesville, VA HUGH RAGSDALE Rhodes, Richard. MastersofDeath.T7he SSEinsatzgruppen andtheInvention ofthe Holocaust.Perseus Press, Oxford, 2002. xii + 338 pp. Maps. Tables. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. fi8.99. ON 20June 1941 one of the most powerful militaryforces in human history, some three million strong, waited to strike. But as the Wehrmacht readied itselfto unleash Operation Barbarossaagainstthe Soviet Union, foursmallish taskforceswere preparing an operation that would in some senses shift the boundariesof human experience even more profoundlythan Hitler'smassive military campaign. These were the Einsatzgruppen,each containing 6oo to IOOO men, entrustedwith the task of eliminating behind the lines Bolshevik leaders,Jews, and otherunwantedgroups.Within a few monthsthe taskforces would be responsiblefor murderinghundreds of thousands of mostlyJewish civilians in operations whose bestiality, thoroughness and astonishing scope markedthe transitionin Nazi policy to genocide. This unprecedented mayhem has been the subject of enormous historical interest. Since the debates between Alfred Streim and Helmut Krausnickin the late I970s, historians have wondered whether the taskforces'journey across the threshold of genocide was driven by clear policy briefs or by improvisation in response to events. More recently, interest in policy developmenthasbeen complemented by a searchto understandthe trajectory REVIEWS 149 and energy of the individualswho made up the Einsatzgruppen.Historians such as Christian Gerlach, Christoph Dieckmann, Andrew Ezergailis, Peter Klein, Konrad Kwiet and now AndrejAngrickhave offeredpowerfulregional studies, whilst Peter Longerich and most recently (and superbly) Jurgen Matthaus in ChristopherBrowning'slatest magnus opus(TheOrigins oftheFinal Solution, Lincoln, NE, 2004) have given us sophisticated summaries. It is thereforesomewhat surprisingwhen the dustjacketof Richard Rhodes's new account of the Einsatzgruppenreadsthat it 'givesfullweight, forthefirsttime' to the Einsatzgruppen role or indeed that it draws on 'largely ignored' Nuremberg Tribunal documents. It is in fact a survey by a non-specialist drawinglargely on recent English-languagepublications, on translatedpostwar reminiscences and some trialrecords. Its strengthlies less in opening up new ground (though it has some good points to make) than in providing a vivid and intelligent account for a popular audience of the terrifying developmentson the EasternFront. To be sure, there are inaccuracies and unevennesses in the story. The overarchingaccount of the origins of the Final Solution is muddled. Rhodes sticks with the older scholarship in believing that Auschwitz commandant Hoss heard from Himmler in July I94I that genocide had been decided on. In fact, it now seems likely that Hoss's post-war testimony on this matter confused his meeting with one many months later in I942. What makes Rhodes's endorsementof the olderview odd isthathe acceptsthe recentclaim by Christian Gerlach that Hitler made a decision to include all European Jews in the Holocaust only in December I94I. This latter view is indeed possible (thoughmany scholarsbelieve the crystallizationof genocidal policy forEuropeanJewry came a...

Основной Вопрос Казаковедения: Российская Историография В Поисках “Древнего” Казачества

SUMMARY: One of the key disputed issues in Cossack history revolves around the origins of the Cossacks. Historically, Cossack self-understanding has shifted as the Cossacks’ social, political, and cultural situation changed. Prior to their incorporation into the structures of the Russian Empire, the Don Cossacks credited their own founding to a territorial grant issued by Ivan the Terrible, the arrival of fugitives from Russia, and an influx of female prisoners from the Ottoman Empire. This founding story was utilized by the Cossacks to argue their right to freely associate with the Muscovite Tsars. It also contributed to the vision of the Cossack land as a place of freedom, a view shared by Russian peasants, revolutionaries, and White guards alike. Cossack views of their past changed as the Russian state turned the Cossacks into a closed military caste and an instrument of state policy. Beginning in the 18th century, the Don Cossacks extended their supposed origins back into history well beyond the 16th century, thus distancing themselves from the rest of Russia. Many Cossack authors invoked a Cossack “national feeling” during the turmoil of the revolution and the Civil War. The neo-Cossack movement in the Russian south that emerged in the late 1980s stresses the so-called “genocide” of the Cossacks, allegedly pursued by Jews and their representatives in the Bolshevik leadership. At the same time, neo-Cossack leaders often utilize the “ancient” version of Cossack origins not shared by Cossacks elsewhere in Russia. The author reviews the two versions (linked to migration and indigenous) of the Cossack origins in historiography, focusing on the issues pertaining to “the Russian reconquista” of the Don region, ancient ethnic components in the origins of the Cossacks, and émigré visions of a separate Cossack “people” as well as on Soviet interpretations of Cossack history.

The Making and Breaking of the Soviet System: An Interpretation by Christopher s> Read (review)

REVIEWS I53 I9I7, and a constant object of concern to the municipality,it was now subject wholly to the centralplanning agencies and industrialministriesin Moscow. Kuntzel argues that in the Soviet period Nizhnii lost its significance as a religious and commercial centre, and its lively cultural life was also undermined . Once a forum for internationalmeetings and exchanges, it became a closed city, and even passenger ships had to pass it at night if they had foreignerson board.During the Sovietperiod it gainedmany new educational institutions,but lost its lively theatre and the animated intellectualdiscussion groups. This historydoes not fulfilall the expectationsit might arouse. The Nizhnii archives are among the richest and best catalogued provincial collections in the Russian Federation. Unfortunately, the author has used them only sparingly, the former party archives not at all. Her list of sources does not referto archivematerials,and she does not provide a descriptionof the fonds she has used, though it would have been very useful to later scholars. Her account of institutions and economic life quite often relies on official handbooks rather than on the memoirs or oral recollections of real people. Not even Gor'kii is quoted as an eye-witness. There are strange omissions: thus, on page I56 we are told that there was no universityin Nizhnii before I9I6, but on page 226 we suddenlycome acrossa universityin the mid-I920S, with no explanation of its origin. On page 50 she states that in the I950S Khrushchev thought of making Gor'kiicapital city of the RSFSR, but gives no source for this interestingassertion.The index contains only the names of persons,so that it is difficultto follow the historyof institutions. All the same, Kuntzel's study offers a useful introduction to the modern historyof one of Russia'smost interestingand importantcities. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies GEOFFREY HoSKING University College London Read, Christopher. TheMakingandBreaking oftheSoviet System. AnInterpretation. European History in Perspective.Palgrave,Basingstokeand New York, 2001. X + 259 pp. Notes. Selectbibliography.Index. CI(3.99 (paperback). THIS is a stimulating and perceptive account of the rise and decline of the Soviet systema decade afterthe system'sdemise gave opportunitiesto analyse and interpretthe whole experience. The author's purpose was 'to study the formation and dissolution of the Soviet system the forces bringing it together and the contradictions which eventually blew it apart' (p. Ioo). Largelybased on establishedaccounts ratherthan presenting unknown facts or new archival materials, the study focuses on the essence of the system, relating its peak under Stalin to its Leninist, Marxist and tsarist roots, and interpretingits subsequentdecline and ultimatecollapse. A strikingfeature of the volume are its concise summariesof the system at various stages, and of the strengths, weaknesses and contributions of the principal protagonists. Thus, the following well summarizes Khrushchev's inheritance: 'Khrushchev's greatest strength was that he had identified the most dysfunctionalfeaturesof Stalinism -the cult of the leader, the power of I54 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 the political police, the eclipse of the party, the rigidity of the command economy, the stultifying cultural monotony, the dangers of the Cold War. However, he did not findsuitablesolutionsnordidhe move out of the strategic frameworkof Stalinism'(p. i 6I ). Similar is the succinct view of Stalin in the early I920S as 'the revolutionary leadership's chief backroom boy and dogsbody' (p. 46). Throughout the book, such pithy phrases characterize situations,actions, individualsand events. In places, conventional wisdom is plausiblychallenged. Read identifiesthe failure to capture Moscow as the turning-point of the Second World War, ratherthan the battle for Stalingrad.The idea of Hitler as the founder of the Soviet Union's easternempire (p. I15) bringsthe readerup with a start.And the portrayalof Stalin as wartimeleader not a psychopathicmonsterbut a nationalleaderwho had hiswits about him, and certainlynot crazy(p. I33) is supportedby many militarymen, and an antidote to views of Stalin as wholly evil. Indeed, throughout, Read presentsbalanced views, rejectingpoliticallyinspiredtendencies to caricature. Buildingsocialismand communism became reduced to 'productionism',in an attempt ultimatelyvain to outperformthe capitalismwhose universal overthrow provided the Bolsheviks with their purpose. That ideologicallydriven goal sustainedthe system'sdevelopment and its defence, and supposedly justified all the evil abuse of power by the Bolshevik leaders until Brezhnev. Under Brezhnev, ideological confidence and zeal was replaced by a 'crudely...

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927

Based mainly on unknown Russian archival sources which have previously been unobtainable, this book analyses the Bolshevik concepts of the Chinese revolution and their reception in China. Issues include the role of the three Bolshevik leaders, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky in trying to lead the Chinese Communists to victory, the real nature of the Trotsky-Stalin split in the Comintern, and a dramatic history of the Chinese Oppositionist movement in Soviet Russia.

The First Soviet Political Trial: Countess Sofia Panina before the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal

The Bolshevik leadership had reason to expect that their first trial of a political opponent would be a success. The defendant was a wealthy aristocrat, a member of the Central Committee of the outlawed Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) party, and a vice minister in the Provisional Government. The unambiguous charge against her-taking and concealing government funds from the former Ministry of Education-would clearly demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of liberal leaders and further discredit the former government. A public trial would introduce the Bolsheviks' new instrument of revolutionary justice-the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Petrograd Soviet, created in late November 1917 and composed of ordinary workers and soldiers in conscious imitation of the French Revolution. From the perspective of her accusers, the likely guilty verdict against Countess Sofia Panina would show the world the superiority of Bolshevik justice and morality, and the legitimacy of their seizure of power. To the Kadets, the trial of a woman widely respected for her progressive philanthropy held equally great significance as an event that would demonstrate the illegitimacy of Bolshevik rule and their violation of the most fundamental norms of justice. The actual proceedings that took place on 10 December 1917 yielded no unequivocal triumphs, however. The trial took several surprising turns, and its ambiguous outcome enabled both supporters and opponents of the defendant to declare victory and draw different lessons. Attracting national and international attention at the time, the trial is often mentioned briefly in histories of the Revolution.1 It has received somewhat more attention

Entry and Entrepreneurship: The Case of Post-Communist Russia

Boettke and Butkevich argue that a vibrant society is an entrepreneurial society. Entrepreneur- ial effectiveness is a function of the free movement of economic actions their alertness to opportunities for mutual gain, and their sense of when and where to enter and exit a market. Boettke and Butkevich focus not so much on the behavior of entrepreneurship, but the institutional conditions within which entrepreneurship takes place. They argue that policies which hinder the above ground legitimate expression of entrepreneurial discovery must be eliminated for the further development of the Russian economy towards a market system and away from the current virtual economy. Institutions of governance must be established which reduce political uncertainty and encourage individuals to be willing to bet on their ideas and find the financing to bring those bets to life.Boettke et Butkevich suggerent que lactivite entrepreneuriale est la force motrice dune societe. Lefficacite de lactivite entrepreneuriale depend de la libre circulation des acteurs economiques leur vigilance a legard des opportunites de gains mutuels, et leur jugement concernant les moment et lieu opportuns pour entrer sur un marche ou en sortir. Les auteurs mettent laccent, pas tant sur le comportement des entrepreneurs, que sur les amenagements institutionnels a linterieur desquels lactivite entrepreneuriale a lieu. Ils considerent que les politiques qui font obstacle aux manifestations legitimes de decouverte entrepreneuriale doivent etre eliminees pour accompagner le developpement de leconomie russe vers une economie de marche, distincte de lactuelle economie virtuelle. Des institutions de gouvernance qui reduisent lincertitude politique doivent etre etablies. Ces institutions devraient aussi encourager les individus a parier sur leurs idees et a trouver des sources de financement pour instaurer ces idees.

Bravin in Tehran and the origins of Soviet policy in Iran

The nature of early Soviet policy towards Iran and the handling of the Persian Soviet Republic of Gilan by the Bolshevik leadership has preoccupied the minds of historians for a number of decades. It is generally assumed that the Soviets pursued a dual policy towards the East as they did in the case of the West. A close examination of the activities of the first Soviet diplomatic agent in Iran (N.Z. Bravin) and the Soviet leadership's handling of and attitude towards him, shows that this was not the case. From the outset Lenin and some of his comrades tried to come to terms with eastern nationalism and that to the extent of not allowing for considerations of class struggle within Eastern societies.

Lenin’s Testimony to the Extraordinary Investigatory Commission

One topic editors of first four editions of V.I. Lenin's works carefully avoided was Bolshevik leader's testimony before Provisional Government's Extraordinary Investigatory Commission on 26 May 1917 (o.s.). No mention of commission or of Lenin's nine-page written deposition to it is to be found in these editions. In 1962 editors of fifth edition, his supposedly Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Complete Collected Works), were only slightly less reticent. The deposition itself is absent from text of volume XXXII, which covers period from 2 May to 8 July 1917, and his appearance before commission is not included in detailed chronology of life and activity of V.I Lenin at end of volume. Buried in one of endnotes, however, are three short paragraphs from his testimony in which he sought to explain his actions in 1914 when he defended Roman Malinovskii, a member of his Central Committee and leader of Bolshevik fraction in IV State Duma, against widespread rumours that he was an agent of tsarist police.l The fact that Lenin's judgement in 1914 was proven wrong when police files were opened in March 1917 explains why original deposition and a contemporary copy of it remained unpublished in two Soviet archives for more than seventy years. Under influence of glasnost, this blank spot in Lenin's biography was finally illuminated in 1990 and 1991 with publication of both documents in two leading Soviet journals.z And in 1996 Richard Pipes published an English translation of what purported to be a third archival copy.3 The fact that these documents differ in content raises an important question concerning veracity of material now pouring out of Russian archives. It is intention of this article to discuss relatively unknown history of Extraordinary Investigatory Commission, background and content of Lenin's testimony before it, and provenance of three archival versions of that testimony which have recently come to light. When Alexander Kerenskii became Minister of Justice in new Provisional Government, his first and one of his more important acts was to create an Extraordinary Investigatory Commission (Chrezvychainaia sledtvennaia komissiia). Announced on 4 March, only two days after abdication of Nicholas II, commission was officially charged on 11 March with the investigation of malfeasance in office of former ministers, chief administrators, and other persons in high office of both civil and military and naval services.4 Kerenskii asked N.K. Murav'ev, a Social Democrat and well-known Moscow defence lawyer, to chair seven-man commission and he gave him authority of an assistant minister of justices The initial vice-chairs, S.V. Ivanov and S.V. Zavadskii, were both former members of Russian Senate. The composition of rest of commission was overtly non-political and it fluctuated during course of next eight months. Its members generally were drawn from intelligent men of independent character who had previously served as procurators in various imperial Russian courts 6 Academician S.F. Ol'denburg became commission's secretary, poet Alexander Blok edited its protocols, and E.V. Tarle provided historical advice. Much of work of commission was done by twenty-five legally trained investigators who collected government and police documents, interrogated former tsarist officials, and took written depositions from witnesses of varying political persuasion. The setting for commission's work was incongruous, to say least. After finding its initial quarters in Senate too cramped, commission moved to Winter Palace. On formal occasions it met in a large hall on first floor of tsar's former residence surrounded by footmen and porters still wearing imperial livery and protected by soldiers from elite Preobrazhenskii Regiment. …

Peace profile: Alexandra Kollontai

Feminists around the world, whether they adhere to the socialist ideology or not, have tried to understand what socialism can offer to the women's liberation movement. To understand how socialism tries to answer the “woman question,” we must examine prominent socialist women and their theories about socialism's effects on their gender. The belief that a socialist state will automatically emancipate women seems all too simple. With the Marxist principle that all people will find freedom under socialism, one wonders whether the theory can actually be put into practice. Alexandra Kollontai—a Bolshevik leader and the only woman member of Lenin's government—recognized flaws in the neat Marxist argument that women's goals would, and could only, be met by joining hands with the men of their class. If the standard Marxist response to the woman question considered any special attempt to organize working women to be a dangerous, separatist act, deviating from the larger picture, then how were women workers to be brought to the cause to begin with? Kollontai had a straightforward response: if women's needs and concerns were not addressed, then women would not join the class struggle. Just as she recognized the need to pay special attention to women during the struggle for socialism, Alexandra Kollontai was vocal in demanding that the victorious Bolsheviks begin to deliver the long‐heralded advancements for women after socialism was achieved. As a woman, her extraordinary strength and determination on women's issues caused her to be inaccurately portrayed as an ultraradical threat to the newly developing Russian society. Instead, Kollontai was merely pioneering a new line of inquiry. In exploring the relationship between men and women, Kollontai was making connections between the personal and the political. Her theories on social and sexual relationships between men and women in the new communist state, to which she dedicated most of her energy, have been distorted in a way that has also earned her the reputation of being a militant prophetess of free love. But Kollontai never recommended “free love” in the promiscuous sense that we may think of it. Rather, as we see in her writings and other work, she was merely addressing the old morality by which a woman's value had been judged by moral purity. She felt these repressive, outdated standards should no longer apply in the new socialist society. What were Kollontai's suggestions for dealing with women's situation in society, even in the new society in which women were, according to traditional Marxism, supposed to be granted total emancipation? How did she see this position directly connected to the position women held in personal relationships, and why did her attempt to make the personal the political bring upon her so much criticism?

Democracy for China: American Propaganda and the May Fourth Movement

During the closing stages of World War I, the U.S. government conducted a worldwide propaganda campaign that promoted America as the trustworthy champion of democracy. The parallel domestic propaganda effort remains well known because of wartime hysteria and controversies over government censorship associated with President Woodrow Wilson's protégé and erstwhile election pamphleteer, George Creel. Creel pugnaciously headed the Committee on Public Information (CPI) from its inception in 1917 until Congress abruptly terminated it in June 1919 amid charges of arrogance, embezzlement, and political partisanship. But the work of CPI's Foreign Section has been largely forgotten, except perhaps for its most sensational bungle, the publication of the fake Sisson Papers, which purported to document that Bolshevik leaders in Russia were paid German agents.1 CPI's China station chief, Carl Crow, observed that because “a large part of our propaganda” was based on Wilson's pronouncements, “it was quite natural that our work should result in the aggrandizement of Wilson as a man – the creation of a super-hero who was declaimed by the world as a new deliverer.” While this “aroused the bitter ire” of his congressional political opponents and thereby contributed to CPI's chaotic demise, Wilson and his message of self-determination for the weak had particular appeal in places like China. American officials noted first with satisfaction, and later with chagrin, as ex-U.S. minister Paul S. Reinsch put it, that “probably nowhere else in the world had expectations of America's leadership at [the] Paris [Peace Conference] been raised so high as in China. The Chinese trusted America, they trusted the frequent declarations of principle uttered by President Wilson, whose words had reached China in its remotest parts.”2

Советизация Закавказья в переписке большевистского руководства, 1920-1922 гг.

Aleksandr V. Kvašonkin, The Sovietization of Transcaucasia through the correspondence of the Bolshevik leadership, 1920-1922. This article studies the questions of the establishment of the Soviet power in the Transcaucasian republics (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) through the correspondence both formal and informal of the Bolshevik leadership during the years 1920-1922. The correspondence of the representatives of the party and the army of Transcaucasia with the Center and between themselves is an extremely rich material which helps establish a true picture of the events in this area, understand and enlight the role played by different leaders of the Bolshevik elite in what they called among themselves the "Sovietization". Beginning in April 1920 in Azerbaijan, the "Sovietization" then spreads out to Armenia and Georgia in the same way: a communist coup takes place in the capital, a Revolutionary Committee is created, calls for help to Soviet Russia which sends troups to the rescue and finally Moscow makes a welcoming speech to the "freed people." Letters, telegrams, talks over a "direct line" (the telegraph) restore the dynamic and bring sense to the chain of acts and events. Among the actors we meet Lenin, Trotskii, Stalin, Ordzhonikidze, Kirov, Chicherin, Tukhachevskii, Krestinskii, Mdivani, Frumkin, Kosior, Vrachev, Trifonov, Kvirkeliia, Smigla and many others.

Bertrand Patenaude's "Peasants into Russians"

Bertrand Patenaude's article, Peasants into Russians: The Utopian Essence of Communism, in the October 1995 issue of The Russian Review, is an excellent contribution to the debate about the usefulness of the concept of War Communism.' It is based on a wide range of material that future scholars will have to incorporate into their accounts of the Civil period. Just as important, Patenaude conducts the debate in a civilized, scholarly manner that focuses exclusively on the difficult issues of interpretation confronting us. I am genuinely complimented to be chosen as Patenaude's chief polemical target. Before turning to our differences, I would like to stress our agreement on some important issues. Patenaude notes that by 1920 it was generally realized that a true state grain monopoly-itself only a presocialist measure-was unrealizable in the near future (p. 559); he also brings out the important point that neither in 1920 nor at any earlier time did the Bolsheviks think in terms of coercive collectivization (p. 565). Patenaude likes to portray himself as a defender of orthodoxy, but I think he will find many of the orthodox surprised and even resistant to these facts. But there is a fundamental difference between us in our characterization of the overall outlook of the party elite in 1920. Patenaude claims there was a consensus Larin to Lenin (a nice phrase) that communism was on the immediate agenda in 1920: the party had already won the class struggle and had brought the countryside into the socialist framework (p. 567). If I understand him correctly, he also thinks that by late 1920 the Bolshevik leaders had convinced themselves that the peasants did not mind handing over grain without compensation and that therefore there was no particular need ever to provide exchange items, even after the revival of industry. I believe, on the contrary, that in 1920 there was (1) a general feeling that the most overwhelming problem facing the regime and the country was the razrukha, the terrible economic breakdown; (2) a general feeling that the razrukha and the Civil had not accelerated socialist construction but rather had forced many unpleasant compromises on the party; and (3) a general feeling that socialism and communism were a long way off. Patenaude's main showpiece is N. Osinskii's Pravda articles from September 1920; for those interested in a more representative sample of the party outlook during the same month, I suggest looking at the debate at the Ninth Party Conference about the so-called nizy versus verkhi conflict.2 Rather than make any further claims, I

The Bolsheviks' "German Gold" Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations

On the evening of 4 July 1917, at the height of the anti-government uprising, the Provisional Government's Minister of Justice, Pave! N. Pereverzev, authorized a press release accusing the Bolshevik leaders of treasonable activities. The report published the next day alleged that Lenin had been sent to Russia by the German government to rally support for a separate peace with Germany and "to undermine the confidence of the Russian people in the Provisional Government. " The money for his activity was allegedly channeled from Berlin to Petrograd, by way of Stockholm. In Stockholm the transfer was carried out by the Bolshevik Jakub Ftirstenberg (Hanecki) and the Russo-German Social Democrat Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus). The main recipients in Petrograd were the Bolshevik lawyer Mieczyslaw Kozlowski and Evgeniia M. Sumenson, a relative of FtirstenbergHanecki. She and Kozlowski ran a trading business as a cover for financial dealings with Ftirstenberg, thus making the transfer of German funds look like a legitimate business transaction.

Technology and Trade: Russia's Pursuit of American Investment, 1917?1929

In the years after the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik leaders frequently expressed a strong commitment to trade with the United States. “We have resolved on economic relations with America,” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin told a Chicago Daily News correspondent in September 1919. “With all countries,” he was quick to add, “but especially with America.”1 Leonid Krasin, Soviet commissar of foreign trade, told American representatives in London that his government viewed commercial cooperation with the United States as “indispensable.”2 Confirmation of a steadfast Soviet design for American trade and investment after the revolution comes from historians as well. John Lewis Gaddis identifies a “persistent theme in Soviet diplomacy: the view that the interests of the Soviet state could be promoted by facilitating ‘businesslike’ dealings with foreign capitalists.”3 This Soviet policy toward the United States contrasted sharply with the irresolution that American and Soviet observers have depicted as typifying Washington's policy toward Moscow. From 1917 to 1933, the U.S. government inconsistently supported both diplomatic isolation from and increasingly important economic contacts with Russia. As Warren Cohen notes, America was officially “unfriendly” during these years, yet “made no effort to prevent the transfer of important technology to the Soviet state.” Joan Hoff-Wilson suggests that Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover, the leading cabinet members during both the Harding and Coolidge administrations, “found it difficult to decide whether to take advantage of what Russian market there was or to use economic pressure against the Soviets.”4

Politics and Philosophy in Russian Social Democracy: Alexander Bogdanov and the Sociotheoretical Foundations ofVpered

Bolsheviks struggled to determine the political direction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1909 a third tendency emerged, Vpered, whose chief theoretician and representative was Alexander Bogdanov. Bogdanov and the Vperedists opposed both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks on fundamental questions of the revolutionary movement. Bogdanov was also a prominent exponent of neo-Kantianism or Machism in Russian Social Democracy and, along with other Social Democrats, had developed the epistemological implications of recent discoveries in the natural sciences for the social sciences and, thus, for Marxism.1 But despite philosophical disagreement with Lenin, Bogdanov had collaborated closely with the philosophically orthodox Bolshevik leader between 1904 and 1908 because both men had agreed on the necessity of building the Party to bring from the outside revolutionary consciousness to workers. The experience of the 1905 Revolution convinced Lenin to revise sharply the theses of What is to be Done? on this point. That same experience, on the other hand, led Bogdanov energetically to reaffirm in 1909 his tutelary conception of the Party in the workers' movement.2 In this essay I attempt to establish the nature and reasons for the tutelary role of the Party vis-a-vis the working class. My methodological point of departure seeks to grasp Bogdanov' s views in philosophy and political economy in relationship to his political practice in Vpered because he wanted to help workers contest the coming domination of capitalist society, specifically, the impersonal rule of the market and the attendant ideological mystification engendered by its operation bourgeois ideology. The ideological restructuring of workers' consciousness, if successfully accomplished by Vpered, would shorten the era of bourgeois ideological

État « prolétarien » et science « bourgeoise » [ Les specy pendant les premières années du pouvoir soviétique

Ettore Cinnella, Proletarian state and bourgeois science : the spetsy during the first years of Soviet rule. Considering the debates on "military specialists", one can see that the main reason of the confrontations between the leaders who were favourable to creating a regular army and the members of the so-called "military opposition" lay in the uncertain attitude of the peasantry towards Soviet power. In order to overcome the resistance of rural masses, some Bolsheviks were proposing the way of persuasion and army democratization, while others were insisting on the necessity to resort to measures of constraint. As to the living and working conditions of "bourgeois" technical and scientific personnel, the spontaneous hate of the plebeian masses for spetsy was nourished by Bolshevik leaders' contradictory and ambiguous attitudes. The third part of the article is devoted to the problem of bureaucracy. The confidence which Lenin and the overwhelming majority of the party entertained lor the administrative capabilities of the toiling masses was in contradiction with the reality and was leading to the conviction that the cause of the bureaucratic phenomenon lay in the presence of former tsarist officials inside the government apparatus of the new regime.

Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy

Zenovia A. Sochor here assesses one of the most important debates within the Bolshevik leadership during the early years of Soviet power-that between A. A. Bogdanov and V. I. Lenin. Once comrades-in-arms, Bogdanov and Lenin became political rivals prior to the October Revolution. Their disagreements over political and cultural issues led to a split in the Bolshevik Party, with Bogdanov spearheading the party's left-wing faction and attracting a following of notable intellectuals. Before Lenin died in 1924, however, he had succeeded in shaping Soviet society according to his own vision, and today Bolshevism is commonly identified with Leninism while Bogdanovism is little known. Sochor provides the first full exposition in English of Bogdanov's views, which, she asserts, must be understood to appreciate the choices available and the paths not taken during the formative years of the Soviet regime.

« Building the first system of state industry in history »* [Piatakov's VSNKh and the crisis of the NEP, 1923-1926

Andrea Graziosi, "Building the first system of state industry in history". The paper tries to go beyond the traditional analyses of the economic policies of the 1920's, generally grounded in the intellectual perspective of the "industrialization debate." It centers around the reconstruction of the administrative-economic activities of G. L. Piatakov in 1923-1926, when he was the VSNKh Vice-President. Special attention is devoted to Piatakov's attempt to build what he called the "first system of state industry in history" and to the consequences such a policy had tor the NEP, whose crisis it accelerated. At the same time, the article is the first scholarly work devoted to Piatakov to appear in the West. For such reason, it also tries to give an assessment of Piatakov's role and importance, witnessed among other things by the fact that he was one of the six "outstanding" Bolshevik leaders mentioned by Lenin in his Testament.