One Against All

Roberto Echaverren

Description

After decades of misinformation during the Soviet period, we can today, with historical hindsight and a better grasp of old and new sources, appraise what Lenin’s government meant for Russia and the world.

Without Lenin, the alternative models of totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century, so aptly characterized this way by Hannah Arendt, would have been unthinkable. In what some have called “the Russian century,” the Soviet regime was an unflinching enemy to parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, the market economy, civil rights and free speech.

Lenin destroyed politics understood as a process of dialogue and negotiation, and implemented a policy of terror.

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Former Soviet Union
• HISTORY
• Vladimir Lenin
• Communism
• General officer
• 20th century
• Social sciences
• Soviet Union
• Revolution
• Russian
• Russia
• History of Russia
• World
• General
• Révolution (homonymie)
• Train de luxe
• Communisme
• Lénine
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 13 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781680534498
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Taken from The Russian Nights Series
This book is a selection of
Las noches rusas, materia y memoria (2011).
One Against All: Lenin and His Legacy
By Roberto Echavarren
Academica Press
Washington∼London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Echavarren, Roberto (author)
Title: One against all : lenin and his legacy | Roberto Echavarren
Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2022. | Includes references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022951066 | ISBN 9781680534481 (hardcover) | 9781680534504 (paperback) | 9781680534498 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 Roberto Echavarren
Contents Introduction Chapter One Lenin’s Government Lenin’s Return to Russia The Soviet The Elections Revolution or coup? What is to be done? Lenin in power Lenin’s Character The Nihilist Inheritance The Constitutional Assembly Terror The GULAG Militarization of Work Rationing Peasant Revolts Strikes Kronstadt The Workers’ Opposition The New Economic Policy Starvation The Church Annihilation of Political Parties Instrumental law Persecution of Intellectuals The Final Days Chapter 2 The Kamen Ostrovski: Kirov and Stalin Chapter 3 The Mir and the Lot of Russian Peasants Chapter 4 Mushelochestvo: Homoerotism in Russia Chapter 5 The Yagoda Law: Criminalizing Homosexuality Bibliography General Lenin Agrarian Policy Anarchism in Russia Stalin Terror GULAG World War II Homosexuality
This will last out a night in Russia, when nights are longest there.
W. Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
Introduction
The stream of new archival material from Russia is dwindling. Overwhelmed by history’s damning evidence, apprehensive before the West and its scholars, and encouraged by Vladimir Putin’s autocratic nationalism, Russians are closing their archives. The era of openness, as Constantin Pleshakov observed, is coming to an end. It’s not likely that we’ll discover anything relevant about the Russian perspective during the Bolshevik period in the coming years, perhaps even in the coming decades. From time to time Russia sinks into a kind of deep lethargy. It happened after the period of enlightened reforms in the 1860s and 1870s and it’s happening now.
Understanding the terms in which historical events took place, how social experiments were born, and with what results, helps us realize where we come from. One of the most decisive social experiments was the invention of Lenin. Before him, the State consisted of the governing and the governed. Lenin introduced a third element: the Party, which dominated both government and society and was placed beyond the control of both.
After decades of misinformation during the Soviet period, we can today, with historical hindsight and a better grasp of old and new sources, appraise what Lenin’s government meant for Russia and the world.
Without Lenin, the alternative models of totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century, so aptly characterized this way by Hannah Arendt, would have been unthinkable. In what we might choose to baptize as “the Russian century,” the Soviet regime was an unflinching enemy to parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, the market economy, civil rights and free speech. Lenin destroyed politics understood as a process of dialogue and negotiation, and implemented a policy of terror.
There were two Russian Revolutions, one in 1905 (when the regime became a constitutional monarchy) and the other in February 1917 (when Nicholas II abdicated). Lenin’s October coup stopped the process of building a State of Law in Russia. On January 5, 1918, he dissolved the Constituent Assembly elected by popular vote. Furthermore, he annihilated all lawful institutions. I am not speaking only of elections and the effective separation of powers. He also suppressed the judiciary as such. Under Soviet rule, justice came to be administered by the political police. All the institutions of the State of Law were dismantled, and criminal law and legal procedure were put in the hands of the organs of repression.
As Krylenko, the Bolshevik prosecutor, said, “We must not only execute the guilty. The execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.” 1 Lenin invented the notion of instrumental law. He conceived of justice not as the right of citizens to have their demands heard in court, but rather as a political tool of the government to instill terror in the population. “We should proclaim without hindrance the politically just principle that is the essence and motivation of terror. Tribunals should neither moderate terror nor suppress it in any way… On the contrary, they must provide a fundament to emphatically legalize its principle, which must be as encompassing as possible.” 2
This reasoning was consecrated in the Criminal Code of 1922, written on Lenin’s initiative, in accordance with the spirit of his letter to Kursky, Commissar (Minister) of Justice. The lawmakers wrote Articles 57 and 58—“omnibus articles”—that gave broad powers to the police to sentence any undesired person. It gave terror the appearance of legality. Crimes were not defined based on legal grounds, which is to say, an infraction of a specific law, but on political grounds, as “threats to the fundamentals of the Soviet State.”
Lenin looked for an even stronger method of intimidation that went beyond sheer terror; a method that, combined with terror tactics, would transcend every form of government known until then. The method put into practice was terror by starvation. According to Lenin: “We have the means to achieve it: a monopoly of grain, the bread card, and conscription for compulsory work.” 3 He put the Russian economy under the total control of the government. He nationalized the means of production. He abolished the free market and eliminated the currency. He subjected the national economy to a comprehensive overhaul, and introduced forced labor and concentration camps.
By 1920, Russia had become a police state in the sense that the CHEKA, the political police, was virtually a State within a State. It monitored and supervised all institutions, including those that were in charge of the economy. In March 1919 Felix Dzerzhinsky, without losing command of the CHEKA, was also named Commissar of the Interior. Among the main responsibilities of the CHEKA was the organization and operation of the forced labor camps (GULAG) established in 1918. In their full maturity, the Soviet concentration camps—along with the single Party State and the omnipotent secret police—were the Bolsheviks’ great contributions to the political practices of the 20th century.
In this book I have dealt with all relevant aspects of Lenin’s government, from his inception of terror, to the suppression of political opposition and every form of dissent, including the opposition within his own Bolshevik Party. I have researched and exposed in detail his treatment of the peasantry, the massacre of the Kronstadt sailors, his suppression of worker’s strikes, his murderous attack on the Orthodox Church, delving in particular into his treatment of intellectuals.
The erasure of subcultures, of any sort of diversity or assertion of style or singularity, the prophylactic policies toward homosexuals, are merely aspects of the terror machine at work. We realize today that a policy of tolerance for sexual diversity is a sound measure of human rights under any regime. Government suppression of sexual minorities constitutes an aspect that is highly relevant and not to be ignored. In order to better understand Soviet policies at this level, I had to contrast them with their historical background in Russia prior to 1917.
A revision of the legal institutions and policies of the Russian regime prior to 1917 became necessary in order to put into perspective Lenin and Stalin’s policies—in particular toward the peasants, who were the bulk of the Russian population. In the chapter “The Mir and the Lot of Russian Peasants,” I have examined the regime of land tenure since the manumission of the serfs by Alexander II in 1861. Furthermore, the legal land reform undertaken by Prime Minister Piotr Stolypin from 1907 to 1911 and his inception of economical incentives were a gigantic step toward the improvement of the living conditions of Russian peasants. Production increased enormously. As a consequence, Russia became a major grain exporter in the period 1908–1913 and until de beginning of World War I. In 1911, the country exported a record 13.5 million tons of grain and became the largest grain exporter in the world. As we consider these developments, Lenin’s policy towards the peasants, his destruction of the country’s agriculture leading to the death by starvation of five million people, reveals its true character.
Stalin achieved what Lenin didn’t have time to: the forcible collectivization of the land, a process so murderous (all in all, millions of peasants perished) that resistance aroused within the Party itself. Kirov was a candidate for succeeding Stalin. His murder (very likely at Stalin’s hands) was the pretext to unleash a terror campaign directed against the old Bolsheviks, and expanded to the military and the population in general. This was made possible—and came as a corollary—of Lenin’s having given terror the mask of legality. Lenin’s Red Terror, Stalin’s Great Terror, were peaks of intensity within a systemic continuum.
During my stay in Russia, one of my best friends there was Oleg Martov, a medical doctor and a great reader. This book is dedicated to his memory. We had lengthy conversations about the political, economic and juridical aspects of the Russian government under the Bolsheviks. These stimulating exchanges were a point of departure for my research. Now, with historical hindsight, after a hundred years since the Russian Revolution of February 1917, I have incorporated new sources and offer here a fresh perspective on Lenin’s government and his legacy.
Acronyms of the Soviet Union Political Police:
CHEKA, 1917-1922
GPU, OGPU, 1922-1934