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Politics and the State

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The Bolshevik Party in Conflict

Part of the book series: Studies in Soviet History and Society ((SSHS))

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Abstract

The clash between the Left Communists and Lenin that surfaced in the spring of 1918 over how the revolutionary state was to be constructed rather predictably mirrored the strands of the conflict already examined. Again, the Left Communists accused Lenin of reneging on the libertarian political principles on which, as he had argued repeatedly during 1917, the revolutionary state must be founded. They viewed with horror his preparedness to abandon this programme and to condone the reconstruction of a highly-centralised, bureaucratic dictatorial state to eliminate the chaos and anarchy that threatened the very survival of the infant Soviet republic. They were certain that his betrayal of the vision of 1917, described by Robert Daniels as the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of a commune state administered from below by the workers themselves, could lead only to the degeneration of the revolution.1

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Notes

  1. A. J. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics (London, 1984), p. 6; and T. Wohlforth, ‘The Transition to the Transition’, New Left Review, 130 (1981), p. 67.

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  6. Hunt, Marx, II, p. 155.

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  19. Lenin, CW, 25, p. 409. For his earlier ideas, among a myriad of references, CW, 24, pp. 39, 100–1, 150, 169, 181–2, 278, 323, 537–8.

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  20. Lenin, CW, 25, pp. 388, 406–9, 418–19, 420–3, 426.

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  21. Ibid., pp. 420–1, 473.

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  23. Ibid., pp. 242–3, 429; also CW, 25, pp. 53, 368–70. Kingston-Mann, Peasant Revolution, pp. 141–3, 173–5, 183, has argued that during 1917 Lenin repeatedly emphasised the role for popular initiative on the part of the peasantry as well as of the workers.

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  26. Ibid., pp. 404, 436, 463.

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  27. Ibid., p. 404; for earlier references, ibid., pp. 111, 129. Harding, Political Thought, 2, pp. 71–2, 119, emphasises this strand in Lenin’s thinking in 1917.

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  29. Ibid., pp. 402, 406.

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  30. Ibid., pp. 457, 462–3, 468–9. At the Seventh Party Congress, in March 1918, Lenin repeated this message, although he then rather optimistically added that after two further congresses it would be possible to see ‘how our state is withering away’. Sed’moi sˮezd, pp. 160, 167.

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  32. Ibid., p. 473, also pp. 421, 451.

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  36. Ibid., p. 498.

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  38. Ibid., pp. 213, 218.

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  39. Ibid., p. 233.

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  53. Lenin, CW, 27, p. 529. The target of his outburst on this occasion was the Left SRs, but his argument is equally applicable to the Left Communists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Worcester College of Higher Education, UK

    Ronald I. Kowalski (Senior Lecturer in Russian History)

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© 1991 Ronald I. Kowalski

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Kowalski, R.I. (1991). Politics and the State. In: The Bolshevik Party in Conflict. Studies in Soviet History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10367-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10367-6_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10369-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10367-6

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