The Russian Revolution

A View from the Third World

Walter Rodney

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786635310
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Preface by Jesse Benjamin and the Walter Rodney FoundationIntroduction by Robin D.G. KelleyAfterword by Vijay PrashadIn his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading revolutionary thinkers of the Black Sixties. He became a leading force of dissent throughout the Caribbean and a lightning rod of controversy. The 1968 Rodney Riots erupted in Jamaica when he was prevented from returning to his teaching post at the University of the West Indies. In 1980, Rodney was assassinated in Guyana, reportedly at the behest of the government. In the mid-'70s, Rodney taught a course on the Russian Revolution at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. A Pan-Africanist and Marxist, Rodney sought to make sense of the reverberations of the October Revolution in a decolonising world marked by Third World revolutionary movements. He intended to publish a book based on his research and teaching. Now historians Jesse Benjamin, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Vijay Prashad have edited Rodney's polished chapters and unfinished lecture notes, presenting the book that Rodney had hoped to publish in his lifetime.1917 is a signal event in radical publishing, and will inaugurate Verso's standard edition of Walter Rodney's works.

1

The Two World Views of
the Russian Revolution

Throughout the history of human knowledge, there have been two conceptions concerning the law of development of the universe, the metaphysical conception and the dialectical conception, which form two opposing world outlooks.

—Chairman Mao Zedong, “On Contradiction” (1937)¹

In the era from the confrontation with colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s through the process of decolonization, African scholars have resolved a number of issues. First, African history and society became a legitimate field of inquiry. Second, they have emphasized the need to counter the racist, colonialist orientation that predominated within the little that had been previously written. Third, they have given primacy to interpretations by Africans themselves. A similar and even more determined effort to overturn racist interpretations of history was made by African descendants in the New World, notably in the United States. This work is the basis for the proliferation of Black Studies programs and is responsible for the demand that, as far as black people are concerned, white people are historically disqualified from interpreting black folks to black folks. Consequently, the terms “African perspective,” and/or “black perspective” have emerged from both the continent and the Diaspora.

The concept of an “African perspective” is much broader than those of “African history,” “African society,” and African culture.” An African scholar naturally designates activity by Africans as his primary field of study, but it does not take very long to discover that he/she is obligated to arrive at his/her own interpretation of human societies outside of Africa. At the University of the West Indies, Ibadan, Dar es Salaam, for example, the normal demands of teaching led rapidly to the decision that local staff should not merely master local affairs, but should replace Europeans presenting and interpreting Europe to Africa, and initiate the study of Asia, so as to provide our own people with a global perspective.

It was not so long ago that “we” in textbooks designed for Africans meant “we the British” or “we the French.” Conversely, “they” referred to Africans, which posed a crisis of identity, even when “they the Africans” are not referred to as savages or natives. This point hardly needs discussion with regard to studies of Africa itself, where the battle for an African identity has already been fought and won in principle. But looking at the outside world is necessary to underscore the new realization that Africans are “we,” and that we have to interpret the totality of human existence.

At the simplest level, an African account of, say, Australia or Switzerland written for Africans would demonstrate the characteristics of relating the foreign and unknown phenomenon to what is familiar in Africa. That is a very normal procedure. When the Dutch went to Benin in the seventeenth century, they exclaimed that Benin City was comparable to the best that Holland had to offer. Similarly, all Europeans compare Shaka to Napoleon, Dahomey to Sparta, and so on. Of course, for the present generation of educated Africans, a European parallel comes to mind more quickly than an African one. Nevertheless, the time will probably come when African teachers will make seventeenth-century European feudalism more readily comprehensible to African students by pointing to similarities and contrasts in fourteenth-century Ethiopia.

In initiating a study of the world at large, the African scholar or student can exercise choice—something that was impossible under colonialism. The colonized African did not merely study Europe; he concentrated heavily, sometimes exclusively on the “mother country.” The opening of the options allows for the establishment of priorities of relevance. In any event, the history of Europe or of a given European country from the fifteenth century to the present has had to give way to courses on African history. Therefore, what remains outside of African consciousness has to be rigorously studied.

There is no need to justify the selection; understanding the Soviet Union is a priority that is self-evident. Some awareness of the Soviet Union has seeped into the African consciousness, occasionally through direct tutoring among the educated, and more usually by inference and occasional references in different contexts. Both the books and the indirect references come from the colonizer to the colonized. The colonizer had national and ideological conflicts with the Soviet Union. Indeed, they were self-declared enemies. Therefore, “A” was interpreting his enemy, “B,” to a third party, “C,” which happens to be comprised of Africans. In the best of circumstances, such a procedure would be questionable, unless Africans had already agreed that our interests and basic outlooks coincided with those of Europe. As it is, we know for a fact how prejudiced and distorted Europe’s view of Africa has been. We know that European capitalism and imperialism continue to have our exploitation as their main objective. There is, therefore, every reason to be suspicious of the Western European (and American) view of the Soviet Revolution, and there is every reason to seek an African view.

In society, there are a variety of options within systems. To understand a system requires that we analyze both its national expressions and the social forces that shape the environment. The lives of Africans over the last five centuries have been affected to varying degrees by forces originating in Europe. Increasingly, Africa became enmeshed in the web of relations that constitute international capitalism—imperialism.² The Russian Revolution was the first decisive break away from international capitalism, affecting thereby the subsequent course of events around the world, including Africa.

To a certain extent, this inquiry has as a premise that there is such a thing as “an African perspective,” and hopefully it will be demonstrated that the literature on the Russian Revolution bears out such an assumption. However, it is also possible to test the limits of the assumption by penetrating more deeply into the process of consciousness, the process by which individuals in society come to rationalize their social relations and external environment. Hence, it is necessary to introduce at a very early stage the concept of the two world views—idealism and materialism—representing fundamentally opposed aspects of consciousness.

There is an area of potential conflict that arises by trying to reconcile an African view with the two world views. It can be argued that aspects of ideology coming from Europe are irrelevant to the African perspective or the black world view. Conversely, it can and has been said that a world view is either idealist or materialist and that the label “African” conveys no meaning and probably mystifies. That issue can only be resolved in the forces of discussion, and it is my intention to try and avoid prejudgment. However, the very title of this chapter should indicate to the reader that whatever uniqueness one may attach to any given African view, it does not dispense with the necessity to recognize (1) the superiority of materialism over idealism, and (2) that materialist views are partial and do not take African perspectives into account.

A Preliminary Categorization of Writers on the Russian Revolution

Every piece of scholarship is implicitly and explicitly a review of previous work on a given subject. But, from time to time, it is also illuminating to direct attention specifically to the nature of existing studies on a particular theme. Historians often resort to this approach, as part of a tradition of assessing the scope and limitations of their own discipline. When this is done, the problem that immediately arises is one of categorization. Into what slot can this or that writer be fitted as a basis for further discussion? Not surprisingly, for the historian the answer is often to make use of a chronological scale. Assuming that the discussion concerns a set of events that took place at least a century or two ago, then it is a relatively simple matter to follow changing patterns of interpretation—starting with contemporaries of the events and moving toward the present. However, when the events are close to the present, a more synchronic approach is unavoidable. This is the situation with regard to the Russian Revolution.

The contrast implied above can best be seen by comparing writings on the Russian Revolution with those on the French Revolution. The mass of material produced by French historians on the central event in their national history falls fairly neatly into chronological eras. In the nineteenth century, it is possible to distinguish the Restoration from the rest of what was essentially a Republican era. The purposes and preoccupations of historians under the monarchy were quite different from those writers of a later date, even though liberal and conservative tendencies could be discerned in both periods. By the turn of the twentieth century, the nature of the debate among French historians on the French Revolution changed under the impact of socialist perceptions, which had been developing during the nineteenth century. After the First World War, the debate became more and more a clear-cut confrontation between socialists and non-socialists.³ This latter is the only framework that is meaningful as far as the Russian Revolution is concerned.

A chronological categorization to a great extent obscures the emergence of fundamental ideological differences in the interpretations of major historical events. The English Civil War of the seventeenth century, which often competes for the title of Revolution, is a case in point. It is entirely justifiable to distinguish between the predominantly “religious,” “constitutional,” and “economic” interpretations that have arisen at various times since the seventeenth century among historians reconstructing the English Civil War. In doing so, however, one or two Marxist views are brought in on the fringe as exhibits of how wide and exotic historical interpretations can be.⁴ But Marxist conclusions start from such different premises that they constitute a camp apart from all other interpretations, which share much more in common. From a Marxist viewpoint, in effect, there are only two world views that enter the picture. In the case of the historiography of the French Revolution, in spite of the more recent evolution, there is still confusion as to the order of difference between several interpretations. That is to say, it is still fashionable to list the “Liberal” Thiers, the “Conservative” Taine, the “Social Democrat” Jaurès and Marx himself (or the “Marxist” Soboul) as though the difference of degree and kind are more or less constant as one takes each of these writers in turn.⁵ That is the equivalent of a taxonomy which presumed the same order of difference between sheepdog, wolf, cat and lion!

The Russian Revolution, which broke out in 1917, is virtually a contemporary event. The sorts of changes that took place in the manner in which this event has been presented over time are not yet very significant. Any overview of the literature on the topic must use compartments based on differences of approach among historians and other social scientists, viewed virtually as a single generation of writers. This compartmentalization can be done on a purely subjective basis, as evidenced by James Billington’s article “Six Views of the Russian Revolution,” in which he is solely concerned with subjective attitudes such as nostalgia, regret and notions of glory.⁶ However, the division reflecting the social reality of the contemporary world is that between Marxist and bourgeois views. When this is overlooked, it suggests an extreme case of mental confusion, since the Russian Revolution itself did more than any other historical event to bring about ideological polarization on a world scale between the two world views of the socialist and capitalist systems.

Before the Russian Revolution, the world at large shared the “metaphysical conception” of which Chairman Mao Zedong speaks in the opening epigraph. In Europe, the metaphysical conception took the form of bourgeois idealism, which had largely superseded the more overtly metaphysical views that had dominated Europe’s perception of man and nature during the feudal epoch. Outside of Europe, metaphysical views with a highly religious and anti-scientific content predominated. In such a context, the materialist conception was partially and inadequately grasped. Nevertheless, in the form clarified by Marx and Engels, the materialist world view was accepted by a number of individuals in the latter part of the nineteenth century. With the rise of the Soviet Union, Marxism was to acquire a class base and the support of a state power. Later, other states were to follow this lead through revolution.

The rise of states governed by Marxism sharpened the contradictions between socialist and bourgeois ideologies, producing an ideological war for the possession of the whole world. The writing of history has been a facet of, and a weapon in, that war, and historians interpreting the Russian Revolution itself have been active combatants. In analyzing the alignment of different historians, it is easier to start with the Marxist camp, which is the more readily recognizable because it is self-declared. Foremost in that camp are the Soviet historians. To the outside world, and especially to the non-specialist, the names of individual Soviet scholars of the revolution are not well known. Their works in foreign languages were almost invariably joint productions under the aegis of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Soviet Academy of Sciences. However, it does not in the least defeat our purpose to recognize the collective personality that Soviet writers have assumed. Any history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, any text on the Russian Revolution, any biography of Lenin or Stalin produced at any time in the Soviet Union, can be fairly regarded as the official Soviet view at that particular time, rather than a purely personal and perhaps eccentric expression by a single writer.⁷ It is only reasonable that Soviet historians should receive priority in a study of the historiography of the Russian Revolution, because they are interpreting national history. They have been closest to the most-relevant source materials, and they are trying to make sense of a reality that they themselves have experienced and are still experiencing.

Outside of the Soviet Union, a number of Marxists have also produced conclusions substantially in accord with those in vogue in the Soviet Union. Most supporting interpretations were written not by professional scholars but people who had ideological affinities with those who had firsthand knowledge of the revolution. One of the most famous contemporary accounts was that of John Reed, whose memoir Ten Days that Shook the World received the imprimatur of Lenin himself.⁸ The publication by the American labor unionist William Z. Foster was also in the same vein; and it was written after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1922.⁹ However, in the Western world, much of the early enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution died out within a short time. That seems to be one of the key reasons why few major scholarly Marxist studies have been carried out in the West on the Russian Revolution from an entirely sympathetic viewpoint. A well-known example is Christopher Hill’s biography of Lenin, written as long ago as 1947.¹⁰ Since then, a number of articles and monographs by the English Marxian economist Maurice Dobb have had a virtual monopoly of the role of the pro-Soviet interpretations in the Anglophone world.¹¹ Most Western Marxist interpretations of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet regime range from mild criticism to bitter denunciation. This started at the period contemporaneous with the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, as part of the debate among European Marxists concerning tactics, strategy and the fundamentals of Marxism. Inside of Russia, the Mensheviks provided the major dissident Marxist force. Their later writings constitute a self-declared Marxist interpretation that is often diametrically opposed to the equally self-declared Marxist position of officially endorsed Soviet historians. One acceptable piece of Menshevik historical writing is that of Raphael Abramovitch, a prominent figure in the Menshevik hierarchy in the period before 1917.¹² Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, two of the most prominent Marxists on the European scene at the time of the 1917 Revolution, took issue with the Bolsheviks. Their disagreements are in fact part of the history of that period, but they must be considered within the context of Marxist scholars commenting on the Russian Revolution. In the first place, one of the crucial issues of the historiography is that concerning the application of Marxism as theory to the program of revolution and reconstruction in Russia. Both Kautsky and Luxemburg have a contribution to make in that respect. Secondly, their works have been republished and integrated into subsequent debate on the nature of the Russian Revolution.¹³

With regard to Leon Trotsky, there is a similar situation of contemporary debate leading directly to subsequent historical controversy. Trotsky began writing historical and polemical accounts before his departur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword: Rodney and the Revolution
• Editors’ Note
• Introduction: An “African Perspective” on the Russian Revolution
• 1. The Two World Views of the Russian Revolution
• 2. The Russian Regime and the Soviet Revolution
• 3. Marx, Marxism and the Russian Left
• 4. Trotsky as Historian of the Russian Revolution
• 5. On the “Inevitability” of the Russian Revolution
• 6. On Democracy: Lenin, Kautsky and Luxemburg
• 7. Building the Socialist State
• 8. The Transformation of Empire
• 9. The Critique of Stalinism
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index