Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (32 page)

The Cheka, then, embodies the complexities of Lenin’s philosophy perhaps better than any other institution of the early months of the Revolution. Where the Party had become less ‘Leninist’ this new, as yet small, but armed and supposedly conscious elite, took up where the Party left off. But the crucial shortage of personnel in this sphere added to the woes of Lenin and the setbacks his earliest revolutionary enterprises had met with.

No one had expected the Revolution to be easy but it was an even greater struggle than expected. The constant effort of the early stages took its toll on Lenin’s health. Eventually, Krupskaya, ever protective of her husband, was able to persuade him to take a holiday around the Russian Christmas and New Year, the latter being celebrated for the last time ever under the old date (14 January) as Russia was due to adopt the western calendar on the 1/14 February 1918. They withdrew to Finland. Once again Krupskaya records the occasion. ‘The marked Finnish cleanliness, the white curtains on the windows, everything reminded Il’ich of his illegal stay in Helsinki in 1907 and 1917, before the October Revolution, when he was working on
State and Revolution
.’ However, the break did not bring the customary restoration of Lenin’s equilibrium. ‘The holiday did us little good, Il’ich at times even spoke sotto voce, as during the days when he was in hiding. We went for daily walks but without really enjoying them. Il’ich was too taken up with his thoughts and wrote practically the whole time.’ [Weber 143]

It is not in the least surprising that Lenin found it impossible to break away from his work. The war question, above all, was pressing in. Conflict was mounting. Indeed, the day he returned to Petrograd, 14 January, was the day his car had been shot at and his Swiss friend Fritz Platten slightly wounded. It seems to have been a robbery attempt rather than a political act. However, the ongoing collapse of the first transition plan, the approaching end of the war with the Central Powers and the growing hostility from the left of the Party led to the need, in early 1918, for a further reappraisal. By February, Lenin was moving, in a piecemeal fashion, to a second model of transition.

PROLETARIAN DISCIPLINE’

On 10–11 March 1918 the Soviet government moved out of Petrograd to Moscow, mainly on account of the German threat. Lenin and Krupskaya had shared a small flat in the Smolnyi since October. Now, after an initial sojourn at the Hotel Natsional, Lenin, Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova moved into the Kremlin. Lenin had a modest office at his disposal and the three of them had a small suite of four rooms altogether. Living in the centre of Moscow did not preclude some continued communion with nature. The Kremlin has a garden and a footpath which follow the line of the Moscow river. It is one of the most beautiful walks in the city, situated inside the beautifully crenellated Kremlin wall and the brilliant white, golden-domed churches at the heart of the complex. Lenin and Krupskaya frequently took the air along the footpath. The irony of Russia’s great atheist and modernizer settling in the quintessentially medieval, tsarist and ecclesiastical heart of traditional Russia did not go unnoticed. Later, a small mansion outside the city, in the village of Gorky, was also put at his disposal. From spring 1918 until his death Lenin’s life revolved around these two places. He rarely spent time anywhere else.

He had plenty to think about in his new surroundings. On 26 October Lenin had made two historic statements. In one, for which he had removed his disguise in order to reveal himself to the Second Congress of Soviets, he said the new authorities would now proceed to construct the socialist order.
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In the second, he said the new government would allow complete creative freedom for the masses. [SW 2 470] As time went on, a fatal contradiction between the two opened up. Given freedom the masses did not build the socialism Lenin expected of them. It brought into focus the quintessential problem of Lenin’s way of thinking. If the masses chose something different from Lenin they were wrong and had to be corrected. Ideally, this would be done patiently and gently, as with a beloved child. However, continued bad behaviour would, unfortunately, require necessary chastisement. Lenin, as we have seen time and time again, could not assimilate opposition. It could only be overcome and destroyed. In place of complete creative freedom Lenin turned to a new discourse based on a completely opposite theme – iron proletarian discipline.

The emphasis on discipline began to appear in his writings and speeches in February and March of 1918 and reached its most sustained exposition in his most important theoretical pronouncement since he had come to power, the pamphlet
The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government
, written in mid-April and published, to underline its importance, simultaneously in
Pravda
and
Izvestiia
, the main Party and government newspapers respectively, on 28 April. Like most of his writings of the period it was still signed with his full conspiratorial name N. Lenin, the N. standing for Nikolai.

What was it about? Starting from an analysis of key problems facing the Revolution, Lenin laid down certain principles for dealing with them. The breathing space purchased at Brest-Litovsk meant there was now ‘an opportunity to concentrate efforts for a while on the most important and most difficult aspect of the socialist revolution, namely, the task of organization’. [SW 2 645] His injunctions seem curiously mundane and undramatic: ‘Keep regular and honest accounts of money, manage economically, do not be lazy, do not steal, observe the strictest labour discipline.’ He was well aware that many in the Party would bridle at the return of formulae which were ‘justly scorned by the revolutionary proletariat when the bourgeoisie used them to conceal its rule as an exploiting class’. However, he insisted that practical application of these ‘“hackneyed” and “trivial” slogans’ was ‘a necessary and
sufficient
condition for the final victory of socialism’. [SW 2 651] ‘The decisive thing’, he went on to argue, ‘is the organization of the strictest countrywide accounting and control of production and distribution of goods.’ Why was such a mundane proposition so important? Because ‘without this there can be no thought of achieving the second and equally essential material condition for introducing socialism, namely, raising the productivity of labour on a national scale.’ [SW 2 652]

What did Lenin mean? In these few, apparently banal, words he was laying a new foundation for the Soviet system. Note first that these were not aspects of socialism but preliminary steps enabling the country to move on to the introduction of socialism. Setting aside the inconsistency of language, Lenin, having stated many times that socialism could not be ‘introduced’, was pointing to the fundamental problem of the Revolution from the Marxist point of view – it had occurred in an economically ‘backward’ country. What Lenin was saying was that backwardness – measured as labour productivity – had to be overcome before the serious construction of socialism could begin. Indeed, it was even necessary to suspend the offensive against capital. [SW 2 652–3] In this respect, his formulae were not inconsistent with
The April Theses
.

However, the further development of his ideas opened up new perspectives. One aspect of the assault on capital – the ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ as he put it – had been successful, but the question of running the newly acquired system lagged behind. Having broken the capitalist opposition politically, the Revolution could afford to take what he acknowledged to be a step backward and call upon specialists from the old system to work for the construction of the new, even at higher salaries than workers, with all the consequences such a compromise would entail. There should also be a new form of competition between different factories. In addition, industrial production implied nationwide discipline in order to function. At a national level, the government too should become more disciplinary, more dictatorial. ‘Dictatorship, however, is a big word, and big words should not be thrown about carelessly. Dictatorship is iron rule, government that is revolutionarily bold, swift and ruthless in suppressing both exploiters and hooligans. But our government is excessively mild, very often it resembles jelly more than iron.’ [SW 2 670]

Every unit also had to be disciplined. Lenin also wanted not only the return of one-person management to ensure this, but that managers should be the dictators of every factory, instantly obeyed by their workforces.

Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But, be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of the processes organized on the pattern of large-scale industry. [SW 2 673]

There is no better example of Lenin indicating that dictatorship takes up where ideal class-consciousness leaves off.

He went on to stress even more clearly, perhaps because he realized how much opposition it would cause, ‘that the people
unquestioningly
obey the single will
of the leaders of labour.’ [SW 2 673] Lenin well knew that workers and Party activists prized the democratic freedoms workers had won and they would cling to them. He had to at least tacitly acknowledge their existence in the face of the emphasis on discipline. ‘We must learn to combine the “public meeting” democracy of the working people – turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring flood – with
iron
discipline while at work, with
unquestioning obe
dience
to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work.’ Unsurprisingly, Lenin did not suggest how this particular circle might be squared. ‘We have not yet learned to do this. We shall learn it’ was all he could add. [SW 2 675] In a set of theses codifying the contents of the article, Lenin emphasized the need for piecework, the Taylor system of scientific management, competition between factories and sectors, ‘unquestioning obedience during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers’ and ‘the general and summarising slogan of the moment’ which was ‘iron discipline and the thorough exercise of proletarian dictatorship against petty-bourgeois vacillations’. [SW 2 683]

There was no subtlety or ambiguity in Lenin’s prescription. ‘Complete creative freedom’ was no longer an option. Central and local dictatorship were the order of the day. In the eyes of his supporters Lenin was facing the realities of the situation in a bold and necessary way. He was pointing out a realistic path forwards. The ‘gradual, peaceful and smooth’ transition expected in October had given way to a quite different law of revolution discovered for current purposes. ‘Every great revolution, and a socialist revolution in particular, even if there is no external war, is inconceivable without internal war, and involves thousands and millions of cases of wavering and desertion from one side to another. It implies a state of extreme indefiniteness, lack of equilibrium and chaos.’ [SW 2 669]

However, to his critics inside and outside the Party the whole thing promised a nightmare. Once again, if the local and national dictators possessed the wisdom of a socialist Solomon all might be well, but in the absence of such ideal personalities the workers were being thrown, unprotected since they could no longer organize for themselves, into a maelstrom of managerial dictators. Practice, however, modified the ferocity of theory and workers tended to vote with their feet. If they were dissatisfied they left jobs and continued to leave cities. Flight to the countryside continued. This gave ammunition to Lenin’s increasing array of critics, including the growing band of Left Communists who objected to compromise, especially when the workers had to pay its costs.

Many other issues of dispute were building up but, before turning to them, there are two more crucial points to make about these first stir-rings of a new model of transition. First, despite its many ringing phrases as a document the original article/pamphlet is very complex and was probably understood in its entirety and put into practice by very few people despite its mass circulation. Even the theses that accompanied the article a few days later require some considerable effort to understand. As in earlier writings, such as
One Step Forward: Two Steps Back
, Lenin continued to show faith in the efficacy of the written word as an agent of social change. He expected his principles to be acted upon by the Party and its agencies who would pass them on to the masses. Words were acts for Lenin. In this respect, the intellectual still existed alongside the politician. He was still the dispenser of doctrine as well as its implementer.

Second, implicit in this complicated little article was the whole orientation of the Soviet system practically throughout its life. Lenin emphasized that backwardness had to be overcome and the efficiency of capitalism replicated and superseded before socialism could be embarked upon. In other words, the Soviet system had to outproduce capitalism as a preliminary to socialism. This became known as productionism. For the rest of its life productionism – maximizing economic output for ideological as well as practical reasons – was the
raison d’être
of the Soviet system.

Productionism was not the only area in which one-man management and a stress on discipline and consciousness-raising were taking over from earlier assumptions. Though Trotsky was more directly responsible than Lenin, the Red Army was going through a comparable revision of expectations. There could hardly have been a concept more deeply embedded in Lenin’s thinking in 1917 than that of turning the standing army into a militia. ‘Abolish the army’ along with the state and the bureaucracy was clearly stated in
The April Theses
. However, another u-turn had begun. Militias, like the Red Guards, were being broken up and a regular army formed. By early 1919 the Party Congress even stated that, in current conditions, ‘the slogan “people’s militia” is deprived of its meaning … and becomes a weapon of the reaction.’ ‘To preach the doctrine of guerilla forces is tantamount to recommending a return from large-scale to cottage industry.’ Election of officers was deemed inappropriate in the ‘class-based workers’ and peasants’ Red Army’.
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