Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (36 page)

Finally, Lenin also participated directly in a major dispute within the Party over cultural issues. A group, under the influence of Lenin’s former friend and then opponent A.A. Bogdanov, had attempted to define proletarian culture and to assign it a major role in revolutionary transformation. The group became known as Proletkul’t, derived from the Russian abbreviation of The Proletarian Cultural Educational Association. In their view, successful classes could only take power if they possessed a powerful culture. The classic example was the bourgeois revolution which, in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and elsewhere, had been preceded by centuries of preparation of bourgeois-individualist as opposed to clerical-feudal culture. To assert itself, the proletariat, they argued, needed to do the same.

The principle opened up a whole set of issues, not least: what did proletarian culture consist of?
¹⁶
The debate brought Lenin’s views on the subject to a head. For him, there was no developed proletarian culture and, for the time being, the point was to absorb the basics of bourgeois culture. Lenin was not thinking of its individualist values but its vast store of knowledge, technique and science. He was particularly critical of the view that there was such a thing as a distinctively proletarian science. Here he clashed not only with Proletkul’tists but senior Party members like Bukharin who took more than a passing interest in problems of cultural revolution. In 1921 Lenin drafted a decree severely restricting the activities of Proletkul’t. The main statements were that ‘the Marxist world outlook is the only true expression of the interests, the viewpoint and the culture of the revolutionary proletariat’ and it had won this position because, ‘far from rejecting the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the contrary, assimilated and refashioned everything of value.’ [SW 3 476–7] In fact, Proletkul’t had not rejected the achievements of the past. Lenin, deliberately or not, was confusing their principles with those of the futurists. Perhaps Lenin’s real objection came in the final paragraph of the draft where he rejected Proletkul’t’s claim to autonomy and called for it to be placed firmly under the direction of the Education Ministry. Needless to say, that is what happened and it became a sub-department of the ministry largely occupied with conventional adult education, an activity Nadezhda Krupskaya increasingly occupied herself with.

Be that as it may, Lenin’s assertion that the first task was to assimilate real bourgeois culture reflected a major concern that was growing throughout the later years of the revolutionary war. Social and economic chaos and collapse called for activists rather than theoreticians. Lenin increasingly complained about the tendency of communists to argue and debate forever, in the good old Russian intelligentsia style, without getting anything done. The time, Lenin increasingly argued, was one where the doers rather than the thinkers must come to the fore. Apart from being a clarion call to the likes of Stalin, who had barely touched Lenin’s life until then (though the reverse is not true in that Lenin had already profoundly influenced Stalin’s life), it was the basis of a degree of soul-searching and breast-beating about bureaucracy on Lenin’s part.

The Party and state apparatus

Before the October Revolution, and especially in the months between February and October, Lenin’s theory of the Party was ceasing to be an accurate description of its practice. Rather, Sukhanov’s view, of a party where slogans had one meaning for the masses and another for the leadership, seems much closer to reality. The cascade of members into the Party in 1917 had burst its theory-imposed confines. After October the expansion continued apace. In March 1919 membership stood at 313,000, rising to 611,000 in March 1920 and 732,000 in March 1921. This continued to be a mixed blessing. Lenin needed all the supporters he could get but mass admission to the Party threatened to dilute its revolutionary resolve by admitting members whose revolutionary consciousness was weak or even non-existent. Before discussing Lenin’s response to the problem we need to look briefly at the processes affecting the ruling apparatus as the revolutionary war unfolded.

In the first place, the fundamental stance of the Party changed from destruction of an old order to construction of the new, something Lenin had no experience of whatsoever. In reality, the break was not a clean one. Throughout the years of revolutionary war both aspects ran in parallel, though the imperative of construction was always increasing while the problem of replacing the old was constantly diminishing as the new authorities increased their grip on power. Second, the distinction between Party and state became increasingly blurred. Small, dominant Party cells, commissars and so on had been attached to state institutions ranging from local soviets to major ministries. At the top, the overlapping personnel of the Politburo and Sovnarkom put the state apparatus firmly under the thumb of the Party. The state was becoming the Party’s errand boy. As such, it makes little sense for us to examine the two components separately. Many of the growing problems Lenin identified were common to both. Some arose from the relationship that was emerging. Third, the scope of leadership action was widening enormously at an immensely rapid pace. Traditional state activities up to 1914 had largely comprised foreign and military policy, maintaining law and order at home and raising the cash needed for the other two. Slight dabbling in education and social insurance had also crept in during the latter part of the previous century. During the war the British, French and German states expanded their responsibilities to include supervision of military-related industries and problems. Famously, in Britain, licensing laws, the remnants of which survived into the twenty-first century, were introduced to force pubs to close in the afternoon to ensure armaments workers would return to their factories. The quality of weapons they built after a pub session doesn’t appear to have worried the legislators. In Russia, total prohibition was introduced on the grounds that a sober manhood would make better fighting material than a drunken one. In terms of front-line fighting most evidence suggests the reverse is the case. There were other drawbacks in the Russian legislation. Prohibition cut government tax income by a massive amount and in any case the population turned to illegal distilling for their vodka, an even more frightening prospect.

By comparison, the scope of the early Soviet state expanded exponentially in the early months. By mid-1918, not only was it responsible for the war but it had taken over most major industries through nationalization. It ran whatever transport networks remained open. It had taken over all schools including religious and private ones. It sponsored all scientific research. It subsidized all artistic enterprises including publishing, theatre, opera, art galleries, museums and cinema, becoming effectively the sole patron for the arts in general. It also, through rationing, took on the task of replacing the market for food and other essential products. It could not, of course, take on all these tasks efficiently in such a short time and under the chaotic conditions of war and revolution. Rations, as a prime example, had to be supplemented through a vast black market for the population to reach even survival level in the great cities. Once again, of course, the Bolsheviks had been criticized by others on the left precisely because the critics foresaw these difficulties. Lenin, however, had continued to believe in ‘
On s’engage et puis, on voit
.’ What was his reaction to these developments?

Not surprisingly, the double-edged nature of Lenin’s views affected this area along with many others. Ideally, self-administration by the masses who ‘would soon learn’ the necessary skills was his core belief. In practice, of course, the dream did not work out. One could not kick down an economy and society and expect ordinary people to rebuild them simply out of some kind of instinct. They needed infrastructure, knowledge and resources. Lenin’s refusal to acknowledge this could be breathtakingly naive. For example, law is one of the most complex and organically evolved aspects of any civilized society. One of the chief problems facing a revolution is what to do about law. It is impossible to maintain the old law, yet there is no time or personnel to devise a whole new law code to replace it quickly. Like all other aspects of transition, time and expertise were needed. However, in his
Report on the Party Programme
at the Eighth Party Congress on 19 March 1919, Lenin mentioned he had found a short cut. ‘Take, for example, the courts. Here it is true, the task was easier; we did not have to create a new apparatus, because anybody can act as a judge basing himself on the revolutionary sense of justice of the working class.’ [SW 3 160] An ‘easier’ task which ‘anybody’ can do! The Party programme itself left the judgment of crimes, where there was as yet no Soviet law, to ‘socialist conscience’.
¹⁷

Ironically, the happy dreams of a self-administered society, functioning like the German post office, as Lenin had argued in
State and Revolution
, were evaporating, just as the pamphlet was published for the first time. Grimmer realities of collapse, incompetence and administrative confusion were to replace them.

Lenin knew exactly what he expected of Party members. They should be paragons of revolutionary virtue. They should know what they were doing and why, be ever-obedient to Party orders and their duty should come first. They should lead by example, never by force, which should be reserved for the enemy. It was up to them to win over the rest of the working people to the communist cause. They must never abuse their position for personal gain. They should be the first in self-sacrifice, last in self-interest. In fact, though Lenin would not relish the comparison, the women and men in the Party should be a secular, revolutionary version of a disciplined religious order. In the words of a decree of the Eighth Party Congress ‘membership in the Russian Communist Party accords no privileges whatsoever, but merely puts heavier responsibilities on them.’
¹⁸
The heroism of Party members should be expressed not only in fighting the enemy but also at work. As well as increasing output, subbotniks were an opportunity to show the fruits of heroic leadership at work. Lenin himself quoted many examples of labour heroism from the Soviet press. Here is one example from
Pravda
of 17 May 1919:

The enthusiasm and team spirit displayed during the work were extraordinary. When the workers, clerks and head office employees, without even an oath or an argument, caught hold of the half-ton wheel tire of a passenger locomotive and, like industrious ants, rolled it into place, one’s heart was filled with fervent joy at the sight of this collective effort, and one’s conviction was strengthened that the vic
tory of the working class was unshakable … When the work was finished those present witnessed an unprecedented scene: a hundred Communists, weary, but with the light of joy in their eyes, greeted their success with the solemn strains of the Internationale. [A Great Beginning, SW 3 207–8]

The atmosphere of a religious meeting was clearly conveyed. While one might doubt the heroic simplicity of such tales, the point is that they defined the ideal.

However, by 1919 problems had begun to emerge. Lenin and the rest of the leadership were increasingly concerned about the quality of recruits to the Party. Far from embodying the much-vaunted ideals of communist morality, they appeared to have joined the Party for personal advantage. In the deadly conditions of 1919, survival was more likely within the Party than without, provided, of course, one stayed out of the army where many thousands of communists were heroically sacrific
ing their lives to lead the struggle for the workers’ cause. Those with less honourable intentions were infiltrating leadership roles and diverting the few perks of office towards themselves. The state administration, if anything, was even worse in that most of its members were not even nominally committed to communist morality. It was the task of tiny communist cells, often less than three per cent of the workforce, to supervise the growing state administration. Bribery and corruption were rife. A cosmopolitan leftist and sympathizer with the Revolution, Victor Serge, who eventually joined Trotsky’s group in exile, has left a vivid vignette of the atmosphere generated:

Committees were piled on top of Councils, and Managements on top of Commissions. Of this apparatus, which seemed to me to function largely in a void, wasting three-quarters of its time on unrealisable projects, I at once formed the worst impression. Already, in the midst of general misery, it was nurturing a multitude of bureaucrats who were responsible for more fuss than honest work.
¹⁹

The Party left picked on the issue of the decline in Party morality and state administration as major themes to attack Lenin’s policies. Allowing non-Party people into important posts was, they said, diluting the proletarian purity of the revolutionary leadership. The terms ‘careerism’ and ‘bureaucratism’ began to be tossed around in Party debates. Careerism identified groups of Party members who were more interested in their own careers and advancement than in the Revolution. Bureaucratism was the tendency among administrators to do what was easiest for them rather than fulfil the needs of those whom they administered. The Party Congress of 1919 had pointed out the twin evils. The resolution on organization opened unequivocally. ‘Numerical growth of the party is progressive only to the extent that healthy proletarian elements of town and countryside are brought into the party … The party must constantly follow with care the changes occurring in its social composition … Expansion of the numerical base must in no case be conducted at the cost of worsening their qualitative composition.’
²⁰
On bureaucratism it was equally forthright: ‘Many of the party members assigned to state tasks are becoming cut off from the masses to a considerable extent and are becoming infected with bureaucratism.’
²¹

The problem was much easier to identify than to deal with. In the first place the vastly expanded scope of Party and state activities put colossal strain on its human resources. There simply were not enough members to do all the jobs that needed doing. Lenin commented that, when the future historians try to discover who administered Russia during the last seventeen months, ‘nobody will believe that it was done by so few people. The number was small because there were so few intelligent, educated and capable political leaders in Russia.’ [CW 29 146–64]

The first response, purging, in some ways made matters worse because it reduced the number of members. From 250,000 the total fell to 150,000 as a result of the first Party purge in 1919.
²²
The idea of the purge was to throw out those who were unworthy of Party membership. As such, purging was, in various ways, a common practice in elite institutions. Anyone who fell short of the standards had to be eliminated from the organization, whether it was the British Cabinet, a gentleman’s club or a political party. However, when there was a desperate shortage of personnel its effectiveness was severely undermined. Lenin was aware of the consequences, complaining in his
Report on the Party Programme
to the Eighth Party Congress on 19 March 1919 that unwanted members ‘have been thrown out of the door but they creep back in through the window’. [SW 3 160] The Party needed vastly more members, not fewer. Indeed, it was constantly recruiting. Lenin, for example, waxed lyrical over the ‘huge, quite unexpected success’ of Party Week in Moscow in autumn 1919 when 13,600 new recruits joined the Party. In the Party as a whole some 200,000 were recruited.
²³
Revealingly, Lenin, giving
The Results of Party Week in Moscow and Our Tasks
, went on to discuss what to do with them. ‘They must be
more boldly
given the most varied kinds of state work, they must be tested in practice as rapidly as possible.’ [SW 3 272]

Let us pause for a moment to digest the implications. First, the statement reveals the relationship between Party and state. Even raw recruits can be thrown into the fray of controlling state institutions immediately. Second, as raw recruits, what did they know of Party objectives? Well, Lenin says, give them the job and then we will see. In Leninist terms their responsibilities were awesome. First was ‘
supervision
over office workers, officials and specialists by new members who are well acquainted with the condition of the people, their needs and requirements’. They were to ‘check up on the conscientiousness with which old officials perform their tasks’ and ‘be placed so as to renovate and refresh the intermediary links between the mass of workers and peasants on one hand and the state apparatus on the other’. The problem was that ‘In our industrial “chief administrations and central boards”, in our agricultural “state farms” there are still too many, far too many, saboteurs, landowners and capitalists in hiding, who harm Soviet power in every way’ – words with an unmistakably Stalinist ring to them. Indeed, Stalin was in the course of becoming the member of the leadership group with the greatest responsibility for supervising the supervisors and rooting out bad apples, a habit he retained throughout his life. Lenin did not envisage Stalinist sanctions at this time, however. Rather, old Leninist illusions, for example that the new Party members would ‘quickly learn the job themselves’, re-emerged. [SW 3 272]