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STUMBLING ITS WAY THROUGH MEXICO
The Early Years of the Communist International
By Daniela Spenser
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Copyright © 2009 Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1736-2
Chapter One
The Bolshevik Revolution on the March
History was Trotsky's instrument, the world was his stage, mankind his audience. —J. T. Murphy, New Horizons
The Bolsheviks did not conceive the October Revolution as an isolated development but rather as the first step toward the world revolution. Two months before the insurrection, Leon Trotsky polemicized against those who opposed this view: "To us inter nation al ism is not an abstract idea existing only to be betrayed on every opportune occasion ... but is a real guiding and wholly practical principle. A lasting, decisive success is inconceivable for us without a revolution in Europe." When on November 7, 1917, Trotsky told the crowds of Petrograd workers and soldiers that the Provisional Government had ceased to exist and the much-applauded Vladimir Ilyich Lenin predicted the outbreak of the world social revolution, Grigori Zinoviev proclaimed at the top of his lungs: "This day we have paid our debt to the inter national proletariat." The North Ameri can writer John Reed, witness to these scenes, during the intoxicating days of November ran into the vice president of the Russian trade unions, David Riazanov who, biting his gray beard, shouted, "It's insane! Insane! The European working class won't move!" For the Bolsheviks there was a single road: after sweeping Europe, the October Revolution would spread to the rest of the world. This road was inevitable based on the people's demands, "the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process."
The Russian communists conceived of the October Revolution as the concretization of the humanism of the Enlightenment, of the social explosion and the radical political transformation of the French Revolution. They considered it endowed with a universal validity notwithstanding the specific characteristics of pre-revolutionary Russia. This universalist thought denied borders, affirmed a continuous evolution of history, progress, and culture, and strove for constantly overcoming partiality and diversity. The Russian revolutionaries also conceived gender as universal and neutral.
The Bolsheviks' other source of inspiration for conceptualizing their project as ecumenical was Marx and his followers. In Marx's vision, the proletariat was politically and scientifically universal because, alienated from their labor and their communities of origin, workers lacked the material ties and were endowed with their own consciousness, different from that of the other social classes. Marx believed that the countries where a working class existed would be the first to advance toward socialism. Asia and Africa, which experienced a different historical process than Europe, were characterized by another mode of production, which organized societies in agglomerates of isolated rural communities connected to a despotic or inefficient state. This conception allowed Marx to see in imperialism an agent of progress although he sympathized with its victims. Marx and Engels identified the nation-states with spaces in which class struggle took place, but the national empirical references illustrated the general pattern of the sociopolitical organization of each of the eras examined, whose significance was objective and international.
With Marx as their ideological guide, Lenin and the Bolsheviks sought to overcome the dilemma between the inter national essence and national form of the class struggle because they considered nationalist ideology to be an obstacle to liberation movements and modernization. Lenin's theoretical perspective, outlined in his book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, was the basis for predicting the escalation of conflicts between the European states and their colonial possessions and a change in the character of capitalism as a sys tem in the process of decay. Even though Marx and Engels centered their analysis of the capitalist sys tem in Europe and the United States, Lenin understood that the intensity of the imperial rivalries provided new possibilities and meaning to the anti-imperialistic struggle in non-European countries.
THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISM OF SOVIET RUSSIA
From the time of the seizure of power in Russia, the revolution was in danger. Its first challenge was to defeat the different forces opposed to the consolidation of the Bolshevik government in order to defend the new order and fight its adversaries seen—although this was not always the case—as part of the counterrevolution and intent on sabotaging the revolution. The other forces to defeat were the invading Western powers, Japan, and the units of the white armies. Peasants also rebelled against the new government, which implemented drastic economic measures such as the mandatory seizure of their grain and livestock to feed the cities and the army. In different areas of the country, peasants were caught in the crossfire between the red and white armies, which fed their ill will toward both. Also in opposition to the Soviet government were several socialist, anarchist, and liberal currents that viewed the Bolsheviks' inclination to monopolize power with concern.
Despite the civil war and the fragmentation of the socialist movement in Russia, the Bolsheviks did not give up their hope that the Russian revolution would spread to the rest of the world. The political conditions in Europe confirmed what the Bolsheviks predicted. The German workers, Marxists and reformists, who in 1914 had voted in favor of war credits so that Germany could launch a military offensive, turning, according to Lenin, their inter nation al ism into social patriotism and national socialism, began to protest and show sympathy for Bolshevik Russia. Russia pleaded for peace, a peace that went hand in hand with the elimination of the economic, political, and social conditions that had caused the war. Instead of peace in defense of the homeland and the national state, Soviet Russia proposed a peace based on the inter national solidarity of the working class against the capitalist regime.
In 1918 the German population was exhausted from battlefield casualties, growing food shortages, and higher prices. When the defeat of Germany was in sight, the social and political convulsions intensified. In October, workers, soldiers, and sailors in the Baltic ports began to establish Soviet-style councils and soon red flags waved in the majority of German cities. To support the revolution that appeared imminent, the Soviet embassy in Berlin provided weapons to the insurrectionists. In November, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated after having lost the support of his troops, and parliament proclaimed the creation of the Social Democratic republic.
In December 1918, the most radical elements in the trade unions and among German socialists and the antiwar Spartacus League, created by Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In response to worker demonstrations and calls for Bolshevikstyle insurrection, barely two weeks after the creation of the party Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brutally assassinated by a radical right-wing military band that operated with the approval of the social democratic government. The German government repressed the protest demonstrations, banned the party, and declared a state of emergency.
Even though an attempted revolutionary insurrection was also defeated in May 1918 in Finland, and despite the ominous events in Germany, the Bolsheviks saw no reason to change their plans to establish the Third International. Lenin conceived the struggle for power by the European communist groups as developments analogous to the Russian experience and considered them rehearsals that would be followed by inevitable victories. It was necessary to stimulate the creation of communist parties that would direct the outbursts of opposition to the current regimes and guide them toward supporting the formation of "the inter national Soviet republic." For Lenin the formation of the Communist Inter national was a necessity after the nationalist European Marxist movement's betrayal of the ideals of the First and Second Internationals. It was necessary to reconstruct the International on the basis of a revolutionary and insurrectional platform and to save it from the errors of the previous groupings; greater centralization and discipline would be needed.
Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, and Grigori Zinoviev centered their attention initially in Europe. Colonial liberation would be accompanied by or would come about as the result of revolts in the metropolitan countries. Bukharin recognized that the national or colonial revolutions were part "of the great revolutionary world process," but he was convinced that it was not possible to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in countries such as China, India, or Ireland, which lacked a working class. Trotsky, on the other hand, wrote in a secret memorandum dated August 1919 that "the road to India may prove at the given moment to be more readily passable and shorter for us than the road to Soviet Hungary.... The road to Paris and London lies via the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Bengal." Both the perspective centered in Europe from which the world revolution would branch out to the rest of the countries and the vision of the important role of the periphery of the capitalist sys tem in enabling the global revolution to be successful were discussed and unveiled during the first years of the Bolshevik government.
THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
The call for revolutionaries of the socialist parties and trade unions to found the Third International, the Communist International, was issued at the end of 1918. The invitation coincided, and not by chance, with the socialists' call to meet at the beginning of the new year in Berne to reconstruct the Second International. Originally the Bolsheviks planned to hold the congress in Berlin, or in the Netherlands, but after the failed insurrection of the Spartacus League and the assassination of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in Germany in January 1919, it was called in Moscow for March 1919. The letter of invitation, signed by Trotsky, Lenin, and several foreigners who were in Moscow, described the period as the "disintegration and collapse of the entire world capitalist sys tem, which will also entail the collapse of European civilization as a whole if capitalism itself, with its insurmountable contradictions, is not eliminated."
The invitation was sent via cable to radical parties and organizations in Europe, the United States, and Japan. However, few delegates could arrive because Soviet Russia was blockaded by foreign troops, because they did not find out about the congress call on time, or because there was no unanimity in the unions or anarchist or socialist organizations as to whether or not to attend. Most of those who ended up calling themselves delegates, fifty-two in total, were from one of four groups: Russians or foreigners who were already in Moscow, communists from the territories of the old Russian empire, nationalist intellectuals who spoke in the name of the Middle East and Asia where there were no communist parties in existence, or members of the European social democratic parties. Many did not have a mandate to represent their respective organizations and parties. Hugo Eberlein, the German delegate who was able to overcome the obstacles to reach the congress, had a mandate from the German Communist Party, supported by Luxemburg before she was murdered, to express the view that the formation of a communist International was premature because it did not have the massive support of the European political organizations and ran the risk of being dominated by the Russians.
The congress met March 2–6, 1919, in Moscow. In the congress deliberations, generalities were expressed on the universality of the Russian model of proletarian self-government and on the dictatorship of the proletariat as a higher form of democracy in relation to parliaments and liberal freedoms. Against the kings, the feudal lords, and the slave owners who attempted to restore their domination, Lenin argued that it was a priority to forge the inter national proletarian vanguard. Trotsky expressed the same idea, with an exhortation to the "[c]olonial slaves of Africa and Asia! The hour of proletarian dictatorship in Europe will strike for you as the hour of your own emancipation!" On March 6, the congress unanimously adopted, with one abstention, the motion to found the Communist International and issued a manifesto to the proletariat of the entire world declaring that the Third International was the authentic inheritor of Marx and Engels and that Soviet democracy was the most appropriate form of government for honest workers in every country.
The delegates to the congress, both authentic and self-appointed, were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm that they felt in Moscow under the aureole of the Bolshevik success, although their revolutionary excitement contrasted with the hesitation of the European and North American workers' parties and organizations whose loyalties continued to be oriented to the different nationally based socialist projects and toward the unions. Communism still did not have a precise meaning. On the other hand, the Communist International's inclusion of the colonial world was its distinctive feature. Of the fifty-two delegates to the Comintern congress, twelve came from Asia, which transformed the beginnings of the Bolsheviks' inter national policy into an audacious gamble to revolutionize the non-Western world, without the Soviet leaders trying to hide that what occurred in Russia would have repercussions in the International. The Bolshevik leaders believed that the International's headquarters would be located in Moscow only temporarily, and they anticipated its being transferred to capital cities such as Paris, Berlin, or London. However, the Bolsheviks assumed a decisive voice in the organization.
With the congress over, Lenin sent trustworthy Bolshevik emissaries to spread the news of the existence of the Third International and especially to persuade organized socialists to adhere to the Comintern in the European countries as well as in Asia, the United States, and Latin America. The main role of the Bolshevik emissaries was to establish communist parties and obtain their commitment to send delegates to the Second Congress of the International, which was to take place in 1920.
The Bolshevik Revolution sparked the curiosity, enthusiasm, and expectations among broad sectors of the working class. However, the Bolsheviks' proposal to form communist parties and have them join the Communist International as the organization that would guide the workers toward their liberation through the example of Soviet Russia did not encounter the expected response either in Europe or outside the capitalist metropolises. Nationalism was more comprehensible than abstract inter nation al ism and, in general, the idea of permanent revolution did not win followers to the extent that workers would abandon their traditional organizations. Faced with the challenge of encouraging the non-European peoples to embark on the road of revolutionary activity, Lenin argued that the vanguard by itself could not undertake the move toward communism. Contrary to the original idea that to advance toward world revolution the communist movement should be led by the European proletarian vanguard, followed by the peasant and petty bourgeois rearguard of the capitalist periphery, Lenin sustained at the end of 1919 that "The task is to arouse the working masses to revolutionary activity, to independent action and to organization, regardless of the level they have reached; to translate the true communist doctrine, which was intended for the Communists of the more advanced countries, into the language of every people; to carry out those practical tasks which must be carried out immediately, and to join the proletarians of other countries in a common struggle." When in the course of 1919 and the beginning of 1920 the emissaries completed their task, the Bolshevik Revolution continued to be besieged by foreign armies and convulsed by civil war. The original optimism became an intense concern among some of the Bolsheviks as to whether they could continue in power or if the new government would be overthrown. This was not the case with Lenin, who continued to intensify relations between the Comintern and the Western countries. In October 1919, Lenin established the Western European Secretariat of the Communist International with headquarters in Berlin and the Western Bureau office in Amsterdam as its subsidiary. The objective of both offices was to establish closer relations between the communist parties in the West and the headquarters of the International in Moscow. Twenty million rubles were earmarked to finance them.
From the beginning of their operation, however, tensions arose between the Comintern and the Amsterdam bureau, whose task was to interpret and implement the policies of the International. In February 1920, the bureau organized a conference to strengthen the ties between Moscow, the European communists, and the American communists. Lenin, who scorned bourgeois democracy and parliamentary forms of government, in 1920 instructed the communists to participate in elections to strengthen their role in society but without being identified with the dominant regime. The Dutch objected to the participation of communists in elections and to the Comintern's instructions. They argued that this decision had to be in accordance with the situation in each country and could not become a general line.
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Excerpted from STUMBLING ITS WAY THROUGH MEXICO by Daniela Spenser Copyright © 2009 by Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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