The Russian Revolution

and Its Global Impact

A Short History with Documents

Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov

Passages: Key Moments in History

 PASSAGES: KEY MOMENTS IN HISTORY

The Russian Revolution and

Its Global Impact
A Short History with Documents
 PASSAGES: KEY MOMENTS IN HISTORY

The Russian Revolution and

Its Global Impact
A Short History with Documents

Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2017 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Daly, Jonathan W., author. | Trofimov, Leonid, co-author.
Title: The Russian Revolution and its global impact : a short history with
documents / Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov.
Description: Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2017. |
Series: Passages : key moments in history | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017007301 | ISBN 9781624666254 (cloth :
alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781624666247 (paperback : alkaline paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921. |
Soviet
Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Influence. | Soviet
Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Sources.
Classification: LCC DK265 .D24 2017 | DDC 947.084/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007301

Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-62466-626-1

 For my students, J. D.
For my daughter Maya, L. T.

v
 CONTENTS

Preface x
List of Maps xvi
List of Illustrations xvii
Glossary of Terms xviii
Chronology of War and Revolution xxi

Historical Essay 1
Russia in Revolution and Civil War 1
The Bolsheviks Engage the World 28
The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 47
A Historiographical Note 62
Epilogue 65

Documents 69
Section 1. Russia’s Revolutions: From the Collapse of the
Monarchy to the Civil War 69
1.1 Konstantin Pobedonostsev Blasts Parliamentarism,
the Free Press, and Modern Education 69
1.2 Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, 1916 71
1.3 Soldiers Write about the War, 1915–1916 74
1.4 Order Number One, March 1, 1917 76
1.5 An American in Petrograd, Spring 1917 78
1.6 Polish Independence and the Russian Revolution,
March–April, 1917 80
1.7 Lenin Calls for a Deepening of the Revolution,
April 4, 1917 81
1.8 General Session of the Petrograd Soviet,
September 11, 1917 83
1.9 Declaration of the Rights of the Working and
Exploited People, January 1918 86
1.10 Mustafa Chokaev, Reminiscences of 1917–1918 88

vii
viii Contents

1.11 Aleksandra Kollontai, “Soon!” (in 48 Years’ Time), 1919 90

1.12 Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii,
ABC of Communism 92
1.13 The Fate of Kiev, 1918 96
1.14 The Russian “Internationale,” 1902–1944 99
1.15 Appeal of Rebel Leaders to the Peasant Masses,
Late July/Early August 1920 100
Section 2. The Bolsheviks Engage the World 103
2.1 The Bolsheviks Take Russia Out of World War I,
January–March 1918 103
2.2 Soviet Protest against Allied Intervention, June 27,
1918 107
2.3 Vladimir Lenin, “A Letter to American
Workingmen,” August 20, 1918 108
2.4 Pitfalls of Intervention, 1918–1920 112
2.5 Bolshevik Anticipation of a Revolutionary Wave
in 1919 115
2.6 Report of the Chief of the International Relations
Section of the Comintern, March 1, 1921 117
2.7 Toward World Revolution, July 3, 1921 120
2.8 The Treaty of Rapallo, April 16, 1922 124
2.9 Joseph Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University
of the Toiling Peoples of the East,” 1925 127
2.10 Bolshevik Influence in China, 1920s 129
2.11 Fighting over the Torch of the Revolution: Trotsky
versus Stalin 134
Section 3. The Russian Revolution and the Power of
Communism 138
3.1 John Reed on the Revolution and Socialism, 1919 138
3.2 “Russia Did It,” 1919 142
3.3 Bela Kun, “Discipline and Centralized Leadership,”
1923 143
3.4 Otto Rühle, “Moscow and Us,” 1920 147
 Contents ix

3.5 Romain Rolland Responds to a Call to Join the

Revolutionary Cause, February 2, 1922 151
3.6 Emma Goldman Rejects Bolshevik Policies,
1922–1923 153
3.7 “The Russian Problem,” 1919 156
3.8 Adolf Hitler’s Lessons from the Russian
Revolution, 1923–1926 158
3.9 “The Zinoviev Letter” Roils British Politics, 1924 162
3.10 Neville Chamberlain’s Unease about
Soviet Russia, 1939 166
3.11 “A Bright and a Heartening Phenomenon in a
Dark and Dismal World,” 1933–1936 168
3.12 Josiah Gumede, “The New Jerusalem,” 1927 171
3.13 W. E. B. Du Bois Discovers Soviet Russia (c. 1928) 173
3.14 José Carlos Mariátegui Welcomes World Revolution 176
3.15 Dr. José Lanauze Rolón’s Radio Address in Puerto
Rico Extolls the Russian Revolution, 1936 178
3.16 Mao Zedong’s Retrospective of the Revolutionary
Struggle, 1949 180

Select Bibliography 186

Index 191
 PREFACE

Deep in the night of July 16–17, 1918, in the Ural city of Ekaterinburg,
secret police (Cheka) officials entered the Ipatiev House, a private home
which had been commandeered by the Bolsheviks and made into the
maximum-security residence of the former Russian tsar and his fam-
ily back in April. The two-story stone house was surrounded by a tall
wooden stockade and guarded twenty-four hours a day by dozens of
security personnel. On July 4, the Cheka had assumed responsibility for
guarding the former tsar of all Russia, Nicholas II, and his family.
At around 1:30 a.m., the head of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, Iakov
Iurovskii, awakened Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, their five children,
three servants, and the court physician Dr. Evgenii Botkin. Having
washed and dressed, the eleven were led to the lower level and into a
large room with no furniture. Two chairs were brought in at the tsar’s
request. He sat his hemophiliac son Alexei on one; Alexandra sat on the
other. The rest were told to line up. In a few minutes, Iurovskii entered
the room with ten armed men. He announced that the local authorities
had ordered the tsar and his family shot. The gunmen began shooting
immediately, firing dozens of bullets at the hapless victims. Blood splat-
tered everywhere. Some were finished off with bayonets. The lifeless bod-
ies were then carried out to a waiting truck and driven ten miles to the
north. There, in the middle of nowhere, the bodies were stripped, burned,
and cast into an abandoned mineshaft. The next night, however, Iurovskii
took some other men and retrieved the bodies. He had them driven to a
more remote site. The men doused the faces and bodies with sulfuric acid
and then reburied them.
Operations were also undertaken against the extended family of the
tsar. On the night of June 12–13, Bolshevik authorities had arrested his
uncle the Grand Duke Michael in the Ural town of Perm, some two hun-
dred miles northwest of Ekaterinburg, and had murdered him. Then, on
the night of July 17, outside Alapaevsk, ninety miles north of Ekater-
inburg, seven more close relations of Nicholas II were murdered, along
with members of their entourage. Most of them were hurled alive down
a mineshaft. Clearly, the Bolsheviks wanted to completely wipe out all
remnants of the Imperial Romanov dynasty. But why?
x
 Preface xi

The Bolsheviks had seized power in October 1917, in the midst of

World War I, after eight months of indecisive rule by shifting coali-
tions of liberals and socialists who had taken power after the tsar’s
abdication in early March. The war had gone badly. Social order was
breaking down. Economic hardship had intensified. The population
craved a new, freer order but also political and economic stability. The
Bolsheviks seemed to promise everything the people wanted. They pro-
claimed an end to the war and negotiated peace in March 1918. They
declared an end to private property in land and granted land-starved
agricultural laborers the right to work it. An eight-hour day for urban
workers was established. National minorities were guaranteed the right
to self-determination.
Yet within months all the promises seemed hollow. Factories shut
down as owners and managers fled. Many workers protested and voted
for opponents of the Bolsheviks who overturned elections and imposed
their own activists in the worker councils and trade unions. The treaty
with Germany required giving up one-third of European Russia. The
grain supply system—already strained from the requirement of feed-
ing millions of troops at the front lines with fewer farmers in the
fields—began to break down, as peasants seized and divided up the
large estates. In May 1918, the Bolsheviks, desperate to obtain food for
the cities, declared “war on the peasant bourgeoisie.” Then the 50,000-
man Czechoslovak Legion, which was making its way through Siberia
to join the fight against German and Austria-Hungary on the Western
Front, refused Bolshevik demands that it disarm. The Legion quickly
seized control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from the Volga River to
the Pacific Ocean. They reached out to anti-Bolshevik forces, including
disgruntled political activists and officers of the old Imperial army, and
the Civil War was on. What started out as a popular revolution had
turned into a bloody conflict with hostile anti-Bolshevik movements
and fronts.
The Civil War was not only a conflict of interests, but also a con-
flict of visions. The Bolsheviks offered the promise of a world without
violence, injustice, inequality, and exploitation while their opponents
appealed to the Russians’ sense of national pride, honor, and duty, but
disagreed among themselves about what should be changed in Russia
and what should remain the same. If even one member of the Imperial
family—the former tsar, or one of his children, uncles, or cousins—had
fallen into the hands of the armed opposition, the Bolshevik leaders
xii Preface

presumably reasoned, then he or she could have served as a rallying

banner of sacred war against them. The leading Bolsheviks, who were
committed to an agenda of destroying and uprooting all traditions,
established institutions, and age-old patterns of life, apparently felt
they could not risk leaving any of Nicholas’s immediate and extended
relations at large. At the same time, the Bolsheviks recognized that such
actions as murdering in cold blood some two dozen people, including
women and children, was unlikely to enjoy the approval of most people
in Russia or the wider world. Thus, only the news of the killing of the
former tsar was made public at the time. The other deaths were admit-
ted to only in 1926.
With these events in mind, one can argue that the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion diverged radically from important earlier revolutions. The English
Civil War (1642–1651) pitted parliamentarians against an overreaching
monarch and to some extent culminated in 1649 with the beheading of
Charles I. Yet this bloody act followed a meticulously conducted public
trial and took place in public. England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–
1689 involved the deposing of a king but also a carefully articulated set
of principles by which the new king was to govern, the Bill of Rights.
The American revolutionaries spelled out the reasons for breaking with
England in their Declaration of Independence. The French revolutionar-
ies put their king on trial, allowed him a defense attorney, published the
judicial proceedings, and executed him in the center of Paris for all to
see. What all these revolutionary events had in common was the revo-
lutionaries’ desire to justify their actions rationally and in the court of
public opinion. By contrast, what the Bolsheviks were engaged in during
midsummer 1918 was so beyond the pale of reasonable justification that
the full truth about it could not be revealed publicly.
The Bolsheviks adopted dozens of policies that could only be seen as
surreal or at least unprecedented in their historical context: the nation-
alization of all private property; the abolition of the free market; violent
campaigns against organized religion; the publication of secret treaties;
the repudiation of sovereign debts; the abolition of legal codes and law
courts; the legalization of abortion; the radical simplification of divorce;
the creation of a worldwide network of subversive political organiza-
tions; the formation of a one-party dictatorship; the tight central control
of all means of communication and media; the imposition of an official
and obligatory artistic doctrine; and the collectivization of agriculture.
One could go on and on. Some were proclaimed to the world. Others
 Preface xiii

remained hidden. All had in common a commitment to wipe the slate

clean, start from scratch, create a new order, liberate humanity, enact jus-
tice, bring to life a new human, and make not just Russia, but eventually
the whole world a better place. In sum, the Russian Revolution was a
global event with a global agenda.

***

Our main goal was to make this book useful not only for those interested
in Russian history, but for scholars and students seeking to explore some
of the critical dynamics of twentieth-century European and world his-
tory. The book was structured with that hope in mind. Both the essay
and the documentary sections are divided into three main topics.
The first topic concerns the Russian Revolution itself. It builds on
our earlier documentary reader, which comprehensively examined social,
political, cultural, and ideological aspects of Russia in the First World
War and the revolutionary era.1 Although the first section of the present
book cannot match the scope and depth of our previous volume, it never-
theless aims to provide a detailed introduction to the conditions that led
to the Russian Revolution, its main stages, the major political forces and
actors, the key events, and the ideas that inspired them. In sum, the first
section should give the reader a sufficient understanding of the domestic
revolutionary developments in Russia that led to the collapse of the Rus-
sian Empire and the birth of Soviet Russia, and of the immediate geopo-
litical repercussions of these historic events.
The second topic is the unique character of the Soviet approach to
international relations and its underlying motivations of revolutionary
and state interests. Specific examples of Soviet innovative practices, such
as the repudiation of secret treaties and parallel efforts at subversion and
diplomacy, are presented along with evidence of the impact of Soviet rev-
olutionary policies on international relations and international security
in the 1920s and the 1930s. This topic may be of particular interest to
students of twentieth-century international relations.
The third topic has to do with the broader impact of the revolution-
ary transformation and of “building socialism” in Russia on the hearts
and minds of the people around the world. The diverse nature of the

1. Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 1914–1922:
A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009).
xiv Preface

responses suggests that they were not a mere product of Soviet propa-
ganda, but rather a fusion of communist (or anti-communist) ideas with
a wide variety of grievances, fears, and hopes throughout the world. This
topic, therefore, could be especially relevant in surveys of major twentieth-
century world history themes such as anti-colonialism, fascism, partici-
patory politics, modernization, peace and conflict, and so forth.
Finally, it is not the intent of the authors to present a full and final
verdict on the Russian Revolution as a world history phenomenon, but
to offer a framework for further discussion and research. We leave it to
our readers to develop their own analyses of the historical documents in
the book and embark upon a fascinating exploration of events in world
history as a shared human experience.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to many people and institu-
tions for support and assistance. We extend many thanks to our editor
Rick Todhunter, who first suggested that we pursue this ambitious topic,
and his talented and dependable team. We are grateful for financial help
from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Bentley University, and Queen’s
University, which enabled us to conduct research, present our findings at
conference venues, commission maps, and secure copyright permissions.
We give special thanks to expert cartography by Peter Bull. Research
assistance in preparing the maps was supplied by William Briska with
most helpful suggestions by Sofya Belova, Dmitry Zhukovsky, Yulia
Rubina, and Dmitry Dotsenko. We are grateful to Julia Sergeeva-Albova
for her German translation expertise. If this book has any merits, it owes
them to a large extent to the insightful, generous, skillful, and expert
suggestions and criticism of our colleagues across many fields, includ-
ing Gleb J. Albert, Sergei Maksudov (Aleksandr Babyonyshev), Richard
Levy, Colleen McQuillen, Mark Liechty, Steve Marks, Leon Fink, Junaid
Quadri, Joaquín Chavez, Chris Boyer, Marc Stern, Angma Jhala, Sandra
Pujals, Bridie Andrews, Sung Choi, and Cyrus Veeser, as well as partici-
pants at the Midwest Russian History Workshop in St. Paul, Minnesota,
the Pogrankom Interdisciplinary Group in Kingston, Ontario, and the
Ninth World Congress of the International Council for East European
and Eurasian Studies in Makuhari, Japan.

***
 Preface xv

Technical Matters

All dates before January 1, 1918, follow the older Julian calendar (O.S.),
which was in use in Russia until that date. It lagged thirteen days behind
the Gregorian calendar (N.S.) used throughout the Western countries.
We observe the Library of Congress transliteration system, minus the
diacritical marks, except for widely accepted Latinizations of names, such
as Nicholas (not Nikolai) and Trotsky (not Trotskii). Throughout the
book, ellipses without spaces (. . .) are from the original. Unless otherwise
specified, all translations are by the authors.
 LIST OF MAPS

Map 1: Russia’s Changing Borders, 1914 to Today xxviii

Map 2: Ethnic Groups of Russia 2

Map 3: Petrograd in February 1917 15

Map 4: Petrograd in October 1917 22

Map 5: Russian Civil War, 1918–1922 26

Map 6: The World in Revolt, 1905–1931 49

Map 7: Russia’s Post-Imperial Space 66

xvi
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Russian Peasants during

Harvest Time (1909) 4

Figure 2: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Bridge over the Kama River

on the Trans-Siberian Railroad (c. 1910) 4

Figure 3: Aleksandr Makovsky, Portrait of Nicholas II of Russia

in his coronation robe (1896) 5

Figure 4: Lenin, Martov, and other members of an early

Social-Democratic organization (1897) 8

Figure 5: Lenin in 1920 12

Figure 6: Women’s demonstration in Petrograd on March 19,

1917. Source: TsGAKFFD Sankt-Peterburga. 17

Figure 7: Kerensky in 1917 19

Figure 8: “Have You Enlisted as a Volunteer?” (1920) 28

Figure 9: “Why Are You Not in the Army?” (1919) 28

Figure 10: “Death to World Imperialism!” (1919) 33

Figure 11: “Comrade Lenin Clears the Earth of Filth” (1920) 33

Figure 12: Great Seal of the USSR (1923) 41

Figure 13: Great Seal of the USSR (1937) 41

Figure 14: “Put Them Out and Keep Them Out” (1919) 53

Figure 15: “Vote for MacDonald and Me” (Punch magazine, 1924) 56
xvii
 GLOSSARY OF TERMS

African National Congress: Comintern: Communist Inter-

Leading anti-colonialist party of national, a Moscow-based
South Africa founded in 1912 organization aimed at spreading
AMTORG (American Trade revolution
Corporation): Soviet state trad- communism: The highest stage of
ing company in the United States human development as pre-
ARCOS (All-Russian Co-operative dicted by Karl Marx
Society): Soviet state trading Communist Party: The name of
company in Great Britain the Bolshevik Party from 1918
Bloody Sunday: January 9, 1905, Constituent Assembly: An
when Imperial troops fired on a all-Russian political body
peacefully demonstrating crowd democratically elected in late
Bolshevik Party: The founding 1917
and ruling party of the Soviet Duma: The lower chamber of the
Union parliament created in 1906
Bolsheviks: The more radical and GPU: The Main Political
influential faction of the Rus- Administration, or secret
sian Social Democratic Party police, successor of the Cheka
Central Committee: The most (1922–1923)
senior Communist officials that Guomindang: A Chinese nation-
met in between Party Congresses alist political party founded in
Central Powers: Germany, 1911
Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Indian National Congress: The
Empire, and Bulgaria in World main pro-independence party in
War I India, founded in 1885
Cheka: The Extraordinary Kadet: A member of the liberal
Commission, or secret police Constitutional Democratic
(1917–1922) Party
class: In the Marxist conception, Komsomol: The Communist
an immutable socio-economic Youth League, an arm of the
category Bolshevik Party

xviii
 Glossary of Terms xix

“kulak”: A wealthy peasant. By People’s Commissariat: Main

extension, a rural dweller resist- government department or
ing Bolshevik confiscation of ministry
food surpluses and later Stalin- Petrograd Soviet: The worker and
ist collectivization of agriculture soldier council of Petrograd
Marxism: An ideology aimed Politburo: The top Communist
at abolishing capitalism Party governing body
and attaining socialism and
Populists: Radical intellectuals
communism
seeking to liberate the Rus-
Mensheviks: The more orthodox sian peasant masses through
Marxist faction of the Russian revolution
Social Democratic Party
Pravda: The flagship newspaper of
NAACP (National Association the Soviet Communist Party
for the Advancement of Col-
proletarian: An industrial worker
ored People): An organization
for promoting the civil rights of proletariat: The class of industrial
African-Americans founded in workers
1909 The Red Scare: Political reaction
New Economic Policy (NEP): to the Bolshevik Revolution in
A temporary relaxation of the United States
anti-market policies Reds: The Bolsheviks or
(1921–1928) Communists
October Manifesto: A declaration Russian Social Democratic Party:
by Tsar Nicholas II to grant a The principal Marxist party of
parliament and civil rights Russia
Octobrist Party: A political party serf: A peasant tied to the land
founded to support the October until emancipation in 1861
Manifesto socialism: An ideology empha-
Panslavism: A Russian ideology sizing social justice, common
favoring cooperation and pro- ownership of property, and
tection of Slavic peoples collective production of
Party Congress: A meeting of wealth
Communist Party officials con- Socialist-Revolutionary Party:
vened to make major decisions Party with aim to liberate Rus-
peasant: A traditional farmer and sian people via revolution and
a member of a rural community terrorism
xx Glossary of Terms

Soviet: A council or form of USSR: The Union of Soviet

local self-government begin- Socialist Republics or Soviet
ning in 1917 soon coopted by Union
Bolsheviks Versailles Conference: A meeting
Soviet power: The Bolshevik term outside Paris in 1919–1920 to
for their rule and their regime decide peace terms
Sovnarkom: The Council of Versailles Treaty: The docu-
People’s Commissars, or the ment that formally ended war
Soviet government between the Allies and Ger-
speculation: The act of engaging many in 1919
in market relations; prohibited War Communism: Radical
by the Bolsheviks economic policies pursued
SRs: Members of the Socialist- by the Bolsheviks during the
Revolutionary Party Civil War
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: A treaty Whites: Anti-Bolshevik forces
that ended war between Russia during the Russian Civil War
and the Central Powers in 1918 Zemstvo(s): Institution(s) of local
tsar: The monarch of Russia self-government created in 1864
 CHRONOLOGY OF WAR AND
REVOLUTION

1905
9 January: Bloody Sunday rally and shooting in Saint Petersburg
5 September: The Russian-Japanese War ends with Russia’s defeat
17 October: Tsar’s Manifesto promises civil liberties and a parliament

1910
Mexican Revolution begins
Republican revolution in Portugal

1911
Chinese Revolution begins

1912
8 January: South African Native National Congress founded (renamed African
National Congress in 1923)

1914
June–July: Mass strikes in St. Petersburg
15/28 July: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
17/30 July: Russian order for general mobilization
19 July/1 August: German declaration of war on Russia

1915
Military supply crisis (insufficiency of shells and/or equipment)
March: France and Britain promise Russia control over Constantinople after
war
26 August: Nicholas assumes supreme military command against advice of his
ministers

xxi
xxii Chronology of War and Revolution

1916
Gradual disorganization of railroad system; grave fuel and food shortages;
massive inflation
22 May/4 June: Brusilov Offensive begins, dealing powerful blow to Austria-
Hungary
17 December: Rasputin is murdered

1917
23 February: Spontaneous demonstrations in Petrograd caused by bread
shortage in stores
27 February: Petrograd declared in state of siege; mass troop mutiny in
Petrograd
March: Formation of soviets in cities, factories, military units, and countryside
1 March: Order Number 1 abolishes military chain of command
2 March: Provisional Government formed; Nicholas abdicates
9 March: The United States recognizes Provisional Government
4 April: Lenin’s “April Theses” call for a deepening of revolution
18 June–5 July: Failed offensive against Austria-Hungary; troops mutiny
25–31 August: Alleged mutiny by Kornilov (Kornilov Affair)
25–26 October (night): Bolshevik-dominated Congress of Soviets passes
decrees on peace and land
Late October–November: Soviet power spreads across country and through
military units
12 November: Elections to Constituent Assembly begin
17 November: Nationalization of private enterprise
22 November: Decree on elective courts and revolutionary tribunals
23 November: Finland declares independence from Russia
28 November: Kadets proclaimed “enemies of people”
7 December: Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counterrevolution and
Sabotage (Cheka) set up
9 December: Brest-Litovsk peace talks begin
10 December: Formation of coalition government of Bolsheviks and Left SRs
14 December: Nationalization of banks
18 December: Decree on civil marriage; Sovnarkom recognizes independence
of Finland

1918
2 January: Decrees on “laborers’ rights” and on universal labor obligation
5–6 January: Constituent Assembly opens and shut down at gun point
11 January: Ukrainian Central Rada proclaims Ukraine independence
15 January: Sovnarkom decrees establishment of Red Army
20 January: Separation of church and state proclaimed
 Chronology of War and Revolution xxiii

21 January: Repudiation of all Russian state debts

25 January: The Ukrainian People’s Republic proclaims independence
27 January: Ukraine signs peace treaty with Central Powers
1 February (N.S.): Gregorian calendar instituted ( Julian dates February 1–13
dropped)
18 February: Germany and Austria-Hungary abrogate truce and begin broad
offensive against Russia
3 March: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed
8 March: Bolshevik party renamed Russian Communist Party
10–12 March: Government moves to Moscow
27 March: Uprising of Don Cossacks against Bolsheviks
5 April: Allied military intervention begins
13 April: Kornilov killed by stray shell; Denikin assumes command of
Volunteer Army
22 April: Foreign trade nationalized; establishment of universal military training
13 May: Beginning of “War Communism”
25–26 May: Czechoslovak Legion (50,000 soldiers) refuses Bolshevik order to
disarm
28 May: Martial law instituted across country
29 May: Universal military draft
8 June: Czechs occupy Samara
12–13 June: Murder of Grand Duke Michael in Perm
28 June: Nationalization of all heavy industry, mining, and railroads
July–August: Numerous peasant revolts
16–17 July: Execution of Imperial family in Ekaterinburg
17 July: Murder at Alapaevsk of several grand dukes and their companions
23 July: Volunteer Army takes Stavropol and by December entire Kuban region
25 July–August: Czechs take Ekaterinburg, Simbirsk, Ufa, Kazan, Irkutsk, and
Chita
2 August: Allies occupy Archangelsk
30 August: SR terrorists kill Petrograd Cheka head Uritskii, wound Lenin
2 September: Decree declaring country a single military camp
11 November: Armistice ends World War I
11 November: Poland declares restoration of sovereignty
13 November: Annulment of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; Red Army begins
occupation of Ukraine, Belorussia, and Baltic region
21 November: Ban on all retail and wholesale commerce
10 December: Labor Code establishes universal labor obligation, ages 16–50

1919
18 January: 1919 Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles
6 February: General strike breaks out in Seattle
xxiv Chronology of War and Revolution

8 February: Congress on defense of childhood declares family “dying

institution”
2–6 March: First Congress of Comintern, Communist International
6 April: Bavarian Soviet Republic proclaimed
21 March: Hungarian Soviet Republic proclaimed
April: Red Scare begins in the United States
3 May: Bavarian Soviet Republic falls
July: Red Army takes Ekaterinburg, Cheliabinsk, Perm, and Kungur
1 August: Hungarian Soviet Republic falls
13 October: Denikin forces seize Orel, threatening Moscow
16 October: Iudenich nears Petrograd
20 October: Red Army retakes Orel
21–24 October: Red Army repulses Iudenich and captures Tobol’sk and
Voronezh
19 November: General offensive of Red Army begins in the south and
southeast

1920
30 January: Allies decide to evacuate their forces from Far East
February: Red Army takes Kiev, Poltava, and all Right-Bank Ukraine
4 February: Massive anti-Bolshevik peasant uprising breaks out in Volga
region
25 February: General retreat of Volunteer Army commences
29 March–5 April: Party Congress votes to abolish private property and
militarize economy
24 April: Poland begins anti-Soviet offensive; Soviet-Polish War begins
12 June: Red Army retakes Kiev
July–September: Peasant uprising in Saratov province
8 July: The United States lifts trade embargo on Soviet Russia
21 July–6 August: Second Congress of Comintern
August: Tambov Uprising begins
October: Soviet All-Russian Co-operative Society (ARCOS) established to
conduct trade with Britain
12 October: Peace treaty signed with Poland, ceding portions of Ukraine and
Belorussia
14 October: Peace treaty signed with Finland
14 November: Vrangel’s forces evacuate Crimea and retreat to Turkey
18 November: Abortion legalized
28 November: The Communist University of the National Minorities of the
West established
 Chronology of War and Revolution xxv

1921
25–27 February: Red Army invades Georgia and establishes Georgian SSR
28 February–11 March: Strikes in Petrograd
28 February–18 March: Kronstadt sailors rebel “for soviets without
Communists”
March: Kronstadt Rebellion
8–16 March: Tenth Party Congress proclaims New Economic Policy
(NEP); ban on party factions
16 March: Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement
21 April: The Communist University of the Toilers of the East established
Summer: Famine begins in Volga region and southern Ukraine (1.5–2 million
die through 1922)
23–31 July: The Communist Party of China founded

1922
10 April–19 May: International conference in Genoa
16 April: German-Soviet Treaty on economic and military cooperation signed
in Rapallo
Fall: Expulsion of 160 scholars, philosophers, professors—flower of Russia’s
intelligentsia
30 December: First Congress of Soviets of USSR affirms Treaty on Formation
of USSR

1923
January: French and Belgian troops enter the Ruhr region
September–October: Revolutionary movement in Hamburg, Saxony, and
Thuringia
November: Adolf Hitler jailed after failed Munich putsch and begins writing
Mein Kampf

1924
21 January: Lenin dies
2 February: Britain recognizes USSR
27 May: Soviet American Trading Corporation (AMTORG) established to
conduct trade with United States
24 October: “Zinoviev letter” published in the British press
xxvi Chronology of War and Revolution

1925
March–April: Stalin proclaims “Socialism in One Country”
12 April: Slaughter of Chinese Communists in Shanghai
September: Sun Yat-sen University established
30 October: France recognizes USSR

1926
May: International Lenin School established
3–13 May: General strike in Britain

1927
10 February: Comintern-sponsored League against Imperialism established in
Brussels
May: ARCOS offices raided by British police, British diplomatic relations with
USSR severed
October: Tenth anniversary of October Revolution international celebration in
Moscow
December: Failed Canton uprising in China

1929
February: Trotsky expelled from USSR
3 October: Diplomatic relations restored with UK
21 December: Fiftieth birthday of Stalin; start of cult of personality
27 December: Stalin announces universal collectivization and “liquidation of
kulaks as class”

1930
26 June–3 July: Sixteenth Party Congress confirms rapid industrialization

1932
31 December: Five-Year Plan proclaimed completed in four years
 MAP 1: RUSSIA’S CHANGING BORDERS, 1914 TO TODAY RUSSIAN BORDERS
NETHERLANDS N O R WAY 1914 1922
DENMARK 1989 Today
SWEDEN
GERMANY

HELSINGFORS

RIGA REVAL
WARSAW
AUSTRIA- VILNA
ST. PETERSBURG
HUNGARY ARKHANGELSK
MINSK

KYIV
ROMANIA KISHINEV MOSCOW

ODESSA
R U S S I A
Bla SARATOV
EKATERINBURG

ck
Se
a
TSARITSYN

ASTRAKHAN
OMSK
NOVONIKOLAEVSK KRASNOIARSK
OTTOMAN KHABAROVSK
TIFLIS
EMPIRE CHITA

ea
IRKUTSK
BAKU

spian S
Ca
VLADIVOSTOK

TASHKENT VERNYI J A PA N
PERSIA C H I N A KOREA

AFGHANISTAN
 HISTORICAL ESSAY

Russia in Revolution and Civil War

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the consequent
loss of one-third of its territory, Russia remains the world’s largest coun-
try on earth (see Map 1). It comprises one-sixth of the earth’s landmass
stretching across eleven time zones and drains into five of the world’s
seventeen longest rivers (the Yenisei, Ob’, Lena, Amur, and Volga). No
country boasts more natural resources. Few developed countries are so
ethnically diverse (see Map 2). Although Russians constitute just over
80 percent of the population, more than one hundred ethnic minorities
call Russia home. For the most part they now live in peace, but tensions
among national minorities contributed to the collapse of both the Impe-
rial and the Soviet states. This turmoil resulted in the creation of seven-
teen independent countries.1
The first (and only) general census of the Russian Empire counted
125.6 million people in 1897, with just under 17 million (13.4 per-
cent) in cities and the rest spread over the countryside. The popula-
tion grew roughly 200 percent in the nineteenth century and some 30
percent from 1900 to 1914, adding more than two million per year
on the eve of the Great War, faster than any major European country.
Indeed, Germany entered World War I partly out of fear of Russian
population (and industrial) growth. Yet infant mortality was also the
highest in Europe: in 1910, of 1,000 children 271 died before turn-
ing one, compared to 111 in France.2 Most Russian peasants remained
semiliterate and lived in extended families. Unlike American farmers or
French peasants, most Russian peasants did not individually own their

1. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova,

Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
and Uzbekistan.
2. B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1978), 42–43.

1
 2
MAP 2: ETHNIC GROUPS OF RUSSIA
N O R W A Y
Latvians
DENMARK Estonians
S W E D E N
GERMANY Chukchi
REVAL
F I N L A N D
Lithuanians Finns
HELSINGFORS
Moldavians Karelians Sami
RIGA Koriaks
Poles
AUSTRIA-
WARSAW VILNA ST. PETERSBURG Nganasany Eveny
HUNGARY ARKHANGELSK Ya k u t s
MINSK

Belorussians Nentsy
Komi Eveny
KYIV
KISHINEV MOSCOW Komi
Ukranians
R u s s i a n s
ODESSA Mari Nentsy Y a k u t s
Chuvashes Udmurts Mansi
Crimean Tatars Khanty
SARATOV Selkups E v e n k i
EKATERINBURG
Nivkhi
Abkhaz Mordvins Ta t a r s
TSARITSYN
Bashkirs Evenki
T a t a r s
Historical Essay

Georgians Kalmyks E v e n k i
ASTRAKHAN
OTTOMAN OMSK
EMPIRE TIFLIS Caspian Sea NOVONIKOLAEVSK Evenki
KRASNOIARSK KHABAROVSK
Armenians Dagestanis
Ossetians Buriats CHITA
IRKUTSK
Chechens Altaians Buriats
BAKU
Ingush Tuvinians
K a z a k h s
VLADIVOSTOK

Turkmens Khakas
Azerbaidzhani TASHKENT J A PA N
Uzbeks VERNYI
Kirgiz C H I N A KOREA
P E R S I A Tadzhiks
AFGHANISTAN

SLAVIC PEOPLES TURKIC PEOPLES CAUCASUS PEOPLES

Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Tatars Abkhaz, Chechens, Dagestanis,
Russians
Georgians, Ingush
 Azerbaidzhani TASHKENT J A PA N
Uzbeks VERNYI
Kirgiz C H I N A KOREA
P E R S I A Tadzhiks
AFGHANISTAN

SLAVIC PEOPLES TURKIC PEOPLES CAUCASUS PEOPLES

Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Tatars Abkhaz, Chechens, Dagestanis,
Russians
Georgians, Ingush
Ukrainians Uzbeks

Belorussians Azerbaidzhani, Turkmen

PALEO-SIBERIAN PEOPLES
Poles Other Turkic peoples
Chukchi, Koriaks, Nivkhi

OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES Eskimos

OTHER URALIC AND ALTAIC PEOPLES
Armenians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Kets
Moldavians, Ossetians, Tadzhiks Altaians, Buriats, Estonians, Evenki,
Eveny, Finns, Kalmyks, Karelians, Khanty,
Germans Uninhabited or sparsely settled
Komi, Mansi, Mari, Mordvins, Nentsy,
Jews Nganasany, Sami, Selkups, Udmurts

Drawn on the basis of Geograficheckii atlas SSSR dlia srednei shkoly (Moscow: Glavnoe Upravlenie
Geodezii i Kartografii pri SNK SSSR, 1941). Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Russia in Revolution and Civil War
3
4 Historical Essay

Figure 1: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Figure 2: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii,

Russian Peasants during Harvest Bridge over the Kama River on the
Time (1909) Trans-Siberian Railroad (ca. 1910)

land, which belonged to the rural communes of which they were mem-
bers. Many such communes, especially in the central provinces, suffered
from “land hunger”: land allotments grew smaller and the price of land
increased (doubling in 1860–1905), yet yields barely rose, forcing mil-
lions to supplement their incomes with non-agricultural work. While
relatively small, in the second half of the nineteenth century the urban
population of the Empire was growing rapidly (from 6 percent in 1861
to 18 percent in 1913), and so were the ranks of industrial workers.
Most worked eleven and a half hours a day (the standard set by a law
of 1897), lived in unsanitary and cramped barracks attached to their
places of work, constantly put their health at risk, and suffered indig-
nities and abuse from foremen and other authorities. Many retained
close ties with their former rural communities and were not fully at
home in either the city or the countryside. It could be argued that the
Russian Empire entered the twentieth century afflicted by the worst of
two worlds (see Figures 1 and 2): the world of tradition that shaped
Russian peasants’ antiquated attitudes and practices and the world of
industrial modernization, which brought about not only technological
breakthroughs and expanding literacy but also social dislocation and
economic exploitation. While most peasants continued to farm with
methods and tools abandoned in western Europe hundreds of years
before, the Trans-Siberian Railroad—one of the world’s greatest feats
of engineering and industrialization at that time—linked the Empire’s
central provinces, Siberia, and the Pacific coast.
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 5

The country’s government and

leadership were antiquated as
well. When filling out his census
questionnaire, Nicholas II of the
Romanov dynasty, tsar (ruler) of
Russia (see Figure 3), stated as
his occupation: “Master [khoziain]
of the Russian Land.” Nicholas
believed that autocracy, the most
extreme form of absolutist mon-
archy, allowed him to rise above
corruption, intrigue, and selfish-
ness and to focus on what was
best for the Russian land and its
people overall. A shared Ortho-
dox Christian faith, he imagined,
Figure 3: Aleksandr Makovsky, imbued his subjects with a sense
Portrait of Nicholas II of Russia of love, community, and belong-
in his coronation robe (1896) ing that no secular democracy or
republic could hope to achieve.
Instead of relishing his autocratic power, however, Nicholas viewed it
as a burden and a sacred legacy to be preserved and passed intact to his
son. Nicholas’s tutor Konstantin Pobedonostsev helped cultivate these
views (see Document 1.1). Nicholas was also steadfastly supported in
this outlook by his German-born and British-raised wife, Alexandra, a
granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a devout convert to the Orthodox
Christian faith.
Most of the country’s educated elites rejected these views. For them,
Russia needed to continue its efforts to emulate Western European coun-
tries. This trajectory had begun when Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725)
built up a European-style military, bureaucracy, diplomatic corps, capital
city, and educational institutions. He also sent many hundreds of young
men to Europe to study.
Most of Peter’s successors carried forward this work. Most importantly,
the grandfather of Nicholas II, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881), abolished
serfdom (an institution that legally bound peasants to land owned by
gentry), founded institutions of local self-government (the Zemstvos and
the town councils), and created an independent judiciary, with trial by
jury and an autonomous bar. These wide-ranging and profound changes
6 Historical Essay

came to be known as “the Great Reforms.” For Russian radicals (many of

them young, with some university education) this was not good enough.
To them, nothing short of the complete overthrow of the Imperial regime
could lift the burden of economic and political oppression and liberate the
Russian people. Many dreamed of socialism—a radically different vision
of economic and social organization based on the principles of collec-
tive production of wealth, and social and political equality. These radicals
who often called themselves Populists, claimed to speak on the behalf of
“the People” and tried to stir up the Russian peasants. When that failed,
they turned to political terrorism, killing several government officials and
staging six failed attempts on the life of Alexander II. The seventh assas-
sination attempt, in March 1881, was successful. It occurred at the very
moment when Alexander had finally agreed to create a national consulta-
tive assembly. Nicholas, who was thirteen at the time, watched in horror
as his grandfather, who had brought to life major reforms, screamed and
died in agony in the Winter Palace, following the bomb attack.
In response, Nicholas’s father, Alexander III (r. 1881–1894),
crushed the revolutionary opposition and sought to reverse some of
the Great Reforms. Access for women and ethnic minorities to second-
ary and higher education was restricted. Alexander III supported the
gentry, which owned a vastly disproportionate, albeit declining, share
of arable land, and vigorously pursued Russification in the Empire’s
western provinces. Printed publications in Ukrainian were forbid-
den, Russian became the main language of instruction in Poland, and
Jews continued to be confined to the Pale of Settlement—specifically
designated areas in western provinces they could not leave. In 1891
thousands of Jewish artisans were expelled from Moscow. At the same
time, Alexander III enthusiastically promoted industrialization, which
placed increased fiscal burden on the peasants and expanded the num-
ber of factory workers. To the Russian professional middle classes,
the implicit message was clear: make money and forget about politics.
Eager to promote industrial modernization, Alexander III and his gov-
ernment adopted some fairly liberal factory legislation but failed to
serve as impartial arbiters in the growing number of conflicts between
industrialists and the labor force. When Nicholas came to the throne,
he affirmed his commitment to autocracy—to the bitter disappoint-
ment of those in the educated classes who had hoped that the young
tsar and his English-speaking wife would move towards constitutional-
ism. Ongoing popular unrest would force Nicholas’s hand.
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 7

Massive strikes by textile workers broke out in 1896 and 1897. Even
when workers pursued economic demands, government prohibition of
strikes, not to mention unionized activity, helped politicize worker unrest.
As the worker ranks and unrest grew, so did the appeal of Marxism, a
theory and vision of socialism developed by Karl Marx (1818–1883).
Marx emphasized the role of industrial workers (proletarians), predict-
ing they would overthrow the capitalist order and establish socialism and
eventually communism, which he conceived as the pinnacle of human
progress, development, and liberation from oppression of all kinds.
Marxist Social-Democratic parties had flourished in western Europe.
Now it was Russia’s turn.
Born into the family of a provincial school inspector, Vladimir Lenin
(see Figure 4), born Ulyanov (1870–1924), excelled in high school
and in law at Kazan University. He had good prospects of joining the
growing ranks of the Russian professional middle class. Apolitical dur-
ing his teenage years, Vladimir was devastated when in 1887 his older
brother Alexander was hanged for a failed attempt to kill the tsar. Having
devoured his brother’s populist books and articles, which he previously
had scorned, Vladimir was slowly drawn to the apparent scientific clarity
and certainty of Marxism. He began engaging in anti-government activity
first in Kazan and then in Saint Petersburg. In 1898, he and other repre-
sentatives of various small Social-Democratic groups joined together to
create the loosely structured Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party.
Lenin’s intellectual and organizational leadership skills quickly pushed
him to the top of the party. Five years later, the party split over questions
of organization and, eventually, tactics into two wings: the Lenin-led
Bolsheviks (the majoritarians) and the Mensheviks (the minoritarians),
led by Julius Martov (1873–1923; see Figure 4). Over time, the Bol-
sheviks and the Mensheviks diverged sharply, as the former advocated a
more rigid, centralist, and secretive party model and stressed the primacy
of political goals over the economic concerns of labor.
In 1899, university students protested across the country. Such pro-
tests would occur with great frequency. Political terrorism struck again in
1901—with the assassination of the minister of education—and again and
again over the following years. In 1902, major agrarian unrest broke out
in the South. Also in 1902, the biggest revolutionary party, the Socialist-
Revolutionaries (SRs), was founded. Their leaders, including Viktor
Chernov (1873–1952), Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaia (1844–1934),
and Grigorii Gershuni (1870–1908) primarily championed the needs of
8 Historical Essay

Figure 4: Lenin (center, seated), Martov (right, seated),

and other members of an early Social-Democratic
organization (1897)

the Russian peasantry. They agitated for popular action, dreamed of a

popular revolution, and staged bold terrorist attacks against top govern-
ment officials in the hope of triggering one. Also in 1902, liberals in exile
abroad led by Peter Struve (1870–1944) began publishing a newspaper,
Liberation, calling for the establishment of a constitutional order. In early
1904, Struve and other leading intellectuals formed an underground
Union of Liberation to pursue these goals.
Throughout these years, despite numerous challenges at home,
Nicholas II had been pursuing an expansionist policy in the Far East.
He viewed Japan, Russia’s chief imperial competitor in far northeastern
China and Korea, as dramatically inferior to the Europeanized Russians
with their immense resources and huge population. In February 1904,
however, the Japanese carried out a surprise attack against the Russian
Eastern Fleet in Port Arthur, which Russia had leased from China. Over
the course of the next year and a half, Russia suffered defeat after defeat
on sea and on land. The proponents of constitutionalism began to see the
autocratic regime as incapable of carrying out fundamental tasks of state.
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 9

On January 9, 1905, multitudes of industrial workers of Saint Peters-

burg led by a radical priest Grigorii Gapon (1870–1906), took to the
streets, many with their family members, to deliver to Nicholas a peti-
tion containing complaints of poor living and working conditions and
demands for an eight-hour work day, civil rights, and political representa-
tion. “If you do not respond to our pleading,” it stated, “we will die right
here on this square, right before your palace. We do not have anywhere
to go and no reason to. We have only two paths: either to freedom and
happiness, or to the grave.” The tsar was away, but his troops fired at the
crowds, killing dozens of people. This day came to be known as “Bloody
Sunday” and marked the beginning of the first Russian Revolution.
Turmoil continued for months as workers went on strike, peasants
attacked gentry estates, and terrorists killed and wounded hundreds of
government officials. Whatever their disagreements, the opponents of
the regime were willing to overlook them for the sake of the common
cause. In the fall, amid a general strike—which all but shut down the
economy—Nicholas II reluctantly issued his “October Manifesto,” which
promised to establish a parliament and basic civil liberties. These prom-
ises were enshrined in the Fundamental Laws of April 1906, including a
bicameral legislature, with a popularly elected lower chamber, the Duma,
and a largely appointed upper chamber, the State Council.
It has been debated to what extent the new political system limited
Nicholas’s power and whether it was stable and sustainable. Nicholas
II remained the Supreme Commander of the Russian armed forces and
retained the authority to appoint ministers, provincial governors, and
other senior officials. He could dissolve the Duma and call for new elec-
tions at will. In 1907, he illegally altered the electoral law to restrict dem-
ocratic representation. He also maintained control over the secret police
and the bureaucracy. Yet the Fundamental Laws gave the parliament real
legislative powers, allowed for the creation of oppositional political parties
and groups, such as the Constitutional Democratic Party (the Kadets)
led by Pavel Miliukov (1859–1943), which called for a full transition to
constitutional parliamentarism, and the more moderate Octobrist Party
led by Aleksandr Guchkov (1862–1936), which was critical of the gov-
ernment, but pleased with the terms of the October Manifesto. Certain
legal protections extended even to Bolshevik and SR activists, some of
whom became Duma deputies, and to their publications, which could
only be permanently closed down by the courts. Perhaps most important
in the long run, the Fundamental Laws made possible the development
10 Historical Essay

of a vibrant Russian public sphere, which included trade unions, profes-

sional and business organizations, charitable groups, thousands of other
voluntary associations, a lively periodical press, and so forth.
Some government officials, including Prime Minister Stolypin (1862–
1911), embraced the new political realities. Stolypin was known for his
efforts to modernize the Russian countryside by encouraging individual
farming and peasant resettlement from those areas where the shortage
of land was most dire. He did not shy away from confronting his revolu-
tionary opponents in the Duma with phrases like “These gentlemen want
great cataclysms, we want a great Russia.” The opposition had its own
share of jabs, charging him with brutal suppression of the revolutionary
unrest and referring to hangmen’s nooses as “Stolypin neckties.” Nicholas,
for his part, increasingly distanced himself from Stolypin. He consid-
ered the entire new constitutional arrangement an aberration, extorted
from him under duress when his troops were tied up in Manchuria and
exploited by radicals seeking to organize the next revolution. When
Stolypin proposed to lift some of the many restrictions on Jews, most
of whom were confined to residence in the Pale of Settlement, Nicholas
refused, asserting that his “conscience” did not allow it.
By 1909, the major revolutionary parties had fallen on hard times.
They lost membership, in part thanks to Russia’s booming economic
growth, and suffered continuous police repression. But politically and
socially, Russia was far from stable. Stolypin was assassinated in 1911
by a revolutionary activist and one-time police informant. The bloody
massacre of hundreds of mineworkers in a Siberian gold field in April
1912, who had been protesting their working conditions, set off a strike
movement and breathed new life into the labor movement. Intermittent
strikes continued for the next two years culminating in the Petrograd
general strike in the summer of 1914, which pursued economic as well as
political demands.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-
Hungarian throne was assassinated in Bosnia by a group of terrorists
with ties to a Serbian government. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared
war on Serbia, a Slavic Orthodox Christian country with links to Russia.
Nicholas felt compelled politically and diplomatically to order the mobi-
lization of the Russian army to defend Serbia against Austria-Hungary.
On September 1, Austria-Hungary’s staunchest ally, Germany, declared
war on Russia in response to a general mobilization of the Russian army
and immediately attacked France, which had been bound by a treaty to
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 11

defend Russia. Two days later Britain jumped in to protect France and
Belgium, and the Great War, later called World War I, had begun. Aside
from pursuing Panslavic solidarity, Nicholas and his advisors hoped to
reassert Russia’s power in the Balkans.
For a while Russian society, political parties, and the tsar seemed
united by a shared desire to fight and win the war. Nicholas met with
Duma deputies and appeared on the balcony of his Winter Palace to
cheering crowds, not far from where nine years earlier his troops had shot
workers on Bloody Sunday. A very different kind of violence occurred
in May 1915, as crowds in Moscow looted hundreds of businesses and
residences they took to be owned by Germans.
Conservatives, liberals, and even many Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Social Democrats believed that Russia’s cause was just. Lenin and his
supporters remained bitterly opposed. To Lenin the war was “a war of
plunder,” a sign of irreconcilable contradictions within capitalism. As the
war unfolded, Lenin found refuge in Switzerland. In September 1915,
he attended a socialist conference in Zimmerwald, where he advocated
turning the “imperialist war” into a “civil war” to advance socialism. His
failure convinced him that the “Second International” (an international
association of socialist parties) no longer served the interests of the work-
ing class. While in Switzerland, Lenin attempted a major Marxist re-
evaluation of capitalism. He recognized that in almost seventy years since
the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, capitalism had spread
across countries and continents, along with Europe’s colonial empires.
Lenin therefore sought to adapt Marx’s analysis of capitalism to these
realities. He built on earlier efforts to reexamine capitalism by John
A. Hobson (1858–1940), Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941), and Karl
Kautsky (1854–1938), but went further, arguing that imperialism—a
global system of financial exploitation and domination—was not just
a phase, but the final phase of capitalism’s development. Lenin further
claimed that imperialist capitalism engendered the rise of monopolistic
corporate structures that worked to divide and re-divide the world. In
other words, capitalism as a free-market system was dying out, making
way for—in fact, laying the foundation for—a more efficient and pro-
ductive form of economic development based on conscious planning (see
Document 1.2).
The implications of this view for the Russian Revolution were immense.
However underdeveloped, the Russian Empire was part of this global
imperialist system. Its collapse could be achieved in conjunction with the
12 Historical Essay

collapse of imperialism all over the

world and perhaps could even con-
tribute to this collapse. Therefore,
Lenin (see Figure 5) and his sup-
porters in the Bolshevik Party saw
the Russian Revolution as part of
a global revolutionary transforma-
tion and expected it to address not
just Russian, but global inequities.
The Great War was a revo-
lution in itself, for Europe as a
whole, and for Russian society
in particular. Russia’s crushing
defeat in the Russo-Japanese War
paled in comparison to the impact
of mass mobilizations, economic
disruptions, material devastation,
and demographic catastrophe of
Figure 5: Lenin in 1920
this conflict. Most horrifying, the
country suffered nearly ten million
casualties (military dead, wounded, captured, and missing in action) dur-
ing the war. Russia’s initial incursion into East Prussia resulted in cata-
strophic defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg and the encirclement of its 2nd
Army, whose commander, General Aleksandr Samsonov (1859–1914),
committed suicide. By late September 1915, the Germans controlled
all of Russian Poland and Lithuania and much of Latvia. The Russian
Empire lost jurisdiction over twenty-three million of its subjects, and the
people of Poland, the Baltic regions, and eventually Ukraine learned to
navigate in a new reality in which the German, the Austro-Hungarian,
and the Russian Empires continued to fight for influence and power.
Equally important, the strains of total war shattered the traditional
worldview of Russia’s peasants, who made up nearly the entire Russian
Imperial army. As the war dragged on, keeping the soldiers thousands of
miles from home, nothing seemed steady or certain anymore: neither the
norms of social hierarchy, nor the wisdom and goodness of the tsar, nor
the existence of divine providence (see Document 1.3).
In 1915, as the Russian army retreated and munitions shortages
intensified, even political moderates and nationalists began to accuse
the government of gross incompetence or worse. Relations between the
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 13

Duma and senior officials, who remained accountable to the tsar only,
were dysfunctional. Nicholas had to dismiss War Minister Vladimir
Sukhomlinov (1848–1926) amidst charges of malfeasance and corrup-
tion. In late summer 1915, moderate opposition parties in the Duma
formed the “Progressive Bloc” to demand further change in government.
Critical voices could be heard in the press, in military-industrial commit-
tees, which had been set up to facilitate collaboration between govern-
ment and business, and in the recently formed Association of the Town
Councils and the Zemstvos.
Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, critics blamed Nicholas who only
made himself more vulnerable when he took on the role of commander-
in-chief in September 1915, thus assuming responsibility for both
victory and defeat. Indeed, both the military and economic situation con-
tinued to deteriorate. A strike movement gained momentum from late
1915, the transportation system was overstrained, inflation raged, and
the government lost public support. Even the politically moderate Con-
stitutional Democrat Vasilii Maklakov (1869–1957) felt compelled to
call Nicholas a “mad driver” at the helm of Russia.
In 1916 the situation turned from bad to worse as general Aleksei
Brusilov’s initially successful counteroffensive against Austria-Hungary
ran out of steam, adding half a million to Russia’s rising casualty toll, while
the government’s attempts to conscript the empire’s subjects in Central
Asia to serve in labor battalions on the Eastern Front led to an open
rebellion by the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples. On November 1, 1916, the
Constitutional Democratic leader Miliukov attacked the government in
a passionate speech, which included the open-ended refrain: “Is it stupidity
or is it treason?” He even mentioned Empress Alexandra, implying approval
of (false but widespread) rumors that she was a German spy. With Nicho-
las at General Headquarters near the frontlines, Alexandra took more
interest in matters of state and government appointments. Deeply religious
and eager to boost Nicholas’s power and to alleviate the suffering of their
hemophilic son Aleksei, Aleksandra had turned to “a man of God,” a Sibe-
rian peasant with hypnotic abilities, Grigorii Rasputin (1869–1916). In
their correspondence, the Imperial couple referred to him as a most trusted
“Friend.” With Nicholas often absent from Petrograd (Saint Petersburg,
which sounded too German, was renamed in September 1914), Rasputin
recommended for high office his political favorites, and Alexandra passed
his recommendations along to the tsar, who sometimes adopted them. Such
interventions seemed suspicious and, along with rumors that Rasputin
14 Historical Essay

was the tsarina’s lover and a German spy to boot, undoubtedly harmed
the prestige of the dynasty. In mid-December 1916, he was murdered by
two devout monarchists anxious to save it.
As the Russian Empire entered its last months of existence, organized
revolutionary activity in Russia’s capital remained subdued. The Impe-
rial government had successfully disrupted the leading revolutionary
parties—in particular the SRs and the Bolsheviks—by arresting activists.
But these successes offered false comfort. The prestige of the dynasty
and the government hit an all-time low. Horrific suffering on the front
lines; stricter discipline in the factories; labor shortages, rising inflation,
and the declining value of the ruble; tighter censorship; continuous mili-
tary reversals; shortages of fuel and bread; and rumors of more short-
ages often made life miserable. All the strands of disgruntlement came
together in early 1917.
The winter of 1916–1917 was harsh: extreme cold combined with
excessive snowfall. Insufficiency of fuel and bread further worsened living
conditions in Petrograd. Strikes broke out on January 9 to commemo-
rate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Arrests followed, but the strikes
continued. On February 22, when the temperature shot up to a balmy
46°F, thousands took to the streets, but government officials believed
they had the situation under control. On that very day Nicholas returned
to General Headquarters.
For Ilia Gordienko (1884–1957), a Bolshevik activist in the Vyborg
district of Petrograd, the revolution, or “the February Days,” as they were
called later, began on February 23. It was International Women’s Day, a
holiday that had originated in the United States in 1909 and was cel-
ebrated by socialist activists internationally before and during the war.
Gordienko recalled hearing female shouts coming from a nearby factory:
“Stop working! Come out!” and “Down with the war! Down with high
prices! Down with hunger! Bread to workers!” The number of striking
workers grew by the day (see Map 3). Students and city residents, includ-
ing many women protesting food shortages, joined them. Nicholas had
no idea how serious the unrest was, since his top officials did not want
to worry him. He gave orders to disperse the crowds with military force.
Now the critical question was whether the soldiers of the Petrograd
garrison could be relied upon to carry out the order. Many were older
reservists, deeply unhappy to be drafted at an advanced age. Mass shoot-
ings at civilians began on February 26. By the end of the day, hundreds
had been killed. That night soldiers of the Volynsky Guards Regiment,
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 15

Feb. 23: 78,000–128,000 workers in 50 factories

1,497 23rd
Feb. 24: 158,000 workers in 131 factories
Nikol’skaia Cotton Feb. 25: 300,000 workers, plus 15,000 university students
1,670 23rd–25th
Feb. 26: All factories closed by authorities
6,511 24th–25th Russian Renault Feb. 27: 66,700 soldiers mutinying
Lessner Feb. 28: 127,000 soldiers mutinying
ka Mar. 1: 170,000 soldiers mutinying
v
Ne
all Military-Medical Supply 7,326 23rd–25th Moscow Guard Regiment
Sm
Parvianen
Grenadiersky
Bridge
Erikson Vyborg District
4,500 23rd–25th 27th
27th
1,592 23rd KRESTY PRISON
Grenadiersky Regiment Sampsonievskaia Cotton
Vulkan 6,704 23rd
Lebedev Jute 1,940 23rd–25th
Metallurgical
1,094 23rd–25th Petrogradsky 998 23rd 2,985 23rd–25th Rosenkrants
District 24th Finland Phoenix 3,773 23rd–25th
Samsonievsky Station
Bridge Arsenal
19,046 25th Promet
Pipe Sm 23rd & 27th 3,958 23rd–25th
all 27th
Ne Liteinyi Bridge
Cartridge va WOMEN’S PRISON 27th
Troitsky SMOLNY
8,292 24th Tuchkov PETER AND Bridge
27th
Bridge PAUL FORTRESS Orudinskii INSTITUTE
Birzhevoi 3,500 23rd–25th 27th Litovskii
Bridge
26th–27th
27th Regiment TAURIDE PALACE
CIRCUIT COURT
Vasilevsky Distric t Palace Pavlovsky Regiment 27th Preobrazhensky Regiment
Bridge HOUSE OF DETENTION
28th 27th Sixth Engineer Battalion

Liteinyi Prospect
27th Volynsky Regiment
UNIVERSITY WINTER PALACE 27th
Finland Regiment POLICE HQ
24th
25th 23rd & 26th
Nikolaevsky KAZAN SQUARE 24th–26th
Bridge KAZAN CATHEDRAL
Nevsky
Pros ZNAMESNKAIA SQUARE
Siemens-Schückert I CITY DUMA pect
3,091 23rd–25th 25th 26th
26th
NEVSKY
a

Keksholm Regiment
ev

26th
PROSPECT Nikolaevsky Station
e N

N e
Larg

l
6,656 23rd–25th na
Ca
ka

va
Franco-Russian Fon
tan
7,645 24th–25th 27th Semenovskii Regiment

Baltic Shipyard
Admiralty Shipyard Tsarskoe Selo
27th Station
4,476 24th–25th
Izmailovskii Regiment
O bvo dnyi Canal

Treugoinik Baltic Station

15,338 24th–25th Warsaw Station

Nevsky Shipyard

NARVSKY GATE

4,909 25th Factory, number of strikers, and date(s) of strike

MOSCOW GATE
25th Location and date of major clashes with police and troops
Skorokhod 27th Major official buildings looted and destroyed and date
4,909 25th
24th Location and date of mass demonstrations
24,449 25th 1,968 24th–25th
Putilov Siemens-Schückert II 27th Location and date of mutiny of military unit

Map 3: Petrograd in February 1917

outraged at having been ordered to fire on unarmed civilians, resolved to

mutiny. In the morning, they fanned out to other units and urged them to
rebel. Many joined them and poured into the streets. Crowds destroyed
symbols of Imperial authority. By midday, that authority was gone in
Petrograd.
Victorious crowds proceeded to the only governmental body in
the city whose authority they recognized—the Duma, which almost
by default assumed power by forming a Provisional Committee. The
revolutionary party leaders—especially Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks—simultaneously established the Petrograd Soviet of Worker
16 Historical Essay

Deputies, soon joined by Petrograd soldiers, as a popular representa-

tive assembly. Its first official decree, Order Number One to the Petro-
grad garrison, de facto abolished the military chain of command (see
Document 1.4).
Nicholas rushed back toward the capital, but rebellious railroad work-
ers thwarted his return. On March 2, his leading generals convinced him
to abdicate, in the hope of saving the war effort. Nicholas tried to pass
the crown to his brother Mikhail, who rejected it. The Russian monarchy
ended, and the Duma-appointed Provisional Government declared the
dawn of a new era.
Initially the Provisional Government was composed of liberals and
moderates—members of the Kadet and the Octobrist Parties—and
one socialist (Alexander Kerensky; 1881–1970) and headed by Prince
Georgii Lvov (1861–1925), a leading Zemstvo activist. One of the
first acts of the Provisional Government was the abolition of the death
penalty, considered a barbaric relic of the fallen regime. Most police
institutions were also eliminated, political (and many regular) crimi-
nals freed, ethnic and religious discrimination banned, and full civil lib-
erties proclaimed. The Provisional Government’s main goal, however,
was winning the war. Fundamental questions of state organization and
popular issues like land reform were put off for an eventual Constituent
Assembly to tackle.
The photograph shown in Figure 6 underscores that from the very
outset, women activism was a crucial element in the February Revolu-
tion. Depicted is a women’s demonstration in Petrograd on March 19.
Marching along the city’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, the
demonstrators demanded electoral rights and political representation
for women. The banners read: “A Women’s Place is in the Constituent
Assembly,” “Strength is in Unity,” and “Female Citizens of Free Russia
Demand Electoral Rights.” Under continued pressure, the Provisional
Government granted women the right to vote on July 20. When the Rus-
sian Constituent Assembly finally met in Petrograd in January 1918, it
became one of the first national representative bodies in the world elected
on the basis of universal male and female suffrage.
The February Revolution was greeted as a welcome change by enthu-
siastic foreign observers (see Document 1.5). The British and French had
grown apprehensive about espionage scandals and incessant rumors of
German influence on Empress Alexandra and senior officials. The Rus-
sian military situation had been deteriorating, so it seemed that major
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 17

Figure 6: Women’s demonstration in Petrograd on March

19, 1917. Source: TsGAKFFD Sankt-Peterburga.

political change could only be for the better. The United States’ response
to the February Revolution was especially enthusiastic. For President
Wilson, the collapse of the autocratic regime facilitated his conception
of World War I as a war to promote democracy and “civilization.” In his
message to Congress on April 4, Wilson proclaimed, “the great generous
Russian people have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to
the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for
peace.”3
Revolutionary reality in Russia, however, was far less tidy. Growing ten-
sions emerged between the politically moderate Provisional Government,
which had claimed legislative and executive power, and the Petrograd
Soviet. Its socialist leaders pushed the government to seek a negotiated
settlement to the war and insisted that they represented the real source of
political legitimacy. The war’s outcome and the success of the Revolution
itself, they believed, depended on the prompt democratization of society
and of the Imperial army, nor were they willing to accept deteriorating liv-
ing conditions and the government’s failure to improve them.

3. Quoted from Mario R. Dinunzio, ed., Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and
Speeches of the Scholar-President (New York and London: New York University Press,
2006), 401.
18 Historical Essay

The Petrograd Soviet was far from the only popular organization
claiming to champion the interests of the masses. A plethora of soviets
and elected committees emerged in battalions and regiments, factories and
towns, villages and provinces across the country, giving voice and power to
millions of aggrieved people. Many localities and regions declared politi-
cal autonomy. Industrial workers sought “worker control” over their fac-
tories. Peasant communes seized a huge number of private landholdings.
Even many parishes declared their administrative autonomy from their
dioceses. This unprecedented experiment in grassroots democracy was,
however, accompanied by the collapse of infrastructure and established
administrative bodies, economic disorganization, and waves of crime.
In the months following the February Revolution, the fragile consen-
sus between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, as
well as other soviets, began to show signs of strain. The military victory
that was supposed to bring the Great War to a close was nowhere to be
seen, desertions from the Russian army increased, the transportation net-
work grew more chaotic, inflation accelerated, and living standards con-
tinued to worsen. All of the blame fell on the Provisional Government.
Internationally, the Provisional Government struggled to find a mid-
dle ground between its great-power ambitions and the harsh reality of
military defeats and nearly endless retreats. They tried to win Polish sup-
port with an offer of independence, a promise that could only be acted on
after a German defeat (see Document 1.6). In the meantime, the Finns,
Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, and other peoples continued to push
for more autonomy or outright independence from Petrograd.
The German authorities facilitated the return from abroad of many
revolutionary leaders, including Lenin, in the hope that they would
undermine Russia’s war effort. In fact, exiled and émigré activists of all
stripes had been pouring into the capital. The day after his arrival, at the
All-Russian Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,
Lenin delivered his famous “April Theses” speech, calling for deepening
the Revolution and the seizure of power by the soviets (see Document
1.7). At first the other Bolshevik leaders were skeptical, but as political
and economic troubles multiplied, support for Lenin’s program swelled.
The first major political crisis occurred on April 18, when Foreign
Minister Miliukov’s reassurance to the Allies of the Provisional Govern-
ment’s commitment to the war and expectation to receive control over the
Dardanelles, and thus Constantinople, after its end became public. Mas-
sive anti-war rallies rocked Petrograd, forcing the government to shed
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 19

Figure 7: Kerensky in 1917

Miliukov and Guchkov, the Octobrist minister of war. Six socialists, who
stood a better chance of working together with the soviets, now joined
what was called “the First Coalition Government.”
The Provisional Government’s biggest effort to restore its standing
among the increasingly disillusioned public was the June offensive against
Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia. Minister of War and
Navy Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970) (see Figure 7), who had studied
in the same gymnasium as Lenin and had once dreamed of killing the
tsar, hoped the offensive would change the momentum of the war, reig-
nite mass enthusiasm, take pressure off France, affirm Russia’s place in
the family of democratic nations, and silence the war’s critics.
The offensive began on June 16 but collapsed two weeks later, result-
ing in tens of thousands of casualties. On July 3–7, mass protests,
20 Historical Essay

reminiscent of the February Days, erupted in Petrograd. The key slo-

gan of the “July Days” was “All Power to the Soviets.” Although Bolshevik
activists had incited workers, sailors, and soldiers to protest, Lenin and
his close associates refused to take the lead and the movement fizzled.
The Provisional Government, supported by the Petrograd Soviet, dis-
persed the crowds by military force. Accused of being German agents,
Lenin went into hiding and several Bolshevik leaders were jailed.
Yet the Provisional Government remained bitterly divided. On August
6 several Constitutional Democrats resigned. Kerensky headed up
what now became “the Second Coalition Government.” Even so, resent-
ment towards the Provisional Government was turning into outright
hatred at the frontlines and in the rear. Soldiers refused to follow orders
and hundreds of thousands deserted. The Bolsheviks—who had stead-
fastly opposed the war and championed nationalizing gentry landhold-
ings and worker control over factories—benefitted from the groundswell
of public discontent. In Moscow, for example, they had won only 11.7
percent of the vote in city Duma elections in June, but 51 percent in elec-
tions to seventeen district Dumas in September.
In late August, Commander-in-Chief Lavr Kornilov (1870–1918)
ordered his troops to move on Petrograd to restore order. He claimed
he was acting on Kerensky’s orders, while Kerensky charged him with
mutiny. To defend Petrograd, Kerensky turned for assistance to the
Petrograd Soviet, which in turn called out workers, soldiers, and sailors.
Kornilov’s assault was successfully halted, but this victory played into the
hands of the Bolsheviks. By September, they were in control of the Petro-
grad Soviet with Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) at the helm (see Document
1.8). The Provisional Government went through another reshuffling and
established a five-member “Directory,” a reference to the government that
took power in 1795 after the most radical phase of the French Revolu-
tion. Russia was formally declared a republic on September 1, and Keren-
sky now held supreme military and political power in the country. Or
so it seemed. In reality, Russia was becoming increasingly ungovernable
with fragmenting and shifting centers of power.
Lenin now was ready to call Kerensky’s bluff, seize what was left
of his power, and proceed with an ambitious socialist agenda. Intense
debates took place among the Bolshevik leaders. Some argued that Rus-
sia was not ready to embrace socialism. Lenin countered that rural and
weakly developed Russia could rely on the powerful industrial economies
of Germany, France, and Britain to provide the needed push forward.
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 21

Russia’s socialist revolution was a global event, he argued, the first salvo
in the battle against world capitalism, soon to be followed by revolutions
in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The Bolsheviks’ taking power in
Russia, therefore, was in the interest of the international proletarian
revolution.
Lenin’s argument won the day. On October 24–25, the Bolsheviks
used the Petrograd Soviet’s Military-Revolutionary Committee, which
had been created two weeks earlier for defense against the German
advance on Petrograd and against counterrevolution, to seize control
of power stations, communication centers, and other key sites in Petro-
grad. By the morning of October 25 (O.S.),4 the Winter Palace—the
seat of the Provisional Government—was the last remaining bastion.
The cruiser Aurora fired a blank shell at the Winter Palace, followed
by live shells shot by the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress across
the Neva River. Bolshevik supporters filtered into the Palace, gradually
overpowering the defenders. Kerensky escaped to the front lines. The
Bolshevik victory was complete. Even a casual look at the Bolshevik
power-seizure, however, reveals major differences with the February
Revolution (see Maps 3 and 4). Most important, hundreds of thou-
sands of people flooded the streets in February, but only small bands
came out in October. Yet similarities should not be overlooked. Both
the Imperial Russian Government and the Provisional Government
failed effectively to respond to pressing popular needs and could count
on few committed defenders.
The Bolsheviks were soon joined by a left-wing splinter group of
Socialist-Revolutionaries and formed a new government—the Council
of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), led by Lenin. He rejected even the
term “ministers” to underscore the deep political rupture. Formally, the
government was accountable to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of
Worker and Soldier Deputies, but the Bolsheviks quickly showed that
they had little tolerance for political opposition, even in the soviets. They
declared that their regime represented “a dictatorship of the proletariat,”
reserving to themselves the right to decide what the proletariat wanted.
The Bolsheviks’ first decrees were decidedly populist. They imme-
diately affirmed a desire to exit the war. This was a welcome relief to

4. As noted in the Preface, the Russian calendar until January 1918 followed the “Old
Style” (O.S.), which in the twentieth century lagged thirteen days behind the Western,
or Gregorian calendar, or “New Style” (N.S.).
22 Historical Essay

Stroganovsky
Bridge

Kamennoostrovsky
Bridge

vk
Ne
all
Sm Vyborg District

Grenadiersky
Bridge
Petrogradsky
District

Sm Sasonievsky Finland Station

all
Ne
Bridge
va PETER AND
PAUL FORTRESS Kresty
Liteinyi Prison
Tuchkov Bridge Troitsky Bridge Bridge SMOLNY
INSTITUTE
Birzhevoi Bridge

Liteinyi Prospect
WINTER
Vasilevsky Distric t PALACE
Palace Bridge General Staff Okhtinskii
The Engineer’s Castle
UNIVERSITY Bridge
The Admiralty Central Telephone Exchange
Nikolaevsky Bridge Electric
CITY DUMA Nevsky Power Station
Russian Telegraphic Agency Main Post Office Pros pect

Nikolaevsky
State
a

Station
ev

Central Telegraph Office Mariiskii Bank

e N

Dvorets

N e
(Parliament)
Larg

Central
ka Electric

va
tan
Fon Tsarskoe Selo Power Station
Station

Electric
O bvo dnyi Canal Power Station

Baltic Warsaw
Station Station

NARVSKY GATE

Bolshevik supporters seize control on the 24th of October

MOSCOW GATE
Bolshevik supporters seize control during the night of the
24th of October and up to 10.00 a.m. on the 25th of October

Bolshevik supporters seize control after 10.00 a.m. on

the 25th of October

Clash of pro-government and Bolshevik forces on the 26th of October

Map 4: Petrograd in October 1917

millions of Russian soldiers and sailors, peasants and workers who had
suffered through meaningless slaughter. By that point, the multiethnic
Russian Empire was already crumbling and scarcely capable of keeping
up the fight. More than sixty self-styled independent territories appeared
and disappeared in the post-Imperial space with exotic names like the
Estland Workers’ Commune, the Tanu-Tuvinsakaia Popular Repub-
lic, the Ural-Volga States of the Tatar and Bashkir Peoples, and the
Rudobel’skaia Partisans’ Republic.
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 23

Having embraced the Marxist ideology of class conflict and inter-

national working-class solidarity, the Bolsheviks simultaneously pro-
moted the national liberation of all oppressed minorities, including
those of the Russian Empire. On November 2, 1917, the Council
of People’s Commissars issued “the Declaration of the Rights of
the Peoples’ of Russia,” which stressed their right to equality, self-
determination, and even secession (see Document 1.9). This policy
gave birth to a fusion of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial rhetoric,
which broadened the Bolsheviks’ appeal and, in the soon-to-follow
Civil War, severely undermined the position of their adversaries,
whose support for the restoration of a unified Russian state found
little enthusiasm in the Empire’s ethnically diverse periphery. But in
their own state-building efforts, the Bolsheviks sacrificed national
self-determination for the imperatives of political control. This
quickly became clear, for example, from the situation in Turkestan—a
vast central Asian region that had come under Imperial Russian con-
trol in the late nineteenth century (see Document 1.10).
The Bolsheviks also nationalized all the land and sanctioned its use
by peasants, de facto approving peasant seizures of estates that had
been occurring since the summer. Most important, their coming to
power meant to the Bolsheviks that the global transition from capital-
ism to communism had begun. What exactly the new world would look
like, no one was sure. Karl Marx’s writings on communism were scanty
(especially when compared to Das Kapital, his three-volume study of
capitalism). Theoretically, communism was supposed to unleash the
creative potential of mankind, allowing it to attain ever-growing levels
of economic productivity, inventiveness, and freedom. It was not just
a socioeconomic concept of modernization, but also an inspirational
vision that captivated the minds of Marx’s followers (see Document
1.11).
But how could it be achieved? The Bolsheviks set out by and large
on their own. They immediately abolished social ranks, titles, and privi-
leges. From governmental policies pursued by the major powers during
the Great War, they adopted centralized control over the economy and
society. From socialist theory, they took for granted the need to eliminate
private property and the market and to take charge of the economy. They
expected to unleash the workers’ support and enthusiasm, yet did not
shrink from imposing on them the strictest organization, discipline, and
control (see Document 1.12). Certain that they alone understood the
24 Historical Essay

inner workings of social development, they devoted huge resources to

education and propaganda—but also relied on censorship, coercion, and
violence, especially when it turned out that most of Russian society did
not share their revolutionary agenda.
As the soviets were gradually purged of non-Bolshevik socialists—
Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and even Left Socialist-
Revolutionaries—the term “Soviet power” became synonymous with
the Bolshevik regime and one-party rule. The freely elected Constituent
Assembly, in which the Bolsheviks received only a quarter of the seats,
was dissolved at gunpoint on the night of January 5–6, 1918, after only
one day in session.
Within a few months, the Bolsheviks alienated growing numbers of
people who objected to their radical vision and policies—from govern-
ment officials and Imperial army officers, to educated elites and moder-
ate socialist party activists, to peasants branded “kulaks” for protesting
forced grain requisitions and even workers who lost the right to strike. In
fact, the Bolshevik failure to share power and adjust their radical policies
made a devastating civil war virtually unavoidable.
By summer 1918, the Bolsheviks, or the “Reds,” were surrounded on
almost all sides, but benefitted from control of Russia’s heartland, main
railroad lines, and main industrial centers, as well as from their ruth-
lessly centralized and state-driven approach to the economy (see Map
5). Their opponents, generally referred to as the “Whites,” often had little
in common with one another except for hatred of the Reds. The main
White forces were dominated by former Imperial officers and led by
General Anton Denikin in the South and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak
in the East. The Whites’ political views ranged from monarchist to
socialist, and they had to contend with national minorities demand-
ing regional autonomy, disgruntled landlords hoping to get their land
back, liberal politicians calling for the restoration of civil liberties, and
socialist political activists quarreling over peasant and labor policies
(see Document 1.13).
The Bolsheviks’ effort to build the Red Army was spearheaded by Leon
Trotsky, who proved to be a remarkably successful military organizer
despite a lack of professional training. Discipline was fierce: military pro-
fessionals were forcibly recruited, millions of peasants were conscripted,
and deserters were hunted down. The Bolsheviks did not hesitate to use
violence and terror throughout the Civil War era. In the early morning of
July 17, 1918, as discussed above, Bolshevik operatives in Ekaterinburg
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 25

in the Ural Mountains slaughtered the entire Imperial family—Nicho-

las, Alexandra, their five children, and their servants—in cold blood and
without warning. The next day, several more Imperial family members
were also murdered.
Faced with Bolshevik disregard for democracy and increasingly ruth-
less treatment of the peasantry, the Socialist-Revolutionaries agonized
over how to confront their revolutionary brothers-in-arms. Should
they work within the new political system? Or should they fight the
Bolsheviks as new tyrants, using violence and terror? On August 30,
proponents of the latter tactic killed the head of the Petrograd Secu-
rity Police (Cheka) Moisei Uritskii (1873–1918) and badly wounded
Lenin in Moscow. In response, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the “Red Ter-
ror.” Rejecting the principle of individual culpability, they declared all
representatives of the “bourgeois exploitative classes” responsible. Tens
of thousands of merchants, priests, officers, intellectuals, and wealthy
peasants were held hostage, sent to concentration camps, or killed. The
Bolsheviks continued to use this tactic in the course of the Civil War.
They played on the popular hatred for the vaguely defined “bourgeoi-
sie,” but also genuinely believed that the Red Terror would not only
intimidate and deter their enemies, but also speed up the dawn of a
classless society.
The sailors who had mostly supported the Bolsheviks in 1917
and the industrial workers whose interests they supposedly repre-
sented also suffered repression. In 1921, when sailors and workers
at the naval fortress of Kronstadt in the Gulf of Finland demanded
“socialism without the Bolsheviks,” democratic elections to the Sovi-
ets, and various civil liberties, the government crushed the “uprising”
with massive firepower and brutal repression, resulting in thousands
of deaths (see Document 3.6).
Modern propaganda played a key role in the Bolsheviks’ mass mobili-
zation efforts. Using print, images, audio recordings, radio broadcasts, and
even movies, they called upon their supporters to help “save the proletarian
revolution” against the dark forces of “bourgeoisie.” Workers and peasants
could easily relate such rhetoric to personal experiences of exploitation and
oppression, even more so since in the course of the Civil War the Whites per-
petrated a large share of atrocities, including massive anti-Jewish pogroms.
The White leaders attempted to promote their own propaganda, but
with less success, due in part to the sheer diversity of their views and
interests. The posters shown in Figures 8 and 9 both use the ubiquitous
 26

MAP 5: RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, 1918–1922 Western boundary of Russia, Attacks by anti-Bolshevik
1905–1917 forces, 1918–1920
Territory lost Bolshevik counterattacks,
Barents Sea (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918) 1918–1920
Bolshevik territory, October 1919 Anarchist offensives of
Nestor Makhno
MURMANSK Main area of famine, 1921–1922 Tambov rebellion
Canadians,
British, French Americans Kolchak
Major anti-Bolshevik
Canadians,
Boundaries of Russia, 1922
positions
Italians
SWEDEN Serbs ARCHANGEL
British, French Trans-Siberian Railway Czechoslovak Legion
FINLAND seizures of strategic
Independence declared American forces guarding the points
Baltic December 6, 1917
Sea
trans-Siberian Railway
ESTONIA
VOLOGDA
British, French PETROGRAD
naval assistance Iudenich
KOSTROMA PERM
LATVIA Letts R U S S I A
Baltic IVANOVO EKATERINBURG
Germans MOSCOW TOMSK
LITHUANIA NIZHNY- KAZAN Kolchak OMSK
SMOLENSK NOVGOROD
OREL UFA NOVONIKOLAEVSK
May 1920 Summer
WARSAW 1920 TAMBOV PENZA SAMARA
CHELIABINSK IRKUTSK
Historical Essay

Sep 1920 ORENBURG

POLAND SARATOV
KIEV VORONEZH
BREST-LITOVSK Denikin
UKRAINE Don Cossacks
TSARITSYN
Ural Cossacks
H U N G A RY Romanians ROSTOV MONGOLIA
GULIAI-POLE
ROMANIA Wrangel Aral
Sea

Ca
Black Sea VLADIVOSTOK

spi
French Georgians

an
British TASHKENT
Mensheviks

Sea
T U R K E Y Japanese, Americans,
C H I N A British, Canadians,
British
Chinese

Me
J A PA N
dit P E R S I A
erra
nean Sea
 Russia in Revolution and Civil War 27

“I Want You” appeal, first conceived by the British at the beginning of

World War I.5 While the White poster was a toned-down version of a
1917 Italian poster by Luciano Mauzan, the Bolshevik poster by Dmitrii
Moor displayed original artistry, made reference to ordinary people and
the importance of factory workers, and therefore was generally more
compelling in the context of the Civil War. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks
prevailed not only because of their ruthlessness and discipline, but also
because of their captivating vision of the future that inspired ordinary
people to commit acts of selfless sacrifice and heroism (see Document
1.14).
Even so, the conscious efforts of both the Reds and the Whites to cast
the Civil War in bipolar terms masked the diversity of colliding attitudes
and interests. Most importantly, the peasantry, the vast majority of the
population, never fully embraced either side: hostile to Bolshevik food
requisition policies but also fearful lest the landlords return and reclaim
their lands, peasants deserted by the millions from the mass-conscripted
armies of both sides and sometimes mutinied—occasionally referring to
themselves as “the Greens”—against any external authority that sought
to control their resources. The Bolsheviks in particular faced a series of
peasant uprisings in Ukraine, the Volga region, south-central Russia,
and Siberia, which erupted most powerfully after the Whites had been
defeated in 1920. The Bolsheviks brutally crushed these uprisings (see
Document 1.15). Forced requisitioning of grain and poor weather caused
a tragic famine in 1921–1922, resulting in at least 1.5 to 2 million deaths.
Nor did the cities escape the ravages of Civil War and the extreme eco-
nomic centralization of War Communism. For example, the population
of Petrograd plummeted from 2.5 million in 1917 to 722,000 in 1920,
while the number of industrial workers more than halved from 2.6 to
1.2 million. As a result, industrial output collapsed, falling 69 percent
from 1913 to 1921.6
The Bolsheviks never viewed the Civil War as a purely domestic prob-
lem. Instead they saw it in the context of a class struggle that knew no
borders. A peasant who took up arms to defend his livestock and a US

5. See Alfred Leete, “Your Country Needs YOU,” London Opinion, September 5, 1914,
p. 1.
6. See Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 27; Alec Nove, An
Economic History of the USSR, 2d ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1989), 57–58.
28 Historical Essay

Figure 8: “Have You Enlisted Figure 9: “Why Are You

as a Volunteer?” (1920) Not in the Army?” (1919)

president who reluctantly authorized military intervention in Russia

were one and the same enemy—“the bourgeois class,” whose universal
destruction, they believed, was the only way to ensure the global triumph
of communism and the advent of a world of genuine human happiness,
free from exploitation, inequality, and injustice. This was going to be a
struggle for the future of mankind. The following section will focus on
Soviet Russia’s interaction with the world and on the Bolsheviks’ evolving
foreign policy approaches and objectives in relation to that paramount
vision and goal.

The Bolsheviks Engage the World

The Bolsheviks were not the first political actors in Russia who played up
the international ramifications of the Revolution. From the first days of
its existence, the Provisional Government leaders hoped that revolutionary
change in Russia would help bring the Great War to a victorious end for the
Allied Powers, which now fully looked like a family of democratic nations.
On March 27, the Petrograd Soviet took this thinking even further by
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 29

issuing an appeal “to the peoples of the whole world.” The appeal declared
that the “Russian democracy has shattered in the dust the age-long des-
potism of the Tsar and enters your family [of nations] as an equal, and as
a mighty force in the struggle for our common liberation.” It then called
on all peoples, and first and foremost the German proletariat, “to begin
a decisive struggle with the acquisitive aspirations of the governments
of other countries.”7 The appeal admonished German workers specifi-
cally to follow the example of the Russian Revolution and overthrow “the
yoke of your semi-autocratic rule . . . refuse to serve as an instrument of
conquest and violence in the hands of kings, landowners, and bankers.”
The Russian Revolution made a global impact even before the Bolsheviks
seized power. But it was the Bolsheviks, the final victors of the Russian
Revolution, who advanced their vision of it on an unprecedented scale.
To practically minded Bolsheviks like Lenin, the international signifi-
cance of the Russian Revolution depended on whether it could trigger
other communist revolutions in Europe and provide real-world lessons
for how to make them successful. Initially, the Bolsheviks were highly
optimistic on both counts, and their foreign policy grew out of that opti-
mism. They developed a unique approach to foreign relations because
their revolutionary goals were unique and unprecedented in history.
But what specifically did they seek to achieve, where, and when? What
methods and tools did they use? What intended and unintended conse-
quences resulted from their foreign policy and how much did it actually
help revolutionize the world?
At the time when the Bolsheviks seized power, states had been recog-
nized for nearly 300 years, since the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–
1648), as the main actors in foreign relations. Concomitantly, serving
state interests (also conceptualized as “national interests” in nation-states)
was seen as an overarching principle of diplomacy. The Bolsheviks had
deliberately smashed the Imperial Russian state and at first were not sure
what, if anything, should replace it. The broad declaratory nature of their
first decrees, their willingness to proceed with the elections to the Con-
stituent Assembly, and their destruction of key legal, political, social, and
economic institutions indicate their initial hopefulness and optimism
about the spontaneous revolutionary energy of the masses. They soon
realized, however, that this energy alone did not suffice to bring about

7. Excerpted from Alfred Golder, ed., Documents of Russian History, 1914–1917, trans.
Emanuel Aronsberg (New York: The Century Co., 1927), 325–26.
30 Historical Essay

the broad changes they believed necessary to move Russia towards social-
ism. By 1918, the Bolsheviks were striving to ensure party dominance
throughout the country in local soviets, never hesitating to dissolve them
and arrest their opponents or even replace them altogether with mili-
tary-revolutionary committees directly subordinated to Moscow, which
became Soviet Russia’s capital in the spring of 1918. Within the party,
the Bolsheviks stressed centralization and discipline, with key decision-
making power in the hands of the Central Committee and increasingly
concentrated in the Politburo, its small executive board. They also set up
and continuously expanded the power of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission (the Cheka), the security police, to fight counterrevolution,
sabotage, speculation, and other “counterrevolutionary” crimes. They
took steps to build a new army and a new administrative apparatus. In
sum, they came to believe that the transition to socialism could only be
achieved by means of a new “proletarian” state and state institutions.
Yet the concept of “state interest” does not adequately explain Bolshe-
vik foreign policy and its methods and goals. The Bolsheviks’ view of the
Soviet state was ambiguous at best. The state to them was an important,
but transitory construction. They expected revolution to engulf other
European countries at any moment and thus to liberate the working
classes there. Once triumphant, the working classes of the world would
not even need the machinery of the state, which was expected “to wither
away,” as humanity moved towards communism. The party’s new name,
picked in spring 1918 (“the Russian Communist Party [Bolsheviks]”),
underscored their commitment to the worldwide communist movement.
Grigorii Zinoviev (1883–1936), a leading Bolshevik and the party leader
of the Petrograd region, conveyed well this almost millenarian anticipa-
tion in a statement he made in 1919:

Old Europe is dashing at a mad speed towards the proletarian

revolution.
. . . Occasional defeats will still occur in the near future. The
color black will perhaps win a victory here and there over
the color red. But the final victory will, nevertheless, go to
the color red; and this in the span of months, perhaps even
weeks. The movement is proceeding at such terrific speed
that we may say with full confidence that within a year we
shall already begin to forget that there was a struggle for com-
munism in Europe, because in a year the whole of Europe will
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 31

have become communist. And the struggle for communism

will be transferred to America, perhaps to Asia, and to other
parts of the world.
...
It may happen that in America capitalism will continue for a
few years to subsist side by side with Communist Europe. It
may happen that even in England capitalism may continue
to exist for a year or two, side by side with communism
victorious in the whole of continental Europe. But such a
co-existence cannot last long. . . .8 

In other words, even though the Bolsheviks created a new state, they did
not develop a strong allegiance to it. Their primary allegiance was to revo-
lution, as they defined it.
Domestically, this revolution gave birth to their regime, which they
called and was popularly known as “Soviet power.” Internationally, the
revolution was going to launch a new phase in human history. Implied
in Bolshevik thinking about revolution was not a state or a nation whose
interests had to be pursued, but “an imagined community” of a very dif-
ferent kind—a global community of the masses with a shared experience
of exploitation. Revolution meant the liberation of this community led
by industrial workers, led in turn by revolutionary Marxists. The Bol-
sheviks’ allegiance to this community superseded their allegiance to the
Soviet state. In diplomatic terms, this meant that, from the outset, Bol-
shevik foreign policy was driven primarily not by state interest, but by
what can be defined as “revolutionary interest.”
The conflict and tension over the roles and meanings of revolutionary
and state interests were more profound than the rivalry between differ-
ent branches of the Bolshevik foreign policy apparatus, nor was it iden-
tical to the frequently discussed ideological versus pragmatic divide in
Soviet foreign policy.9 Various policies driven by revolutionary or state

8. G. Zinoviev, “Die Perspectiven der proletarischen Revolution,” Die Kommunistische

Internationale, no. 1 (August 1919), ix–xiv [here: xii, xiv].
9. See, for example, Gabriel Gorodetsky, “The Formulation of Soviet Foreign Policy—
Ideology and Realpolitik” in Gabriel Gorodetsky, ed., Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991:
A Retrospective (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1994), 30–44; Michael Jabara
Carley, Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Preface.
32 Historical Essay

interest could involve a certain dose of ideology, as well as pragmatism.

But they were rooted in different expectations of the world’s future: eager
anticipation of an imminent global revolutionary triumph resulted in
the dominance of the revolutionary interest; the decline of revolutionary
movements abroad led to the assertion of the state interest.
The first period of Soviet foreign policy, marked by the primacy of
revolutionary interest, grew out of Lenin’s initial expectations of a global
socialist revolution in the fall of 1917. On October 1, as he sought to
convince other party leaders to seize power, he pointed to the execution
of German sailors (most likely for their participation in a recent mutiny
in Wilhelmshaven, a coastal German city on the North Sea). “The begin-
ning of the revolution is obvious,” he wrote, stressing the urgent need
to secure the world revolution, the Russian Revolution, and “the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people at the front.”10
The same sentiment was reflected in the first Bolshevik decree—the
Decree on Peace. Adopted on October 26, it called for an immediate
armistice between all warring powers and for the relinquishing of claims
on all “annexed” territories overseas as well as in Europe. The decree, it
was hoped, would appeal not just to governments, but to peoples around
the world, and in particular to the “conscious workers” of what the leading
Bolsheviks considered the three most advanced nations: England, France,
and Germany. These workers, according to the decree, had the task “to
secure the cause of peace along with the cause of liberating the working
and exploited masses of population from all slavery and all exploitation.”11
According to the Bolsheviks, genuine peace was impossible without the
defeat of capitalist imperialism and the revolutionary transformation of
the world. The Decree on Peace was therefore also a decree on world
revolution.
The primacy of the revolutionary interest at this point was nearly
total, so that the Bolsheviks, eager to reach out to the exploited masses
over the heads of the governments, did not see a need to resort to tra-
ditional tools of state diplomacy. When Leon Trotsky, having played a
critical role at the helm of the Petrograd Soviet, was appointed Com-
missar of Foreign Affairs, he thought of it as a small job: “I will issue

10. Vladimir Lenin, “Letter to the Central Committee, the Moscow and Petrograd
Committees and the Bolshevik Members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets,” Col-
lected Works, vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 140–41.
11. Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, 18 vols. (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1957), 1:12.
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 33

Figure 10: “Death to World Figure 11: “Comrade Lenin Clears

Imperialism!” (1919) the Earth of Filth” (1920)

a few revolutionary proclamations to the peoples of the world and then

shut up shop.”12
Trotsky began by publishing secret correspondence and agreements
between the Allied powers regarding postwar territorial changes in
Europe and the partition of the Ottoman Empire. He declared abolition
of secret diplomacy and its “intrigues, codes, and lies.”13 But his job soon
grew bigger. When Russia’s allies refused to respond to the Decree on
Peace, the Bolsheviks turned to the Central Powers. A unilateral armi-
stice on the Eastern Front was signed on November 24, 1917, and on
December 9 peace talks between Russia and the Central Powers began
in the city of Brest-Litovsk (see Document 2.1). These negotiations soon
broke down. Germany, because of its position of great military strength
compared to Russia, whose army had practically collapsed, demanded
from the Bolsheviks big territorial concessions. Trotsky, as the head of

12. As quoted in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, 3 vols. (New York
and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985), 3:16.
13. Lev Trotsky, Sochineniia (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1925), vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 167.
34 Historical Essay

the Soviet delegation, refused. He was motivated not by imperial ambi-

tion, but by the leading Bolsheviks’ belief that a German revolution
would soon sweep away the kaiser’s regime. The armistice was thus bro-
ken. The German offensive, re-launched on February 18, 1918, proved to
be unstoppable by military means. The Bolsheviks had to return to the
negotiating table. Thus it was only with great reluctance and only when
faced with a profound existential threat that the Bolsheviks accommo-
dated state interests in their early foreign policy. Even their most ardent
proponents viewed these accommodations as tactical retreats.
The terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on March 3, 1918,
were severe. As illustrated in Map 5 (p. 26), Soviet Russia ceded control
over vast territories that had been part of the Russian Empire, shedding
a quarter of its population and industry. Although the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk was abrogated when a defeated Germany was forced to sign the
Treaty of Versailles the following year, its political and psychological
impact on Russia was lasting and continues to this day.
Immediately after Soviet Russia formally exited the Great War, British
troops landed in the far-northern Russian seaport of Murmansk. The
British hoped to protect accumulated military supplies, to fend off a
German-Finnish attempt to capture the Murmansk-Petrograd railroad,
and also to continue the fight alongside the Bolsheviks against the Central
Powers. In addition, they hoped that the 50,000-strong Czechoslovak
Legion, which had been fighting with the Russian Army against the
Austrians, would depart from Russia and join the Allied forces. At first
the Bolsheviks were willing to collaborate, but on May 13, Lenin succeeded
in convincing his fellow party leaders to comply with German demands
to disarm the Czechoslovak forces. As a result, the Czechoslovak troops,
which had been traveling eastward on the Trans-Siberian Railway in
order to circle the globe and join the fight on the Western Front, rebelled
and quickly seized control of several cities from the Volga River to western
Siberia.
Western historians have often downplayed the significance of Allied
intervention forces in Russia, pointing to their limited objectives and
small scale. Indeed, the number of British troops in the Far North never
exceeded eight thousand, but the Czechoslovak revolt showed what
even relatively small numbers of well-organized, trained, and disciplined
troops could accomplish. The cascading impact of the Czechoslovak
revolt was catastrophic for the Bolsheviks. In summer 1918, almost the
whole of Siberia, the Ural Mountains, and the Volga region slipped from
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 35

their control. Many Allied leaders hoped this development would lead to
the toppling of the Bolshevik government by their Civil War adversaries,
which might reopen the eastern front against the Central Powers.14
Over the summer, the scope of foreign intervention widened. The
largest expeditionary force was sent by Japan, eventually reaching 70,000
men in Siberia. The American Expeditionary Forces landed in the north-
ern seaport of Archangelsk (5,000 troops) as well as in the Pacific port
of Vladivostok (roughly 8,000 troops). General William Sidney Graves
(1865–1940) commanded the latter from September 1918 until their
evacuation in 1920. The mandate of the American Expeditionary Force
in Siberia was extremely limited: to protect allied military supplies and
ensure safe passage and evacuation of Czechoslovak troops from Russia
via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Graves’s orders precluded him from ren-
dering active support to any party in the Civil War. Graves himself was
a reluctant interventionist and believed that “there isn’t a nation on earth
that would not resent foreigners sending troops into their country, for
the purpose of putting this or that faction in charge of their Government
machinery.”15 While in Siberia, Graves grew further convinced of this,
having witnessed numerous abuses committed by Cossack warlords who
were loosely associated with Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920),
the supreme commander of the anti-Bolshevik Siberian government (see
Document 2.4).
Graves’s caution notwithstanding, growing Allied involvement in
Russian affairs reinforced the Bolsheviks’ class-based worldview, which
saw the international bourgeoisie coalescing in its vicious desire to crush
the first proletarian state. For the second time in six months the Bolsheviks
were confronted with an existential threat.
At this point, the Bolshevik foray into state-interest diplomacy (seeking
to establish formal relations and using the language of diplomatic notes)
resulted from the dire necessity to use any tools at their disposal to ensure
the survival of the Russian Revolution, as they saw it (see Document 2.2).
In their broader worldview, the Russian Revolution could be secured only
through a complete recasting of the world’s social, economic, and political
structures. This in turn was predicated on a global revolutionary triumph

14. See Ian C. D. Moffat, The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918–1920: The Diplomacy
of Chaos (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
15. William S. Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, 1918–1920 (New York: Cape
Ann Smith, 1931), 82.
36 Historical Essay

and the elimination of the very international actors, or states, with which
the Bolsheviks engaged in diplomacy. This made international conflict
more important than peace and stability in their thinking about interna-
tional relations. The tactical imperative to engage “the old world” clashed
with the strategic imperative to destroy it and led to a constant search for
ingenious foreign policy solutions. The result was an approach to interna-
tional relations as unique and revolutionary as Soviet Russia itself.
Fundamentally, it was an optimistic approach. The Bolsheviks
believed that time was on their side in their confrontation with “the old
world,” if they could only hold on to power during a fairly short interval.
This short-term goal required not only domestic military and economic
mobilization, but international mobilization as well—reaching out to
the working classes all over the world, inspiring their sympathy and sup-
port for Soviet Russia. For this purpose, the Bolshevik leadership relied
on propaganda as much as on diplomacy. At the very least, they hoped
such an approach would make it much harder for foreign governments to
intervene in Soviet Russia’s affairs (see Document 2.3).
Then, on October 1, 1918, when the collapse of the German mon-
archy seemed imminent amid chaos and growing revolutionary turmoil,
Lenin advocated providing German workers with all possible grain and
military assistance and conscripting a three-million-man army to assist
the international worker revolution. In his words: “We are all ready to die
to help the German workers deepen the revolution they have begun.”16
The greater was his disappointment when most German Social Demo-
crats opted for the creation of a parliamentary republic instead of imme-
diately moving toward a Bolshevik-style system.
Still, to the Bolsheviks, revolution in Europe seemed just around
the corner. In Germany they encouraged the radical socialist Sparta-
cist League led by Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) and Rosa Luxemburg
(1871–1919). In January 1919, the League tried to seize power in Berlin,
but failed. Bolshevik hopes spiked again when, in March, Hungarian
socialists and communists proclaimed the creation of a Hungarian Soviet
Republic. By this point the Bolsheviks were thinking more boldly about
how to promote world revolution. They knew that their own victory in
Russia required strategic direction, discipline, and organization, so they
tried to impart these principles to communist leaders on an international
scale (see Document 2.5).

16. V. I. Lenin to Ia. M. Sverdlov and L. D. Trotskii, in PSS, 50:185–86 [here: 186].
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 37

The Communist International (Comintern), founded in Moscow

in early March 1919, was to become to the world revolution what the
Bolshevik party was to the Russian Revolution.17 Also called “the Third
International” to distinguish it from the moderate Second Social-
ist International (1889–1916), which collapsed during the Great War,
the Comintern brought together communist parties from all over the
world. The Comintern’s mission was to assist and coordinate their efforts
to spread the world revolution. This mission was proclaimed even as
the Bolsheviks were in the midst of the Civil War, fighting for survival
against the forces of Anton Denikin in the south and Aleksandr Kolchak
in the east.
Bolshevik victory in this struggle was followed by another war, this
time launched by Poland. The Polish-Soviet War of spring and sum-
mer 1920 revealed the Bolsheviks’ continuing commitment to the
revolutionary interest. In the early phases of the war, Polish forces suc-
cessfully occupied Kiev as the Bolsheviks scrambled to rebuff them.
Within months, however, the military fortunes changed, and the Red
Army went on the offensive. Now, the Bolsheviks’ dream of the world
revolution was re-ignited. The offensive was conducted in large part,
according to Lenin, “to probe with a bayonet the readiness of Poland
for social revolution.”18 War to the Bolshevik leaders was one of many
tools, which could be used at the right moment and in the right place, to
help liberate the world’s oppressed masses from the shackles of capital-
ist exploitation.
When Red Army troops were nearing Warsaw in July 1920, the
Second Congress of the Comintern opened in Moscow. The Con-
gress took a major step towards implementing the Bolshevik model of
revolutionary activism on a global scale by passing twenty-one condi-
tions for membership, including the obligation to adhere to organi-
zational discipline and to give unconditional support to every soviet
republic throughout the world in its struggle against the forces of
counterrevolution.
Even though the Bolsheviks established diplomatic relations with
the Baltic states and pursued trade relations with England, this conven-
tional state-interest diplomacy remained subordinate to the overarching

17. See Duncan Hallas, The Comintern (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008).
18. Richard Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, with the assistance
of David Brandenberger (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 100.
38 Historical Essay

revolutionary agenda. Increasingly, then, Bolshevik opponents in Europe

and in America viewed Soviet Russia as a sinister and insidious power
bent on global subversion and conquest. Bolshevism was seen as a dis-
ease and in the words of the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau
(1841–1929), required a “cordon sanitaire,” or “sanitary barrier,” made of
the newly independent countries of eastern Europe to prevent its spread.
The British government was more optimistic. On February 10, 1920,
Premier David Lloyd George, in a speech before the House of Commons,
asserted: “Commerce has a sobering influence. There is nothing to fear
from a Bolshevist invasion of surrounding countries . . . because the Bol-
sheviki cannot organize a powerful army. I believe that trading will bring
to an end the ferocity, rapine, and cruelty of Bolshevism more surely than
any other method.”19
By September 1920, the Poles had rolled the Red Army back from
Polish territory and had forced the Bolsheviks to accept an expanded
Poland. Still, the Bolshevik domestic and foreign positions were strong
and stable. In November, their military forces crushed the last bulwark of
White resistance in the Crimea. Abroad, the Comintern was developing
into an effective tool to coordinate revolutionary efforts (see Document
2.6).
Soviet stabilization, however, coincided with general European stabi-
lization and the decline of revolutionary activity. This forced the Bolshe-
viks to reevaluate their revolutionary tactics and the temporal horizon for
the world revolution (see Document 2.7). By extension, they also had to
reconsider their perspective on the Soviet state. It appeared that the state,
not world revolution, was here to stay, and, at least in the near future,
would have to function on its own in a hostile capitalist environment. In
these conditions, survival, security, and economic development dictated a
greater emphasis on state interest in foreign relations.
Late 1920 through early 1921 marked the beginning of a new phase
in Soviet foreign policy based on an unsteady equilibrium between
revolutionary and state interests. Speaking to the Eighth Congress
of Soviets in December 1920, Lenin admitted that while it would be
“most pleasant to defeat all the imperialist powers,” the strength of the
capitalist world and Soviet Russia’s geopolitical isolation required play-
ing on disagreements between imperialist powers.20 In March 1921,

19. “Lloyd George’s Program,” The Independent (New York; February 21, 1920), 286.
20. PSS, 5:105.
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 39

the government announced the moderate pro-market New Economic

Policy at home and the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement abroad—the
first major Soviet diplomatic breakthrough with a leading western
state, in this case England. Retreating from the primacy of revolutionary
interest facilitated a series of agreements, signed by the Bolsheviks,
allowing the Red Cross, the American Relief Administration, and
other international humanitarian organizations to bring desperately
needed food and medical supplies to the famine-stricken areas of
the Volga and Ural regions in 1921–22. Food aid from abroad saved
millions of lives; despite this help, at least 1.5 to 2 million people died
of starvation and famine-related disease.
The first wide-ranging exercise of state-interest diplomacy took place
when, in 1922, the Soviets agreed to attend the Genoa Conference con-
vened in Italy to discuss issues of European economic recovery, Soviet
debt obligations, and trade.21 Representatives of Soviet Russia and
Weimar Germany met separately in Rappalo, where they signed an
agreement that cancelled out reciprocal claims for war damages and
territory, established diplomatic relations between the two countries,
and promoted economic, political, and (thanks to a subsequent secret
pact signed on July 29, 1922) extensive military cooperation (see Docu-
ment 2.8).22 In May 1922, the Bolshevik Central Committee adopted a
resolution, declaring “the whole course of international relations recently
bears witness to the inevitability, at the present stage of historical devel-
opment, of the temporary co-existence of the communist and bourgeois
systems of property.”23
In the same year, when state interests began to reassert themselves,
the Soviet state itself underwent a major change with the creation of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a polity revolutionary in structure,

21. Over 800 journalists attended the conference including Ernest Hemingway for the
Toronto Star, Wickham Steed for the Times, and M. Keynes for the Manchester Guard-
ian. The conference was called the “largest gathering of European statesmen since
the Crusades.” See Stephen White, The Origins of Detente. The Genoa Conference and
Soviet-Western Relations 1921–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
255.
22. On subsequent Soviet-German cooperation, see Aleksandr Nekrich, Pariahs, Part-
ners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922–1941 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997).
23. Quoted in Jon Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994), 26.
40 Historical Essay

as well as in aspiration. By 1922, the Bolsheviks were in control of

Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The latter three
republics were merged during the course of 1922 into the Transcauca-
sian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which the Bolshevik central
party leaders had initially planned to unite, along with Ukraine and
Belorussia, into Soviet Russia, with autonomy only in matters of local
governance. Lenin, however, was becoming increasingly alarmed about
a possible resurgence of Russian nationalism and a de facto inferior sta-
tus for national minorities within the larger Soviet state. His ambitious
solution was to create an entirely new union of formally equal social-
ist republics. The centralized economy and political authority of the
Bolshevik leadership in Moscow was to be maintained, yet adminis-
tratively member republics would retain delineated borders and par-
tially autonomous political and administrative institutions. In practice,
the level of actual autonomy was very modest. The creation of the new
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, at the end of December 1922, thus
finalized the revolutionary destruction of the Russian Empire with its
provincial administrative organization. It also left the door open to the
incorporation of new members, for the Bolsheviks expected the revolu-
tion to spread further. On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of
Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics approved a Declara-
tion on the formation of the USSR. The Declaration stressed that the
USSR would serve as “a reliable bulwark against world capitalism” but
at the same time would be “a new decisive step on the path of unify-
ing the working people of all countries into the Global Socialist Soviet
Republic.”24
The Great Seal of the USSR, adopted in 1923, represented the new
state. It boasted a globe, a rising sun, the motto: “Proletarians of All
Countries Unite!” from the Communist Manifesto (1848), and a hammer
and sickle to represent the unity of the workers and the peasants. Ironi-
cally, the first version (Figure 12) contained a glaring error that was cor-
rected only in the 1937 revision (Figure 13): the handle of the sickle was
depicted upside down, a feature any peasant would have noticed instantly.
The banners proclaimed the Soviet motto in the various languages of the

24. A. S. Orlov, ed., Khrestomatiia po istorii Rossii s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei
(Moscow: Prospekt, 1999), 224.
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 41

Figure 12: Great Seal of the Figure 13: Great Seal of the
USSR (1923) USSR (1937)

constituent republics of the USSR, which had increased from six to

eleven during the intervening years.
Ensuring the security of the fledgling Soviet state and rebuilding the
war-ravaged and deindustrialized economy were major concerns for the
Bolsheviks in the 1920s. During these years, the Soviet leaders inces-
santly pursued diplomatic recognition and commercial opportunities
from “the capitalist world.” These efforts yielded both setbacks and suc-
cesses. Britain officially recognized the Soviet Union in 1924, France
did so in 1925, and the United States, belatedly, followed suit in 1933.
This shift in Bolshevik priorities empowered the diplomacy-driven Peo-
ple’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, whose head, Georgii Chicherin
(1872–1936), worried about diplomatic risks of Comintern’s revolution-
ary approach to foreign relations. Trade also increased, but on Bolshevik
terms. A state monopoly on foreign trade was established in April 1918,
followed by the creation of several state agencies for trade with Western
countries, including the All-Russian Co-operative Society (ARCOS) in
London in 1920 and the American Trade Corporation (AMTORG)
in New York in 1924. These wholly state-controlled front organiza-
tions became important actors in the Soviet foreign relations apparatus.
Generally, foreign trade was meant to focus on rebuilding and modern-
izing Soviet Russia’s industrial base, not importing consumer products.
Exports peaked in 1930 at 3.612 million rubles and imports in 1931 at
42 Historical Essay

3.851 million rubles in constant 1950 rubles,25 before declining in the

course of the Great Depression.
While state interests were gaining ground, revolutionary interests
remained a prominent factor in Soviet foreign policy in the course of the
1920s. The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was treated as
a technical advisory board by the Politburo leaders, who were unwilling
to give up their commitment to worldwide revolutionary transformation
by means of the Comintern in exchange for the normalization of diplo-
matic relations. Chicherin compared such a concession to a pope giving
up the Catholic Church.26
These competing interests clashed in 1923 when, in response
to Germany’s failure to pay war reparations, France occupied the
industrial Ruhr Valley. The initial Soviet response was driven by
state interests. French domination of Germany could pose a potential
threat to the USSR, so the Soviets condemned the French action,
warned Poland not to get involved, and expressed general support for
the Weimar government. Then the German Communist Party called
for general strike, which was followed by revolutionary turmoil in
Thuringia, Saxony, and Hamburg. Once more it seemed that Europe,
or at least Germany, was moving towards revolution. The Bolsheviks
were faced with a dilemma: Should they promote revolution in
Germany, which would undermine the Weimar government, or focus
on diplomacy, because a strong Weimar Republic benefited Soviet
state security? They opted for the former. Speaking to party activists
in Moscow on September 29, Zinoviev boldly asserted, “events in
Germany are opening a new page in the history of world revolution.”27
Days earlier, the Politburo and the Central Committee, having
explored the tantalizing prospects of a Soviet Germany’s alliance with
the USSR and the eventual creation of “a Union of Soviet Republics
of Europe and Asia,” proclaimed that “the interests of the USSR in the

25. See Appendix B in Gordon W. Morrell, Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution:
Anglo-Soviet Relations and the Metro-Vickers Crisis (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1995), 182.
26. Michael Jabara Carley, Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Soviet-Western Relations
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 326, 418.
27. Grigorii Zinoviev, “Rech na sobranii chlenov i kandidatov RKP Sokolnicheskogo
raiona (29 sentiabria 1923 g.),” Kommunisticheskaia revoliutsiia, no. 17–18 (1923): 3–22
[here: 3]. We thank Gleb Albert for bringing this source to our attention.
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 43

final analysis, of course, coincide with the interests of the German and
entire international proletariat.”28
German revolutionary turmoil in 1923 fizzled and turned out to be
the last ray of hope for an imminent revolution in Europe as well as a
crushing disappointment to rank-and-file activists in the USSR.29 Immi-
nent or not, the Bolsheviks retained their faith in the world’s revolution-
ary future and devoted more attention and resources to propaganda,
training, and organizational work not only in Europe, but in other parts
of the world as well. Again, they drew on Lenin’s analysis of imperialism
as the final stage of capitalism and on their own revolutionary experi-
ence: with sufficient effort and commitment the British and the French
empires could meet the Russian Empire’s fate, they believed.
In January 1924, Lenin died. Four main rivals—all old Bolsheviks—
now vied more openly for power. A brilliant orator, military leader, orga-
nizer, and intellectual, Trotsky was the obvious contender. In fact, the
others teamed up to thwart his rise. Zinoviev, the Party boss of Leningrad
(as Petrograd was called after Lenin’s death), had a strong power base in the
old capital. Lev Kamenev (1883–1936) was acting chair of the Soviet gov-
ernment during Lenin’s illness and Zinoviev’s close ally. Both, despite their
hesitancy in October 1917, were, like Trotsky, on the more radical wing of
the Party. Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938), a leading party intellectual and
editor of the newspaper Pravda, was more moderate and an enthusiastic
supporter of the New Economic Policy. Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), the
Georgian-born Secretary General of the Party’s Central Committee and
the closest associate of Lenin, came out on top because of his control of
patronage jobs in the Party, clever self-effacement during the struggles for
power, and tactical brilliance. It also helped that in 1924, in part because
of the failure of European revolution, he formulated an important foreign
policy revision to Leninism, an idea encapsulated in the slogan “Socialism
in One Country.” Socialism, Stalin argued, could be built in Russia even
if revolution never occurred in Europe. The USSR continued to promote

28. Zinoviev Report to the Central Committee, September 23, 1923, Russian State
Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), f. 17, op. 2, d. 101, ll. 4–13 ob., cited in
G. M. Adibekov, Z. G. Adibekova, eds., Politburo TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b) i Komintern:
1919–1943: Dokumenty (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004), 187, 192, 194, 195.
29. See Gleb J. Albert, “‘German October Is Approaching’: Internationalism, Activists,
and the Soviet State in 1923,” Revolutionary Russia 24, no. 2 (December 2011), 111–42.
44 Historical Essay

revolution worldwide but more than ever was seen by the Soviet leadership
as its indispensable anchor state.
In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks opened four international schools
within the USSR to educate and train revolutionaries from around
the world. Two such schools opened in Moscow in the fall of 1921.
While the Communist University of the National Minorities of the
West catered to political activists from western Soviet regions as well
as from countries of central and eastern Europe, the Communist Uni-
versity of the Toilers of the East opened its doors to students from
the Soviet republics in Asia and to international students mostly from
China, India, Indochina, and the Middle East (see Document 2.19).
Four years later the University’s Chinese Department was split off to
give birth to the Sun Yat-sen University, which focused more specifically
on activists from the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party.
The following year the International Lenin School was instituted by the
Comintern specifically for Communists from Europe and North Amer-
ica, as well as China. Thousands of students attended these schools,
receiving ideological indoctrination and practical training in methods of
revolutionary work. Many of them rose to positions of prominence in
the worldwide revolutionary movement. The schools’ alumni included
such Communist Party leaders, statesmen, and heads of state as Iosip
Broz Tito, Harry Haywood, Wladyslaw Gomulka, Erich Honecker,
Nikolaos Zachariadis, Li Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Ho Chi Minh, Kha-
lid Bagdash, and Sen Katayama (see Map 6, p. 49). Perhaps the most
emphatic manifestation of revolutionary interest in this period could
be observed in the Bolsheviks’ approach to China. Soon after seizing
power, they abrogated the Russian Empire’s unequal treaties signed
with China after the crushing of the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901).
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1920 and soon
joined the Comintern.
Yet the Bolshevik leaders realized, and the Comintern’s relationship with
the CCP clearly showed, that promoting revolution abroad was an enor-
mously complicated mission that required caution as well as boldness, aware-
ness of changing social conditions, and political maneuvering of the highest
caliber. In the course of the 1920s, the Bolshevik consensus was that the
Chinese Communists were too weak for a Communist-led revolution and
therefore had to work within a broader framework of the Guomindang—
a revolutionary organization with a nationalist and anti-colonialist
 The Bolsheviks Engage the World 45

agenda headed by Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975). The Bolsheviks actively

supported the Guomindang, though only temporarily. As Stalin remarked
on April 5, 1927, it had “to be utilized to the end, squeezed out like a lemon,
and then flung away.”30 Yet Chiang Kai-shek refused to be “squeezed.” In
1926–1927, Chiang’s relations with the Communists soured as he con-
solidated his personal power. On April 18, 1927, he declared the creation
of a separate government in Nanking, breaking ties with the left-leaning
Guomindang government in Wuhan, a booming transportation and
industrial hub in central China and a hotbed of communist activism. The
Wuhan government had in turn grown increasingly hostile to the Com-
munists because of their strong appeal and influence in the region. The
splintering of the Guomindang thus created a real prospect for the political
marginalization of the Chinese Communist Party. The Bolshevik leaders
advised the Chinese Communists to remain tactically within the Wuhan
government and allied to the Guomindang, while seeking to bring about a
communist revolution (see Document 2.10). The Bolsheviks sent money,
arms, and advisers. On December 10, 1927, the Politburo authorized a
major uprising in Canton, but it failed, leading to waves of anticommunist
repression. It then took the Chinese Communist Party two more decades
to build itself into a formidable political and military force and to defeat the
Guomindang in 1949.
As the revolutionary crisis in China unfolded, the Bolsheviks faced a
security crisis in Europe. In May 1927, the police raided ARCOS’s office
in London, citing continued Soviet attempts to spy and promote revolu-
tion in Britain. The British government severed diplomatic relations with
the USSR, triggering “the war scare” in Moscow. The Bolshevik response
to the crises of 1927 was based on the interplay of revolutionary and
state interests. On one hand, in 1928, the Comintern proclaimed that
the post-revolutionary stabilization of capitalism had ended and that the
“Third Period” of the development of capitalism would directly lead to
its economic and revolutionary collapse. To many, this judgment seemed
especially prescient after the onset of the Great Depression the follow-
ing year. On the other hand, by the late 1920s the Comintern was firmly
fused with the machinery of the Soviet state and worked closely with
the Cheka’s successor, the OGPU, and with military officials to advance

30. As quoted in Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, 2d rev. ed. (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), 162.
46 Historical Essay

Soviet state interests.31 Survivability of the Soviet state and its readiness
for war, defensive or revolutionary, was seen by Stalin and his supporters
as more vital than ever and dictated rapid industrialization, agricultural
modernization, militarization, political rigidity, and the destruction of
enemies from within.
Not everyone agreed with Stalin’s view of the Soviet state. Leon Trotsky
and his allies worked hard to keep the revolutionary flame alive, claiming to
be the true bearers of the Russian revolutionary legacy and goals. Expelled
from the Soviet Union in 1929 as Stalin’s archenemy, Trotsky along
with his followers had tried at first to radicalize the Third International
(Comintern) from within by forming the International Left Opposition.
When that effort failed, Trotsky called for the creation of a Fourth Inter-
national intended to mobilize workers and bring about a revolutionary
transformation of the world amid the Great Depression, spread of fascist
regimes, and increasing likelihood of a new world war (see Document 2.11).
Stalin saw Trotsky’s approach as recklessly provocative and no
less dangerous than fascism itself. By the mid-1930s, state inter-
est and state security were paramount to Soviet foreign policy, as
the Soviet state faced an existential threat potentially more dan-
gerous than the German offensive of 1918 or the anti-Bolshevik
offensives of the Civil War. Fully aware that Hitler viewed Russia as
potential “living space” (Lebensraum) for the German people, the Soviet
government was eager to meet the emerging threat of imperial conquest
through a military buildup and robust state-interest-driven diplomacy,
and was more than ever open to working with other states to create an
international environment conducive to peace and stability in Europe.
In 1932, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Poland
and, in 1934, finally joined the League of Nations. When the civil war
broke out in Spain, Soviet support for the Spanish Republic’s struggle
against General Francisco Franco was motivated by concerns about the
rise of fascism, not by revolutionary interest. A defensive Franco-Soviet
Pact and a mutual assistance treaty with Czechoslovakia were reached
in 1935, followed by frantic and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to

31. Top Comintern activists teamed up with leading Soviet military experts, includ-
ing Vasilii Blukher and Mikhail Tukhachevskii, to produce a detailed analysis of suc-
cessful strategies of revolutionary insurrection. The book was published in German in
1928 and in French in 1931, but only appeared in English in 1970. See A. Neuberg,
Armed Insurrection (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1970).
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 47

forge an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance against Hitler in 1939. Soviet

diplomatic efforts notwithstanding, the cumulative impact of earlier
revolutionary policies remained profound and resulted in intense and
widely held suspicion about Soviet goals and intentions abroad.32
In the final analysis, the pursuit of the revolutionary interest in Soviet
foreign policy during the interwar years exerted a powerful impact in
Europe and beyond. Prodded by the Comintern, European Communists
were animated by a nearly eschatological expectation of the “second com-
ing” of the Russian Revolution. This attitude alienated the broader and
more moderate left while re-energizing the right and the extreme right.
Ultimately, revolutionary-interest-based Soviet policies failed to revolu-
tionize Europe, but by eroding goodwill and trust in international rela-
tions, they contributed to the outbreak of another world war.

The Russian Revolution and the

Power of Communism

The global power of the Russian Revolution cannot be fully grasped

solely in terms of the destruction it wrought on one mighty empire, or
of the Bolsheviks’ organized efforts to transform Russia and globally
spread the Russian revolutionary wave. As a source of both fear and
hope, the Russian Revolution made a profound impact on people’s hearts
and minds worldwide. Indeed, the range of reactions around the world
was truly dramatic. As the French communist journalist Pierre Pascal
(1890–1983) put it: “Some, with more or less bad faith, insist on depict-
ing a country of fire and blood, subjected to I don’t know what gang of
brigands, ‘enemies of the human species,’ wreaking only devastation, pil-
lage, and murder. Others believe naïvely that the capitalist and bourgeois

32. A detailed discussion of the role of trust in the USSR can be found in Geoffrey
Hosking (Guest Editor), “Trust and Distrust in the USSR,” Slavonic & East European
Review, Special Issue, vol. 91, no. 1 (2013). The critical role of distrust and suspicion
towards the Soviet Union in Europe is discussed in R. H. Haigh, D. S. Morris, and A.
R. Peters, Soviet Foreign Policy, the League of Nations and Europe, 1917–1939 (Totowa,
NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1986), 123–28. They nevertheless argue that aggressive
ideology “tempered by realpolitik” defined Soviet foreign policy throughout the entire
interwar period.
48 Historical Essay

system are but a dim memory in Russia and that a perfect communist
society has taken their place.”33
Beyond intellectual debates and activities of professional revolution-
aries lay the world of suffering and social tensions exacerbated by the
calamities of the war that had just ended. Anger, resistance, and revo-
lutionary turmoil broke out in both the devastated European imperial
core and the colonial and semicolonial periphery. Map 6 shows a world
in revolt, of which the Russian Revolution was an integral and critical
element.34
This section will seek to convey the variety of ways in which people
in many lands perceived and interpreted the Russian Revolution and to
show—using selected examples among countless others—how these per-
ceptions in turn affected their worldviews, pivotal choices, and actions. In
broadest terms, responses to the Russian Revolution could be character-
ized as either hopeful or alarmist.
It can in fact be argued that Russian revolutionary ideas began to
arouse global expectations even before revolution shattered the Russian
Empire. A major industrialization drive of the 1890s gave Russia one
of the fastest industrial growth rates in the world, and brought to life a
burgeoning population of industrial workers and small armies of radical
intellectuals passionately seeking to “revolutionize” them. Thousands of
Russian revolutionaries were forced to escape Russia and used France,
Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States as safe havens for
their underground work in Russia. This put them in close contact with
their Western counterparts, especially the radical socialist minority that
rejected the Great War. Equally important, hundreds of thousands of
Russian industrial workers took part in the mass migration from Russia
and eastern Europe to the United States. From 1881–1914, some three
million Russian subjects (Russians, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, etc.) made
their home in America. There they encountered a much more developed
industrial economy, in which the working conditions still left a lot to be
desired. Russian-speaking activists championed the interests of Ameri-
can workers, attacking injustice and inequality. Such attacks resonated
with many newcomers from eastern Europe.

33. Pierre Pascal, En Russie rouge (Paris: Édition de la Librairie de l’Humanité, 1921), 5.

34. This map is not comprehensive and does not imply direct causal connection with
the Russian Revolution. It is meant to convey the context, scope, and diversity of con-
temporaneous revolutionary movements in the world.
MAP 6: THE WORLD IN REVOLT, 1905–1931
FINLAND YAKUTIA
1918 RUSSIA 1921
NETHERLANDS LATVIA
1918 HUNGARY 1905, 1917
1918-20
IRELAND 1919
1916
UKRAINE
GERMANY 1917-21 OUTER MONGOLIA
1917, 1918, 1921-24
1919, 1923 TURKEY
1908, 1919-23,
PORTUGAL SLOVAKIA 1927-31
1910 1919
SYRIA CHINA
BULGARIA 1925-27 1911, 1927
1923
ALGERIA
1916 EGYPT INDIA
1918-19 1919, 1928-31
MEXICO
1910 BURMA
NIGER
1930-34
1916-17 ~
NGHÊ-TINH PROVINCE OF
FRENCH INDOCHINA
EL SALVADOR
1930-31
1932

NICARAGUA
1927-33
INDONESIA
1926-27

GERMAN EAST AFRICA

BRAZIL 1905-06
1930

GERMAN
SOUTH WEST AFRICA
1904-08
Major Revolutions and Rebellions
The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Heads of state or leaders or founders of SOUTH AFRICA

1914-15
Communist Parties who were alumni of:
Sun Yat-sen University
Communist University of the Toilers of the East
Communist University of the National Minorities of the West
International Lenin School
49
50 Historical Essay

Undoubtedly, the success of the Russian Revolution increased the

appeal of the Bolshevik interpretation of Marxism. Many revolutionary
activists around the world embraced both the vision of communism and
the Bolshevik pathway towards it. Their hope was buttressed by confi-
dence that in a relatively short time the Russian Revolution would spill
out into a world proletarian revolution and trigger a global communist
transformation.
The experience of John Reed (1887–1920) demonstrates just how
powerful the experience of the Russian Revolution could be.35 An Ameri-
can reporter and left-wing political activist, he arrived in Russia in the fall
of 1917, shortly before the Bolshevik seizure of power. A vocal opponent
of the Great War, a year earlier he had traveled around eastern Europe
and had observed war-related devastation and suffering. To Reed, it was
capitalism that had made the catastrophic global war possible, and he
welcomed the Bolsheviks’ vision as, to him, the only viable alternative.
Reed returned to the United States in April 1918, more radicalized than
ever. In 1919, he actively participated in the Left Wing Section of the
Socialist Party of America, accusing the Party’s central leadership of a
lack of revolutionary zeal and calling for greater worker involvement in
the world revolutionary movement (see Document 3.1). Later in the
year, Reed was purged from the Socialist Party’s National Convention
and helped found the Communist Labor Party of America. After his
indictment on sedition charges, he returned to Russia to work for the
Comintern. He died of typhus in 1920 and was granted the rare privilege
of burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
John Reed was not the only American inspired by the Russian Revolu-
tion. Even though the United States emerged victorious from the Great
War and avoided the economic devastation suffered by other victorious
powers, it was not immune from growing social unrest. On February 6,
1919, a general strike broke out in Seattle, bringing the city to a stand-
still for five days.36 The general strike was an act of labor solidarity with
shipyard workers, who had downed their tools on January 21 in order
to secure higher wages. The strike was not spontaneous, but the result
of decisions made by union locals. It proceeded peacefully, as strikers

35. See Eric Homberger, John Reed (Manchester and New York: Manchester Univer-
sity Press, 1990).
36. See Harvey O’Connor, Revolution in Seattle: A Memoir (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1964), 90, 94, 102–3, 119, 158–59, 198–201, 210–11, 244.
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 51

sought to maintain core city services, as well as establish an alternative

food distribution network. While the strike ended in an orderly fashion,
the authorities’ reaction to the strike was severe and involved arrests and
the persecution of radical activists. To some of the strikers, the Russian
Revolution served as an inspiring example (see Document 3.2).
Still, in the first years after the Russian Revolution its impact was the
strongest in Europe. Strikes and uprisings rocked Germany, Hungary,
Italy, and Spain, and Soviet-style soldier and worker councils made claims
on political as well as economic power. As mentioned in the previous sec-
tion, it seemed for a while that Germany was on the brink of a full-scale
revolution. Among the revolutionaries who came closest to replicating
the success of the Russian Revolution was Bela Kun (1886–1938).37 A
Hungarian Jew, Kun fought against the Russians in the Austro-Hungarian
army and was captured as a prisoner of war. He joined the Bolshevik
party organization in Tomsk, Siberia, and experienced the Russian Revo-
lution firsthand. In early 1918, he moved to Petrograd and cofounded the
Hungarian group of the Russian Communist Party. In November he left
Russia for Hungary. No longer a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Hungary was in the midst of severe economic, social, and political crises.
On March 21, 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed,
with Kun as Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Revolutionary Gov-
erning Council. The Republic lasted for a mere 133 days before being
crushed by Romanian forces. Kun returned to Russia with an unshaken
belief in the global applicability of the Bolshevik revolutionary strategy
(see Document 3.3).
Yet not all revolutionaries agreed to accept the Russian Revolution as
a model to follow. Contrary to Bela Kun, Otto Rühle (1874–1943), a
member of the radical German Spartacist League, argued that Bolshevik
success in Russia, while admirable and important, could not be replicated
in other countries due to its flawed emphasis on political coercion. To
leftist radicals like Rühle, the Russian Revolution was a cautionary les-
son of unjustified repression and state bureaucratization that set back
the prospects of communism (see Document 3.4). In 1920, Rühle was
among those who split from the German Communist Party (KPD),
which they believed to be adhering too closely to the Bolshevik model, in
order to form an independent Communist Workers’ Party of Germany

37. See Gyorgy Borsanyi, The Life of a Communist Revolutionary: Bela Kun (Boulder,
CO: Social Science Monographs, 1993).
52 Historical Essay

(KAPD). The following year, the KAPD left the Comintern and eventu-
ally splintered into smaller communist groups.38
The Russian Revolution appealed not just to professional revolutionar-
ies. Many intellectuals believed that capitalism, especially after the Great
War, was irredeemable not only on economic, but on moral grounds.
They admired the Russian Revolution’s anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist
fervor but had reservations about where it stood in relation to human-
istic values and freedom. When the French Communist novelist Henri
Barbusse (1873–1935) accused left-leaning intellectuals of trying to stay
above the fray instead of joining the cause of the communist revolution,
Romain Rolland (1866–1944), a Nobel-Prize-winning French author,
responded with a sympathetic, but cautious rejoinder (see Document
3.5). A lively intellectual debate followed, drawing contributions from
over forty writers and publicists from France, Germany, Switzerland, and
Italy. The debate centered on issues of social struggle and violence, but
also on the meaning of individual autonomy and intellectual freedom.39
Like Barbusse, the Russian-born American anarchist Emma Goldman
(1869–1940), hailed the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks. Deported
back to Russia in 1919 by American officials for radical activity, she soon
discovered many of the same problems that concerned Rolland. It took her
a year to come to terms with what she observed. Revolutionary Russia, as
it turned out, was now a Bolshevik state, intolerant of individual freedoms
and political dissent. Goldman was particularly shocked by the brutal gov-
ernment suppression of worker strikes and the Kronstadt sailor rebellion
in 1921. She left Russia later that year (see Document 3.6).
Goldman’s deportation from the United States took place in the heat of
the “First Red Scare”—a brief but intense period of anticommunist fears
and paranoia that affected the American public sphere as well as various
government agencies in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In Novem-
ber 1919 and January 1920, US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
(1872–1936) initiated raids resulting in the arrest of thousands and the
deportation of hundreds of suspected radicals, often without due process.
The Red Scare subsided after Palmer’s stern warning of an imminent
revolution in May 1920 failed to materialize. It nevertheless had a lasting

38. See Pierre Broué, The German Revolution, 1917–1923, trans. John Archer, ed. Ian
Birchall and Brian Pearce (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006).
39. David James Fischer, Romain Rolland and the Politics of International Engagement
(Berkley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1988), 80–111.
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 53

impact on American political and public life by forging a rigid ideological

conception of “Americanism” and branding a variety of radical views and
activities as “un-American.” The cartoon in Figure 14 captures the fears of
those who believed that the Russian Revolution was a threat to civiliza-
tion, a development ridden with chaos, violence, and devastation.
Admittedly, the Russian Revolution did not by itself cause the Red
Scare; other forces had also been at work. For nearly three decades, rapid
industrialization and waves of immigration from eastern and central
Europe had challenged the widely cherished myth of a homogenous,
individualistic, and harmonious
American society, and had given rise
to a growing suspicion and resent-
ment toward foreign radicals, and
even immigrants more broadly. But
the spectacular success of the Russian
Revolution, the postwar resurgence
of the labor movement, and anarchist
bomb attacks turned this resentment
into fear. Furthermore, the defeat of
the Central Powers, whose leaders
had often been portrayed by war-
time propaganda as barbaric and a
danger to “civilization,” left an empty Figure 14: “Put Them Out and
niche in many people’s minds that Keep Them Out” (1919)
was quickly filled by perceptions of
pro-Bolshevik activists who seemed to care more about socialist revolu-
tion than about America. Revolutionary subversion became a convenient
explanation for a host of America’s postwar ills.
The fear of the Russian Revolution was even stronger in Europe.
European political elites were alarmed about the Bolsheviks’ revolu-
tionary policies and domestic social unrest because many countries in
postwar Europe seemed just as susceptible to revolution as the Russian
Empire had been. When in 1919 Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd
George contemplated involving Soviet Russia in the Paris Peace Confer-
ence, called by victorious powers to set peace terms for Germany and its
allies they realized that they could count on support from neither one
of the other conference participants (particularly French Prime Minis-
ter Georges Clemenceau), “nor the public opinion of our countries which
was frightened by Bolshevik violence and feared its spread,” as Lloyd
54 Historical Essay

George later admitted.40 In fact, some, like Danish diplomat and soon-
to-be foreign minister Harald Scavenius, voiced alarm about the spread
of Bolshevism to Germany and called for its speedy destruction by mili-
tary means (see Document 3.7). There was, however, little appetite in
Europe for such a far-reaching military campaign. A key, but understand-
able, result of the Bolshevik Revolution was to exclude Russia from the
postwar settlement negotiations, which weakened the emerging inter-
war security system and probably made it easier for Hitler to pursue his
vision of world domination.41
More than any other event, the Russian Revolution, along with
Germany’s defeat in World War I, shaped Adolf Hitler’s worldview.42 He
drew three principal lessons from it. First, its evolution underscored the
critical role of oral propaganda for stirring and leading the masses. Second,
Hitler concluded that in order for his movement to be effective, it had to
offer not just specific policy solutions, but an inspiring vision of the future.
Finally, he saw in the Russian Empire a country and a culture that was
crushed first and foremost by Jews in Bolshevik attire. To Hitler, the Rus-
sian Revolution was proof that Germany could suffer the same fate, unless
the German people rose to resist communist propaganda. At the same time,
he was profoundly skeptical about the stability and viability of “Jewish-
dominated” Soviet Russia. In Hitler’s view, Russia’s “rotten structure” of
governance made it an appealing target for German conquest and coloniza-
tion, a unique opportunity to turn Germany into a vast continental power
on par with the British Empire and the United States (see Document 3.8).
The revolutionary collapse of the Russian Empire together with the
rising appeal of internationalist communist ideals and activism served
as a rallying point for extreme nationalist and fascist groups across the
European continent, facilitating their rise to power first in Italy, then in
central Europe, and finally in Germany and in Spain.
While Great Britain’s liberal democracy survived, British politics were
not immune to fears inspired by the Russian Revolution. On October 8,
1924, a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons brought down

40. See Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1996), 161–62 (quotation: 162n105).
41. See Dominic Lieven, Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia
(London: Allen Lane, 2015) 362–64.
42. See Eugene Davidson, The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazism, 1st
University of Missouri Press pbk. ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997),
101–18.
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 55

the first Labor government in British history. Formed in January by Prime

Minister Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), it had been under fire for
restoring diplomatic relations with the USSR, signing the Anglo-Soviet
Trade Agreement, and most immediately for refusing to prosecute a com-
munist editor for incitement to mutiny. A major political scandal broke
out when just days before the election the Daily Mail published a letter
supposedly written by the Chairman of the Comintern, Grigorii Zinoviev,
to the British Communist Party urging it to engage in subversive activi-
ties (see Document 3.9). The letter became a welcome propaganda gift to
the opposition, as shown in Figure 15. Historians debate whether the let-
ter actually helped to tip the electoral scales in favor of the Conservatives,
though they agree it was a forgery. As such, the letter sheds light not on
Comintern activities in Britain, but on ways in which perceptions and fears
of revolutionary communism affected British politics and public discourse.
In the following decade, as Stalin pursued rapid industrialization and
collectivization and used brutal force to destroy his real and imagined
enemies, many Europeans continued to perceive Soviet Russia and the
revolutionary appeal of communism as an equal, if not greater, threat
to international stability and security than Nazism and fascism. One of
these many was Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), whose views and
actions proved pivotal to European security, when he served as British
Prime Minister from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain viewed
even the February Revolution skeptically. To him, it was a manifesta-
tion of a revolutionary ferment “in all the unsteady brains of the world,”
which could only hurt, not help, the war cause. From the first weeks of
the Bolshevik seizure of power, he believed the Revolution had plunged
Russia into chaos. His only consolation was that this catastrophe would
sober up revolutionaries in other countries: “If the Russian Revolution
had been a success instead of a complete disaster, it would have had a
very deep and ugly reverberation over here.” Like most members of the
British conservative political establishment, he was deeply concerned
with Soviet attempts to finance, infiltrate, and influence the British labor
movement and radical left. Like most, he did not doubt the authenticity
of the forged “Zinoviev letter.”43 The British general strike in May 1926

43. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: MacMillan, 1970), 79–80
(“unsteady brains”); Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (London and Bur-
lington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 366; Robert Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary
Letters (Aldershot, Burlington, Singapore, and Sydney: Ashgate, 2000), 1:234–235,
257 (“ugly reverberation”), 320, 323; 2:133, 305, 353; 3:356.
56 Historical Essay

Figure 15: “Vote for MacDonald and Me” (Punch magazine, 1924)

only reinforced suspicions and fears of Soviet involvement as the Polit-

buro channeled funds to the strikers and the Comintern gave orders to
the British Communist Party to politicize the strike and bring down the
Conservative government. Chamberlain’s “diary letters” to his sisters (see
Document 3.10) confirm that his unease about “the Bolshies” persisted
throughout the 1930s. Despite pressure from opposition leaders and
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 57

some fellow Conservatives like Winston Churchill (1874–1965), Cham-

berlain remained deeply skeptical about drawing closer to the Bolshe-
viks, thus making the forging of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet military alliance
against Hitler in 1939 unlikely and ultimately impossible.
Chamberlain was not alone in his skepticism. Profound suspicion
of Soviet Russia pervaded the East European capitals. Their governing
elites had directly experienced the Russian Revolution and saw their
countries as continuously threatened by it. In 1938, the “barrier policy”
of Poland and Romania made any Soviet assistance to Czechoslovakia
unfeasible. In 1939 the Baltic states refused to enter into any security
agreement with the USSR that would allow Soviet military intervention.
Poland, mindful of the Soviet revolutionary goals in the Polish-Soviet
War of 1920 and fearful of losing its eastern provinces, refused point
blank to grant Soviet troops the right of transit through the Polish ter-
ritory, even for the purpose of rebuffing the Germans. This, to borrow
a term William Irvine applied to French conservative politics,44 was a
“war-revolution nexus”: a belief that a military conflict, particularly with
Soviet involvement, could morph into revolutionary turmoil. This belief
was rooted in an ideological rejection of communism, in an apprehension
about Soviet foreign policy goals, but also in the historical memory of the
Russian Revolution.
British unease about Soviet Russia was rooted not just in history,
but in the realization that the British Empire was even more globally
extended and diverse than the Russian Empire had been, and there-
fore potentially even more vulnerable to revolutionary unrest. Indeed,
the Russian Revolution impressed many anti-colonial activists fighting
against British imperial domination of their countries and lands. The
ardent commitment of Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) to India’s free-
dom can be traced to his early years. Born in India, Nehru studied in
Britain before returning home to practice law and pursue a nationalist
political agenda. A cosmopolitan background made Nehru attuned to
the international dimensions of India’s struggle for self-rule and even-
tual independence. He was encouraged by the Boer War (1899–1902),
which challenged British dominance in South Africa, as well as by the

44. As quoted in Michael Jabara Carley, 1939: The Alliance that Never Was and the
Coming of World War II (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1999), xv. One could argue that the Bol-
sheviks embraced the reverse version of this nexus, expecting revolutionary turmoil to
spark a war with Soviet Russia’s involvement.
58 Historical Essay

Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), which triggered the Russian Revo-

lution of 1905. The cataclysm of the Great War and the collapse of the
Russian Empire in 1917 filled him with optimism about India’s prospects
for breaking free from the British Empire (see Document 3.11). Marxism
helped Nehru to develop a universal conceptual framework of change,
in which India’s struggle against British rule was but one example of the
world’s transition from capitalism to a superior social order. He was not
alone in this thinking, for, in his words, “The younger men and women
of the [Indian National] Congress, who used to read Bryce on Democra-
cies45 and Motley46 and Keith47 and Mazzini,48 were now reading, when
they could get them, books on socialism and communism and Russia.”49
Nehru’s optimism, patience, and perseverance ultimately bore fruit. He
became the first prime minister of an independent India in 1947, after
thirty-five years of engagement in anti-colonial struggle and politics.
An awareness of the Russian Revolution’s significance for anti-colonial
struggle spread throughout the developing world, though it took time
for many activists to realize its potential and appeal. Josiah Tshangana
Gumede (1867–1946) was a black Christian of Zulu ancestry and
a founding member of the South African Native National Congress,
renamed the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. Despite his
earlier opposition to Bolshevism, Gumede realized that building interna-
tional support could revitalize the ANC, whose mass following declined
in the 1920s. Gumede agreed to participate in the Founding Congress of
the Comintern-sponsored League Against Imperialism, which took place
in 1927 in Brussels. Later in the year, as president general of the ANC,
Gumede journeyed to the Soviet Union to take part in the celebration
of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. He visited Moscow
and then traveled around the Soviet Republic of Georgia. The experience

45. James Bryce (1838–1922), a British academic and statesman, published Modern
Democracies, 2 vols. (1921).
46. Probably John Lothrop Motley (1814–1877), an American, who authored Historic
Progress and American Democracy (1868).
47. Arthur Berriedale Keith (1879–1944) was a Scottish scholar of Sanskrit and con-
stitutional law. He authored The Constitutional Law of the British Dominions (1933) and
A Constitutional History of India, 1600–1935 (1936), among other works.
48. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) fought for Italian unification.
49. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography with Musings on Recent Events in India (Lon-
don: John Lane, 1936), 364.
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 59

was overwhelming. The Communists he met stood against racism and

accepted him as an equal. The post-revolutionary social order in Russia
appeared equally color-blind. As he solemnly declared upon his return
to South Africa, “I have been to the New Jerusalem. . . . I have brought a
key [that will] unlock the door to freedom.”50 Gumede concluded that
the Communists were allies in the black South Africans’ struggle against
British domination and racial injustice, and that their struggle was part
of a global fight against imperialism (see Document 3.12). Gumede pro-
posed a strategy of closer cooperation with the Communists, “the only
people who are with us in spirit.” His strategy met with resistance from
the more moderate activists in the ANC, as well as from some tribal lead-
ers who pointed out that the Bolsheviks had killed the tsar of Russia
and were no friends to tribal hierarchies. Even though Gumede failed to
gain immediate support for his agenda in the 1930s, after World War II
the ANC did grow into a mass-based organization that forged an alli-
ance with the South African Communist Party and has dominated post-
apartheid politics.
Many African-American radical activists promptly welcomed the
Russian Revolution, including the socialist editors of a leading African-
American magazine, the Messenger, A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979)
and Chandler Owen (1889–1967). W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a
co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), was at first skeptical of communism. An African-
American scholar, writer, and civil rights activist, Du Bois believed that
the cause of racial equality was broader than the dictates of any particu-
lar ideology. Yet witnessing entrenched, violent racism in America—for
example the widespread attacks on blacks during the Red Scare in the
“Red Summer” of 1919—outraged him. Then in 1926 he visited the
Soviet Union for two months. What he saw convinced him definitively
that racism was not just America’s national disgrace, but also an essential
by-product of global capitalism. The Russian Revolution, he concluded,
offered an alternative to capitalism and therefore to racism. Shortly
after his return to the United States, Du Bois published several articles
detailing his observations and thoughts about Soviet Russia, in which he
argued that socialism was a fair and just social order that could do away
with racial, as well as class, inequality and oppression (see Document

50. “African National Congress Welcomes Gumede,” South African Worker, vol. 12
(March 2, 1928), 2.
60 Historical Essay

3.13). He ultimately concluded that the Russian Revolution was more

profound than even the French Revolution and called the Soviet Union
the “most hopeful country on earth.” Du Bois continued to disagree with
American Communists on issues of political strategy, criticized Joseph
Stalin’s tyrannical rule, and joined the Communist Party only in 1961
(largely to protest specific repressive policies of the US government).
But his belief that socialism was capable of transforming human nature
itself only grew stronger with the decades and resonated well beyond the
NAACP.51
Although the Bolsheviks at first paid scant attention to Latin Amer-
ica, the inspirational impact of the Russian Revolution could be observed
across the continent. It appealed to those who sought a radical solution
to rural poverty, participated in the struggles of a small but growing
industrial worker class, or attacked the entrenched social and cultural
conservatism of the landed elites, especially as the concurrent revolu-
tion in Mexico (1910–1920) stopped short of completely transforming
society. This sentiment was aptly summed up by an Argentinian scholar
and activist José Ingenieros (1877–1925), who, speaking at a mass rally
in Buenos Aires in November 1918, declared that “for those who view
the course of history with a panoramic vision that ignores the trivial, the
Russian Revolution marks the arrival of social justice in the world.”52
In Chile, the Russian Revolution convinced worker activist and the
founder of the Socialist Worker’s Party, Luis Emilio Recabarren (1876–
1924), that the Bolsheviks offered the right model of evolutionary trans-
formation and in 1922 he spearheaded his party’s transformation into a
Communist Party and a member of the Comintern.
José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) was a Peruvian political thinker,
journalist, newspaper editor, and Marxist activist. In 1919, given his stri-
dent left-wing political stance, the Peruvian government arranged to send
him abroad. He traveled and lived in Europe until 1923 and came back
with a firm belief that what started in Russia was a world revolution,

51. See Gerald Horne and Mary Young, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia (West-
port, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2001), 187–89, 195–98; David L. Lewis, W.
E. B. Du Bois, a Biography (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2009), 386, 486–87, 553,
669 (quotation: 669).
52. As recounted by Anibal Ponce, Jose Ingenieros, su vida y su obra, 1926 in Obras
Completas (Buenos Aires: Ed. Hector Matera, 1957), 88–90, cited in Michael Lowy,
ed. Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present: An Anthology (New Jersey and
London: Humanities Press, 1992), 21.
 The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism 61

bound to engulf other continents. He welcomed the Comintern’s reach

to Asia (see Document 3.14) and eventually to Latin America, but later
on criticized the Comintern’s narrow focus on Peruvian workers at the
expense of the overwhelming peasant majority. One of the most original
Marxist thinkers in Latin America, Mariátegui viewed the struggles of
Peruvian peasants and indigenous people as part of a global revolution-
ary change.
In Puerto Rico, Dr. José Lanauze Rolón helped establish the Birth
Control League of Puerto Rico, but was met with fierce opposition from
the Catholic Church. Not a Communist at first, Rolón grew increasingly
interested in the Russian Revolution’s overthrow of the entire social and
political order (see Document 3.15). In 1934, he became a founding
member of the Puerto Rican Communist Party.
The country outside Europe where the Russian Revolution had the big-
gest impact was China. Then in his twenties, Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
advocated China’s modernization and supported the principles of repub-
lican government. Mao became an adamant supporter of Sun Yat-sen
(1866–1925), the first president of the Republic of China, which emerged
amid the Revolution of 1911 and the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. At
that time, Mao was aware of communist ideas, but was not in a rush to
embrace them. His shift in attitude took place as China’s republican gov-
ernment failed to bring order and stability to the country, while the liv-
ing conditions of China’s peasants and workers remained abysmal. As an
assistant librarian at Peking University, Mao read avidly about the Bol-
sheviks, their policies, and ideology. The Bolshevik view of the Great War
as fundamentally imperialist made all the more sense to Mao as the Ver-
sailles Conference had handed control of China’s northeastern Shandong
Province from Germany to Japan. To Chinese patriots there could be no
greater hypocrisy, no greater contrast between the democratic rhetoric of
the victorious powers and reality. Echoing the views of one of the founders
of the Communist Party of China (the CPC), Li Dazhao (1888–1927),
Mao wrote in 1921 that “absolute liberalism, anarchism, even democracy”
were fine in theory, but not in practice. The communist revolution in pre-
dominantly rural Russia, on the other hand, seemed to offer an immedi-
ate and practical recipe for China’s woes.53 Later that year, Mao became
one of the thirteen delegates to the First National Congress of the CPC.

53. See A. Pantsov, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927 (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
62 Historical Essay

He was not the only one to be impressed by the Russian Revolution. As

one Communist activist later put it, “Until the Chinese learned about the
Russian Revolution, we were no good at politics and we made fools of
ourselves. However, now the Chinese Communists have learned from the
Russians how to have a revolution and no one laughs any more about the
Chinese revolution.”54 It took Chinese Communists twenty-eight years
of struggle against regional warlords, Japanese forces, and rival national-
ists to come to power on a revolutionary wave that first rose in Russia in
1917 (see Document 3.16).
In the course of the two decades following the Russian Revolution, its
impact reached all corners of the world touching the hearts and minds
of millions of people. In the second half of the twentieth century, the
mystique of the Russian Revolution began to fade as its main progeny,
the Soviet Union, grew increasingly ossified and then collapsed under the
pressure of economic, political, and nationalist forces it could no longer
suppress or contain. Both the hopes and fears inspired by the Russian
Revolution no longer haunt the developed or the developing world. The
Russian Revolution powerfully impacted world history in the twentieth
century, but does its influence extend to the present? As the Epilogue
suggests, shock waves of the Russian Revolution continue to reverberate
even in contemporary Eurasian geopolitics.

A Historiographical Note

The ripple effects of the Russian Revolution assumed many forms and
lasted for decades. It took time for mature scholarly analysis to develop as
well. By mid-century, the Soviet Union appeared at the peak of its power
and influence, which encouraged scholars to look at the Russian Revolu-
tion as a source of the Soviet Union’s success. To E. H. Carr, the British
author of a multi-volume study of Soviet Russia—the first three volumes
of which were devoted to the Russian Revolution (1950–1953)—it
marked a new era in history, in which the value of individuals and liberal
ideas diminished, perhaps irrevocably. While Carr downplayed the effec-
tiveness of the deliberate global outreach by the Bolsheviks, he pointed
to the tremendous anti-capitalist appeal of the Russian Revolution in the

54. Quoted in David Priestland, The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Mod-
ern World (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 264–65.
 A Historiographical Note 63

developing world. Most importantly, he argued that despite violence and

brutality, the Revolution led to the creation of a powerful new state, a
new system of social and political organization, and a new pathway
toward modernization.
A more skeptical view was advanced by Arnold J. Toynbee (1967),
who noted that the success of the Soviet Union paled in comparison to
the initial worldwide expectations of the Bolsheviks and their supporters.
The “myth” of the communist future gradually lost its exhilarating appeal,
and nationalism and the major historic religions ultimately proved more
potent in captivating people’s minds. Even European Communists drifted
further away from the violent revolutionary tradition. Toynbee believed
that Western political culture was by and large not receptive to Bolshe-
vik radicalism. He concluded, surprisingly, that the Russian Revolution’s
greatest impact came from its reorientation of the United States from a
revolutionary into a conservative power.
In a somewhat similar vein, a group of French historians, including
Victor Fay, Marc Ferro, and Pierre Broué, sought to examine why the rev-
olution in Russia failed to precipitate other successful revolutions in East-
ern, Central, and Western Europe (1967). They concluded that the rest of
Europe simply had not experienced economic, social, and political crises
of similar severity. Public opinion in France had been intensely focused
on not losing the Great War; nationalist agendas had remained strong in
the collapsing multinational empires of central and eastern Europe; the
extreme left in Germany, Italy, and Austria remained marginalized; and
even in Hungary, where a Soviet republic was briefly established, the revo-
lutionaries failed to pursue balanced policies towards the peasantry and
lacked the clandestine experience and structure of the Bolshevik party to
maintain their grip on power. Moreover, the French historians viewed
the Russian Revolution’s failure to spread globally as a key reason for the
increase in government coercion and repressiveness under Stalin.
Of course, as Eric Hobsbawm later pointed out, Lenin’s model of cen-
tralized and coercive party organization proved extraordinarily effective
in non-Western countries (1995). Within thirty to forty years, one-third
of humanity was living under a regime derived from the Russian Revolu-
tion. Hobsbawm also viewed the impact of the Russian Revolution in
Western countries far more favorably than Toynbee. It proved to be “the
savior of liberal capitalism,” he argued, by helping the West to win the
war against Nazi Germany and by providing incentives for reform and
accommodation of some moderate socialist demands.
64 Historical Essay

Implicit in these arguments about the limits and failures of the Rus-
sian Revolution was the view that it was a specifically Russian phe-
nomenon, not easily replicable in other countries or cultures, especially
Western ones. By contrast, Paul Dukes mapped out the impact of the
Russian Revolution on people’s minds around the world, from Germany
to Polynesia (1979). Dukes focused exclusively on the first five post-
revolutionary years and mostly on sympathetic observers. Even so, he
concluded that the Russian Revolution “belonged to the whole world.”
While it failed to meet the expectations of most of its supporters, so
did the English, American, and French Revolutions. The very fact that
it offered mankind “a rising cause,” he reasoned, was far more historically
significant than any specific failures.
Comparative studies of revolutions in the modern world worked in
the same direction. Several historians and sociologists, in particular
Crane Brinton (1965), Theda Skocpol (1979), Bailey Stone (2014), and
Jack Goldstone (2014), who have examined the Russian Revolution in a
comparative perspective, developed elaborate typologies of modern revo-
lutions. Such an approach helped conceive of the Russian Revolution as
both a global phenomenon and one of many revolutions during the past
century.
Along similar lines, Mark N. Katz has focused on how revolutions
have disrupted international order (1997). He conceptualized twentieth-
century revolutions as forming “revolutionary waves,” of which the first
was Russia’s “Marxist-Leninist wave.” Many others have followed, includ-
ing the struggle against colonialism and more recently “Arab nationalist”
and “Islamic fundamentalist” waves.
In a posthumously published work, Martin Malia interpreted the
Russian Revolution as one of many uniquely European revolutions,
which extended across the world along with the projection of Europe’s
power and influence, intellectual as well as economic (2006). The reason
why Marxist ideology, which emphasized the revolutionary agency of
industrial workers, turned out to be most successful in predominantly
agrarian societies was because Marxism originally grew out of Europe’s
pre-industrial periphery (1840s Germany) and provided ready, albeit
fundamentally defective, recipes for swift development by revolutionary
means. This made Marxism appealing to people in countries politically
and economically backward compared to Western Europe. Thus the Rus-
sian Revolution served as a springboard for projecting European notions
of modernity, progress, and change onto the wider world. Malia’s final
 Epilogue 65

assessment of the Russian Revolution, however, was deeply negative,

because of the lack of a positive legacy and the catastrophic human toll.
Peter Holquist provides a clue to the Bolsheviks’ resort to extraordinary
violence and coercion (2002). In his interpretation, Western Europe did
not only contribute ideas to this outcome but also provided the con-
text of total mobilization during the First World War, out of which the
Bolshevik revolutionary experience emerged.
Failure or not, according to Michael Richards, in terms of significance,
the Russian Revolution “set the standard for revolution in the twentieth
century, just as the French Revolution had done for the nineteenth cen-
tury” (2004). The Russian Revolution resulted not only in the creation
of a new major power—the Soviet Union—but also elicited numerous
actions and policy responses from countries not directly affected by it.
Most important, after the Russian Revolution and in part because of it,
no other revolution could occur in isolation.

Epilogue

Eurasia’s current distribution of political power and state borders—and

the ethnic, religious, national, and cultural identities and conflicts that
surround them—are to a significant degree products of the Russian
Revolution. For decades, the destructive force of the Revolution, which
led to the collapse of the Russian Empire, had been overshadowed by its
constructive legacy—the birth of a new state and the building of a new
Soviet Empire based on markedly different principles of administrative
organization, social and ethnic integration, and control. The failure and
collapse of that construction draw attention again to the profundity and
intensity of the Revolution’s original destructive impulses. A hundred
years later, the disintegration of the Russian Empire appears to have been
no less historically significant than the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
Not only was this the first European imperial collapse, which was fol-
lowed by the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian and German (and later
British, French, Belgian, Dutch, and Portuguese) empires, but the rever-
berations of that collapse continue to this day and invite the reconceptu-
alization of the “post-Soviet space” as a “post-Imperial space.”
When viewed against the backdrop of the vanished Russian imperial
borders and internal administrative divisions, Map 7 reveals some twenty
new post-Imperial states that emerged out of the revolutionary cataclysm
 66
MAP 7: RUSSIA’S POST-IMPERIAL SPACE
Present border of the Russian Federation

N O R WAY 1914 border of the Russian Empire

NETHERLANDS
DENMARK
SWEDEN 2015 Russia’s post-Imperial space with year
GERMANY of commencement
Major terrorist attacks within
Kaliningrad FINLAND 1999 Russia’s post-Imperial space
CZ. POLAND enclave
LATVIA ESTONIA EU members
SL. St. Petersburg
LITHUANIA
European Union Eastern Partnership members
HUNG. 2017
BELARUS
UKRAINE NATO and EU members
ROM. 1993 1999 2002
2014 Moscow
MOLDOVA Kiev Eurasian Economic Union members
2014
European Union Eastern Partnership and
2014 2015
Odessa Donetsk 2014 Eurasian Economic Union members
Sloviansk
2014 2014 2014 2015
Mariupol Luhansk 1999 R U S S I A
CRIMEA Volgodonsk
2014
Simferopol
2014
Black Novoazovsk
TUR.
Sea 1992 NORTH2004
OSSETIA
ABKHAZIA 1995
Budyonnovsk
Historical Essay

2004
1991 2008 Beslan 2007
GEORGIA INGUSHETIA

SOUTH OSSETIA Buynaksk 1999 CHECHNYA

19911992 2008 DAGESTAN 1991 1993 1999
SYR.
ARMENIA 1999
K A Z A K HS TA N
IRAQ 1988
Caspian
AZERBAIJAN Sea
TURKMENISTAN UZBEKISTAN

MONGOLIA
J A PA N
2010
IRAN KYRGYZSTAN KOREA
1992 2010
TADJIKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN C H I N A
PAKISTAN
 Epilogue 67

of 1917. Some were quickly absorbed by the Bolshevik-designed Soviet

Union, yet re-emerged again in the wake of its shattering in 1991 and
their fates since have differed substantially. To complicate matters, these
post-revolutionary state borders have rarely matched the boundaries of
conflicted and conflicting ethnic and cultural identities.
Russia’s “post-Imperial space” also has visionary dimensions, which
give insight into the present thinking and agenda of the Putin-led Rus-
sian government. One of the questions in the public debate about Putin’s
intentions and goals is whether he is bent on rebuilding the Soviet Union.
Such an outcome, however, would require a degree of ideological and
doctrinal cohesiveness in Russian foreign policy that it has lacked in the
post-Soviet era. Putin’s actions bear the mark of spontaneity and often
appear to be responses to short-term challenges, not part of a single grand
design. It may be more productive to think about Putin’s foreign policy
in Eurasia as broadly geared towards a conversion of “the post-Imperial
space” into a “neo-Imperial space.” “Neo-Imperial space” is not tantamount
to the rebuilding of either the Soviet Union, or of the Russian Empire,
for which Russia clearly lacks the resources and will. It would, however,
allow Russia to pursue escalating influence, dominance, and control over
its neighbors. Even as several former parts of the Russian Empire are now
members of the European Union and NATO, as Map 7 shows, Russia is
vigorously pursuing its own version of economic and political integration
by forging and taking the lead in the Eurasian Economic Union, which at
present includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. None
of these countries are stable democracies. Their attempts to simultane-
ously pursue integration with the European Union were abandoned or
curtailed under pressure from the Putin government. Two other post-
Imperial states, Moldova and particularly Ukraine, were forcefully, yet so
far unsuccessfully, pressured to slow down or abandon rapprochement
with the European Union. The territorial integrity of two post-Imperial
states—Ukraine and Georgia—remains compromised as a result of
Russia’s recent military actions.
Such tactics, along with myriad other economic, political, military, and
propaganda measures help project Russia’s power in the post-Imperial
space. In addition, in recent years the Putin government has begun to exert
political, economic, and propagandistic influence on a global scale, pro-
viding financial support to extremist groups in Europe, offering enticing
deals to friendly businesses and politicians, meddling in the democratic
process in Western countries, and building an international propaganda
68 Historical Essay

network that now reaches all continents. Even though this effort to
project power is far feebler than that of the Bolsheviks, and lacks any
ideological coherence, it indicates that in historical terms Putin is try-
ing to present himself as a bearer of the great power traditions of both
Imperial and Soviet Russia. How much violence and aggression he is
prepared (or allowed) to commit to achieve his goals remains an open
question to this day.
 DOCUMENTS

Section 1
Russia’s Revolutions: From the Collapse of the
Monarchy to the Civil War

1.1
Konstantin Pobedonostsev Blasts Parliamentarism,
the Free Press, and Modern Education1

While Nicholas II seldom articulated his political beliefs, the fol-

lowing excerpts from an article by his tutor, Konstantin Pobe-
donostsev (1827–1907), a leading statesman, sheds light on his
thinking about autocracy as a system of government far superior
to parliamentary democracy and other modern European institu-
tions. The theme of Russia’s political and cultural superiority, on
which Pobedonostsev dwells, persisted through the revolutionary
era and managed to outlive it.

The New Democracy

What is this freedom by which so many minds are agitated, which inspires
so many insensate actions, so many wild speeches, which leads the people
so often to misfortune? . . . In a Democracy, the real rulers are the dex-
terous manipulators of votes, with their henchmen, the mechanics who
so skillfully operate the hidden springs which move the puppets in the

1. Source: K. P. Pobedonostsev, Moskovskii sbornik, 2d ed. (Moscow: Sinodal’naia

tipografiia, 1896), 25–27, 57–58, 60–61, 69–70.

69
70 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

arena of democratic elections. Men of this kind are ever ready with loud
speeches lauding equality; in reality, they rule the people as any des-
pot or military dictator might rule it. . . . The history of mankind bears
witness that the most necessary and fruitful reforms—the most durable
measures—emanated from the supreme will of statesmen, or from a
minority enlightened by lofty ideas and deep knowledge, and that, on the
contrary, the extension of the representative principle is accompanied by
an abasement of political ideas and the vulgarization of opinions in the
mass of the electors . . .
This is how the representative principle works in practice. The ambi-
tious man comes before his fellow-citizens, and strives by every means to
convince them that he more than any other is worthy of their confidence.
What motives impel him to this quest? It is hard to believe that he is
impelled by disinterested zeal for the public good . . . .

The Press
. . . the journalist with a power comprehending all things, requires no
sanction. He derives his authority from no election, he receives support
from no one. His newspaper becomes an authority in the State, and for
this authority no endorsement is required. The man in the street may
establish such an organ and exercise the concomitant authority with an
irresponsibility enjoyed by no other power in the world. That this is in no
way exaggeration there are innumerable proofs. How often have superfi-
cial and unscrupulous journalists paved the way for revolution, fomented
irritation into enmity, and brought about desolating wars! For conduct
such as this a monarch would lose his throne, a minister would be dis-
graced, impeached, and punished; but the journalist stands dry above the
waters he has disturbed, from the ruin he has caused he rises triumphant,
and briskly continues his destructive work.

On Education
But infinite evil has been wrought by the prevalent confusion of knowl-
edge and power. Seduced by the fantasy of universal enlightenment, we
confuse education with a certain sum of knowledge acquired by complet-
ing the courses of schools, skillfully elaborated in the studies of peda-
gogues. Having organized our school thus, we isolate it from life, and
secure by force the attendance of children whom we subject to a process
of intellectual training in accordance with our program. But we ignore or
 1.2. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 71

forget that the mass of the children whom we educate must earn their
daily bread, a labor for which the abstract notions on which our programs
are constructed will be vain; while in the interests of some imaginary
knowledge we withhold that training in productive labor which alone
will bear fruit. Such are the results of our complex educational system,
and such are the causes of the aversion with which the masses regard our
schools, for which they can find no use.

***

Yet we waste our time discussing courses for elementary schools and
obligatory programs which are to be the bases of a finished education.
One would include an encyclopedic instruction; . . . another insists on
the necessity for the agriculturist to know physics, chemistry, agricul-
tural economy, and medicine; while a third demands a course of political
economy and jurisprudence. But few reflect that by tearing the child from
the domestic hearth for such a lofty destiny, they deprive his parents of a
productive force which is essential to the maintenance of the home, while
by raising before his eyes the mirage of illusory learning they corrupt his
mind, and subject it to the temptations of vanity and conceit.

1.2
Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism, 19162

Vladimir Lenin wrote his pamphlet on imperialism in 1916 in

Zurich, when the Great War was raging in Europe. He later admit-
ted that for reasons of censorship, he had to refrain from discuss-
ing the revolutionary implications of his analysis. Still, no other

2. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution 1914–1922: A Docu-
mentary History (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), 14–16.
72 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

text is more critical for understanding his thinking about capital-

ism, revolution, and the world’s future.

Chapter X. The Place of Imperialism in History

We have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capi-
talism. This in itself determines its place in history, for monopoly that
grows out of the soil of free competition, and precisely out of free com-
petition, is the transition from the capitalist system to a higher socio-
economic order. We must take special note of the four principal types of
monopoly, or principal manifestations of monopoly capitalism, which are
characteristic of the epoch we are examining.
Firstly, monopoly arose out of the concentration of production at a
very high stage. This refers to the monopolist capitalist associations, car-
tels, syndicates, and trusts. We have seen the important part these play
in present day economic life. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
monopolies had acquired complete supremacy in the advanced coun-
tries, and although the first steps towards the formation of the cartels
were taken by countries enjoying the protection of high tariffs (Germany,
America), Great Britain, with her system of free trade, revealed the same
basic phenomenon, only a little later, namely, the birth of monopoly out
of the concentration of production.
Secondly, monopolies have stimulated the seizure of the most impor-
tant sources of raw materials, especially for the basic and most highly
cartelized industries in capitalist society: the coal and iron industries.
The monopoly of the most important sources of raw materials has enor-
mously increased the power of big capital and has sharpened the antago-
nism between cartelized and non-cartelized industry.
Thirdly, monopoly has sprung from the banks. The banks have
developed from modest middleman enterprises into the monopolists
of finance capital. Some three to five of the biggest banks in each of
the foremost capitalist countries have achieved the “personal link-up”
between industrial and bank capital, and have concentrated in their
hands the control of thousands upon thousands of millions which form
the greater part of the capital and income of entire countries. A finan-
cial oligarchy, which throws a close network of dependence relationships
over all the economic and political institutions of present-day bourgeois
 1.2. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 73

society without exception—such is the most striking manifestation of

this monopoly.
Fourthly, monopoly has grown out of colonial policy. To the numerous
“old” motives of colonial policy, finance capital has added the struggle for
the sources of raw materials, for the export of capital, for spheres of influ-
ence, i.e., for spheres for profitable deals, concessions, monopoly profits,
and so on, economic territory in general. When the colonies of the Euro-
pean powers, for instance, comprised only one-tenth of the territory of
Africa (as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able to develop—by
methods other than those of monopoly—by the “free grabbing” of ter-
ritories, so to speak. But when nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by
1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably
ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently,
of particularly intense struggle for the division and the re-division of the
world.

***

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom,
the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a
handful of the richest or most powerful nations—all these have given
birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us
to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.

***

The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one of the

numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous countries, etc.,
makes it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections of the
workers, and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and win
them to the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation
against all the others. The intensification of antagonisms between impe-
rialist nations for the division of the world increases this urge.
74 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.3
Soldiers Write about the War, 1915–19163

The passages below are taken from soldiers’ letters confiscated

by military censors. Compiled into summaries for civilian and mil-
itary officials on the soldiers’ “mood,” they reveal bitter discon-
tent about conditions at the front, from poor supplies to abusive
commanders.

A. Novikov to A. I. Ivanova, Moscow

The elation that the troops felt earlier is no more . . . 
In L’vov, before the eyes of 28 thousand soldiers, five people were
flogged for leaving their courtyard without permission to buy white
bread.

Anon. to A. P. Nechaeva, Kharkov, July 15, 1915

Cholera is ravaging the entire area. Every day a hundred people are
brought from the front; the nearby inhabitants are also sick. The death
rate is astronomical.
 . . . I will describe to you the conditions and the treatment of the sick:
all of them lie on straw, without mattresses or pillows. There is no disin-
fection; those who die are buried nearby, behind the huts of the Galicians.
There are two doctors and four physicians for 500 sick people. The medi-
cal personnel are completely exhausted. Several nurses grew sick from
exhaustion and died.
The sick are not isolated; the contagion is spreading . . .

Efim D. Chernyshev, Belostok, to Aleksandr A. Belikov, Village of Druzh-

kovka, Factory of the Toretskii Company, August 3, 1915
We are now so consumed with work day and night that there is no time
to look up at the sky, but we are gradually retreating. We have retreated
from Lomzha to Belostok. Dear brother, if you could only see what is

3. Source: O. Chaadaeva, “Soldatskie pis’ma v gody mirovoi voiny (1915–1917),” Kras-

nyi arkhiv 65–66 (1934): 118–63 (here: 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 136, 142–43).
 1.3. Soldiers Write about the War 75

going on here! The military transports have stretched over a hundred

versts,4 but most of the people traveling are civilians leaving their homes
and going not knowing where, giving themselves up to the mercy of fate.
It is a sorry sight to look at: they are driving along cows and pigs, taking
whatever they can and leaving the rest for somebody else. You can see
children crying, and in some instances parents lose their children, and
everywhere you hear the weeping and wailing of the poor Poles, because
they are being moved out, and their grain and houses are being burned,
so as to leave nothing to the Germans.

Anon. to N. V. Rudakova, Moscow

 . . . But we are still experiencing shortages of shells and rifle bullets. We are
all in a bad mood now: it is very unpleasant that the enemy is driving us
back. It was fun and good when we were chasing them. We all appreciate
that you all, the civilian population, are trying to save Russia and relieve
the army, but alas, our superiors are acting in the exact opposite way.

Anon. to S. V. Sukharev, Moscow, November 2, 1916

 . . . There is some news: the Plastun [Cossak] regiment refused to go on
the offensive. They are saying: “We are not going without artillery.” I don’t
know what will happen to them. I am writing about it, but if they open
the letter, it won’t reach you.

Mikh. Vosvizik to Kuz’ma Vosvizik, Village of Kamenets

Tell our relatives and friends to fear military service like fire, because
there is neither good footwear, nor clothing, nor food. They don’t give
us even meat and instead they give us rotten fish and mushrooms with
worms. I buy a few things myself, because by sticking to the rations you
can die quickly.

Anon. to Novikova, Romanovka, suburb of Odessa

I am alive, thank God, and the devils haven’t taken me. Some people are
fortunate—they get wounded after two days on the front line. But here it
is as if the bullets can’t strike you. I am so tired of this dog’s life.

4. A versta was equal to just over one kilometer or 0.66 miles.

76 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

Kh. Grishin to Agaf ’ia. Mikh. Grishina, Village of Beguny

 . . . Others think war is just as inevitable as death is inevitable, but I think
this is not so, since death is the natural end of existence and creatures,
whereas war is an artificial extermination of everything in general and not
just of people. I am writing this to you, my dear, so that you will have a
correct understanding of war and not think that war is sent by God. War
is the result of cunning people’s minds and actions, who hold power and,
either because they do not know how to use this power properly or for
reasons of their own selfish gain, direct matters in such a way that war
flares up.

1.4
Order Number One, March 1, 19175

Order Number One was issued by the Petrograd Soviet and pub-
lished on March 2, 1917. It prescribed a series of changes in the
army’s command structure, organization, and even institutional
culture. Formally, the order only applied to the Petrograd gar-
rison, but it circulated widely and had a shattering effect on the
established military order.

To the garrison of the Petrograd District, to all soldiers of the guard,

army, artillery, and navy for immediate and precise implementation and
to the workers of Petrograd for your information.
The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies decrees:
1. That all companies, battalions, regiments, depots, batteries, squad-
rons, ships, and individual branches of military agencies shall imme-
diately elect committees of representatives from among the enlisted
men of the abovementioned units.
2. That all military units that have not yet elected their representatives
to the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies shall elect one representative per

5. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 48–50.
 1.4. Order Number One 77

company and send them with written credentials to the building of

the State Duma on March 2 at 10 a.m.
3. That in all of their political actions military units are subordinate to
the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies and to their [soldiers’]
committees.
4. That the orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma
should be complied with, except when they contradict the orders and
resolutions of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
5. That weapons of every kind, including rifles, machine guns, armored
vehicles, and others, should remain at the disposal and under the
control of company and battalion committees [of soldiers], and in no
case whatsoever should be given to officers, even at their request.
6. That while on duty and carrying out orders, soldiers must maintain
the strictest military discipline, but while off duty and in the capac-
ity of their political, civic, and private life, the civil rights of soldiers
cannot in any way be diminished. In particular, that springing to at-
tention and obligatory saluting off duty is abolished.
7. That, moreover, officers shall no longer be addressed as Your
Excellency, Your Honor, etc.6 Instead officers shall be addressed as
Mister General, Mister Colonel, etc. The rude treatment of soldiers
of any rank and, in particular using the word ty,7 is forbidden, and
any violation of this, as well as all misunderstandings between of-
ficers and soldiers should be reported by the latter to the company
[soldiers’] committees.
This order should be read in all companies, battalions, regiments, crews,
batteries, and other combat and noncombat units.

6. Honorific forms of address, such as “Your Honor,” were attached to specific ranks,
both civil and military, and indicated stature, power, and authority within the govern-
mental structure.
7. In Russian, there are two ways to say “you.” One is the respectful “vy,” and the other
is the familiar “ty.” Authority figures in Russia often used the “ty” form as an expression
of disrespect and even insult.
78 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.5
An American in Petrograd, Spring 19178

The following eyewitness account is by Graham Romeyn Taylor

(1880–1942), an American sociologist, progressive journalist,
and public activist. He traveled in Russia throughout 1917–1918
and worked for the American Committee on Public Information
in Vladivostok from late 1918 to March 1919. He conveys the
widespread sense of excitement and idealism about the Revolu-
tion in spring 1917.

Petrograd, April 3, 1917

Dear father,
I am overwhelmed that I should have been so fortunate as to be here
in Russia at this hour of destiny. If you could know even a millionth part
of all what I want to tell you and try to make you feel! I can imagine how
America hailed the new government. And how proud we all were here
that America was the first to recognize it officially. I am filled with great
surges of feeling over all it means to the world and the progress of human
liberty,—this century advance that has been made in a few days.

***
As it was, I landed right in the middle of the great final demonstration—
a vast assemblage and parade of troops, all carrying red flags and banners
with inscriptions such as “Hail to Free Russia” “Soldiers and Working-
men United” “Hurrah for the Constitutional Assembly” and “Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity.” Every band played the Marseillaise9 repeatedly,
occasionally putting in a popular Russian air. . . .

***

8. Our thanks to Alex Wilgus for bringing this document to our attention and to the
Newberry Library for kind permission to publish this excerpt.
Source: Taylor, Graham Romeyn (son) to Graham Taylor, 1916–1919, 24 1427,
Graham Taylor Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago.
9. The French national anthem, written in 1792.
 1.5. An American in Petrograd 79

. . . I never expected to see with my own eyes the Cossacks bearing the
red banner of the revolution, and the sudden brotherhood of populace
with the men who have so often before at the behest of autocracy ridden
them down. The whole thing was a sort of unification of the people—for
those Cossacks are of course just like all the rest of the people in the
community—they come right from it—and it was surcharged with a
wonderful feeling. You knew that it was the great Day of Liberation, of
which they had all been dreaming—which they could hardly believe had
arrived. It was really a profound spiritual stirring that just got hold of
you. It seemed as if the whole great throng was on the point of burst-
ing into tears of happiness. And I confess I felt just that way myself. My
mind wandered from the scene to the prisons all over the country, from
which at one sweep the political prisoners had been released. I imagined
their faces as they came out of the opened doors. I thought of Madam
Breshkovskaya10 out in that village north of Irkutsk and tried to picture
the scene when the news of her freedom reached her. I tried to think what
would be her emotions if she could see those Cossack troops marching by
as they did before her eyes.
It was a day that seemed to lift me to the sky—with a great bright vista
spread out—of the future of a people suddenly disclosed to them. I shall
never cease my gratitude to heaven that I was permitted to be there. I felt
that if there was only some way in which I could put everything I have got
into that movement—to take even the smallest part in whatever would
help to prevent that lustre from being dimmed—in whatever would
make sure that the aspiration is realized in its fullest sense—I would be
happier than I could possibly be in doing anything else.

10. Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaia (1844–1934) was a veteran revolutionary leader.

In February 1917, she was in exile in Minusinsk, eastern Siberia, and was released
along with all other political prisoners and exiles.
80 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.6
Polish Independence and the Russian
Revolution, March–April, 191711

On March 16, 1917, in the document excerpted below, the Pro-

visional Government promised Polish independence. This prom-
ise, which could not be implemented with Poland under German
control, enjoyed widespread Polish support. By the end of the
war, the Polish state was reborn, over 120 years after the three
successive Partitions of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in
1772–1795.

Poles! The old state order of Russia, the source of your and our enslave-
ment and disunity, has now been overthrown for good. Liberated Russia,
represented by its Provisional Government . . . hastens to extend its fra-
ternal greetings and invites you to a new life, to freedom.
The old regime made hypocritical promises to you, which it could,
but did not wish to, fulfil. The Central Powers took advantage of its mis-
takes in order to occupy and devastate your territory. With the sole aim
of fighting against Russia and her allies, they gave you chimerical state
rights . . . Brother Poles! . . . Free Russia calls on you to join the ranks of
those fighting for peoples’ freedom . . . the Russian people recognize the
full right of the fraternal Polish people to determine their own des-
tiny . . . the Provisional Government considers that the creation of an
independent Polish State, comprising all the lands where the Polish peo-
ple constitute the majority of the population, will be a reliable guarantee
for lasting peace in the renewed Europe of the future. United with Russia
by a free military alliance, the Polish State will become a firm bulwark
of Slavdom against the pressures of the Central Powers . . . It is up to the
Russian Constituent Assembly to give binding strength to the new fra-
ternal alliance and agree to those territorial changes of the Russian State
which are necessary for the creation of a free Poland out of all three, cur-
rently separated, territories.

11. Source: “Vozzvanie Vremennogo Pravitel’stva k poliakam,” Vestnik Vremennogo

Pravitel’stva, no. 11 (57) (March 17/30, 1917), 1.
 1.7. Lenin Calls for a Deepening of the Revolution 81

Accept the fraternal hand, brother Poles, which free Russia extends
to you . . . stand up now to meet the bright new day in your history, the
day of the resurrection of Poland . . . forward, to the struggle, shoulder to
shoulder and arm in arm, for your freedom and ours!

1.7
Lenin Calls for a Deepening of the
Revolution, April 4, 191712

Vladimir Lenin’s “April Theses” speech seemed too radical for

most Bolsheviks when he pronounced it. But as the Provisional
Government limped from one crisis to another, his call to end
the war, depose the Provisional Government, and move towards
socialism began to make sense to growing numbers of workers,
soldiers, and peasants.

***

1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government
of Lvov13 and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory
imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the
slightest concession to “revolutionary defensism” is permissible.
The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolution-
ary war, which would really justify revolutionary defensism, only on con-
dition: (a) that power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections
of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be
renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected
in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

***

12. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 71–73.
13. Prince Georgii Lvov (1861–1925) was the first prime minister in the Provisional
Government.
82 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the

country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to
the insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat,
placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which
must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections
of the peasants.
This transition is characterized, on the one hand, by a maximum of
legally recognized rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent
countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards
the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of
capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism. . . . 
3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all
its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the
renunciation of annexations. . . . 
4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’
Deputies our [Bolshevik] Party is in a minority, so far a small minority,
as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from
the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the
[Menshevik] Organizing Committee . . . who have yielded to the influence
of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies
are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that there-
fore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the
bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation
of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the
practical needs of the masses. . . . 
5) Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic
from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but
a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Laborers’ and Peasants’
Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.14
The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at
any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian program to be shifted to
the Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ Deputies. Confiscation of all landed
estates.

14. I.e., the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people. (Footnote
added by Lenin.)
 1.8. General Session of the Petrograd Soviet 83

Nationalization of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of

by the local Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. . . . 
7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single
national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies.
8) It is not our immediate task “to introduce” socialism, but only to
bring social production and the distribution of products at once under
the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. . . . 
10) A renewed International. . . . 

1.8
General Session of the Petrograd
Soviet, September 11, 191715

At the September 11 session of the Petrograd Soviet, Leon Trotsky

stepped up to confront the Menshevik leader Fedor Dan (1871–
1947) and to offer a more radical program of action, as docu-
mented below. Two weeks later, the Bolsheviks were in control
of the Petrograd Soviet’s Executive Committee, with Trotsky at
the helm.

Fedor Dan: Russia is currently experiencing days more difficult than at

any point during our revolution. Our revolution emerged in the midst of
such hardships that were never experienced by any other revolution. A
three-year war and the resultant economic collapse make it difficult for
the revolution not only to develop but to preserve the gains it has made
so far.
Moreover, one should not overlook the fact that the army played an
extraordinary role in our revolution and that the proletariat, given the
nature of our economic development, cannot play the role it does in
Western Europe. This is why from the very beginning we realized that
the continuing collapse [razrukha] would pose enormous difficulties for

15. Source: “V Petrogr. Sovete rabochikh i soldatsk. deputatov,” Izvestiia, no. 169
(September 13, 1917): 4.
84 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

us and that every revolutionary should focus on the political indoctrina-

tion of the worker and soldier masses. . . . 
They are saying that all power should be in the hands of the soldiers,
workers, and peasants. But if you read the Bolsheviks’ resolutions and
publications, you will see something entirely different: power is offered to
the proletariat and not to the peasantry as a whole, but only to its poor-
est members, i.e. agricultural laborers. But you should not forget that the
vast majority of peasants does not share the viewpoint of the proletariat.
Indeed, were the proletariat of Petrograd to write off the peasantry from
the revolution, I assert, that will be the end of our revolution, which
would be drowned in blood, since, under those circumstances, we would
receive not a single train-car load of grain from the villages, and a hunger-
driven uprising of the angry masses would finish off our revolution once
and for all.

***

I think that all of the programs that would unite only revolutionaries are
not worth a kopek. If we really want to overcome all of the challenges, we
must draft a program that will appeal to dozens of millions of peasants
and all of the urban dwellers. We heard here that we should offer peace
to all nations, but we have repeatedly stated this since March 14. [Shouts
from the audience: “Not true!”]. I don’t know what the comrade who
yelled this has done for peace, but one should look at what the Soviet has
been doing throughout. [Shouting from the audience: “but the govern-
ment did not appeal to other governments with an offer of peace!”]. . . . 

***

Leon Trotsky: Comrade Dan tells us that the Russian revolution has
faced greater difficulties than any revolution in history. But the more
difficulties we face, the more radical should the means be for surmount-
ing them. Yet after seven months, we still do not even have a Con-
stituent Assembly, something that has never happened in any other
revolution.16 . . . 

16. The American equivalent, the Constitutional Convention, met in 1787, ten years
after the start of the Revolution.
 1.8. General Session of the Petrograd Soviet 85

Dan is referring to Western Europe, but nothing like the political situ-
ation that the Russian Republic is now experiencing ever occurred there.
There are two ways—one is to use capital punishment and other
repressive measures to create a combat ready army and strangle the revo-
lution and the other is to give the broad masses what they want.

***

You now stand in the middle and you are offered two hands—one is the
hand of the bourgeoisie, the other is the hand of the proletariat of Petro-
grad and Moscow. . . . 
Resolution of the Soviet: The programmatic section of the resolution
was adopted by a huge majority of the assembled. It included the follow-
ing; 1) prompt and merciless liquidation of the Kornilov conspiracy;17
2) abolition of the death penalty; 3) focusing all efforts on the speediest
achievement of a general peace on the basis of the demands of the Rus-
sian revolution; 4) convocation of a Constituent Assembly on schedule;
5) immediate dissolution of the State Duma and the State Council; 6)
transfer of all land to the jurisdiction of land committees, temporarily
until the Constituent Assembly; 7) on the workers’ issue, introduction of
state control over production through worker organizations, implemen-
tation of an 8-hour work day; decisive struggle against viciously deliber-
ate closings of enterprises, against excessive profits of the capitalists and
against mass unemployment. In the army: a radical purging of the com-
manding ranks from top to bottom to get rid of all individuals who have
not embraced the spirit of the new democratic army and are not willing
to work jointly with the soldier organizations.

17. As commander-in-chief, Lavr Kornilov (1870–1918) thought he had the approval

of Prime Minister Kerensky to restore order in Petrograd in late August, but the effort
was thwarted.
86 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.9
Declaration of the Rights of the Working
and Exploited People, January 191818

Vladimir Lenin intended this Declaration to evoke the Declara-

tion of the Rights of Man and Citizen passed by the French revo-
lutionaries in August 1789. The Bolshevik Revolution, in his view,
would go beyond the French Revolution, transforming the world
not only politically but also economically. The Declaration was
voted down by the democratically elected Constituent Assembly.
The Bolsheviks used the Assembly’s failure to adopt the Declara-
tion as a pretext to dissolve the Assembly the following day. But
its main intended audience was neither the Constituent Assembly
nor the Third Congress of Soviets, which approved it on January
18, but the working people of the world.

The Constituent Assembly resolves:

I. 1. Russia is hereby proclaimed a Republic of Soviets of Workers’,
Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies. All power, centrally and locally, is
vested in these Soviets.
2. The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the principle of a
free union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national republics.
II. Its fundamental aim being to abolish all exploitation of man by man,
to completely eliminate the division of society into classes, to merci-
lessly crush the resistance of the exploiters, to establish a socialist
organization of society, and to achieve the victory of socialism in all
countries, the Constituent Assembly further resolves:
1. Private ownership of land is hereby abolished. All land together
with all buildings, farm implements, and other appurtenances of ag-
ricultural production, is proclaimed the property of the entire work-
ing people.
2. The Soviet laws on workers’ control and on the Supreme Economic
Council are hereby confirmed for the purpose of guaranteeing the

18. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 145–47.
 1.9. Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People 87

power of the working people over the exploiters and as a first step to-
wards the complete conversion of the factories, mines, railways, and
other means of production and transport into the property of the
workers’ and peasants’ state.
3. The conversion of all banks into the property of the workers’ and
peasants’ state is hereby confirmed as one of the conditions for the
emancipation of the working people from the yoke of capital.
4. For the purpose of abolishing the parasitic sections of society, uni-
versal labor conscription is hereby instituted.
5. To ensure the sovereign power of the working people, and to elimi-
nate all possibility of the restoration of the power of the exploiters,
the arming of the working people, the creation of a socialist Red
Army of workers and peasants, and the complete disarming of the
propertied classes are hereby decreed.
III. 1. Expressing its firm determination to wrest mankind from the
clutches of finance capital and imperialism, which have in this most
criminal of wars drenched the world in blood, the Constituent
Assembly wholeheartedly endorses the policy pursued by Soviet
power of denouncing secret treaties, organizing the most extensive
fraternization with the workers and peasants of the armies in the
war, and achieving at all costs, by revolutionary means, a democratic
peace between the nations, without annexations and indemnities
and on the basis of the free self-determination of nations.
2. With the same end in view, the Constituent Assembly insists on a
complete break with the barbarous policy of bourgeois civilization,
which has built the prosperity of the exploiters belonging to a few
chosen nations on the enslavement of hundreds of millions of work-
ing people in Asia, in the colonies in general, and in the small coun-
tries. The Constituent Assembly welcomes the policy of the Council
of People’s Commissars in proclaiming the complete independence
of Finland, commencing the evacuation of troops from Persia, and
proclaiming freedom of self-determination for Armenia.
3. The Constituent Assembly regards the Soviet law on the cancel-
lation of the loans contracted by the governments of the tsar, the
landowners, and the bourgeoisie as a first blow struck at internation-
al banking, finance capital, and expresses the conviction that Soviet
88 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

power will firmly pursue this path until the international workers’
uprising against the yoke of capital has completely triumphed.

***

1.10
Mustafa Chokaev, Reminiscences of 1917–191819

A Muslim Kazakh political activist, Mustafa Chokaev (1890–

1941), served as prime minister in the Provisional Government of
Autonomous Turkestan from November 1917 to February 1918.
He asserts that he had envisioned Turkestan as an autonomous
part of a democratic Russian state, but the Bolshevik dissolution
of the Constitutional Assembly left him no choice but to fight for
an independent Turkestan.

We did not discuss Turkestan’s autonomy at our congresses. But in the

depths of our national and regional committees it was the most frequent
topic of our conversations. We viewed autonomy this way: Turkestan
should have its own legislative body and an autonomous government.
The central all-Russian “federal” authority should be in charge of for-
eign policy, state finance, railroads, and the military. The local autono-
mous government should exercise control over schools, local railroad
construction, town and provincial institutions of self-government, the
land issue—we particularly emphasized this, and the judiciary. We also
wanted to introduce some substantial reforms into the area of the for-
mation of the army, namely, we envisioned the creation of a “territorial
army,” i.e., for Turkestanis to perform military service in Turkestan, while
remaining under a unified all-Russian command. That was, of course,
only principles, only a sketch. We did not go farther into the details. Our
main concern was the question of Turkestani personnel. One can pro-
claim any principles, wish for anything at all, even for the moon in the

19. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 282–84.
 1.10. Mustafa Chokaev 89

sky. Yet if adequate personnel are lacking, if there are no technical experts,
no human resources, then all of these beautiful wishes will remain empty
words, capable only of provoking the derision of enemies and misleading
friends and the popular masses, on whose behalf and for whose good
these principles are proposed and these beautiful slogans are proclaimed.
I will not say that we did not have any such human resources, but they
were extremely insufficient. . . . 
I would like briefly to recount the last episode of our struggle. Kokand
was already under fire. Machine guns and rifles were crackling. Hand gre-
nades were exploding. Once in a while cannons boomed! The Bolsheviks
sent us their first “parliamentarians” with the proposal to hand me over
to the Kokand military revolutionary committee.20 I received them in the
presence of all the available members of the government. Without waiting
for the opinion of my comrades, I responded that I was ready to surren-
der myself to the military revolutionary committee on the condition that
the Bolsheviks immediately cease shelling the city and pledge not to apply
repressive measures toward civilians. The Bolshevik parliamentarians left
and returned only two days later. By that time Kokand was besieged from
all sides. Bolshevik troops were arriving from Samarkand, Tashkent, and
Fergana. Our people were also arriving, but they were armed with long
iron-tipped pikes, sickles, axes, pitchforks, big knives, and, in the best
cases, hunting rifles. Their most potent weapon was their hatred of the
Bolsheviks. None could doubt the outcome of this struggle. I remember
as if it were yesterday how at 11:20 a.m. new Bolshevik parliamentar-
ians arrived with a new ultimatum. Now the Bolsheviks demanded: (1)
the autonomous government’s recognition of the Soviet government;
(2) its issuing of an appeal to the population of Turkestan to obey the
Soviet government; (3) disarming the population and handing over all of
its weapons to the Bolsheviks; (4) disbanding the militia. And so forth.
There were four members of the government present. . . . Our response
was brief: we refused to accept the ultimatum. On behalf of my comrades
I told the Bolshevik parliamentarians: “Strength is on your side. Except
for our conviction that justice is on our side, we have none. We do not
doubt that you will defeat us, but recognizing your right to rule, recogniz-
ing the Soviet government of Turkestan is something we cannot do!”

20. From late October 1917 to March 1918, the Bolsheviks set up over 220 local mili-
tary revolutionary committees endowed with almost complete autonomy and authority
to coordinate the seizure of power.
90 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.11
Aleksandra Kollontai, “Soon!”
(in 48 Years’ Time), 191921

Aleksandra Kollontai (1872–1952) wholeheartedly embraced

the Russian Revolution. Appointed People’s Commissar for Social
Welfare in Lenin’s government in October 1917, she was the
first woman in the world to hold a ministerial position. In the
early 1920s she led Zhenotdel, the Women’s Section of the Bol-
shevik Party’s Central Committee. Following her disagreement
with Lenin over the role of trade unions in the Soviet system, she
was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway, another unprec-
edented appointment. Her visionary essay, excerpted below from
a 1922 reprint, describes a communist future with no class con-
flict or violence.

January 7, 1970. The “House of Rest,” is filled with light, warmth, and
commotion. It is the final residence of old veterans of “the Great Years”
of the World Revolution. On this day, which used to be Christmas, the
veterans decided to recall the days of their childhood and youth and to
decorate a Christmas tree, a real Christmas tree, like the ones before the
global transformation. The young adults, teenagers, and children were
enthusiastic, especially when they learned that “the red grandmother”
would be reminiscing about the great year of 1917.

***

But a closer look at the youth revealed that this was no longer the youth
that had fought at the barricades during “the Great Years,” and even less
so the youth that had lived under the yoke of capitalism.

***

There was not a single sick, pale, or exhausted face among the youth of
the commune who gathered for the Christmas party. Their inquisitive

21. Source: A. Kolontai (sic), Skoro (cherez 48 let), Miniatiurnaia Biblioteka, no. 1
(Omsk: Izdatel’stvo Sibbiuro TsKRKSM, 1922), 3, 4, 6–7, 8, 11, 12.
 1.11. Aleksandra Kollontai, “Soon!” (in 48 Years’ Time) 91

eyes were glowing with fervor; their firm, elastic youthful bodies moved
boldly, supplely, and rhythmically. But most joyful of all was that inces-
sant peels of merry laughter filled the bright celebration hall.
The youth of “Commune No. 10” loved life, loved laughter, and
frowned only when it had to confront the only remaining enemy of
mankind—nature.

***

But the youth loved this struggle. What would life be like without strug-
gle, without the surmounting of challenges, without the mind’s auda-
cious aspirations, without the eternal drive forward—into the unknown,
toward the unreachable!
Without this struggle life in the commune would have become bor-
ing. . . . Life [in the commune] is organized in such a way that people
live not in families, but are divided up according to age. Children live in
“Palaces of the Child,” young men and women in jolly little houses sur-
rounded by gardens, and adults live in dormitories of various types, such
as the “Home of Rest” for old people.
There are neither rich nor poor in the communes. These are forgotten
words. They no longer mean anything. Commune members have every-
thing necessary, so as not to have to worry about their daily and mate-
rial needs. Clothing, food, books, entertainment—the commune delivers
everything. In return, commune members lend the commune their work-
ing hands for two hours per day and their creativity, the audacious pur-
suits of their minds for the rest of their lives.
The commune has no enemies, since all the neighboring peoples and
nations have long since established similar communes and the entire
world is now a federation of communes. The younger generation no lon-
ger knows what war is . . . 

***

“And I [know] what a ruble is and what money in general is. We saw
money in a museum. Grandpa, did you also have money? And did you
carry it in a sack in your pocket? And were there—what did they call
them?—pickpockets who snatched it, right? That’s really funny.”
92 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

And ringing voices joined together in friendly laughter, while the vet-
erans of the revolution felt rather embarrassed for that distant past when
there were capitalists, thieves, money, aristocratic ladies . . . 

***

“And you, ‘Red Grandmother,’ did you shoot at a human being? A live
human being?”
The eyes of the commune youths gazed with astonishment and flashed
a reproach, bewilderment . . . To shoot at a live human being? . . . But life is
sacred! . . . 
“But we ourselves were prepared to die! We sacrificed everything for
the revolution,” “Red Grandmother” offered by way of explanation.
“Like us for our commune,” proudly reply the young people.
. . .
You made it, so will we. You subjugated social forces. We will subju-
gate nature. . . . Your Christmas tree celebration is in the past. Ours lies
ahead! Life is not an accomplishment; it is the struggle itself, a never-
ending rebellious pursuit!

1.12
Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii
Preobrazhenskii, ABC of Communism 22

In early 1919, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii

(1886–1937) published the ABC of Communism in order to
summarize Bolshevik beliefs. Bukharin was the editor of the
Bolshevik flagship newspaper Pravda and a leading member of the
Communist Party. He had opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in
favor of launching a struggle for “world revolution.” He is the

22. Source: N. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism: A Popular

Explanation of the Program of the Communist Party of Russia, trans. Eden and Cedar
Paul (London: The Communist Party of Great Britain, 1922), 262–63, 266–67, 284,
285–87, 333–34.
 1.12. Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, ABC of Communism 93

author of the excerpts from Chapter 12. Preobrazhenskii was

a member of Pravda’s editorial board and is the author of the
excerpt from Chapter 15. Both were killed during the Stalinist
Terror in the later 1930s.

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY

***

§ 94.

Our Goal, the Development of Productivity. The foundation of our

whole policy must be the widest possible development of productivity.
The disorganization of production has been so extensive, the post-war
scarcity of all products is so conspicuous, that everything else must be
subordinated to this one task. More products! More boots, scythes, bar-
rels, textiles, salt, clothing, corn, etc.—these are our primary need. How
can the desired end be secured? Only by increasing the productive forces
of the country, by increased productivity. There is no other way. But
here we encounter a formidable difficulty, arising out of the onslaught
made upon us by the worldwide forces of the counter-revolution. We
are blockaded and put upon our defense, so that we are simultaneously
deprived of labor power and cut off from the material means of produc-
tion. We have to wrest by force of arms petroleum and coal from the
landlords and capitalists. Here is our first great task. We have to set the
work of production upon a proper footing. Here is our second great
task.

***

NEVERTHELESS, ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS

OF THE SOVIET POWER WAS AND IS THAT OF UNITING
ALL THE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COUNTRY IN
ACCORDANCE WITH A GENERAL PLAN OF DIRECTION
94 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

BY THE STATE. Thus only is it possible to retain productivity at such a

level as will permit a subsequent farther development. We have learned in
Part One that one of the great merits of the communist system is that it
puts an end to the chaos, to the “anarchy,” of the capitalist system. Herein
lies the very essence of communism.

§ 100.

Comradely Labor Discipline.

***

Labor discipline must be based upon the feeling and the conscious-
ness that every worker is responsible to his class, upon the consciousness
that slackness and carelessness are treason to the common cause of the
workers. The capitalists no longer exist as a dominant caste. The work-
ers no longer work for capitalists, usurers, and bankers; they work for
themselves. . . . 

***

It is plain that the work of creating a new labor discipline will be ardu-
ous, for it will involve the re-education of the masses. A slave psychology
and slavish habits are still deeply ingrained. It is just as it was in the case
of the army. . . . The re-education of the workers will be facilitated by the
fact that the toiling masses themselves realize (and have been taught by
daily experience) that their fate is in their own hands. They had a very
good lesson when for a time, in various regions, the Soviet Power was
overthrown by the counter-revolution. For instance, in the Urals, in Sibe-
ria, etc.
The communists, the workers’ vanguard, gave a striking example of the
new, comradely discipline when they instituted the so-called Communist
Saturdays, when they worked voluntarily and gratuitously, increasing the
productivity of labor far beyond the ordinary.

***
 1.12. Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, ABC of Communism 95

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ORGANIZATION OF BANKS AND MONETARY
CIRCULATION

***

§121.

Money and the Dying-out of the Monetary System. Communist soci-

ety will know nothing of money. Every worker will produce goods for
the general welfare. He will not receive any certificate to the effect that
he has delivered the product to society; he will receive no money, that is
to say. In like manner, he will pay no money to society when he receives
whatever he requires from the common store. A very different state of
affairs prevails in socialist society, which is inevitable as an intermediate
stage between capitalism and communism. Here money is needed, for
it has a part to play in commodity economy. If I, as a boot maker, need
a coat, I change my wares, the boots that I make, into money. Money is
a commodity by means of which I can procure any other commodity I
may please, and by means of which in the given case I can procure the
particular thing I want, namely a coat. Every producer of commodities
acts in the same way. In socialist society, this commodity economy will to
some extent persist.
Socialism, however, is communism in course of construction; it is
incomplete communism. In proportion as the work of upbuilding com-
munism is successfully effected, the need for money will disappear. In
due time the State will probably be compelled to put an end to the expir-
ing monetary circulation. This will be of especial importance in order
to bring about the final disappearance of the laggards of the bourgeois
classes who with hoarded money will continue to consume values cre-
ated by the workers in a society which has proclaimed: “He who does not
work, neither shall he eat.”

***
96 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

1.13
The Fate of Kiev, 191823

With the collapse of Imperial Russia, Ukraine became the object

of competing powers and interests. The autonomous Ukrainian
government was overthrown by pro-Bolshevik forces in February
1918. In March, German troops drove out the Bolsheviks. On
April 29, with German acquiescence, the Cossack General Pavlo
Skoropadskii (1873–1945) seized power in Kiev.
The author of the memoir excerpted below, Nikolai Mogilian-
skii (1871–1934), was an ethnographer and a member of the
liberal Kadet Party. Like many Russian liberals, he supported the
cultural autonomy of Ukraine but opposed its independence.
More instability and violence followed the events recorded by
Mogilianskii.

. . . on January 17 (30) as the brief, foggy winter day was drawing to a
close, we were approaching Kiev, and the train had to stop every min-
ute since Kiev Station Number One was not accessible. With every stop,
infrequent shelling was heard. . . . 
These were the first salvos fired at Kiev by the Bolshevik army under
the command of Remnev. The first act of the Kiev tragedy in the long-
suffering year 1918 began. Since Kiev’s capture by Batu [Khan] in the
thirteenth century,24 the city has not seen anything like this.

***

Kiev was left to the mercy of fate by the fleeing Ukrainian troops and
authorities. The Bolshevik troops, who stormed into the city on January
26 and at that moment looked more like a gang, and their nightmarish
“activities” soon made people forget the nightmare and horror of the [pre-
ceding] nine-day artillery bombardment. The greenish faces of the city

23. Source: N. M. Mogilianskii, “Tragediia Ukrainy” in Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, 22

vols., ed. I. V. Gessen (Berlin: Slowo-Verlag, 1922–1937; Moscow: Terra, 1993): 11:77,
79, 80, 83.
24. Batu Khan (c. 1207–1255) was a Mongol ruler whose forces conquered nearly all of
the Rus’ principalities in 1237–1240 with great violence.
 1.13. The Fate of Kiev 97

dwellers, exhausted by hunger, lack of sleep, and recent worries were now
distorted by the horror of madness and a dull, exhausted hopelessness.
What followed was a stomach-turning massacre in the most direct
sense of the word, the totally indiscriminate and arbitrary killing of those
Russian officers who had remained in the city and did not want to join
Ukrainians in their fight against the Bolsheviks. From hotels and pri-
vate apartments, unfortunate officers were dragged literally like cattle to
slaughter to the “Dukhonin Headquarters”25—the ironic name of the
Mariinskii park—a favorite execution spot where hundreds of officers
of the Russian army perished. For example, my cousin Colonel A. M.
Rechitskii was murdered on Bibikov Boulevard with a shot to the back of
his head when he resisted four Red Army men who had wanted to tear
off his epaulettes. . . . 26

***

Besides officers, anyone who was naïve enough to display their red card,
that is, their Ukrainian citizenship certificate, was also executed. . . . 

***

Soon, however, vague rumors surfaced that the Ukrainians had struck a
deal with the Germans and that German troops were moving on Kiev.
These rumors were validated by the Bolsheviks’ behavior. Sensing that
the ground under their feet was shaking, they behaved like lords for a
day: plundering, feasting, destroying, and rejoicing, seizing the moment,
however brief!
The conditions of city dwellers deteriorated by the day. Gangs of
armed bandits emerged, robbing people at night, attacking residents
and their dwellings. Having been disarmed by the Bolsheviks, poor city
dwellers lacked even the most basic means of self-defense.

25. Nikolai Dukhonin (1876–1917), the last commander-in-chief of the Imperial

Russian Army, was murdered by a mob of pro-Bolshevik sailors on December 2, 1917
(O.S.). To send someone “to Dukhonin’s headquarters” was a euphemism that meant
to kill him.
26. Military epaulettes were considered by ordinary Russians to be an egregious sym-
bol of the old repressive order.
98 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

Only after the Bolsheviks had loaded up all kinds of valuables and had
fled from the city, two or three days before the German attack, did the
organization of self-defense begin.

***

Having signed on to all the German conditions in Brest,27 the Ukraini-

ans entered Kiev as triumphant victors. Discreetly, however, the Germans
had entered the city the day before in order to ensure the establishment
of order. This was on February 17 (O.S).28

***

Once the Germans arrived, all robberies and violence ceased as if by wav-
ing a magic wand, without any threats or menacing declarations. City
dwellers breathed easier. Even late at night it became completely safe to
walk the streets. Theaters, cinemas, and restaurants reopened and life
began to play its eternally hectic music in double time.
Ukrainian patriots afforded themselves the luxury of only a few
extreme savageries so that, as I was informed, only one Jewish student
was its casualty, killed in the Podol29 for an unknown reason and under
entirely unclear circumstances. In any case, there were none of the horri-
ble murders and assassinations that had marked the period of Bolshevik
rule. . . . 

***

Anarchy was held at bay by only one force—German arms. So how did
the Germans comport themselves in the Ukrainian countryside? Every-
thing depended, of course, on the character of the commander. I person-
ally observed Germans keeping guard in villages of Kanevskii district in
Kiev province. They did not irritate the population and did not leave any
bad feelings. They paid for all the foodstuffs they took from the people
and did not insult them.

27. That is, having signed a separate treaty in Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers
on February 9, 1918.
28. That is, March 2 (N.S.).
29. The Podil (in Ukrainian) was an old commercial quarter of the city.
 1.14. The Russian “Internationale” 99

In other places, however—and I read a number of detailed reports and

investigative protocols about this—direct, shameless and cynical plunder
occurred. . . . 

1.14
The Russian “Internationale,” 1902–1944

The “Internationale,” a song composed in France in 1871 after the

crushing of the socialist Paris Commune, soon became a rallying
hymn of the international socialist movement. Its Russian trans-
lation appeared in 1902. In 1918, the Bolsheviks adopted the
song’s first three stanzas below as Soviet Russia’s state anthem.
By doing so, they sought to position themselves as the rightful
champions and heirs of the century-old fight on behalf of the
oppressed masses. Even after it was replaced by a new Stalinist
state anthem in 1944, the Russian “Internationale” remained the
official song of the Soviet and now Russian Communist Party.

Rise up, ye branded with a curse,

World of the hungry and enslaved!
Our minds are boiling with anger.
We are ready for mortal combat.
The whole world of violence we will
Shatter to the ground, and then
Our own, new world we will build;
He who was nobody will become all.

Chorus:
This is our last
And decisive battle;
With the strains of the Internationale
The human race will rise up! × 2

No one will grant us deliverance:

Neither god, nor king, nor hero.
100 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

We will achieve liberation

By our own hand.
To overthrow oppression with a skillful hand,
To fight for our rightful due,
Blow the horn and boldly forge,
Strike while the iron is hot!

Chorus × 2
Only we, toilers of the great,
Global army of labor,
Are entitled to possess the earth,
Not the parasites—they never!
And if mighty thunder blasts
The pack of dogs and executioners,
The sun will keep shining its
Bright rays on us all.

Chorus × 2

1.15
Appeal of Rebel Leaders to the Peasant
Masses, Late July/Early August 192030

Aleksander Sapozhkov was a division commander fighting for

the Bolsheviks on the Eastern and the Southern Fronts. Angry
about his sudden dismissal in July 1920, he mutinied, and his
9th Cavalry Division followed him. What started as a personal
grudge quickly developed into a popular rebellion, as growing
numbers of peasants of Samara province (in the Middle Volga
region) joined the rebellion. The Bolsheviks responded with full

30. Source: Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii Saratovskoi oblasti, f. 27, op. 1, d.
534, l. 14.
 1.15. Appeal of Rebel Leaders to the Peasant Masses 101

military force. By early September, the rebels had been defeated

and dispersed, but even larger peasant rebellions followed.

Our dear comrades, fathers and brothers . . . 

Today the 1st Red Army of “Truth” has come to your area. What are
these troops and what is the goal of their arrival you probably do not
know. We will try to explain it to you briefly, so that you can see in us
your defenders, your children and sons who have come to help you and to
liberate you at last from the horror and violence, to which you have been
subjected for more than a year.
Our army fought on the Ural Front where it performed many heroic
deeds and underwent many trials and deprivations in order to defend you
from the external enemy. While on the frontlines, we received thousands
of letters from our fathers and brothers who lived here, in the rear. All
of them were filled with moans and complaints about the violent abuses,
scandals, humiliations, deprivations of property and even of life that were
being carried out on behalf of the people, on behalf of the People’s Soviet
Power, that is, supposedly on your own behalf. It all happened because
under the guise of the love of freedom, dishonest people began to infil-
trate our honest family of laborers. These people did not understand the
real life of the laboring peasants and the working class. They were former
bourgeois, landlords, generals, village policemen, and other such scum,
which like leeches pierced the body of the Russian people and began to
drink its blood without any mercy. Why did this happen, how could we
not prevent this and instead allowed all kinds of scoundrels to enslave us?
This happened because the ruling party of communists seized power in
the country and began to implement a dictatorship, which is the absolute
power of just one party of communists, not a dictatorship of the prole-
tariat as it was really supposed to be.
Members of the party of communists were put in all places regardless
of whether they were honest or thieves, friends of the people or disguised
parasites who had joined the party only in order to live at the expense of
poor peasants. So come to us, assist us, and we will rescue you from all
the evils and troubles that weigh you down. We are the same working and
laboring people as you are. We are your children and sons. It pains us to
hear your moans. It pains us to see your endless suffering, and we have
come to rescue you from all that. The cities and villages we have taken
102 Documents • Section 1: Russia’s Revolutions

prove to us that we are not mistaken, and that you support and under-
stand, since you have experienced all this in your own lives.

***

Long live the Army of “Truth”! Long live victory over our enemies! Long
live the true fighters for the revolution of the working people!
 2.1. The Bolsheviks Take Russia Out of World War I 103

Section 2
The Bolsheviks Engage the World

2.1
The Bolsheviks Take Russia Out of World
War I, January–March 191831

The first major security crisis to face Soviet Russia was the loom-
ing prospect of its defeat in the Great War. The excerpts below
shed light on the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The head of the
Soviet delegation, Leon Trotsky, explains why the Bolsheviks
refused to agree to the harsh German demands, and General
Max von Hoffmann, the chief of staff of the German armies on
the Eastern Front, shares his recollections of the talks. Instead of
the German workers rising up, as anticipated by the Bolsheviks,
a major German offensive ensued, compelling the Bolsheviks to
agree to even harsher terms several weeks later.

Leon Trotsky, “At Brest-Litovsk,” May 1918

***

At the same time, we pointed out that we were going to Brest-Litovsk for
the continuance of the peace negotiations under conditions which were
becoming better for ourselves but worse for our enemies. We observed

31. Sources: N. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, The Proletarian Revolution in Russia, ed. Louis
C. Fraina (New York: The Communist Press, 1918), 350–52, 353; Max von Hoffmann,
The War of Lost Opportunities (London: K. Paul, French, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1924),
216, 219–20, 226, 227–28.
104 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

the movement in Austria-Hungary32 and there was much to indicate—

for that is what the Social Democratic deputies in the Reichstag had
reference to—that Germany too was on the eve of such events. Filled
with this hope, we departed.33 And even during the first days of our
next stay at Brest, a radiogram via Vilna brought us the first news that
in Berlin a tremendous strike movement had broken out,34 which, just
as that of Austria-Hungary, was directly connected with the conduct of
the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. But, as is often the case in accordance
with the dialectics of the class struggle, the very dimensions of this prole-
tarian movement—never seen in Germany before—compelled a closing
of the ranks of the propertied classes and forced them to ever greater
implacability. . . . 

***

. . . Then came the hour of decision. We could not declare war. We were
too weak. The army had lost internal cohesion. For the salvation of our
country and in order to overcome the process of disintegration, we were
forced to re-establish the inner connection of the working-masses. This
psychological bond can be created by way of common productive effort
in the fields, in the factories, and in the workshops. We must bring the
working masses, so long subjected to the terrible sufferings and cata-
strophic trials of the war, back to their fields and factories where they can
again find themselves in their labour and enable us to build up internal
discipline. This is the only way out for a country that must now do pen-
ance for the sins of Czarism and of the bourgeoisie. We are forced to
give up this war and to lead the army out of this slaughter. But we do
declare at the same time and in the face of German militarism: the peace
you have forced upon us is a peace of force and robbery. We shall not
permit that you, diplomatic gentlemen, can say to the German workers:

32. Trotsky was referring to the food crisis that gripped Austria-Hungary in winter
1917–1918, precipitating widespread unrest, including a strike movement in the main
industrial centers.
33. Trotsky had arrived for his first round of negotiations on January 6 (N.S.) and, fol-
lowing a twelve-day recess, returned just before the 28th.
34. Major strikes encompassing up to one million workers commenced on January 28
in several German cities. Among the strikers’ demands was an end to the war on Soviet
Russian terms.
 2.1. The Bolsheviks Take Russia Out of World War I 105

“You have called our demands conquests and annexations, but see: we
bring to you, under these same demands, the signature of the Russian
Revolution!”—Yes, we are weak; we can not now conduct a war, but we
possess sufficient revolutionary force to prove that we shall not, volun-
tarily, place our signatures under a treaty that you write with your sword
upon the bodies of living people. We refused our signatures!—I believe,
comrades, that we acted rightly.

***

Max von Hoffmann, The War of Lost Opportunities

***

Trotsky was certainly the most interesting personality in the new Russian
Government: clever, versatile, cultured, possessing great energy, power of
work, and eloquence, he gave the impression of a man who knew exactly
what he wanted and who would not be deterred from using any means
for the attainment of his end. The question has been much discussed
whether he came with the intention of concluding a peace, or if from the
very beginning he only wanted to find the most visible platform from
which to propagandize his Bolshevik theories. Although propaganda
played such a prominent part in the whole of the negotiations of the fol-
lowing weeks, I still think that Trotsky at first wanted to try to make
peace and that it was only afterwards, when he had been driven into a
corner by Kuhlmann’s35 dialectics, for which he was no match, that he
thought of bringing the conference to a spectacular finish by declaring
that, though Russia could not accept the conditions of peace offered by
the Central Powers, nor even fully discuss them, still, it declared the War
to be finished.

***

When I finished there was profound silence. Even Mr. Trotsky, at the first
moment, could not find a word in reply. It was difficult to find anything

35. Richard von Kühlmann (1873–1948) was Germany’s foreign minister.

106 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

to say against it, as all I had asserted was in strict accordance with facts.
The meeting was quickly adjourned.

***

. . . In the meeting of the 10th of February he announced, that although he

would sign no Treaty of Peace, Russia would consider the War at an end
from that time, she would send all her Armies to their homes and that
she would proclaim the fact to all the Peoples and all the States.
The whole congress sat speechless when Trotsky had finished his
declaration. We were all dumbfounded. . . . If peace were not concluded
the object of the armistice was not attained, and, therefore, the armistice
came automatically to an end, and hostilities must recommence. Trotsky’s
declaration was, in my opinion, nothing more than a denouncement of
the Armistice.

***

On the eighth day after the negotiations had been broken off so abruptly
by Trotsky, the Eastern Army resumed the offensive. The demoralized
Russian troops offered no kind of resistance, if it were possible even to
call them troops, as it was only the staffs that still remained; the bulk
of the troops had already gone home. We simply swept over the whole
of Livonia and Estonia, and took possession of them. Our troops were
greeted everywhere as deliverers from the Bolshevik terror, and not only
by the Baltic Germans, but likewise by the Letts and Estonians.
Two days after our advance had recommenced a wireless message was
received from Petrograd announcing that the Russians were ready to
renew the negotiations and conclude a Peace and also begging that the
German advance might be stopped. It had very quickly been proved that
Trotsky’s theories could not resist facts. The German Army advanced
only as far as Lake Peipus and Narva,36 in order to release at least all
the Baltic members of our race from the Bolsheviks and all their crimes.
Then the advance was stopped and the Bolsheviks were informed that
they might send a delegation, authorized to sign a Peace, to Brest-Litovsk.

36. An Estonian city 150 km from St. Petersburg.

 2.2. Soviet Protest against Allied Intervention 107

Almost immediately the delegation under the leadership of Sokolnikov37

arrived. . . . 

2.2
Soviet Protest against Allied
Intervention, June 27, 191838

The following diplomatic note was issued by the Soviet govern-

ment in response to the landing of British forces, as part of the
Allied anti-German war effort, in northern Russia’s Murmansk
region in March 1918. Georgii Chicherin (1872–1936), who laid
the foundations of Soviet diplomacy, had just replaced Trotsky as
Commissar of Foreign Relations.

By the will of the working people, cognizant of the unity of their inter-
ests and in solidarity with the working masses of the whole world, the
Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic has quit the ranks of the
belligerent powers and exited the state of war, which was impossible for
Russia to maintain due to its internal condition.
The working people of Russia and the Worker-Peasant Government,
which is implementing its will, only seek to live in peace and friendship
with all other peoples. The working people of Russia do not threaten any
people with war and could not be a source of any threat to Great Britain.
Therefore, the Worker-Peasant Government cannot refrain from pro-
testing even more forcefully against the invasion of the English armed
force, which arrived in Murmansk without any aggressive provocation
from the Russian side.
The armed forces of the Russian Republic are charged with the task
to protect the Murmansk region against any foreign intervention and the
Soviet troops will carry out this obligation, unswervingly fulfilling its
revolutionary duty to guard Soviet Russia to the end.

37. Grigorii Sokolnikov (1888–1939) replaced Trotsky as lead negotiator.

38. Source: Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny v SSSR: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov v trekh
tomakh, 3 vols. (Moscow: Institut Marksa-Engel’sa-Lenina, 1960), 1:29–30.
108 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs insists most decisively

that no armed forces of Great Britain or of any other foreign power
should be present in Murmansk, a city of a neutral Russia. The Commis-
sariat repeats its numerously declared protestation against the presence
of the English warships in the Murmansk harbor expressing at the same
time its firm expectation that the government of Great Britain will retract
this measure, which is contrary to Russia’s international status, and that
the working people of Russia, which ardently desires to maintain friendly
and unperturbed relations with Great Britain, will not be involuntarily
put in a situation incompatible with its most sincere aspirations.

2.3
Vladimir Lenin, “A Letter to American
Workingmen,” August 20, 191839

The letter below was written by Vladimir Lenin (under the pseud-
onym N. Lenin) on August 20, 1918, marking the Bolsheviks’
growing commitment to a global struggle for hearts and minds.
A Bolshevik emissary Petr Ivanovich Travin (Sletov), an old
Bolshevik, took the letter to the United States, along with a copy
of the Soviet Constitution and a diplomatic note to Woodrow
Wilson demanding an end to US intervention in Russia. The
American journalist, John Reed (1887–1920), arranged for its
publication in several American newspapers and magazines. By
the end of the year a less strident version of the letter was pub-
lished in The Class Struggle, a socialist periodical. That version is
excerpted below with the addition of the omitted sections trans-
lated from the Russian original and inserted in square brackets.

***

39. Sources: N. Lenin, A Letter to American Workingmen: From the Socialist Soviet
Republic of Russia (New York: The Socialist Publication Society, 1918), 3–4, 9–12, 14;
and V. I. Lenin, “Pis’mo k amerikanskim rabochim,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th
ed., 55 vols. (Moscow: Gos. izd. politicheskoi literatury, 1958–1965), 37:48–49, 60.
 2.3. Lenin, “A Letter to American Workingmen” 109

The history of modern civilized America opens with one of those really
revolutionary wars of liberation of which there have been so few com-
pared with the enormous number of wars of conquest that were caused,
like the present imperialistic war, by squabbles among kings, landhold-
ers, and capitalists over the division of ill-gotten lands and profits. It
was a war of the American people against the English [brigands] who
despoiled America of its resources and held it in colonial subjection, just
as their “civilized” descendants are draining the lifeblood of hundreds of
millions of human beings in India, Egypt, and all corners and ends of the
world to keep them in subjection.
Since that war 150 years have passed. Bourgeois civilization has borne
its most luxuriant fruit. By developing the productive forces of organized
human labor, by utilizing machines and all the wonders of technique
America has taken the first place among free and civilized nations. But at
the same time America, like a few other nations, has become characteris-
tic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires
who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving
men and women who are always staring want in the face. [The Ameri-
can people, who had given the world an example of a revolutionary war
against feudal slavery, has fallen into the latest capitalist wage-slavery at
the hands of a small circle of billionaires, has found itself playing the role
of hired executioner, which for the benefit of the rich scum strangled the
Philippines in 1898 under the pretext of its “liberation”40 and in 1918 is
strangling the Russian Socialist Federative Republic under the pretext of
“defending” it against the Germans.]

***

We are accused of having brought devastation upon Russia. Who is it

that makes these accusations? The train-bearers of the bourgeoisie, of
that same bourgeoisie that almost completely destroyed the culture of
Europe, that has dragged the whole continent back to barbarism, that
has brought hunger and destruction to the world. This bourgeoisie now
demands that we find a different basis for our Revolution than that of
destruction, that we shall not build it up upon the ruins of war, with

40. The reference is to the Spanish-American War, when the United States seized the
Philippines and, following a bloody anti-insurgency campaign, subjugated the country.
110 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

human beings degraded and brutalized by years of warfare. O, how

human, how just is this bourgeoisie!

***

The bourgeoisie of international imperialism has succeeded in slaughter-

ing 10 millions, in crippling 20 millions in its war [in order to settle which
predators, the English or the Germans, will rule the world]. Should our
war, the war of the oppressed and the exploited, against oppressors and
exploiters, cost a half or a whole million victims in all countries, the bour-
geoisie would still maintain that the victims of the world war died a righ-
teous death, that those of the civil war were sacrificed for a criminal cause.

***

Let the corrupt bourgeois press trumpet every mistake that is made by
our Revolution out into the world. We are not afraid of our mistakes. The
beginning of the revolution has not sanctified humanity. It is not to be
expected that the working classes who have been exploited and forcibly
held down by the clutches of want, of ignorance and degradation for cen-
turies should conduct its revolution without mistakes. The dead body of
bourgeois society cannot simply be put into a coffin and buried. It rots in
our midst, poisons the air we breathe, pollutes our lives, clings to the new,
the fresh, the living with a thousand threads and tendrils of old customs,
of death and decay.
But for every hundred of our mistakes that are heralded into the world
by the bourgeoisie and its sycophants, there are ten thousand great deeds
of heroism, greater and more heroic because they seem so simple and
unpretentious, because they take place in the everyday life of the factory
districts or in secluded villages, because they are the deeds of people who
are not in the habit of proclaiming their every success to the world, who
have no opportunity to do so.
But even if the contrary were true,—I know, of course, that this is not
so—but even if we had committed 10,000 mistakes to every 100 wise
and righteous deeds, yes, even then our revolution would be great and
invincible. And it will go down in the history of the world as unconquer-
able. For the first time in the history of the world not the minority, not
alone the rich and the educated, but the real masses, the huge major-
ity of the working-class itself, are building up a new world, are deciding
 2.3. Lenin, “A Letter to American Workingmen” 111

the most difficult questions of social organization from out of their own
experience.

***

We know that it may take a long time before help can come from you,
comrades, American Workingmen, for the development of the revolu-
tion in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with varying
rapidity (how could it be otherwise)! We know full well that the outbreak
of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come,
quickly as it is ripening in these days. We are counting on the inevitabil-
ity of the international revolution. But that does not mean that we count
upon its coming at some definite, nearby date. We have experienced two
great revolutions in our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and
we know that revolutions can come neither at a word of command, nor
according to prearranged plans. We know that circumstances alone have
pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this
new stage in the social life of the world not because of our superiority but
because of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the
outbreak of the international revolution, revolutions in individual coun-
tries may still meet with a number of serious setbacks and overthrows.

***

We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international socialist

revolution comes to our assistance with its armies. But these armies exist,
they are stronger than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more
invincible the longer imperialism with its brutalities continues. Working-
men the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers
and their Scheidemanns.41 Inevitably labor is approaching communistic
Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone
is capable of preserving culture and humanity from destruction.
We are invincible, for invincible is the Proletarian Revolution.

41. Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) was the founder and longest-serving president of
the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Philipp Scheidemann (1865–1939) was a
leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
112 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

2.4
Pitfalls of Intervention, 1918–192042

The first document below is an excerpt from an informal dip-

lomatic message sent by US Secretary of State Robert Lansing
(1864–1928), on July 17, 1918, to the Allied ambassadors articu-
lating a justification for intervention in Russia. Maj. Gen. William
S. Graves, commander of the US Expeditionary Force in Siberia,
received a copy of the message from Secretary of War Newton
Baker, Jr. (1871–1937). The second document is Graves’s pes-
simistic report, filed on June 30, 1920, concerning the status of
Allied intervention forces and the general political and economic
conditions he observed in Russia.

Document 1
The whole heart of the people of the United States is in the winning
of this war. The controlling purpose of the Government of the United
States is to do everything that is necessary and effective to win it. . . . 

***

In such circumstances it feels it to be its duty to say that it cannot, so long

as the military situation on the western front remains critical, consent to
break or slacken the force of its present effort by diverting any part of its
military force to other points and objectives. . . . 

***

It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United

States, arrived at after repeated and very searching re-considerations of
the whole situation in Russia that military intervention there would add

42. Sources: Document 1: US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United

States, 1918, Russia II (1932), 287–89; Document 2: NARA, RG 395.9, Historical
Files of the AEF in Siberia, Final report of Maj. Gen. William S. Graves on the opera-
tions of AEF in Siberia, July 1, 1919–Mar. 30, 1920. Roll 10, file 21-33.6.
 2.4. Pitfalls of Intervention 113

to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure rather
than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of
our main design, to win the war against Germany, it cannot, therefore,
take part in such intervention, or sanction it in principle. Military inter-
vention would, in its judgment, even supposing it to be efficacious in its
immediate avowed object of delivering an attack upon Germany from
the East, be merely a method of making use of Russia, not a method
of serving her. . . . Whether from Vladivostok, or from Murmansk and
Archangel, the only legitimate object for which American or allied troops
can be employed, it submits, is to guard military stores which may sub-
sequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be
acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense.
For helping the Czecho-Slovaks43 there is immediate necessity and suf-
ficient justification. Recent developments have made it evident that that
is in the interest of what the Russian people themselves desire, and the
Government of the United States is glad to contribute the small force at
its disposal for that purpose. . . . 

***

Document 2

***

The people soon found that the troops of foreign governments were
guarding the railroad for the benefit of Kolchak,44 and not for the ben-
efit of the people. This naturally resulted in a resentment of the people,
not only against the Kolchak government, but against the Allied Forces
engaged in guarding the railroad.
This is the only case where the action of American Corps could be
considered as taking sides and justifying a resentment of a certain action
of the Russian people against the United States.

43. On the Czechoslovak Legion, see Historical Essay, p. 34.

44. Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920) was a polar explorer, commander in the Imperial
Russian Navy, and leader of anti-Bolshevik forces in Eastern Russia.
114 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

Notwithstanding the assistance we were giving the Kolchak govern-

ment, the fact that I would not send troops out of the railroad sector to
look for anti-Kolchak troops and disperse them, caused great criticism
from the Kolchak adherents.
When the railroad employees refused work, it was generally stated
their action was due to political convictions, and many of them would
be arrested by the Kolchak authorities. The pay of these workmen was
not such, during a great part of the time we were guarding the railroad,
to even subsist the workman himself, let alone his family, if he had one.
The value of the rouble fluctuated from about ten cents to less than
one fourth of a cent. The average pay of the railroad employees, when the
rouble was selling at two hundred and fifty for one American dollar, was
less than three dollars a month, and I have been informed that many of
these workmen had nothing but tea and bread for months.

***

My belief is the result of intervention in Siberia is going to be very harm-

ful to the United States, Japan, England, and France, but less so to the
United States than to the others. . . . 
. . . There is no question that the people, or ninety percent of the peo-
ple, were outrageously treated by the Kolchak representatives. They were
robbed, beaten, exploited and thousands murdered by men who pro-
fessed to be supporting Kolchak. . . . It was a common statement of rep-
resentatives of all classes, except the Kolchak government class, that the
treatment of the people was worse than in the time of the Czar. . . . 

***

. . . Ninety percent of the people of Russia, including in Siberia, are com-

posed of peasants and workmen. These people, since the beginning of the
war in 1914, have not only undergone great suffering, but have experi-
enced great losses of men and property. They are all tired of war. They are
more desirous of peace than of any other one thing in the world. . . . The
Soviet Government has evidently convinced the people of Siberia that
their form of government offers an opportunity for restoration of peace-
ful conditions. . . . 

***
 2.5. Bolshevik Anticipation of a Revolutionary Wave 115

2.5
Bolshevik Anticipation of a
Revolutionary Wave in 191945

Mikhail Voronkov (1893–1973) was a Bolshevik and leading

Soviet official in Riazan province. He was attending the 8th Party
Congress when news of the Hungarian Revolution reached Mos-
cow. The following excerpts from his diary record excitement
as well as eager anticipation of new revolutions erupting across
Europe—feelings shared throughout the Bolshevik Party.

18 March [1919].

***

Last night comrade Lenin opened the congress in the Kremlin. . . . Lenin

talked about the international situation, arguing that we need to view
the Entente countries as no different than German imperialism, which is
why the Soviet government is ready to accept even the most unfavorable
conditions, if only peace can be concluded.46

***

22 March [1919].

***

During the evening session, Bukharin barged into the Presidium, jump-
ing and leaping around, and began explaining something to the people
around him. Confusion followed. It turned out that Lenin had been
contacted via wireless transmission from Budapest—in Hungary power

45. Source: Mikhail I. Voronkov, Intelligent i epokha: Dnevniki, vospominaniia, stat’i,

1911–1941 gg., ed. A. O. Nikitin (Riazan’: NRIID, 2013), 128, 130, 135, 139, 141. The
editors are grateful to Gleb Albert for bringing this book to our attention.
46. Lenin was referring to the Paris Peace Conference, which met from January 1919
to January 1920.
116 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

shifted to the Communists. The Congress applauded for a long time after
the announcement and welcomed a Hungarian Communist47 who made
a speech.

***

5 April [1919]. Work’s little nuisances are hurtfully unnerving. Every-

one comes to see me asking for everything: boots and soap, timber and
woolen cloth, and kerosene! I really can’t wait to be done with this work
in the City Executive Committee, since I am in such a state sometimes
that I am ready to beat up everybody . . . Lyriev,48 from the Provincial
Party Committee, presented a report on the struggle with the enemies of
Soviet power. For the purpose of defending socialism, it is necessary to
insinuate secret informers among the SRs49—this is disgusting, but obvi-
ously unavoidable: the countryside is turning restive again, as in the fall,
because of the official grain inventory.50 I wish the workers’ revolution in
Germany and France would come soon. It hurts so much to be waiting!

***

21 April [1919].
. . . There was a radio report on the revolution in Turkey51 and the
establishment of Soviets there. What joy! Now the Black Sea campaign
of the Allies will be lost and so will their fleet and landing forces. One can
now breath easier, in the assurance of the great inevitable cause of world
revolution. . .

***

47. Endre Rudnianskii (1884?–?) was a Hungarian lawyer and Communist activist.
48. Nikita Lyriev (1893–?) then headed both the Cheka and the Revolutionary
Tribunal in the city of Riazan.
49. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party was traditionally the most popular political
party among the peasantry.
50. The grain inventory was conducted for the purpose of calculating obligatory deliv-
eries to the state.
51. The author is referring to the initial developments of the Turkish War of Indepen-
dence (May 1919–July 1923).
 2.6. Report of the Chief of the International Relations Section of the Comintern 117

2–22 May [1919].

A whirlwind of events in the past twenty days. Party and Soviet life is
in full swing, centering on the question of the struggle against Kolchak.
We are sending convoys [of troops] and holding political rallies, with the
deepest conviction that truth and victory belong to us. The Allies are
traitors, and the majority of Western socialists are has-beens! How the
whole world would glow with red flames, if in at least one of the Entente
countries a worker revolution would break out! . . . 
All these days I dealt with matters of city administration. It took a lot
of effort to compel the department of communal services to tidy up the
city; the question of fuel is worrisome; [state] procurement of [firewood]
has almost halted,52 and one cannot face winter relying solely on the Pro-
vincial Forest Committee. . . . 

***

2.6
Report of the Chief of the International Relations
Section of the Comintern, March 1, 192153

The Bolshevik leaders subsidized and controlled the Comintern

throughout its existence. They aimed to advance the work of
Communist parties and to encourage their efforts to foment revo-
lution, as this report by a senior Comintern official indicates.

To the Chairman of the Executive Committee of Comintern (IKKI),

Comrade Zinoviev

Copy to the General Secretary

52. Such procurements were often coerced, sometimes performed by “hostages” taken
among politically suspect groups, and nearly always on terms disadvantageous to those
making deliveries to the state.
53. Source: Daly and Trofimov, eds., Russia in War and Revolution, 201–2.
118 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

During my trip I visited the following countries: POLAND,

CZECHOSLOVAKIA, AUSTRIA, ITALY, GERMANY, LITHU-
ANIA, and LATVIA. I will present my proposals about these countries
in that order.
I. POLAND
The Polish Communist Party is the only large illegal party close-
ly linked to the masses. It has a strong influence on the working
class. . . . It has almost no income and is forced to live entirely at
the expense of the IKKI. The needs of the party are many. Until
October 15, 1921, they received from us 1,000,000 German marks
per month, and after that date, because of a change in the exchange
rate, nearly double that amount.

***

II. CZECHOSLOVAKIA

***

Here is my proposal in terms of financing the Czech Communist

Party: provide substantial assistance as a loan for organizational ex-
penses and for newspapers to prevent their press from collapsing;
also this year allocate a certain amount for waging their electoral
campaign for parliament; they will need a large amount, since the
bourgeois parties will be fighting hard against them.

***

III. AUSTRIA
. . . the Austrian Communist Party does not constitute a revolution-
ary base, nor does it stand up to the military cliques seeking to attack
Russia. . . . yet cutting off subsidies threatens the closure of [their]
newspaper. . .
My proposal is to purchase a printing press for publishing Die
Rote Fane . . . under the condition that it would not be given to the
 2.6. Report of the Chief of the International Relations Section of the Comintern 119

party but would remain a private enterprise under the control of the
IKKI. . . .
IV. ITALY
. . . I think it is a mistake that the party does not allow its members
to join pan-proletarian organizations that combat the fascists. The
working masses are much angered by fascism, and this mood could
be used for communist propaganda and for unifying workers in the
struggle against the fascists. . . .
The party lives entirely at the expense of Comintern and has
no hopes for independent existence. Their only available revenue is
50,000 party cards at 5 lire each per year for a total of 250,000 lire.
By contrast, the expenses for the central apparatus and subsidies to
local organizations alone add up to 733,200 lire per year. If one adds
to this 240,000 lire for illegal work and 100,000 for relations with
other parties, then, together with expenses for their newspapers and
publishing operations, the grand total reaches 4,306,000 lire, which
under the current circumstances we are absolutely unable to provide.

***

V. GERMANY

***

Concerning the financing of the Communist Party of Germany, the

Party itself seeks to receive less assistance from Comintern but can-
not do without it entirely. Still, it is possible to reduce this assistance
without damaging the work of the Communist Party. They can re-
duce the central apparatus and terminate newspaper subsidies for
local organizations.
Director of the Department of International Relations of the IKKI
120 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

2.7
Toward World Revolution, July 3, 192154

When the Third Congress of the Comintern met in Moscow in

summer 1921, the prospects for an international communist revo-
lution looked bleak compared to 1919. Yet, by now the Bolshevik
government had won the Civil War. Below is an excerpt from
the resolution “On Tactics,” which takes into account these new
realities. It spells out the tactics Communist parties should pursue
to achieve their objectives: overthrowing capitalism, setting up
a proletarian dictatorship, and creating “an international Soviet
republic.”

3. The Important Task of the Present

In view of these imminent new struggles, the question of the attainment
of decisive influence on the most important sections of the working class,
in short, the leadership of the struggle, is the most important question
now confronting the Third International. For, despite the present objec-
tive revolutionary economic and political situation wherein the acutest
revolutionary crisis may arise suddenly (whether in the form of a big
strike, or a colonial upheaval, or a new war, or even a severe parliamentary
crisis) the majority of the working class is not yet under the influence of
Communism. Particularly is this true in such countries, as for example,
England and America, where large strata of workers depending for their
existence on the power of finance capital are corrupted by imperialism,
and the real revolutionary propaganda among the masses has only just
begun. . . .

***

54. Source: Theses and Resolutions Adopted at the Third World Congress of the Commu-
nist International (June 22nd–July 12th, 1921) (New York: The Contemporary Publish-
ing Association, 1921), 38, 51, 54–55, 58–59, 60–61, 63, 65–66.
 2.7. Toward World Revolution 121

[6.] Broadening the Fight

***

The character of the transition period makes it imperative for all Com-
munist Parties to be thoroughly prepared for the struggle. Each separate
struggle may lead to the struggle for power. Preparedness can only be
achieved by giving to the entire Party agitation the character of a vehe-
ment attack against capitalist society. The Party must also come into con-
tact with the widest masses of workers, and must make it plain to them
that they are being led by a vanguard, whose real aim is—the conquest of
power. The Communist press and proclamations must not merely con-
sist of theoretical proofs that Communism is right. They must be clar-
ion calls of the proletarian revolution. The parliamentary activity of the
Communists must not consist in debates with the enemy, or in attempts
to convert him, but in the ruthless unmasking of the agents of the bour-
geoisie and the stirring up of the fighting spirit of the working masses
and in attracting the semi-proletarian and the petty bourgeois strata
of society to the proletariat. Our organizing work in the trade-unions,
as well as in the party organizations, must not consist in mechanically
increasing the number of our membership. It must be imbued with the
consciousness of the coming struggle. It is only in becoming, in all its
forms and manifestations, the embodiment of the will to fight, that the
Party will be able to fulfil its task, when the time for drastic action will
have arrived.

***

8. The Forms and Means of Direct Action

***

In the course of the past year, during which we saw the ever increasing
arrogance of the capitalist offensive against the workers, we observed that
the bourgeoisie in all countries, not satisfied with the normal activity
of its state organs, created legal and semi-legal though state-protected
122 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

White-Guard organizations, which played a decisive part in every big

economic or industrial conflict.

***

The bourgeoisie, though apparently conscious of its power and actually

bragging about its stability, knows through its leading governments quite
well, that it has merely obtained a breathing spell and that under the
present circumstances every big strike has the tendency to develop into
civil war and the immediate struggle for the possession of power.
In the struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist offensive it is
the duty of the Communists not only to take the advanced posts and lead
those engaged in the struggle to a complete understanding of the funda-
mental revolutionary tasks, but it is also their duty, relying upon the best
and most active elements among the workers, to create their own workers
legions and militant organizations which would resist the pacifists and
teach the “golden youth” of the bourgeoisie a wholesome lesson that will
break them of the strike-breaking habit.
In view of the extraordinary importance of the counter-revolutionary
shock-troops, the Communist Party must, through its nuclei in the
unions, devote special attention to this question, organizing a thorough-
going educational and communication service which shall keep under
constant observation the military organs and forces of the enemy, his
headquarters, his arsenals, the connection between these headquarters
and the police, the press and the political parties, and work out all the
necessary details of defense and counter-attack.
The Communist Party must in this manner convince the widest circles
of the proletariat by word and deed that every economic or political con-
flict, given the necessary combination of circumstances, may develop into
civil war, in the course of which it will become the task of the Proletariat
to conquer the power of the state.

***

10. International Coordination of Action

***
 2.7. Toward World Revolution 123

. . . The unconditional support of Soviet Russia is still the main duty

of the Communists of all countries. Not only must they act resolutely
against any attacks on Soviet Russia, but they must also struggle to do
away with all the obstacles placed by capitalist states in the way of Rus-
sia’s communication with the world market and all other nations. Only
if Soviet Russia succeeds in reconstructing economic life, in mitigating
the terrible misery caused by the three years of imperialist war and three
years of civil war, only when Soviet Russia will have contrived to raise
the efficiency of the masses of its population, will it be in a position, in
the future, to assist the western proletarian States with food and raw
material, and protect them against being enslaved by American Capital.
The International political task of the Communist International con-
sists not in demonstrations on special occasions, but in the permanent
increase of the international relations of the Communists, in their cease-
less struggle in closed formation. It is impossible to foretell at what front
the proletariat will succeed in breaking the capitalist lines, whether it
will be in capitalist Germany with its workers who are most cruelly
oppressed by the German and the Entente bourgeoisie, and are faced by
the alternative of either winning or dying, or in the agrarian southwest,
or in Italy, where the decay of the bourgeoisie has reached an advanced
stage. It is therefore the duty of the Communist International to inten-
sify its efforts on all the sectors of the workers’ world front, and it is the
duty of the Communist Parties to support with all their means the deci-
sive battles of each section of the Communist International. This must
be achieved by immediately widening and deepening all international
conflicts in every other country, as soon as a great struggle breaks out in
any one country.

***
124 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

2.8
The Treaty of Rapallo, April 16, 192255

The Treaty of Rappalo stunned the other European governments—

as two “pariah states” drew closer in the face of Western hostility—
and represented a milestone in the Bolsheviks’ growing embrace
of state diplomacy.

German-Russian Agreement; April 16, 1922 (Treaty of Rapallo)

The German Government, represented by Dr. Walther Rathenau,56

Minister of State, and the Government of the Russian Socialist Federal
Soviet Republic, represented by M. Tchitcherin, People’s Commissary,
have agreed upon the following provisions:

Article 1
The two Governments are agreed that the arrangements arrived at
between the German Reich and the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet
Republic, with regard to questions dating from the period of war between
Germany and Russia, shall be definitely settled upon the following basis:
[a] The German Reich and the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet
Republic mutually agree to waive their claims for compensation for
expenditure incurred on account of the war, and also for war damages,
that is to say, any damages which may have been suffered by them and by
their nationals in war zones on account of military measures, including
all requisitions in enemy country. Both Parties likewise agree to forego
compensation for any civilian damages, which may have been suffered
by the nationals of the one Party on account of so-called exceptional war

55. Source: League of Nations, Treaty Series; Publication of Treaties and International
Engagements Registered with the Secretariat of the League (Geneva: League of Nations,
1923), vol. 19, pp. 248–52.
56. Walther Rathenau (1867–1922), a leading German industrialist and statesman,
was appointed Foreign Minister in January 1922. Rightwing conspirators murdered
him in June, in part for his role in negotiating the Rapallo Treaty.
 2.8. The Treaty of Rapallo 125

measures or on account of emergency measures carried out by the other

Party.
[b] Legal relations in public and private matters arising out of the state
of war, including the question of the treatment of trading vessels which
have fallen into the hands of either Party, shall be settled on a basis of
reciprocity.
[c] Germany and Russia mutually agree to waive their claims for com-
pensation for expenditure incurred by either party on behalf of prisoners
of war. Furthermore the German Government agrees to forego compen-
sation with regard to the expenditure incurred by it on behalf of mem-
bers of the Red Army interned in Germany. The Russian Government
agrees to forego the restitution of the proceeds of the sale carried out
in Germany of the army stores brought into Germany by the interned
members of the Red Army mentioned above.

Article 2
Germany waives all claims against Russia which may have arisen through
the application, up to the present, of the laws and measures of the Rus-
sian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic to German nationals or their
private rights and the rights of the German Reich and states, and also
claims which may have arisen owing to any other measures taken by the
Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic or by their agents against Ger-
man nationals or the private rights, on condition that the government of
the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic does not satisfy claims for
compensation of a similar nature made by a third Party.

Article 3
Diplomatic and consular relations between the German Reich and the
Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic shall be resumed immediately.
The conditions for the admission of the Consuls of both Parties shall be
determined by means of a special agreement.
126 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

Article 4
Both Governments have furthermore agreed that the establishment of
the legal status of those nationals of the one Party, which live within the
territory of the other Party, and the general regulation of mutual, com-
mercial and economic relations, shall be effected on the principle of the
most favoured nation. This principle shall, however, not apply to the priv-
ileges and facilities which the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic
may grant to a Soviet Republic or to any State which in the past formed
part of the former Russian Empire.

Article 5
The two Governments shall co-operate in a spirit of mutual goodwill
in meeting the economic needs of both countries. In the event of a fun-
damental settlement of the above question on an international basis, an
exchange of opinions shall previously take place between the two Gov-
ernments. The German Government, having lately been informed of the
proposed agreements of private firms, declares its readiness to give all
possible support to these arrangements and to facilitate their being car-
ried into effect.

Article 6
Articles 1[b] and 4 of this Agreement shall come into force on the
day of ratification, and the remaining provisions shall come into force
immediately.
Original text done in duplicate at Rapallo on April 16, 1922.
Signed: Rathenau
Signed: Tchitcherin
 2.9. Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University of the Toiling Peoples of the East” 127

2.9
Joseph Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University
of the Toiling Peoples of the East,” 192557

Bolshevik leaders directly supervised and participated in the work

of the international revolutionary universities instituted in the
USSR beginning in 1921. On May 18, 1925, Joseph Stalin deliv-
ered a speech to a student meeting at the Communist University
of the Toilers of the East, which by then already bore his name.
In his speech, Stalin greeted “the sons of the East,” yet he noted
that the university’s tasks of nation- and socialist state-building
in the Soviet republics of the East were quite distinct from its tasks
in the colonial and dependent countries of the East. The excerpt
below reflects Stalin’s thinking about the latter tasks.

***

From the foregoing, one can deduce at the very least the following three
inferences:
1) To achieve the liberation of colonial and dependent countries from
imperialism is impossible without victorious revolution. You cannot win
independence for free.
2) It is impossible to move the revolution forward and to gain full
independence in those colonies and dependent countries where capital-
ism is developed without isolating the collaborationist national bourgeoi-
sie, without liberating the petty-bourgeois revolutionary masses from the
influence of this bourgeoisie, without working toward the hegemony of
the proletariat, without organizing the progressive elements of the work-
ing class into an independent communist party.
3) It is impossible to achieve a durable victory in colonial and depen-
dent countries without a genuine alliance between the liberation move-
ment of these countries and the proletarian movement of the advanced
countries of the West.

57. Source: I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, 18 vols. (Moscow: Gos. izd. politicheskoi litera­
tury, 1946–1952), 7:133–52.
128 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

***

What are the immediate tasks of the revolutionary movement of the col-
onies and dependent countries in light of these circumstances?
The key aspect of the nature of colonies and dependent countries at
the present moment is that there is no longer any such thing as a single
and all-encompassing East. In the past, the colonial East was repre-
sented as something unitary and homogenous. Today this view no
longer reflects reality. There are now at least three categories of colo-
nial and dependent countries. First, there are countries like Morocco,
which have no or almost no proletariat and which are undeveloped in
regard to industry. Second, there are countries like China and Egypt,
whose industry is little developed industrially and whose proletariat
is relatively small. Third, there are countries like India, which are
fairly developed capitalistically and have a fairly numerous national
proletariat.
Clearly it is not possible to place all such countries on the same level.

***

These tasks become particularly serious and significant if they are con-
sidered in light of the present international situation. The international
situation at the moment is characterized by a temporary lull in the rev-
olutionary movement. But what is a lull and what can it signify at the
present moment? It can only signify growing pressure on the workers
in the West, on the colonies of the East, and, above all, on the Soviet
Union as the standard bearer of the revolutionary movement in all coun-
tries. . . . Therefore the question of preparing a counterstrike of the united
forces of revolution against a likely strike from the imperialist camp is
inescapably the order of the day.
That is why the unflinching fulfillment of the present tasks of the rev-
olutionary movement in colonies and dependent countries has acquired
especial importance at this moment.

***

One has to be aware of the existence of two deviations in the practical

work of activists of the colonial East, which have to be fought against in
order to successfully cultivate truly revolutionary cadres.
 2.10. Bolshevik Influence in China 129

The first deviation is underestimating the revolutionary potential of

the liberation movement and overestimating the idea of a united all-
encompassing national front in colonies and dependent countries regard-
less of their conditions and extent of development. This deviation to the
right threatens to undermine the revolutionary movement and to dissolve
the communist elements in the wide-ranging choir of bourgeois national-
ists. Decisive struggle against this deviation is the manifest obligation of
the University of the Peoples of the East.
The second deviation is overestimating the revolutionary potential
of the liberation movement and underestimating the goal of achieving
a union of the working class and the revolutionary bourgeoisie against
imperialism. This deviation, it seems, is afflicting Communists in Java who
recently mistakenly adopted the motto of Soviet power for their country.
This deviation to the left threatens to sunder the bonds with the masses
of the Communist Party and to transform it into a sect. Decisive strug-
gle against this deviation is the essential condition for cultivating truly
revolutionary activists in the colonies and dependent countries of the East.

***

2.10
Bolshevik Influence in China, 1920s58

On June 26, 1927, the Chinese Communist Politburo met in joint

session with representatives of the Executive Committee of the
Comintern to discuss instructions recently sent from Moscow. The
minutes of the session excerpted below reveal both the degree
and the limits of Moscow’s influence over the rapidly developing
political situation in China.

***

58. Source: RGASPI, f. 514, op. 1, d. 298, ll. 69–72.

130 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

CHEN DUXIU:59 We have two paths before us: one on the left and one
on the right. The one on the right means giving up everything; the one on
the left means radical actions. We will perish taking either path.
Besides, there is a middle path, i.e., the continuation of the present
situation—this is also impossible.
So what can we do? Perhaps we should look for a fourth path? We
need to discuss this at our session.
BORODIN:60 First, we need to reach an agreement with Moscow.
For six weeks we have been receiving cables conveying a particular view.
We have disagreed with this view and have repeatedly expressed our dis-
agreement to Moscow, which has insisted that we carry out its directives.
The task is to find a new, common ground with Moscow.
(He then reads a cable from Moscow addressed to Wang Jingwei.61)
The contents are basically as follows:
“In the present dangerous situation we consider it our revolutionary
duty to declare to you the following: salvation is only in joining with the
peasantry, not in confrontation with the peasantry. The Guomindang
must understand that it is necessary to implement an agrarian revolu-
tion. Vacillation must stop. The Guomindang must more closely unite
with the CP and together with it form a revolutionary power.62 Besides, it
is necessary to reorganize the Guomindang, to bring in new leaders from
the working class and the peasantry. We must create a firm basis for the
party, a firm revolutionary power.”
. . . What does Moscow want? Moscow wants:
1) agrarian revolution,
2) democratization of the Guomindang (proletarization and the
involvement of the peasantry),

59. Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) cofounded the Chinese Communist Party and served as
its General Secretary from 1921 to 1927.
60. Mikhail Borodin (born Gruzenberg; 1884–1951) emigrated to the United States in
1906 and studied law and philosophy at Valparaiso University in Indiana. He returned
to Russia in 1918. Lenin sent him to the USA and Mexico to promote the Comintern
in 1919. In 1923, he was sent as a Comintern envoy CCP and a Soviet political advisor
to the Guomindang. He helped forge an alliance between them.
61. Wang Jingwei (1883–1944) was then a leftist member of the Guomindang, closely
associated with Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu, and Borodin.
62. The word translated here as “power” in Russian is vlast’. It denotes variously govern-
ment, leadership, power, and authority.
 2.10. Bolshevik Influence in China 131

3) the creation of a revolutionary army,

4) not exiting the government and the Guomindang (which is viewed
as reckless).
If we act in accordance with these four points, the issue of the party’s
independence will resolve itself; it will no longer be a problem.
(KHITAROV63 shouts: Then the Communist party will lead.)
Yes, then the Communist party will be the leader.
How does Moscow understand these tasks and how do I understand
them?
1) Agrarian revolution.
It is not by accident that Moscow has issued a demand for an agrar-
ian revolution, and not the confiscation of land. Here we can find com-
mon ground. Confiscation of land is not the beginning, but the end of
an agrarian revolution. We should begin with other steps. We should tell
Moscow what we mean by an agrarian revolution. We should determine
whether Moscow means the same thing or it is demanding the immediate
confiscation of land. . . .

***

2) Democratization of the Guomindang.

Here there are two options. The first is to engage workers and peas-
ants, to hold conferences in the provinces, to put out demands to renew
the Guomindang from below.
The second is to advise the Guomindang to elect new leaders from the
masses.
We must clearly tell the Comintern that the first option is possible,
but the second option is impossible. The second option would inevitably
provoke a break-up with the Guomindang. . . .
3) Arming the workers and peasants.
This, of course, we welcome wholeheartedly. The situation, however,
is such that we will not be able to remain in Wuhan for more than two
months. What are our choices? Either we leave for Nanking, but there
Feng 64 could attack us. In that case, we would probably have to retreat
to Guangdong. We will have to surrender Wuhan in any case. Or we will

63. Rafael Khitarov (1900–1939) was an official of the Komsomol and of the Com-
munist Youth International.
64. Feng Yuxiang (1882–1948) was a Chinese warlord allied with Chiang Kai-shek.
132 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

have to go underground together with the left Guomindang. But for this
reason arming the workers and peasants is now practically impossible. . . .
4) Exiting the government.
Moscow calls this a risky adventure. But we, that is, some of the com-
rades here, are even more radical than Moscow. They want to resign. But
I think that here we can reach an agreement without much difficulty. It
is not yet time to resign. We must remain in the government. This, of
course, does not mean that every minister must actually remain in his
office and work. He could designate his deputy, or his secretary, to remain
and go abroad himself for six months if he desires. This is a technical
issue. But as a political gesture, we must remain in the government, sym-
bolically, as it were.

***

CHEN DUXIU: I do not understand Moscow directives and I cannot

agree with them. Moscow simply does not understand what is going on
here. . . . We know precisely what Moscow means by agrarian revolution.
Moscow is demanding the confiscation of land, which we cannot accept.
So Borodin’s entire platform is nonsense.
TAN PINGSHAN:65 I do not agree with Chen Duxiu. I think we
should accept Borodin’s five points. To that end, we should cable Moscow
once again. We should not exit the government. First, we, the Chinese,
should determine our platform and only then notify Moscow about it.
ZHANG GUOTAO:66 I also think that Moscow’s directives are
unacceptable. We should reject them and notify Moscow about it. If
Moscow continues to insist on its point of view, then we should send a
cable in response and take a stand against Moscow.

***

65. Tan Pingshan (1886–1956) was a member of the Politburo of the CCP, head of
the Central Peasant Department in the Wuhan government, a senior official of the
Comintern, and a close associate of Borodin.
66. Zhang Guotao (1897–1979) was a founding member of the CCP and a rival to
Mao.
 2.10. Bolshevik Influence in China 133

ZHOU ENLAI:67 In Shanghai, we received an order from Moscow to

create a democratic government. Then, when we did it, we were told this
was wrong. Moscow always acts this way. We should clarify what Mos-
cow actually wants.
ZHANG TAILEI:68 Since Roy69 arrived, since the Comintern del-
egation was here, we have had constant disagreements. It all began with
the Northern Expedition.70 This situation is intolerable. We really need
to come to an agreement.
We argued with the Comintern representative.71 But when we asked
him what he wanted to propose, on Sunday he wanted a demonstration,
and on Wednesday, a strike. We cannot implement this. These demands
are impossible to carry out.
KHITAROV then had a private talk with Borodin (while the session
continued). He quoted Lenin to him, to the effect that those who assert
that in revolutionary times, when civil war has already begun, we can
engage only in propaganda and agitation and not in action, that those
who reject action are either dead men or traitors to the revolution.
BORODIN said that this is generally speaking correct. At the current
moment, these things cannot be separated.

***

67. Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was, at the time, a member of the Politburo of the CCP.
68. Zhang Tailei (1898–1927) was a leader of the failed communist uprising in Decem-
ber 1927 in Guangzhou (then called Canton in English).
69. Born in India, Manabendra Roy (1887–1954) was a Comintern leader.
70. The Northern Expedition was a Guomindang military campaign in 1926–1928,
which reunified China.
71. That is, Manabendra Roy.
134 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

2.11
Fighting over the Torch of the Revolution:
Trotsky versus Stalin72

Trotsky’s article, later known as “The Transitional Program,” was

adopted by the founding conference of the Fourth International,
which met in September 1938 outside Paris. Trotsky’s support-
ers embraced it as a roadmap for an international communist
revolution.

The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the

Fourth International

The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution

The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a his-
torical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already
in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached
under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already, new
inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth.
Conjunctural crises under the weight of the social crisis affecting the
whole capitalist system impose ever heavier deprivations and sufferings
upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the finan-
cial crisis of the State and undermines the unstable monetary systems.
Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy
to another.
The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has
already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now
toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastro-
phe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bour-
geoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy

72. Source: Leon Trotsky, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the
Fourth International,” Socialist Appeal, vol. 2, no. 46 (October 22, 1938): 7.
 2.11. Fighting over the Torch of the Revolution 135

at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United

States, etc.) all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity,
bordering on a paralysis of will. The “New Deal,” despite its first period
of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political per-
plexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in
accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run
its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” poli-
tics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the
economic blind alley.
International relations present no better picture. Under the increas-
ing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an
impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local distur-
bances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably
coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of
course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a
new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war
than on the eve of 1914.
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened”
for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “rip-
ened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revo-
lution, in the next historical period at that—a catastrophe threatens the
whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly
to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced
to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.

The Proletariat and Its Leadership

The economy, the state, the politics of the bourgeoisie and its interna-
tional relations are completely blighted by a social crisis, characteristic of
a pre-revolutionary state of society. The chief obstacle in the path of
transforming the pre-revolutionary into a revolutionary state is the
opportunist character of proletarian leadership; its petty bourgeois cow-
ardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it
even in its death agony.
In all countries, the proletariat is wracked by a deep disquiet. In mil-
lions, the masses again and again move onto the road of revolutionary
outbreaks. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative
bureaucratic apparatus.
136 Documents • Section 2: The Bolsheviks Engage the World

The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since

April 1931 to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society.
However, its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, anarchists,
POUMists73)—each in its own way—acted as a brake and thus prepared
Franco’s74 triumphs.
In France, the great wave of “sit-down” strikes, particularly during June
1936, revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow
the capitalist system. However, the leading organizations (Socialists,
Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular Front succeeded in
channeling and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream.
The unprecedented wave of sit-down strikes and the amazingly rapid
growth of industrial unionism in the United States (the CIO) is a most
indisputable expression of the instinctive striving of the American work-
ers to raise themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by
history. But here, too, the leading political organizations, including the
newly created CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze
the revolutionary pressure of the masses.
The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of the bour-
geois order, its cynically counterrevolutionary role throughout the world,
particularly in Spain, France, the United States, and other “democratic”
countries, created exceptional supplementary difficulties for the world
proletariat. Under the banner of the October Revolution, the concilia-
tory politics practiced by the “People’s Front” dooms the working class to
impotence and clears the road for fascism.
“People’s Fronts” on the one hand—fascism on the other; these are the
last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the prole-
tarian revolution. From the historical point of view, however, both these
resources are stopgaps. The decay of capitalism continues under the sign
of the Phrygian cap75 in France as under the sign of the swastika in Ger-
many. Nothing short of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open a road
out.

73. Members of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, and independent Spanish
Communist party.
74. Francisco Franco (1892–1975), a Spanish general, led a bloody civil war against the
leftist Popular Front government, which came to power after the election of 1936, and
then ruled as dictator of Spain from 1939 until 1975.
75. A symbol of liberty during the French Revolution of 1789–1794.
 2.11. Fighting over the Torch of the Revolution 137

The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective con-

ditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of
the old workers’ organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is the
decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic appa-
ratus. No matter how the methods of the social-betrayers differ—from
the “social” legislation of Blum76 to the judicial frame-ups of Stalin—they
will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat. As
time goes on, their desperate efforts to hold back the wheel of history will
demonstrate more clearly to the masses that the crisis of the proletarian
leadership, having become the crisis in mankind’s culture, can be resolved
only by the Fourth International.

***

76. Léon Blum (1872–1950) was the socialist Prime Minister of France in a Popular
Front government in 1936–1937.
138 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Section 3
The Russian Revolution and the
Power of Communism

3.1
John Reed on the Revolution and Socialism, 191977

In the article “A New Appeal,” published upon his return from

Soviet Russia to the United States, John Reed critically evaluated
the views of American workers and offered a strategy to engage
them in the worldwide revolutionary movement.

It is time for American Socialists to do a little painful thinking. For my

own satisfaction I should like to set down here what I think about the
American Socialist Movement.
From my observations in different parts of the country, I should say
that, roughly, the American Socialist Party is composed of two main
elements:
1) American petty bourgeois (clerks, shopkeepers, administrative offi-
cers of small business, a few farmers); and American intellectuals (jour-
nalists, mainly).
2) Foreign-born workers; foreign-born intellectuals.
The most significant facts in the American Labor Movement are the
American Federation of Labor and the I.W.W.78 These two organizations
prove that political Socialism has very little attraction for the American
workingman; in fact, they prove that the American workman is opposed
to Socialism.
Why?

77. Source: The Revolutionary Age (Boston), vol. 1, no. 14 (January 18, 1919): 8.
78. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical labor union, was founded
in 1905.
 3.1. John Reed on the Revolution and Socialism 139

Let us consider first the American Federation of Labor. This is a purely

economic organization, whose power consists in the fact that it defends
certain workers against the assaults of the capitalist class, which by rais-
ing the cost of living and depressive relative wages, is always attempting
to reduce the working class to the condition of peonage. Above all, men
who work with their hands are practical, and the American Federation of
Labor offers a practical program.
By reason of the history of this country, its boundless lands and natural
resources, the stupendous growth of its cities, the immeasurable oppor-
tunities presented for energetic individuals in the immense demand for
food, manufactured goods, and means of transportation, and the fluid-
ity of social boundaries, the American worker has always believed, con-
sciously or unconsciously, that he can become a millionaire or an eminent
statesman. This is expressed in the saying, once heard often but now less
frequently that “any American boy can be President.” . . . 
The American worker knows that this country is owned and con-
trolled by “the Trusts.” But he does not realize that the day of univer-
sal opportunity has passed. He believes, consciously or unconsciously,
that he can still rise above the working class, and above his fellows.
And because many thousands believe this, their unanimous sentiment
is opposed to any system, like Socialism, which wishes to destroy their
imagined opportunity. . . .
Moreover, although the American worker is profoundly disgusted with
the dominant Democratic or Republican Parties, and if you ask him what
he thinks of such-and-such a political candidate, will say, “Oh, he’s just a
dirty politician. They’re all alike—they make promises, but they never do
anything when they get elected”; although the American worker knows
that Congress, the State Legislatures, and the City Councils are used by
business interests for their own selfish purposes—still he does not know
how to answer when he is told, “Well, if you don’t like your officials, vote
for somebody you do like. You are the boss. This is a free country.”
The American worker still thinks politically instead of economically. No
one has ever been able to tell him, in a way which he understands, that in
our state of society the vote is almost powerless. As I have said, he knows
that the men he elects to political office are dominated by Big Business
after they get elected; but he doesn’t realize that unless he, the worker,
takes away the power of Big Business before he elects his representatives,
those representatives will always be bought—or if they are honest, they
will always be powerless.
140 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Why doesn’t the American worker vote the Socialist ticket? In the first
place, he probably doesn’t like Socialism, which means to him only a sys-
tem worked out in foreign countries, not born of his own particular needs
and opposed to “democracy” and “fair play,” which is the way he has been
taught to characterize the institutions of this country. In the second place,
if he has become conscious of his class interests, voting for the Socialist
Party seems to him impractical. “They won’t win,” he says, “it will just be
‘throwing away my vote.’”
Of course he does not see that voting for a candidate who promises
and does not perform is just as much “throwing away his vote” as voting
the Socialist ticket.
Sometimes, however, the candidate does perform his promises; some-
times the popular discontent does force a legislative body to pass some
needed social measures. The worker is satisfied; he does not follow
the law to its most important stage—its operation. He does not watch
the Courts which interpret the law. For example, take the various Anti-
Injunction79 bills which have passed Congress, hailed by the American
Federation of Labor as “a new Magna Carta.” And yet injunctions are
still used as weapons against the workers in industrial disputes. . . . Con-
sider the Child Labor Law,80 declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court. The list of cleverly drawn and inefficient labor laws in the statute
books is endless. . . . And if the laws, as sometimes happens, are effective,
the employers simply refuse to obey them, and drag out litigation in the
courts until the whole matter is quietly forgotten.
The American worker does not see to the heart of the society in which
he lives. When the truth becomes too obvious, he is easily persuaded that
all abuses can be corrected by agitation, by the law, by the ballot box.
He does not see that the whole complex structure of our civilization is cor-
rupt from top to bottom, because the capitalist class controls the sources
of wealth.
And yet there is one important truth which he has learned. He knows
that the immediate problems of his daily life in industry cannot be solved
by politics. For this is necessary a kind of insurrection—direct action—
the strike. . . .

***

79. Laws giving labor unions and organizers various legal protections.
80. Reed was referring to the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916.
 3.1. John Reed on the Revolution and Socialism 141

If anything were needed to demonstrate the value of political action, the

Russian Revolution ought to do it. No true Socialist denies that the par-
liament of the future Socialist State will be an Industrial parliament; but
the transformation from the political to the industrial system must be
expressed by political action, whose value in the class struggle lies in the
fact that it creates opportunities for the education of the workers, and for
industrial direct action, and protects these two essential methods of the
struggle of the working class for power.

. . . 

. . . My idea is to make Socialists, and there is only one way of doing
that—by teaching Socialism, straight Socialism, revolutionary Social-
ism, international Socialism. This is what the Russian Bolsheviki did;
this is what the German Spartacus group did. They approached not
Socialists, but people: workers, peasants, soldiers, who did not know
what Socialism was. First, they found out from the working people what
they wanted most. Then they made those wants into an immediate pro-
gram and explained how they were related to the other demands of the
complete Social Revolution. And they explained, explained, eternally
explained . . . 
Revolutionary Socialism is not a refined theory adapted to cultivated
minds. There is no value in inventing new Socialist tactics merely so that
intellectuals can discuss what Karl Marx would have thought about it.
Revolutionary Socialism, above all other kinds, must be practical—it
must work—it must make Socialists out of workers and make them quick.
Comrades who call themselves “members of the Left Wing” have an
immediate job to do. They must find out from American workers what
they want most, and they must explain this in terms of the whole Labor
Movement, and they must make the workers want more—make them
want the whole Revolution.

***

And finally, the workers must be told that they have the force, if they will
only organize it and express it; that if together they are able to stop work,
no power in the universe can prevent them from doing what they want to
do—if only they know what they want to do!
And it is our business to formulate what they want to do.
142 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Said Nikolai Lenin81 at the Peasants’ Congress in Petrograd,82 “If

Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all
the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five
hundred years . . . The Socialist political party—this is the vanguard of
the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of edu-
cation of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, relying upon the
Labor Organizations for revolutionary initiative . . . ”
And again, at the Third Congress of Soviets,83 “You accuse us of using
force . . . We admit it. All Government is legalized force, controlled by one
class and used against another. For the first time in history, we in this
hall are creating a legalized force controlled by the working class, the vast
majority of the people, and directed against those who have exploited us
and enslaved us . . . ”

3.2
“Russia Did It,” 191984

The leaflet below, which circulated in Seattle during the strike of

1919, called upon workers to seize control of the shipyards, take
their efforts to the national level, and carry out a revolutionary
transformation on the Russian model. Although this strategy did
not gain traction in the General Strike Committee or among the
majority of workers, it shaped the conservative perception of the
strike as the work of “domestic Bolshevism.”

81. Nikolai Lenin was a pseudonym of Vladimir Lenin.

82. This congress took place in late November 1917.
83. The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies met in January 1918.
84. Source: Leaflet, Industrial Workers of the World, Seattle Office, Records. Indus-
trial Workers of the World, Acc. 544, Box 3. Courtesy Labor Archives of Washington,
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
 3.3. Bela Kun, “Discipline and Centralized Leadership” 143

3.3
Bela Kun, “Discipline and Centralized
Leadership,” 192385

When Bela Kun published the article excerpted below, the Hun-
garian Soviet Republic’s brief existence had ended. Its failure
only reinforced his belief that centralism, discipline, and carefully
planned strategy were key to the success of future communist
revolutions.

***

I do not intend to enlarge upon the international and internal political

causes which were favorable to the Russian Revolution, and which, on

85. Source: The Communist Review, Special Double Number, vol. 3, nos. 9 and 10
(January–February 1923): 469, 470, 471–73, 474.
144 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

the other hand, were detrimental to the Hungarian revolution. I shall

only point to the fact that in Hungary we failed to provide, not only what
Comrade Lenin described as a plan of retreat, but even a line of retreat.
In regard to the Russian Revolution, I think that the circumstance
which has belied all the Thermidor86 prophesies about Soviet Russia was
the following:—In Russia there was a centralized, disciplined and self-
sacrificing Workers’ Party in the shape of the Russian Communist Party.
The absence of such a Party or of anything approaching it in Hungary
was the cause of the inevitable collapse of the proletarian revolution, not-
withstanding all the sacrifices and enthusiasm of the Hungarian prole-
tariat and poorer peasantry. Apart from military defeat at the front, the
downfall of the revolution was accelerated by the vacillating influence of
the social democracy upon the Hungarian working class. . . .
We, in Hungary, did not have the benefit of a mature Communist
Party, and I am safe in saying that at the time we could not have such
a Party. We had no mature Communist Party that could cling to the
helm of State at the most critical moments, in spite of the wavering of
the working class, in spite of the passive, and at times even hostile, atti-
tude of part of the working class. In Hungary influence was brought to
bear upon the masses of the proletariat by the fusion between the class-
conscious active and determined minority and the social democracy,
which, together, led the masses to the conquest of power. On the other
hand, in Russia there has been, and there is now, a Communist Party
with years of fighting experience, whose influence in the critical moments
of the Russian Revolution was enormous. . . .
. . . What is it that enabled the Russian Party not only to gain a major-
ity at the time of the October revolution, but to retain it throughout the
vicissitudes of the revolution? The secret lies first of all in the close orga-
nization of the Party. No other party, bourgeois or proletarian, had such a
carefully picked and strongly welded nucleus, or to use a favorite military
metaphor of Comrade Bukharin, a uniform ideological general staff, as
has the Russian Party.
. . . The influence of the Communist Party over the large working class
masses, with the State under Communist control, is naturally exercised

86. The reference is to the execution of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) in the

month of Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar, marking the end of the
French Revolutionary Terror.
 3.3. Bela Kun, “Discipline and Centralized Leadership” 145

not only by means of propaganda, but also by the authority of the State
and of the administration.

***

. . . In Russia, with the help of the Communist Party, the Soviets became a
real popular institution, an organ of proletarian democracy. In Hungary
we could not achieve this because there was no Communist leadership.
But how is it possible to achieve united action in such a large country
with so many State organs, with so many labour organizations? How is
it possible, in a country where there are single districts much larger than
France, Germany and England together, to find a unified party leadership
which could be felt even in the smallest village?
How is centralization at all possible in such a country as Russia? I
would like to answer this question by a comparison. In Germany the
social-democracy, having attained power, was practically dissolved as a
party organization. The governmental organs influenced the social democ-
racy much more than the latter influenced the government. The decid-
ing factor in the social-democracy is the governmental social-democratic
bureaucracy which originated from the old party bureaucracy. It is just
the opposite in Russia. The Russian Party always saw to it that the lead-
ing elements of the Party should influence the Soviet organs, and not
vice-versa. To bring this about something was required from the Com-
munist Party which is still not understood by many persons otherwise
well acquainted with the Russian movement. This is what I said yesterday
to one of the comrades of our Party: Russia is not a Prussian sergeant,
and we are not recruits. Moscow represents the best leadership of the
world revolution. Those who do not understand the significance of cen-
tralized discipline as the experience of the Russian Revolution created it
are not good recruits of Communism or of the Communist Party. . . .
How can we explain this discipline? Of course, there is the story that
old-time Bolsheviks were an organization of conspirators under the lead-
ership of Comrade Lenin. I am sorry to say that I was not a party to
such conspiracy, and do not know what sort of conspirators they were. I
know, however, that these conspirators have become the best leaders of
the masses. Why? Because during this conspiring period of the Russian
Revolution a strict discipline was created and the members of the Party
were trained in this discipline. Naturally, this discipline comes not only
from the masses, but mainly from the leaders, and it requires therefore a
146 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

great confidence in the leaders. This leadership is really the heart of the
Russian Communist Party, the authoritative body of the whole Commu-
nist movement. Allow me to quote these few words from the Austrian
poet Anzengruber:87 —“Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother, but
they must be worthy of it.” The leaders of the Russian Revolution have
gained the confidence of the masses and of the Communist Party because
they have been worthy of it.
. . . The activity of the Communist Party of Russia should be a sub-
ject of study for every leader and organizer of the Western parties so
that they may make critical use of the Russian experience in the Western
situation and prepare their parties for the conquest and maintenance
of power. The application of this experience is not the least problem of
the International Revolution.
I am far from being an adherent of the free will doctrine, but I believe
that for a realization of the prospects of a world revolution, the subjective
factor of a Communist Party is one of the most important. We cannot
determine the objective factors, at most we can influence them through
the Communist Party. Nevertheless, I believe that if we had had Com-
munist parties like the Russian one in 1919 in every country, at the time
of the demobilization crisis, we would have been able not only to seize
power, but also to have held it. The importance of the Communist Party
as a subjective factor remains the same even in this period of compara-
tive apathy. The question before us is: Considering the prospects for a
world revolution, how can we build up such Communist parties which,
in Western circumstances, perhaps through different means, can gradu-
ally win over the majority of the proletariat, before the revolution and
after the revolution? Is it possible to create such Communist parties? I
believe so. I have been working within the Communist Party of Russia,
and I can say that the masses of its membership do not stand on a higher
intellectual level than the German proletariat. I might even say that the
masses of the German proletariat stand higher in culture than those of
the Russian Communist Party. Of course, behind the Russian proletariat
are five long years of experience in revolution; it is this experience which
has made possible the elastic policy of the Russian Party.
But such elasticity is possible in all parties. I believe that the main
problem in building up such subjective factors of the world revolution
is the creation of basic revolutionary cadres. I believe that if we are able

87. Ludwig Anzengruber (1839–1889) was a Viennese writer.

 3.4. Otto Rühle, “Moscow and Us” 147

to form these cadres, these vanguard troops, we will be able to lead the
Western proletariat to the conquest of power, and retain this power after
we have gained it. That is why this is one of our chief tasks, and the les-
sons which the Russian Communist Party has given us from five years of
experience in the Russian Revolution are most important.

3.4
Otto Rühle, “Moscow and Us,” 192088

In the article below, Otto Rühle argues that the essence of com-
munism is not centralization, discipline, and political control, but
attaining superior levels of productivity, education, technology,
and economic growth. Nor is there one single path to reach this
goal.

Moscow and Us

I.
The first International was the International of awakening.
It had called upon the proletariat of the world to wake up, to arise; it
had to proclaim the great slogan of Socialism.
It had a propagandistic duty.
The second International was the International of organization.
Its role was to gather the masses that had awoken to class conscious-
ness, to educate them, to prepare them for the Revolution.
It had an organizational duty.
The third International is the International of Revolution.
It has to set the masses on the march and stimulate their revolution-
ary activity; it has to carry out the World Revolution and establish the
proletarian dictatorship.
It has a revolutionary duty.

88. Source: Die Aktion, vol. 10, no. 37/38 (September 18, 1920): 505–7. Translated by
Julia Sergeeva-Albova.
148 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

The fourth International will be the International of Communism.

It has to put the new economy in place, organize the new society,
establish socialism. It has to abolish dictatorship, dissolve the state, build
a—finally free!—society without dominance.
Its duty will be to fulfill the communist idea.
II.
The Third International calls itself Communist. It wants to be more
than it can be. It is revolutionary, no more and no less. Thus, it stands on
the highest step so far on the hierarchy of Internationals, and fulfills the
highest duty that has to be fulfilled and is possible to fulfill today.
It can be called the Russian International. It emerged in Russia. It is
based in Russia. It is ruled by Russia. Its spirit is outright the spirit of the
Russian Revolution, of the Russian Communist Party.
And exactly for this reason it cannot be a Communist International.
What in Russia attracts the regard of the world—regards of horror
and of admiration—is not yet Communism.
It is a Revolution, it is a class struggle of the Proletariat against the
Bourgeoisie, carried out with unprecedented determination, heroism,
and consequences. It is a dictatorship.
Russia is still far, many miles far from Communism. Russia, the first
country that came to Revolution and carried it out, will be the last land
that reaches Communism.
No, no—the Third International is not a Communist International!
III.
The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia not so much by means of a
revolutionary struggle for the socialist idea, but much more by means of
a pacifistic coup.
They promised peace to people.
And land—private property—to peasants.
This way they led all people after them.
And the coup succeeded.
They jumped over a whole era, the period of capitalist development.
From feudalism, whose breakdown began after 1905 and was accelerated
and completed by the war, they switched to socialism in a fabulous som-
ersault. At least they imagined that a political takeover by socialists was
enough to achieve a socialist era.
They believed they could constructively complete what should slowly
grow and ripen as a product of natural development.
 3.4. Otto Rühle, “Moscow and Us” 149

Revolution and socialism were for them primarily a political matter.

How could these perfect Marxists ever forget that they are primarily an
economic matter?
The most mature capitalist production, highly developed technology,
the most educated workers, highest returns on production—to name a
few—are indispensable preconditions of the socialist economy and there-
fore of socialism itself.
Where could one find these preconditions in Russia?
A rapid proliferation of world revolution could supply what is missing.
The Bolsheviks have done everything to induce it. But it has failed so far
to materialize.
So arose a vacuum.
Political socialism without an economic foundation. A theoretic
design. Bureaucratic rule. An accumulation of paper decrees. Agitational
slogans. And terrible disappointment.
Russian Communism hangs in the air. And it will remain there until
World Revolution creates conditions for its realization in the advanced
capitalist countries that are the most ready for socialism.
IV.
The cascading Revolution is surging forward. It is hurtling over Ger-
many. Soon it will reach other countries.
In every country, it will encounter different economic relations. A dif-
ferent social structure. Different traditions. Different ideologies. In every
country, the stage of the political development of the proletariat is differ-
ent; different is its relation to the bourgeoisie, to the peasants; different is
therefore its method of class struggle.
In every country, the Revolution will have its own face. It will create its
own forms and develop its own laws.
Revolution, although it is evolving into an international phenomenon,
is in the first place a unique development for each country, each people.
However valuable Russia’s revolutionary experience can be to the pro-
letariat of any country, however thankful that country may be for broth-
erly advice and neighborly help—the Revolution itself is that country’s
own affair; it must be independent in its struggles, free in its decisions,
free from influence and hindrance in its evaluation and utilization of the
revolutionary situation.
The Russian Revolution is not the German, is not the World
Revolution!
150 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

V.
In Moscow the opinion is different.
There, they have a standard blueprint of Revolution.
Allegedly the Russian Revolution unfolded according to this blueprint.
This blueprint supposedly guided the Bolsheviks’ struggle.
Consequently, the Revolution in the rest of the world must follow this
blueprint.
Consequently, the parties in the other countries must conduct their
struggle according to this blueprint.
Nothing is easier and simpler than this.
We have a Revolution . . . we have a revolutionary party . . . what do we
do?
We take the usual blueprint of Revolution (patented by Lenin) out
of our pocket, apply it . . . hurray! It works! And bang! The Revolution is
won!
And what does this wonderful standard blueprint look like?
“The revolution is a party affair. The dictatorship is a party affair.
Socialism is a party affair.”
And further:
“The party is discipline. The party is iron discipline. The party is leader-
ship. The party is the strictest centralism. The party is militarism. The party
is the most strict, most iron, most absolute militarism.”
Concretely formulated, this blueprint means:
The leaders are above; the masses are below.
Above: Authority. Bureaucratism. Personality cult. Dictatorship of
the leader. Violent domination.
Below: Slavish obedience. Subordination. Standing at attention.
Never-ending bigwigism.
The KPD89 central office to the nth degree.
VI.
It is impossible to implement the Ludendorff system90 in Germany for
the second time, be it even in Bolshevik guise.
The Russian method of Revolution and of socialism is unacceptable for
Germany, for the German proletariat.

89. The German Communist Party.

90. General Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937) was a dominant political figure during
World War I who helped impose wide-ranging state controls over the economy.
 3.5. Romain Rolland Responds to a Call to Join the Revolutionary Cause 151

We dismiss it. Absolutely. Categorically.

It would be a disaster.
More than that, it would be a crime.
It would lead us to decay.
Therefore we want—can—have the right to have nothing in common
with an International that assumes that the Russian method should be
imposed, even forced onto the proletariat of the world.
We must preserve for ourselves full freedom and independence.
The German proletariat will make its German Revolution, like the Rus-
sian proletariat made the Russian Revolution.
It has come to the Revolution later.
It will have to struggle harder.
Because of that, it will reach Communism earlier and more assuredly.

3.5
Romain Rolland Responds to a Call to Join the
Revolutionary Cause, February 2, 192291

Below is an excerpt from Romain Rolland’s second open letter

to Henri Barbusse in response to the latter’s passionate call for
all intellectuals to join the communist cause, which he believed
was being advanced by the Russian Revolution. In his first reply,
Rolland had already expressed his concern about a lack of self-
criticism among the Communists. He was even more uneasy
about their unequivocal embrace of violence at the dawn of what
he feared would be “an era of upheavals” and “an Iron Age.”

Our common enemy, my dear Barbusse, is the oppressive violence that

exists in human society today. But you are seeking to fight violence with
violence. In my view (as I already mentioned and I am not going to repeat
myself ) this method can only lead to mutual destruction. If you act

91. Source: Romain Rolland, “Deuxième Lettre de Rolland à Barbusse,” in Textes

politiques, sociaux et philosophiques choisis, ed. Jean Albertini (Paris: Éditions Sociales,
1970), 209–16 (here: 212, 213–16).
152 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

against your enemies in the same fashion as your enemies, just as the
Germans and French did during the war, the social war may end in some
sort of a Treaty of Versailles, a paper victory. Even so, this result would
be catastrophic for everyone. I may be wrong, but in any case I plan to
fight with other weapons.
. . . the first one is an intrepid struggle of the mind, of all the combined
forces of reason mobilized in order to monitor, control, and pass judg-
ment on the actions of those in power (as our valiant friends of the Union
of Democratic Control92 are doing), but also in order to ridicule, castigate,
and assail malfeasance, emulating the steely criticism and embittered
irony of Voltaire93 and the Encyclopedists94 who did more for the down-
fall of the royalty than the handful of hotheads who took the Bastille.
But there is another weapon, much more powerful, though equally
suitable to the weak and the strong; it has already proved its effective-
ness in other lands. It is surprising that nobody ever talks about it in
France: it was used among the Anglo-Saxons by thousands of conscien-
tious objectors, by means of which Mahatma Gandhi is now undermining
the British Empire’s domination of India—it is Civil Disobedience, and I
do not say Non-Resistance, since, make no mistake about it, this is resis-
tance of the highest caliber. To refuse to consent and to go along with a
criminal State—no act of greater heroism could be accomplished by a
man of our times. . . .
. . . Much preoccupied with collective forces (I know as well as anyone
their strong magnetic appeal), perhaps you do not attach adequate impor-
tance to the individual conscience—the self-sufficient, thoroughly self-
sufficient and independent conscience, the mover of the world! . . . How
many generations of sacrifices—some dazzling, many more obscure—
did it take to build the new Christian world upon the indestructible
ruins of Rome! Can the Revolution whose goal is to build fraternal unity
among working human beings have less importance and be expected to
have fewer delays before it reaches its goal? . . . 
. . . No, the attitude I propose to my companions is not one of detach-
ment and renunciation. Quite the opposite, I say: “Never sleep! Never

92. The Union of Democratic Control was a left-leaning British pressure group formed
in 1914.
93. Voltaire (1694–1778) was a brilliant French thinker and social critic.
94. The editors and authors who contributed in 1751–1772 to the world’s first truly
comprehensive encyclopedia.
 3.6. Emma Goldman Rejects Bolshevik Policies 153

compromise! Never yield before injustice and lies! . . . Dare! Sacrifice your-

selves! And rest assured, your efforts will not be in vain. Your toil belongs
to the centuries to come. Do not complain that you have not reached your
goal. Rejoice partaking in the work that goes infinitely beyond your life.
This is the way for the living to taste immortality.”

***

I am now asking my fellow writers, especially those who claim to march

in the vanguard of thought:
Do you think that the present duty of an artist, or a scholar, of an
intellectual is to join, like joining the army of the right cause in 1914, the
army of the Revolution in 1922? Or does it seem to you that the best way
to serve the cause of humanity and even of the Revolution is to preserve
the integrity of your free thought, even against the Revolution itself, if
it fails to recognize the vital necessity of liberty! For if it fails to do so, it
would no longer be a source of renewal. It would be nothing but a new
form of the monster of a hundred faces: Reaction.

3.6
Emma Goldman Rejects Bolshevik
Policies, 1922–192395

Born in the Russian Empire, Emma Goldman (1869–1940) emi-

grated to the United States in 1885. Jailed repeatedly for civil
disobedience and incitement to violence, she was deported back
to Russia in 1919, during the Red Scare. She emigrated again in
1921, after the bloody suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion,
which to her meant “the Russian Revolution was no more.” The

95. Source: Emma Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, Page, & Company, 1924), 65, 66, 73–74, 75–77.
154 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

following passage is taken from My Further Disillusionment in

Russia (1924).

In February 1921, the workers of several Petrograd factories went on

strike. The winter was an exceptionally hard one, and the people of the
capital suffered intensely from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. They asked
an increase of their food rations, some fuel and clothing. The complaints
of the strikers, ignored by the authorities, presently assumed a political
character. Here and there was also voiced a demand for the Constitu-
ent Assembly and free trade. The attempted street demonstration of the
strikers was suppressed, the Government having ordered out the military
kursanti.96

***

When the Kronstadt sailors learned what was happening in Petrograd

they expressed their solidarity with the strikers in their economic and
revolutionary demands, but refused to support any call for the Constitu-
ent Assembly. On March 1st, the sailors organized a mass meeting in
Kronstadt, which was attended also by the Chairman of the All-Russian
Central Executive Committee, Kalinin97 (the presiding officer of the
Republic of Russia), the Commander of the Kronstadt Fortress, Kuz-
min, and the Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet, Vassiliev. The meeting,
held with the knowledge of the Executive Committee of the Kronstadt
Soviet, passed a resolution approved by the sailors, the garrison, and
the citizens’ meeting of 16,000 persons. Kalinin, Kuzmin, and Vassiliev
spoke against the resolution, which later became the basis of the conflict
between Kronstadt and the Government. It voiced the popular demand
for Soviets elected by the free choice of the people.

***

On March 7th Trotsky began the bombardment of Kronstadt, and

on the 17th the fortress and city were taken, after numerous assaults

96. Cadets.
97. Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946), a long-term Bolshevik, was also a member of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party.
 3.6. Emma Goldman Rejects Bolshevik Policies 155

involving terrific human sacrifice. Thus Kronstadt was “liquidated” and

the “counterrevolutionary plot” quenched in blood. The “conquest” of the
city was characterized by ruthless savagery, although not a single one of
the Communists arrested by the Kronstadt sailors had been injured or
killed by them. Even before the storming of the fortress the Bolsheviki
summarily executed numerous soldiers of the Red Army whose revolu-
tionary spirit and solidarity caused them to refuse to participate in the
bloodbath.

***

Seventeen dreadful days, more dreadful than anything I had known in

Russia. Agonizing days, because of my utter helplessness in the face of
the terrible things enacted before my eyes. It was just at that time that
I happened to visit a friend who had been a patient in a hospital for
months. I found him much distressed. Many of those wounded in the
attack on Kronstadt had been brought to the same hospital, mostly kur-
santi. I had opportunity to speak to one of them. His physical suffering,
he said, was nothing as compared with his mental agony. Too late he had
realized that he had been duped by the cry of “counter-revolution.” There
were no Tsarist generals in Kronstadt, no White Guardists—he found
only his own comrades, sailors and soldiers who had heroically fought for
the Revolution.
The rations of the ordinary patients in the hospitals were far from
satisfactory, but the wounded kursanti received the best of everything,
and a select committee of Communist members was assigned to look
after their comfort. Some of the kursanti, among them the man I had
spoken to, refused to accept the special privileges. “They want to pay
us for murder,” they said. Fearing that the whole institution would be
influenced by these awakened victims, the management ordered them
removed to a separate ward, the “Communist ward,” as the patients
called it.
Kronstadt broke the last thread that held me to the Bolsheviki. The
wanton slaughter they had instigated spoke more eloquently against
them than aught else. Whatever their pretences in the past, the Bolshe-
viki now proved themselves the most pernicious enemies of the Revolu-
tion. I could have nothing further to do with them.
156 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

3.7
“The Russian Problem,” 191998

The memorandum excerpted below was written by Harald Scav-

enius (1873–1939), Danish ambassador to Russia. Scavenius
worked hard to protect Russian noblemen from the Red Terror,
but had to leave Russia once diplomatic relations were severed in
December 1918. He then served as Denmark’s foreign minister
from 1920 to 1922. He presented his memorandum at the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919, where leaders of Britain, France, the
United States, and Italy worked to establish the principles of a
post–World War I order. Scavenius was deeply disturbed by the
connections between Soviet Russia and the revolutionary move-
ment in Germany and made a case for a speedy destruction of
Bolshevism.

One of the most important questions which is to be dealt with by the

forthcoming Peace Conference will no doubt be the adjustment of the
Russian chaos. On that point everybody agrees: disagreement only exists
in regard to the question as to how this adjustment is to be brought about.
For the sake of greater clearness the diverging opinions can be grouped
under two main headings: Intervention or Non-Intervention.

***

A Bolshevist Germany will instantly ally itself with Russia and after this
it will hardly be possible for the peace congress to enforce its decisions. In
this respect the Brest-Litovsk peace is an object lesson. In order to avoid
this and especially to guarantee a lasting peace it is necessary to finish off
Bolshevism before it is too late. It is still feasible with comparatively small
difficulties while it will prove rather impossible if action is postponed till
also Germany has become Bolshevist at any rate not without the resump-
tion of a new regular war which will perhaps prove to be more than can
possibly be inflicted upon armies which after four and a half years of war
have already been within the reach of peace.

98. Source: Harald Scavenius, “The Russian Problem” (1919), Papers of Richard Pipes,
1945–2006, HUG(FP)98.25, Box 4 of 7, Folder J, Harvard University Archives.
 3.7. “The Russian Problem” 157

In the case that an intervention is decided upon one ought to avoid

mistakes similar to those committed by Germany in occupying the Baltic
provinces and Ukraine and leaving Petrograd and Moscow alone. It ought
to be realized that if Bolshevism is going to be suppressed, it will be nec-
essary to oust the Bolshevists from the said cities. As long as the Bolshe-
vists are in possession of the Government machine and, masquerading
as a Government, are able to continue their propaganda nothing will be
gained by occupying ever so many provinces. No large forces are needed
for the occupation of Moscow and Petrograd because the population of
these cities are solidly opposed to the Bolshevists and a large percentage
of the garrisons in these cities are likewise not real Bolshevists but ordi-
nary citizens who by fear and distress have been compelled to join the red
army. Part of the necessary troops may without doubt easily be enlisted
among the soldiers now returning, many of which are more or less out
of touch with civil life, nor will it prove difficult to enlist volunteers in
Scandinavia. The troops collected in this way need not be very numerous
because the greater part of the troops requisite for the occupation may be
available through an agreement with the Finnish Government, and it will
also be possible to organize the Russian troops in Finland. The offensive
for Petrograd must of course be launched from Finland, the frontier of
which is only 20 kilometers distant from the said city.
If intervention is decided upon the intervening countries ought
instantly, i.e. pending discussions of details, to forward some cargoes of
foodstuffs to Helsingfors in order to have the necessary stores ready in
time for supplying the population of Petrograd and Moscow till food-
stuffs can arrive from Siberia. During the present conditions while the
population of the said cities is dying from starvation one wagon load of
flour is worth more than many guns.
158 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

3.8
Adolf Hitler’s Lessons from the Russian
Revolution, 1923–192699

Adolf Hitler began working on his main doctrinal book Mein

Kampf (My Struggle) while imprisoned for the failed Nazi coup
attempt in Munich in 1923. It is debatable to what extent a
book written in the mid-1920s can be used to explain Hitler’s
policy agenda after seizing power in 1933. But it sheds light on
key premises of Hitler’s worldview and his profound fear and
hostility towards Bolshevism.

***

Slowly fear of the Marxist weapon of Jewry descends like a nightmare on

the mind and soul of decent people.

***

And in politics he [the Jew] begins to replace the idea of democracy by

the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets
him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate
and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.
He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold sense: eco-
nomic and political.
Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from
within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence,
incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants the flag of revolution
on the very battlefields.

***

99. Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston and New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 324, 325, 472, 475, 477, 524, 533, 649, 654–55, 662.
 3.8. Adolf Hitler’s Lessons from the Russian Revolution 159

The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he

killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical sav-
agery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish
journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people.100

***

What gave Marxism its astonishing power over the great masses is by
no means the formal written work of the Jewish intellectual world, but
rather the enormous oratorical propaganda wave which took possession
of the great masses in the course of the years.

***

Let no one believe that the French Revolution would ever have come
about through philosophical theories if it had not found an army of agi-
tators led by demagogues in the grand style, who whipped up the pas-
sions of the people tormented to begin with, until at last there occurred
that terrible volcanic eruption which held all Europe rigid with fear. And
likewise the greatest revolutionary upheaval of the most recent period,
the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, was brought about, not by Lenin’s
writings, but by the hate-fomenting oratorical activity of countless of the
greatest and the smallest apostles of agitation.
The illiterate common people were not, forsooth, fired with enthusi-
asm for the Communist Revolution by the theoretical reading of Karl
Marx, but solely by the glittering heaven which thousands of agitators,
themselves, to be sure, all in the service of an idea, talked into the people.
And that has always been so and will eternally remain so.

***

. . . For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the
impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts
on the people. And this alone gives the standard for the speaker’s genius.

100. As often was the case, Hitler constructed his own version of reality not based on
facts. The total number of unnatural deaths from 1914 until 1922 was somewhat over
ten million, including those due to World War I and the famine of 1921–1922. It was
also absurd to suggest that any non-Bolshevik journalists, not to mention stockbrokers,
gained from the Bolshevik regime.
160 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

***

Once it was possible in Russia to incite the uneducated hordes of the

great masses, unable to read or write, against the thin intellectual upper
crust that stood in no relation or connection to them, the fate of the
country was decided, the revolution had succeeded; the Russian illiterate
had thus become the defenseless slave of his Jewish dictators,101 who for
their part, it must be admitted, were clever enough to let this dictatorship
ride on the phrase, of “people’s dictatorship.”

***

. . . The lack of a great, creative, renewing idea means at all times a limitation
of fighting force. Firm belief in the right to apply even the most brutal weapons
is always bound up with the existence of a fanatical faith in the necessity of the
victory of a revolutionary new order on this earth.
A movement that is not fighting for such highest aims and ideals will,
therefore, never seize upon the ultimate weapon.
The fact of having a new great idea to show was the secret of the suc-
cess of the French Revolution; the Russian Revolution owes its victory
to the idea, and only through the idea did fascism achieve the power to
subject a people in the most beneficial way to the most comprehensive
creative renewal.
Of this, bourgeois parties are not capable.

***

The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absur-

dity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime.
Quite aside from the fact that the Reich’s frontiers in 1914 were any-
thing but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of
embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to
geo-military expediency. They were not the result of a considered politi-
cal action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no
means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance.

101. Although a substantial minority of the Bolshevik leadership had Jewish origins,
this was also true for their socialist and liberal opponents. As shown in previous chap-
ters, the Bolsheviks were for the most part internationalist, atheistic, and in general
opposed to ethnic, national, and religious distinctions.
 3.8. Adolf Hitler’s Lessons from the Russian Revolution 161

***

And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign

policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six
hundred years ago.102 We stop the endless German movement to the south
and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break
off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the
soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only
Russia and her vassal border states.
Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing Russia
to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which
previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For
the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the
political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of
the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.
Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower
nations led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once
grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as long as the
racial nucleus of the creative state race maintained itself. For centuries
Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper lead-
ing strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and
extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the
Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources,
it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever.
He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decompo-
sition. The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end
of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We
have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the
mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish103 theory.
Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement, is to bring our
own people to such political insight that they will not see their goal for the
future in the breath-taking sensation of a new Alexander’s conquest, but in the
industrious work of the German plow, to which the sword need only give soil.

102. Hitler was referring to the Ostsiedlung, the Germanic expansion into eastern
Europe during the Middle Ages.
103. That is, German nationalist.
162 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

***

Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all
the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free
them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner
contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set
free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent
a repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future.
If we pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power
whose master is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to
free our own people from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk
right into it? How shall we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as
an accursed crime against humanity if we ally ourselves with the orga-
nizations of this spawn of hell, thus recognizing it in the larger sense?
By what right shall we condemn a member of the broad masses for his
sympathy with an outlook if the very leaders of the state choose the rep-
resentatives of this outlook for allies?
The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude
toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.104

***

3.9
“The Zinoviev Letter” Roils British Politics, 1924105

The forged letter below was published by the Daily Mail on

October 25, 1924, days before new British national elections
and became a major embarrassment to the Labor government.
In 1999, a British government-affiliated scholar with access to
secret service archives confirmed that the letter was leaked to the

104. Here, Hitler, in a metaphor he returned to throughout his career, was paraphras-
ing Jesus, as related in Matt. 12:26–27.
105. Source: Gill Bennett, A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business: The Zinoviev
Letter of 1924 (London: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, General Services Com-
mand, 1999), 93–95.
 3.9. “The Zinoviev Letter” Roils British Politics 163

press by MI6 operatives. Who exactly forged the Russian original,

which contains spelling, grammar, and syntactic errors, remains
a mystery.

SOVIET RUSSIA Latvia

L/3900
2.10.24
Instructions to British Communist Party

VERY SECRET Executive Committee, Third

Communist International.
Presidium.
Sept 15th, 1924.

To the Central Committee,

British Communist Party.
Moscow.

Dear Comrades,
The time is approaching for the Parliament of England to consider
the Treaty concluded between the Governments of Great Britain and the
S.S.S.R. for the purpose of ratification. The fierce campaign raised by
the British bourgeoisie around the question shows that the majority of
the same, together with reactionary circles, are against the Treaty for the
purpose of breaking off an agreement consolidating the ties between the
proletariats of the two countries leading to the restoration of normal rela-
tions between England and the S.S.S.R.
The proletariat of Great Britain, which pronounced its weighty word
when danger threatened a break-off of the past negotiations, and com-
pelled the Government of MacDonald to conclude the Treaty, must
show the greatest possible energy in the further struggle for ratification
and against the endeavours of British capitalists to compel Parliament to
annul it.
It is indispensable to stir up the masses of the British proletariat, to
bring into movement the army of unemployed proletarians, whose posi-
tion can be improved only after a loan has been granted to the S.S.S.R.
for the restoration of her economies and when business collaboration
between the British and Russian proletariats has been put in order. It
164 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

is imperative that the group in the Labour Party sympathising with the
Treaty should bring increased pressure to bear upon the Government
and parliamentary circles in favour of the ratification of the Treaty.
Keep close observation over the leaders of the Labour Party, because
those may easily be found in the leading strings of the bourgeoisie. The
foreign policy of the Labour Party as it is already represents an inferior
copy of the policy of the Curzon Government.106 Organise a campaign of
disclosures of the foreign policy of MacDonald.
The IKKI107 will willingly place at your disposal the wide material
in its possession regarding the activities of British imperialism in the
Middle and Far East. In the meanwhile, however, strain every nerve in
the struggle for the ratification of the treaty, in favour of a continuation of
negotiations regarding the regulation of relations between the S.S.S.R.
and England. A settlement of relations between the two countries will
assist in the revolutionising of the international and British proletariat
not less than a successful rising in any of the working districts of Eng-
land, as the establishment of close contact between the British and Rus-
sian proletariat, the exchange of delegations and workers, etc., will make
it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda of ideas of Lenin-
ism in England and the Colonies. Armed warfare must be preceded
by a struggle against the inclinations to compromise which are embedded
among the majority of British workmen, against the ideas of evolution
and peaceful extermination of capitalism. Only then will it be possible
to count upon complete success of an armed insurrection. In Ireland and
the Colonies the case is different; there, there is a national question, and
this represents too great a factor for success for us to waste time on a
prolonged preparation of the working class.
But even in England, as in other countries where the workers are
politically developed, events themselves may more rapidly revolutionise
the working masses than propaganda. For instance, a strike movement,
repressions by the Government, etc.
From your last report it is evident that agitation-propaganda work in
the Army is weak, in the Navy a very little better. Your explanation that
the quality of the members attracted justifies the quantity is right in prin-
ciple, nevertheless it would be desirable to have cells in all the units of

106. Lord Curzon (1859–1925) was a conservative statesman who served as Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs from 1919 to 1924 but was never head of government.
107. The Comintern.
 3.9. “The Zinoviev Letter” Roils British Politics 165

the troops, particularly among those quartered in the large centres of the
country, and also among factories working on munitions and at military
store depots. We request that the most particular attention be paid to
these latter.
In the event of danger of war, with the aid of the latter and in contact
with the transport workers, it is possible to paralyse all the military prep-
arations of the bourgeoisie and to make a start in turning an imperialist
war into a class war. Now more than ever we should be on our guard.
Attempts at intervention in China show that world imperialism is still
full of vigour and is once more making endeavours to restore its shaken
position and cause a new war, which as its final objective is to bring about
the break-up of the Russian proletariat and the suppression of the bud-
ding world revolution, and further would lead to the enslavement of the
colonial peoples. “Danger of War,” “The Bourgeoisie seeks War; Capital
fresh Markets.”—these are the slogans which you must familiarise the
masses with, with which you must go to work into the mass of the pro-
letariat. Those slogans will open to you the doors of comprehension of
the masses, will help you to capture them and march under the banner
of Communism.
The Military Section of the British Communist Party, so far as we are
aware, further suffers from a lack of specialists, the future directors of the
British Red Army.
It is time you thought of forming such a group, which, together with
the leaders, might be, in the event of an outbreak of active strife, the brain
of the military organisation of the Party.
Go attentively through the lists of the military “cells,” detailing from
them the more energetic and capable men, turn attention to the more
talented military specialists who have, for one reason or another, left the
Service and hold socialist views. Attract them into the ranks of the Com-
munist Party if they desire honestly to serve the proletariat and desire in
the future to direct not the blind mechanical forces in the service of the
bourgeoisie, but a national army.
Form a directing operative head of the Military Section.
Do not put this off to a future moment, which may be pregnant with
events and catch you unprepared.
Desiring you all success, both in organisation and in your struggle,
With Communist Greetings,
President of the Presidium of the IKKI
166 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

ZINOVIEV
Member of the Presidium
McManus.
Secretary, KUUSINEN
Copies to
London
Estonia
Finland
Legation
File

3.10
Neville Chamberlain’s Unease about
Soviet Russia, 1939108

From 1915 to his death in 1940, Neville Chamberlain regularly

corresponded with his sisters, Ida and Hilda. The format of pri-
vate letters allowed him to share his thoughts and calculations on
political and diplomatic matters that could not be made public at
the time. In the excerpted letter below, Chamberlain explains his
and other European politicians’ distrust of Soviet Russia, which
stood in the way of forging a robust anti-Hitler coalition in 1939.

26 March 1939

Chequers

My dear Ida,
From your letter I think you have realized that this has been a grim
week though how grim even you couldn’t know.

***

108. Source: Robert Self, ed. The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 4 vols. (London:
Ashgate, 2005), 4:396.
 3.10. Neville Chamberlain’s Unease about Soviet Russia 167

The only line of advance that presented itself to me after the Czecho-
Slovakian affair was to get a declaration signed by the four Powers: Brit-
ain, France, Russia & Poland that they would act together in the event
of further signs of German aggressive ambitions. I drafted the formula
myself and sent it out. But it soon became evident that Poland would find
great difficulty in signing and I could really understand why. Hitherto
she has skillfully balanced between Germany & Russia so as to not get
into trouble with either. But if she now joins with Russia & the West-
ern democracies in a declaration which aims at curbing German ambi-
tions, will not the Germans say to her, Aha! Now we see where you stand.
Unless you instantly abjure your new friends, hand over Dantzig [sic] and
accept whatever humiliating conditions we impose we will bomb Warsaw
into ruins in a few hours. And what consolation would it be to know
that thereafter Britain & France would make Germany pay for her behav-
ior; it’s like sending a man into the lions den and saying to him: “Never
mind if the lion does gobble you up; I intend to give him a good hiding
afterwards.” As soon as I appreciated this position fully I saw that it was
unlikely that we should get their signature. Was it worth while to go on
with Russia in that case? I must confess to the most profound distrust of
Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective
offensive even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives which seem to
me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty and to be concerned
only with getting everyone else by the ears. Moreover, she is both hated
and suspected by many of the smaller states notably by Poland, Rumania,
and Finland so that our close association with her might easily cost us the
sympathy of those who would much more effectively help us if we can get
them on our side.
My conclusion therefore is that the Declaration is dead. . .
168 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

3.11
“A Bright and a Heartening Phenomenon in a
Dark and Dismal World,” 1933–1936109

In the following excerpt, taken from his autobiography, Jawaharlal

Nehru recalls the period after 1933, when two attempts of his
National Congress Party to hold sessions in Delhi and Calcutta
were forcibly dispersed by the police. Champions of Indian
independence found few venues for legal political work and in
response embraced campaigns of civil disobedience in which
Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) took the lead. Prospects
for quick success looked dim and morale was fading. Nehru
describes how he came to be drawn to Marxism and how the
example of Soviet Russia sustained him through these hard times.

As our struggle toned down and stabilized itself at a low level, there was
little of excitement in it, except at long intervals. My thoughts traveled
more to other countries, and I watched and studied, as far as I could
in gaol, the world situation in the grip of the great depression. I read as
many books as I could find on the subject, and the more I read the more
fascinated I grew. India with her problems and struggles became just a
part of this mighty world drama, of the great struggle of political and
economic forces that was going on everywhere, nationally and interna-
tionally. In that struggle my own sympathies went increasingly toward
the communist side.
I had long been drawn to socialism and communism, and Russia had
appealed to me. Much in Soviet Russia I dislike—the ruthless suppres-
sion of all contrary opinion, the wholesale regimentation, the unneces-
sary violence (as I thought) in carrying out various policies. But there
was no lack of violence and suppression in the capitalist world, and I real-
ized more and more how the very basis and foundation of our acquisitive
society and property was violence. Without violence it could not con-
tinue for many days. A measure of political liberty meant little indeed
when the fear of starvation was always compelling the vast majority of

109. Source: Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography with Musings on Recent Events in

India (London: John Lane, 1936), 361–63.
 3.11. “A Bright and a Heartening Phenomenon in a Dark and Dismal World” 169

people everywhere to submit to the will of the few, to the greater glory
and advantage of the latter.
Violence was common in both places, but the violence of the capitalist
order seemed inherent in it; while the violence of Russia, bad though it
was, aimed at a new order based on peace and co­operation and real free-
dom for the masses. With all her blunders, Soviet Russia had triumphed
over enormous difficulties and taken great strides toward this new order.
While the rest of the world was in the grip of the Depression and going
backward in some ways, in the Soviet country a great new world was
being built up before our eyes. Russia, following the great Lenin, looked
into the future and thought only of what was to be, while other countries
lay numbed under the dead hand of the past and spent their energy in
preserving the useless relics of a bygone age. In particular, I was impressed
by the reports of the great progress made by the backward regions of
Central Asia under the Soviet regime. In the balance, therefore, I was
all in favor of Russia, and the presence and example of the Soviets was a
bright and heartening phenomenon in a dark and dismal world.
But Soviet Russia’s success or failure, vastly important as it was as a
practical experiment in establishing a communist state, did not affect the
soundness of the theory of communism. The Bolsheviks may blunder or
even fail because of national or international reasons, and yet the com-
munist theory may be correct. On the basis of that very theory it was
absurd to copy blindly what had taken place in Russia, for its applica-
tion depended on the particular conditions prevailing in the country in
question and the stage of its historical development. Besides, India, or
any other country, could profit by the triumphs as well as the inevitable
mistakes of the Bolsheviks. Perhaps the Bolsheviks had tried to go too
fast because, surrounded as they were by a world of enemies, they feared
external aggression. A slower tempo might avoid much of the misery
caused in the rural areas.110 But then the question arose if really radical
results could be obtained by slowing down the rate of change. Reform-
ism was an impossible solution of any vital problem at a critical moment
when the basic structure had to be changed, and however slow the prog-
ress might be later on, the initial step must be a complete break with the
existing order, which had fulfilled its purpose and was now only a drag
on future progress.

110. This may have been a reference to the collectivization of agriculture from 1929 and
the terrible famine of 1932–1933.
170 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

In India, only a revolutionary plan could solve the two related ques-
tions of the land and industry as well as almost every other major prob-
lem before the country. . . .
Russia apart, the theory and philosophy of Marxism lightened up
many a dark corner of my mind. History came to have a new meaning for
me. The Marxist interpretation threw a flood of light on it, and it became
an unfolding drama with some order and purpose, howsoever uncon-
scious, behind it. In spite of the appalling waste and misery of the past
and the present, the future was bright with hope, though many dangers
intervened. It was the essential freedom from dogma and the scientific
outlook of Marxism that appealed to me. It was true that there was plenty
of dogma in official communism in Russia and elsewhere, and frequently
heresy hunts were organized. That seemed to be deplorable, though it
was not difficult to understand in view of the tremendous changes tak-
ing place rapidly in the Soviet countries when effective opposition might
have resulted in catastrophic failure.
The great world crisis and slump seemed to justify the Marxist analy-
sis. While all other systems and theories were groping about in the dark,
Marxism alone explained it more or less satisfactorily and offered a real
solution.
As this conviction grew upon me, I was filled with a new excitement,
and my depression at the nonsuccess of civil disobedience grew much
less. Was not the world marching rapidly toward the desired consumma-
tion? There were grave dangers of wars and catastrophes, but at any rate
we were moving. There was no stagnation. Our national struggle became
a stage in the longer journey, and it was as well that repression and suf-
fering were tempering our people for future struggles and forcing them
to consider the new ideas that were stirring the world. We would be the
stronger and the more disciplined and hardened by the elimination of the
weaker elements. Time was in our favor.
 3.12. Josiah Gumede, “The New Jerusalem” 171

3.12
Josiah Gumede, “The New Jerusalem,” 1927111

Josiah Tshangana Gumede (1867–1946) was a leading South

African radical activist. He visited the Soviet Union in November–
December 1927 during an official celebration of the tenth anni-
versary of the October Revolution. Under the headline “Gumede
Brings Keys to Freedom,” the official newspaper of the Commu-
nist Party of South Africa, the South African Worker, reported on
the message he brought back to Africa.

RECEPTION TO J.T. GUMEDE AT PARTY

HEADQUARTERS
The Communist Hall at Johannesburg was crowded to suffocation
last Saturday night to welcome J.T. Gumede, Pres. Gen. of the African
National Congress, on his return from Russia, where he had attended the
Tenth Anniversary Celebration and the “Friends of Russia” convention
in November, subsequently touring several of the Eastern and Southern
Soviet Republics united in the U.S.S.R.

***

NEW HOPE OF OPPRESSED PEOPLES

He recalled the failure of his previous visits to Imperialist England, the
new hope inspired at the Brussels Conference112 a year ago, and finally
the solid support for the cause of all oppressed peoples which he had
met with at Moscow. There he found that all he had been told of Russia

111. Source: “To Destroy Oppression and Smash Class Rule,” South African Worker,
vol. 12 (March 2, 1928): 1; “African National Congress Welcomes Gumede,” ibid., 2.
112. The 1927 Brussels Conference was convened under the auspices of the League
against Imperialism, a front organization of the Comintern.
172 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

was lies. Instead of exploiters and exploited, tyrants and downtrodden,

he found everyone a friend and comrade: education for all, even for old
women, and no one said “this is mine,” but “this is ours.” Even the prison-
ers had a freedom unknown to many “freemen” in Africa, with weekend
leave to visit their homes, orchestras and theaters of their own, weekly
newspapers edited by themselves and circulating in all the prisons of the
country, and, for disciplinary offenses, an arbitration court consisting of
fellow prisoners. The country was owned by its people, and the Govern-
ment supplied agricultural implements and financed their cooperative
stores. The sailors at sea and ashore had as comfortable a time as the rest.
In short, “Jim” was the ruler of the country.
This wonderful liberation had been accomplished by organising and
fighting with weapons torn from the oppressors. And throughout, he
found that the people who were able to reason and to lead the class strug-
gle were the Communists. (Cheers.)

***

A NEW JERUSALEM

***

“I am one of the blessed sons of your mothers for I have seen the new
world to come, where it has actually begun. I have been to the new
Jerusalem.”
For centuries the Russian people suffered under the tyranny and
despotism of the Tsarist Empire, which subjected and oppressed many
countries under a terrible burden of suffering and exploitation.
Imperialism cut the land into farms leaving the people landless; the
people had to work for nobles for little or no pay, reduced to dire poverty,
weeping, and wailing, always being raided, shot by police; this made them
unite and finally they kicked out the oppressors, killed the Tsar, and took
the land and towns for the people.

***
 3.13. W. E. B. Du Bois Discovers Soviet Russia 173

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE FOR ALL RACES

I have brought back a key with me if you will accept it; we need your help
and support to turn that key and unlock the door to freedom. . . .

3.13
W. E. B. Du Bois Discovers Soviet Russia (c. 1928)113

The article excerpted below focuses on one aspect of the Russian

Revolution that W. E. B. Du Bois thought to be crucial for Black
Americans—its emphasis on racial equality. The article was writ-
ten around 1928, after his journey to the USSR.

Whatever we may think theoretically of Russia’s revolution and the

Soviet government two things are certainly true—first, the economic
system based on private capital which is prevalent in the world today is
imperfect and is and has been widely criticized. There is scarcely a stu-
dent of the system past and present who does not regard it as a makeshift
which can and must be improved. Whether the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat as exemplified in Russia will bring the needed improvements or
not, only time will tell. But certainly this second proposition cannot be
controverted: we must judge Russia by what she does and not simply by
what she says and certainly not by what other people say about her. We
must remember that private interests both economic and social wish the
failure of the Russian experiment and we must listen to their voices in
books, speeches, and the public press with reserve.
To us as Negro Americans, the chief question is: What is Russia’s
attitude toward the world problem of race? We include in this, her attitude
toward Negroes in America and Africa and toward the colored peoples of
the East. This is not all. Most Americans do not know that within Russia
are numerous race problems. The territory of the union of the Soviet
republics consists of over eight million square miles, or one-sixth of the

113. Source: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963. Russia and

the race problem, c. 1928. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and
University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
174 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

land surface of the earth and of one hundred and fifty million people
of different races and languages, including five varieties of Slavs, two
sets of Lithuanians, five of the Latin and Teutonic races, seven Iranians,
ten varieties of Finns, twelve groups of Turks and Tartars, two sets of
Monguls, besides Jews, Gypsies, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and five or
six other races. No such tremendous mixture of race under one govern-
ment has been seen elsewhere in the world, not even in the United States
of America.
Here then, above all, is the place to ask: How does the new revolu-
tionary government of Russia face the question of race? And the answer
is clear and unequivocal. Russia stands for absolute equality of races—
political, social, and civil. She recognizes on the one hand the rights of
her constituent peoples to maintain their own language and their own
culture and to have schools, teachers, and literature to sustain these. So
far as practicable, she gives all the different nations local governmental
autonomy. Russia consists of ten autonomous soviet socialistic repub-
lics; and within these republics, are various partially autonomous govern-
ments based on race and language.
On the other hand, Russia does not force racial segregation. A Tartar
may send his child to a Tartar school or to a Russian school, just as he
pleases. In the Tartar school, he learns Russian. Every inducement is held
out to make the different groups acquainted with the language and the
culture of the leading races in Russia. But they are not forced to this.
They are invited.

***

What will be the result of this experiment in the encouragement of

races and nations, groups and languages, within a great nation? Usu-
ally nations have tried to suppress variant groups. They have hammered
and pounded them into submission and disappearance as the Germans
sought to do with the Poles, as the Hungarians treated the Slavs, and
as England, France, and Spain have treated numerous smaller groups.
Here in America, we are trying to make Germans, Irish, Hungarians, and
Italians ashamed of the race that gave them birth, unwilling to remem-
ber their languages and claiming only English descent. Russia has set her
face in the opposite direction. For the first time in decades, the Ukraine
can be proud of its literature and language; the Poles can talk Polish, the
Armenians can have their own little government, the Jews can not only
 3.13. W. E. B. Du Bois Discovers Soviet Russia 175

be free in their own Soviet republic, but everywhere they wish to go in

Russia.
That is not all. The colored peoples of the East—the dark Tartars, the
Chinese, and the Monguls within the bounds of the Russian republic,—
are given every encouragement. In Moscow there is a university for the
Eastern peoples with a thousand students, with everything—clothes,
food, and tuition—free. There is a Chinese university with about five
hundred students giving a course of two years.
And finally in all public celebrations, the importance of the different
racial elements in Russia is given free and frank encouragement. I saw the
tenth annual celebration of Youth Day in September 1926. Two hundred
thousand children and youth marched in the public square. They were
not only Russians of all sorts and kinds but over one hundred Chinese
and many Tartars, Caucasians, and people from Turkestan and two or
three Negroes. I have never seen a greater variety of human types.
Not only in Russia, but outside of Russia and in her general diplo-
macy and relations in the world, Russia has taken a firm stand for racial
equality. She has demanded decent treatment for Africans and persons
of African descent throughout the world and has gone out of her way to
treat Negro visitors with courtesy.
Above all, today Russia is the hope of Asia. She is the backbone of the
present Chinese revolution and the hope of nationalism in India. This
is the reason and the sole reason for the recent attack upon Russia in
England, America, and Italy and to some extent in France. The solidarity
of white Europe toward the colored world has been broken by Russia
and the white world, led by England, is determined to punish Russia at
any cost.
All this is quite outside of questions of economic policy, of political
trend, and of debt settlements. The attitude of Russia on the race ques-
tion within and without her boundaries is of tremendous significance to
us and of such significance to the races of the world that it bids fair to
overshadow other and in many respects lesser questions.
176 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

3.14
José Carlos Mariátegui Welcomes World Revolution114

The excerpt below is taken from a lecture given by José Carlos

Mariátegui on September 28, 1923, in Lima, Peru, soon after his
return from Europe where he observed the expanding repercus-
sions of the Russian Revolution and met with leading revolu-
tionaries and intellectuals, including Antonio Gramsci, Georges
Sorel, Henri Barbusse, and Romain Rolland. Mariátegui praises
the Comintern for recognizing that the world revolution is impos-
sible without engaging the oppressed masses of Asia.

Only European and American workers were represented in the First

International. The most advanced South American workers and work-
ers drawn into the orbit of the European world, the western world, also
took part in the Second International. But the Second International was
still primarily an association of workers in the West, an appendage of
European civilization and society. All this was natural and just, moreover,
because the socialist doctrine, the proletarian doctrine, constituted a cre-
ation, a product of European and Western civilization. I said, to expound
rapidly on the crisis of democracy, the socialist and proletarian doctrine
is the child of bourgeois capitalist society. . . . Among the Eastern peoples,
the system of slavery persists to this day. The problems of the peoples of
the East are different from those of the peoples of the West. . . . 
The socialists have begun to understand that social revolution must
not be only a European revolution, but a worldwide revolution. The lead-
ers of the social revolution perceive and understand the capitalist tactic of
seeking in the colonies resources and means of avoiding or delaying revo-
lution in Europe. And they strive to fight capitalism, not only in Europe,
not only in the West, but in the colonies. The Third International is
driving socialist tactics in this new direction. The Third International
encourages and promotes insurrection among the peoples of the East,

114. Source: José Carlos Mariátegui, “La agitatión revolucionaria y socialista del
mundo oriental,” in Historia de la Crisis Mundial: Conferencias (Años 1923 y 1924), 7th
ed. (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1980), 140–47 [here: 142–46].
 3.14. José Carlos Mariátegui Welcomes World Revolution 177

even though such popular actions lack a proletarian and class character,
and exhibit, rather, a nationalist character.

***

At a memorable congress, the Congress of Halle,115 Zinoviev, in the name

of the Third International, defended its colonial policy against attacks by
Hilferding,116 the socialist leader and current Minister of Finance. On
this occasion, Zinoviev was arguing, “The Second International was lim-
ited to white men; the Third does not divide men by the color of their
skin. If you want a world revolution, if you want to liberate the proletariat
from the chains of capitalism, you must not think only of Europe. You
ought to also direct your gaze to Asia. Hilferding will reply scornfully:
‘These Asians, these Tartars, these Chinese!’ Comrades, I say a world
revolution is not possible if we do not turn our faces also to Asia. Those
lands are inhabited by four times more men than in Europe, and these
men are as oppressed and outraged as we are.
“Are we going to move toward socialism or not? If Marx asserted that
a European revolution without England would resemble no more than
a tempest in a glass of water, we will say, oh comrades from Germany,
that a proletarian revolution without Asia is not a world revolution. And
this is very important for us. I am also European like you; but I feel that
Europe is a small part of the world. At the Congress in Moscow,117 we
understood what so far has been lacking in the proletarian movement.
We sensed what is necessary for the coming of the world revolution. And
this something is the awakening of the oppressed masses of Asia. I con-
fess: when in Baku we saw hundreds of Persians and Turks singing the
‘Internationale’ with us,118 I felt tears in my eyes. And then I heard the
rumbling of the world revolution.”

115. Meeting in Halle, Germany, in October 1920, the Congress of the USPD, the
Independent Socialist Party of Germany, voted to join the Third International.
116. Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941) was a Marxist economist and politician of the
SPD, or German Socialist Party.
117. Zinoviev is referring to the Second World Congress of the Comintern, which met
from July 19 to August 7, 1920.
118. The Congress of the Peoples of the East was a multinational conference organized
by the Comintern and held in Baku, Azerbaijan, in September 1920.
178 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

And it is for such reasons that the Third International has not wanted
to be an exclusively European International. At the founding Congress
of the Third International,119 delegates from the Chinese Workers’
Party and the Korean Workers Union were present. At the following
congresses, Persians, Turkestanis, Armenians, and delegates from other
Eastern peoples also attended. And on August 14, 1920, in Baku there
gathered this great congress of the peoples of the East, to which Zinoviev
alluded and which was attended by delegates from 24 Eastern peoples. At
this congress, the foundations were laid for an International of the East,
not a Socialist International, but a revolutionary and insurrectional one.

3.15
Dr. José Lanauze Rolón’s Radio Address in Puerto
Rico Extolls the Russian Revolution, 1936120, 121

José Lanauze Rolón (1893–1951) was an Afro-Puerto Rican phy-

sician who received his medical degree from Howard University
and then completed specialized training in otorhinolaryngol-
ogy at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. In 1925, he founded
the Puerto Rican League for Birth Control (LPCNPR) and led the
movement to decriminalize the publication and distribution of
contraceptive information. A highly educated and prolific poet,
essayist, and journalist, Lanauze was also a founding member of
the Communist Party of Puerto Rico (1934–1944), and a leading
internationalist theoretician. His speech for the nineteenth anni-
versary celebration of the Bolshevik take-over, excerpted below,
reflects his belief in the progressive role of the Russian Revolution

119. The Third International was founded in Moscow in March 1919.

120.  Our special thanks to Christian Vélez, Ph.D. student and research assistant to
Dr. Sandra Pujals, Department of History, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, for
identifying the source at the Colección Puertorriqueña.
121. Source: Except from the speech “La Revolución Rusa: 19 aniversario” by Dr. José
A. Lanauze Rolón, transmitted by WKAQ radio station in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
on November 7, 1936, and later published as a pamphlet by the Communist Party of
Puerto Rico (Third International). The copy of the pamphlet is from Colección Puertor-
riqueña, Biblioteca José M. Lázaro, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.
 3.15. Dr. José Lanauze Rolón’s Radio Address in Puerto Rico Extolls the Russian Revolution 179

and its global significance, including its legacy to the Spanish

Republic, which was then in the midst of a civil conflict. The
speech was broadcast via San Juan radio in 1936.

What is the balance sheet of the Russian Revolution over the past nine-
teen years? Nineteen years in the history of a people is not very much.
What has Puerto Rico, as a people, accomplished in those nineteen years?
What about the other peoples of the Americas? What progress has the
rich and vibrant metropolis to the north made in the past nineteen
years?
Let’s look at the record, as President Roosevelt has said. Let’s look
at the record of the Russian Revolution. At the end of those nineteen
years, of the confusion, prostration and anarchy, misery and social paraly-
sis, deeply rooted ignorance and superstition, and ancient slavery of the
peasantry all that remains in the Soviet Union are scanty and indistinct
traces. Russia is now the second largest industrial nation in Europe. It
has liquidated in this short time the plague of illiteracy. Eighty percent
of its agriculture, which adheres to the latest methods of mechanization
and scientific cultivation, has been collectivized. Soviet science and the
arts have nothing to envy the rest of the civilized world. In Russia there is
no unemployment, there is social security for all, and the factories, land,
and other means of production are in the hands of the workers. In Soviet
Russia, to exploit others and increase one’s profits through the labor of
others is a crime, the greatest of crimes. Education is compulsory and
free. Women have the same political, social and economic opportunities
as men; mothers enjoy significant privileges and protections. Russia is
still, as on the first day of the Revolution, the mother country of the child;
the child in Russia is honored by the government, the intellectuals, and
the entire work force.
While performing these enormous tasks of construction, of orga-
nization, and of social and moral development, Soviet Russia has been
painfully forced to build up and discipline a powerful military force:
an army of millions of soldiers, an air force of thousands of mighty air-
planes, impregnable fortifications, an extremely efficient war industry,
submarines, and numerous battleships. All of this makes Russia one of
the greatest military powers in the world—and all of these marvelous
achievements have come to fruition in the short span of less than half a
generation.
180 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Those victories in science, the arts, industry, agriculture, the military,

and social life alone would suffice to prove the clear advantages of social-
ism as compared to capitalism, which remains mired in misery and insol-
uble problems. Those victories alone would suffice to make Russia the
guiding light and inspiration of all the working masses of all the countries
of the planet.

3.16
Mao Zedong’s Retrospective of the
Revolutionary Struggle, 1949122

In the document below, which was written in the summer of

1949, Mao Zedong speaks optimistically and in a broad revolu-
tionary context of the struggle and goals of the Communist Party
of China. There were good reasons for his optimism: by that point
the Communists’ struggle with the Guomindang was nearing an
end. The Guomindang government had already fled the capital
city of Nanking and on October 1, 1949, the Communist People’s
Republic of China would be officially proclaimed in Beijing.

The first of July 1949 marks the fact that the Communist Party of China
has already lived through twenty-eight years. Like a man, a political party
has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age. The Communist Party
of China is no longer a child or a lad in his teens but has become an
adult. When a man reaches old age, he will die; the same is true of a
party. When classes disappear, all instruments of class struggle—parties
and the state machinery—will lose their function, cease to be neces-
sary, therefore gradually wither away and end their historical mission;
and human society will move to a higher stage. We are the opposite of
the political parties of the bourgeoisie. They are afraid to speak of the
extinction of classes, state power, and parties. We, on the contrary, declare
openly that we are striving hard to create the very conditions which will

122. Source: Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 5 vols. (Peking: Foreign Languages Press,
1969), 4:411–14, 415, 422–23.
 3.16. Mao Zedong’s Retrospective of the Revolutionary Struggle 181

bring about their extinction. The leadership of the Communist Party and
the state power of the people’s dictatorship are such conditions. Anyone
who does not recognize this truth is no Communist. Young comrades
who have not studied Marxism-Leninism and have only recently joined
the Party may not yet understand this truth. They must understand it—
only then can they have a correct world outlook. They must understand
that the road to the abolition of classes, to the abolition of state power
and to the abolition of parties is the road all mankind must take; it is only
a question of time and conditions. Communists the world over are wiser
than the bourgeoisie, they understand the laws governing the existence
and development of things, they understand dialectics, and they can see
farther. The bourgeoisie does not welcome this truth because it does not
want to be overthrown. To be overthrown is painful and is unbearable
to contemplate for those overthrown, for example, for the Kuomintang
reactionaries whom we are now overthrowing and for Japanese imperial-
ism which we together with other peoples overthrew some time ago. But
for the working class, the labouring people, and the Communist Party
the question is not one of being overthrown, but of working hard to cre-
ate the conditions in which classes, state power, and political parties will
die out very naturally and mankind will enter the realm of Great Harmo-
ny.123 We have mentioned in passing the long-range perspective of human
progress in order to explain clearly the problems we are about to discuss.
As everyone knows, our Party passed through these twenty-eight
years not in peace but amid hardships, for we had to fight enemies, both
foreign and domestic, both inside and outside the Party. We thank Marx,
Engels, Lenin, and Stalin for giving us a weapon. This weapon is not a
machine-gun, but Marxism-Leninism.
In his book “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder written in
1920, Lenin described the quest of the Russians for revolutionary theory.
Only after several decades of hardship and suffering did the Russians
find Marxism. Many things in China were the same as, or similar to,
those in Russia before the October Revolution. There was the same feu-
dal oppression. There was similar economic and cultural backwardness.
Both countries were backward, China even more so. In both countries

123. The expression refers to a society based on public ownership, free from class
exploitation and oppression—a lofty ideal long cherished by the Chinese people. Here
Mao means communist society.
182 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

alike, for the sake of national regeneration progressives braved hard and
bitter struggles in their quest for revolutionary truth.
From the time of China’s defeat in the Opium War of 1840, Chinese
progressives went through untold hardships in their quest for truth from
the Western countries. . . . Chinese who then sought progress would read
any book containing the new knowledge from the West. The number of
students sent to Japan, Britain, the United States, France, and Germany
was amazing. At home, the imperial examinations were abolished and
modern schools sprang up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain; every
effort was made to learn from the West. In my youth, I too engaged in
such studies. They represented the culture of Western bourgeois democ-
racy, including the social theories and natural sciences of that period, and
they were called “the new learning” in contrast to Chinese feudal culture,
which was called “the old learning.” For quite a long time, those who
had acquired the new learning felt confident that it would save China,
and very few of them had any doubts on this score, as the adherents of
the old learning had. Only modernization could save China, only learn-
ing from foreign countries could modernize China. Among the foreign
countries, only the Western capitalist countries were then progressive, as
they had successfully built modern bourgeois states. The Japanese had
been successful in learning from the West, and the Chinese also wished
to learn from the Japanese. The Chinese in those days regarded Russia as
backward, and few wanted to learn from her. That was how the Chinese
tried to learn from foreign countries in the period from the 1840s to the
beginning of the 20th century.
Imperialist aggression shattered the fond dreams of the Chinese about
learning from the West. It was very odd—why were the teachers always
committing aggression against their pupil? The Chinese learned a good
deal from the West, but they could not make it work and were never able
to realize their ideals. Their repeated struggles, including such a country-
wide movement as the Revolution of 1911, all ended in failure. Day
by day, conditions in the country got worse, and life was made impos-
sible. Doubts arose, increased, and deepened. World War I shook the
whole globe. The Russians made the October Revolution and created
the world’s first socialist state. Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin,
the revolutionary energy of the great proletariat and labouring people of
Russia, hitherto latent and unseen by foreigners, suddenly erupted like a
volcano, and the Chinese and all mankind began to see the Russians in
a new light. Then, and only then, did the Chinese enter an entirely new
 3.16. Mao Zedong’s Retrospective of the Revolutionary Struggle 183

era in their thinking and their life. They found Marxism-Leninism, the
universally applicable truth, and the face of China began to change.
It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. Before
the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin
and Stalin, they did not even know of Marx and Engels. The salvoes
of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The Octo-
ber Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world,
to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying
a nation’s destiny and considering anew their own problems. Follow the
path of the Russians—that was their conclusion. In 1919, the May 4th
Movement124 took place in China. In 1921, the Communist Party of
China was founded. Sun Yat-sen, in the depths of despair, came across
the October Revolution and the Communist Party of China. He wel-
comed the October Revolution, welcomed Russian help to the Chinese
and welcomed co-operation of the Communist Party of China. Then
Sun Yat-sen died and Chiang Kai-shek rose to power. Over a long period
of twenty-two years, Chiang Kai-shek dragged China into ever more
hopeless straits. In this period, during the anti-fascist Second World
War in which the Soviet Union was the main force, three big imperialist
powers were knocked out, while two others were weakened. In the whole
world only one big imperialist power, the United States of America,
remained uninjured. But the United States faced a grave domestic crisis.
It wanted to enslave the whole world; it supplied arms to help Chiang
Kai-shek slaughter several million Chinese. Under the leadership of
the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people, after driving out
Japanese imperialism, waged the People’s War of Liberation for three
years and have basically won victory.
Thus Western bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy, and the
plan for a bourgeois republic have all gone bankrupt in the eyes of the
Chinese people. Bourgeois democracy has given way to people’s democ-
racy under the leadership of the working class and the bourgeois republic
to the people’s republic. This has made it possible to achieve socialism
and communism through the people’s republic, to abolish classes and
enter a world of Great Harmony. . .

***

124. A political movement that emerged from student demonstrations in Beijing on

May 4, 1919, protesting unfair treatment of China by the Treaty of Versailles.
184 Documents • Section 3: The Russian Revolution and the Power of Communism

Twenty-four years have passed since Sun Yat-sen’s death, and the Chi-
nese revolution, led by the Communist Party of China, has made tremen-
dous advances both in theory and practice and has radically changed the
face of China. Up to now the principal and fundamental experience the
Chinese people have gained is twofold:
(1) Internally, arouse the masses of the people. That is, unite the work-
ing class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national
bourgeoisie, form a domestic united front under the leadership of the
working class, and advance from this to the establishment of a state which
is a people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working
class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
(2) Externally, unite in a common struggle with those nations of the
world which treat us as equals and unite with the peoples of all countries.
That is, ally ourselves with the Soviet Union, with the People’s Democra-
cies, and with the proletariat and the broad masses of the people in all
other countries, and form an international united front.

***

Twenty-eight years of our Party are a long period, in which we have

accomplished only one thing—we have won basic victory in the revolu-
tionary war. This calls for celebration, because it is the people’s victory,
because it is a victory in a country as large as China. But we still have
much work to do; to use the analogy of a journey, our past work is only
the first step in a long march of ten thousand li.125 Remnants of the enemy
have yet to be wiped out. The serious task of economic construction lies
before us. We shall soon put aside some of the things we know well and
be compelled to do things we don’t know well. This means difficulties.
The imperialists reckon that we will not be able to manage our economy;
they are standing by and looking on, awaiting our failure. We must over-
come difficulties; we must learn what we do not know. We must learn
to do economic work from all who know how, no matter who they are.
We must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and
conscientiously. We must not pretend to know when we do not know.
We must not put on bureaucratic airs. If we dig into a subject for several
months, for a year or two, for three or five years, we shall eventually mas-
ter it. At first some of the Soviet Communists also were not very good at

125. A traditional unit of distance, equivalent to roughly one-third mile.

 3.16. Mao Zedong’s Retrospective of the Revolutionary Struggle 185

handling economic matters and the imperialists awaited their failure too.
But the Communist Party of the Soviet Union emerged victorious and,
under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, it learned not only how to make
the revolution but also how to carry on construction. It has built a great
and splendid socialist state. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is
our best teacher and we must learn from it. . . .
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 INDEX

“A New Appeal” (Reed), 138–42 Birth Control League of Puerto

African National Congress Rico. See Puerto Rican League
(ANC), 58–59, 171 for Birth Control (LPCNPR)
Alexander II: assassination of, 6; “Bloody Sunday,” 9; strikes on
Great Reforms, 5–6 anniversary, 14
Alexander III, 6 Blukher, Vasilii, 46n31
Alexandra Feodorovna (tsarina), Blum, Léon, 137
5, 13, 16, 25 Boer War, 57
All-Russian Conference of Soviets Bolshevik international schools:
of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Communist University of
Deputies, 18 the National Minorities of
All-Russian Co-operative Society the West, 44; Communist
(ARCOS), 41; raid by British, University of the Toilers of the
45 East, 44, 127–29; International
All-Russian Extraordinary Lenin School, 44; Sun Yat-sen
Commission. See secret police University, 44
American Committee on Public Bolshevik Party, 7, 148–49;
Information, 78 8th Party Congress, 115;
American Federation of Labor ABC of Communism, beliefs,
(AFL), 111n41, 138–40 93–95; coerced procurements,
American Trade Corporation 117n52; comparison to
(AMTORG), 41 Germany, 145; comparison
anti-colonial struggle, 57–59 to Hungary, 143–47; control
Anzengruber, Ludwig, 146 of heartland, railroads, and
Austria, Comintern report, 118 industrial centers, 24; Decree
Austro-Hungary: assassination on Peace, 32–33; forced
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, grain requisitions, 24; foreign
10; food crisis, 104n32. See also policy based on revolutionary
Hungarian Revolution interest, 30–31, 35–36;
autocracy and democracy, 69–70 looking for effect in Europe,
29; military rebellion of
Bagdash, Khalid, 44 Sapozhkov, 100–102; peasant
Baker, Newton, Jr., 112 uprisings, 27; policies, 23–24;
banks and bankers, 29, 72, 83, 87, Politburo, executive board, 30;
95 propaganda and promises, 27;
Barbusse, Henri, 52, 151, 176 purge of other parties from

191
192 Index

Bolshevik Party (Continued ) Bukharin, Nikolai, 43, 92, 115,

government, 24; “Red Terror” 144
response to attack on Lenin
and Uritskii, 25, 156; Russian capitalism and monopolies, 72–73
“Internationale,” 99–100; Carr, Edward Hallett, 62–63
Russian Revolution in global Chamberlain, Neville, 55–57, 166
transformation, 12; sailors’ Chen Duxiu, 130–32
revolt crushed, 25, 153–55; Chernov, Viktor, 7
seizure of power, 21. See also Chiang Kai-shek, 44–45, 183
Council of People’s Commissars Chicherin, Georgii, 41;
(Bolsheviks and Socialist Commissar of Foreign
Revolutionaries) Relations, 107–8
Bolshevik Party, foreign relations: China: agrarian revolution, 130–31;
diplomatic relations and Bolshevik relationship, 44–45;
recognition, 41; foreign trade, Communist People’s Republic
41; international humanitarian of China, 180; comparison
food aid, 39; Rappalo meeting to Russia, 181–84; May
with Germany, 39, 124–26; 4th Movement, 183. See also
retreat from revolutionary Bolshevik international schools
interest, 39; revolutionary and Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
state interests, 37–38. See also 44, 180–84; Comintern
Germany influence, 129–33
Bolshevik Revolution, 86; Chokaev, Mustafa, 88
Chamberlain’s view of chaos, Churchill, Winston, 57
55; Kun’s role, 51; at Petrograd Civil War, 23–27
Soviet, 83; Reed’s view, 50. Class Struggle, The, 108
See also October Revolution; Clemenceau, Georges, 38, 53
Russian Revolution Coalition Government, First, 19
Bolshevism: anti-colonial Coalition Government, Second, 20
struggle, 58; Danish opinion, Comintern: Fourth International,
156–57; French opinion, 38; in 46, 134, 137, 148; International
Germany, 54, 156–58, 161–62; Left Opposition, 46;
Hitler’s opinion, 158–62; in International Relations Section
the United States, 142 report, 117; Internationals,
Borodin, Mikhail, 130–33 First through Fourth, 147–48,
Breshko-Breshkovskaia, Ekaterina, 176–78; mission of world
7, 79n10 revolution, 37, 42, 46n31;
Brinton, Crane, 64 Second Congress, 37; Third
British Communist Party, 55, 56; Congress, 120–23, 142;
forged letter, 162–66 Third International, 46, 148,
Broué, Pierre, 63 178n118; views of Mariátegui,
Brusilov, Aleksei, 13 176–77
 Index 193

communism: ABC of Communism, Curzon, George Nathaniel, 164

banking, 95; ABC of Czechoslovakia, Comintern
Communism, industry and report, 118
productivity, 93–94; ABC of
Communism, labor discipline, Daily Mail, 55, 162
94; essence of, 147; global Dan, Fedor, 83–85
tactics, 120–23, 176; imagined Declaration of the Rights of Man
communist future, 90–92; and Citizen, 86
resistance to, 151–53; Russian Deng Xiaoping, 44
“Internationale,” 99–100. See Denikin, Anton, 24, 37
also Comintern Denmark, 54, 156
Communist International Du Bois, W. E. B., 59–60, 173
(Comintern). See Comintern Dukes, Paul, 64
Communist Labor Party of Dukhonin, Nikolai, 97
America, 50 Duma: creation under
Communist Manifesto (Marx), 11, Fundamental Laws, 13;
40 military chain of command
Communist Party of China abolished, 16; “Progressive
(CPC), 61 Bloc,” 13; Stolypin in, 10
Communist Party of Russia,
146–47 educational system, 70–71
Communist Workers’ Party of European Union, 67
Germany (KAPD), 51
Congress of Industrial Fay, Victor, 63
Organizations (CIO), 136 “February Days,” 14
Congress of the Peoples of the February Revolution, 14–16;
East, 177n118 collapse of infrastructure and
Constituent Assembly, 16; administrative bodies, 18;
Bolsheviks and, 29, 84; comparison with October
dissolved at gunpoint, 24; Revolution, 21; foreign
Poland and, 80; resolutions of, response, 16–17; Provisional
86–88 Committee and Petrograd
Constitutional Democratic Party Soviet, 15–16
(Kadets), 9, 13, 16, 20; memoir Feng Yuxiang, 131
detailing Cossack seizure of Ferro, Marc, 63
Ukraine, 96–99 Finland, 87, 157
Council of People’s Commissars Fourth International. See Comintern
(Bolsheviks and Socialist- France: French Revolution, 86;
Revolutionaries), 21; labor strikes in, 136
Declaration of the Rights of Franco, Francisco, 46, 136
the Peoples’ of Russia, 23, 87; Franz Ferdinand, Archduke,
land nationalization, 23 assassination of, 10
194 Index

Fundamental Laws of April 1906, “Greens,” opposition to both Reds

9; economic growth under, 10; and Whites, 27
Petrograd general strike, 10; Guchkov, Aleksandr, 9, 19
Siberian gold field mineworkers Gumede, Josiah Tshangana,
massacre, 10 58–59, 171
Guomindang, 44–45, 130–32, 180
Gandhi, Mahatma, 152, 168
Gapon, Grigorii, 9 Haywood, Harry, 44
Genoa’s Conference, 39 Hilferding, Rudolf, 11, 177
German Communist Party, Hitler, Adolph, 46, 47, 54, 57, 158,
42–43, 51 159n100
German Spartacist League, 36, 51 Ho Chi Minh, 44
Germany: Chamberlain’s view Hobsbawm, Eric, 63
of, 167; Comintern report, Hobson, John A., 11
119; communism in, 149–51; Hoffmann, Max, 103, 105–7
French occupation of Ruhr Holquist, Peter, 65
valley, 42; Independent Honecker, Erich, 44
Socialist Party of Germany, Hungarian Revolution, 115,
177n115; Ludendorff system, 143–45
150; National Socialists, 161; Hungarian Soviet Republic, 51
Ostsiedlung, 161n102; social-
democratic bureaucracy, 145; IKKI. See Comintern
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, India: anti-colonial sentiment,
103–7; Treaty of Rapallo, 57–58; civil disobedience, 152;
124–26; Ukraine, abandonment National Congress Party, 168
of, 96; Wilhelmshaven sailors’ Industrial Workers of the World
mutiny, 32; workers’ strikes, (IWW), 138
104n34 Ingenieros, José, 60
Gershuni, Grigorii, 7 International Women’s Day, 14
Goldman, Emma, 52, 153 Irvine, William, 57
Goldstone, Jack, 64 Italy, Comintern report, 119
Gompers, Samuel, 111
Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 44 Jews: Hitler’s views of Bolsheviks,
Gordienko, Ilia, 14 54, 158–62; in Pale of
Gramsci, Antonio, 176 Settlement, 6, 10; pogroms by
Graves, William Sidney, 35, 112 “Whites,” 25
Great Britain: Anglo-Soviet Trade journalist and journalism, 70
Agreement, 55; fear of Russian
Revolution and Bolshevism, Kadets. See Constitutional
54–57 Democratic Party (Kadets)
Great Reforms. See Alexander II Kalinin, Mikhail, 154
Great War. See World War I Kamenev, Lev, 43
 Index 195

Katayama, Sen, 44 and capitalism, 72; “Letter

Katz, Mark N., 64 to American Workingmen,”
Kautsky, Karl, 11 108–11; opposed Russia in
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of World War I, 11; reevaluation
1916, 140 of capitalism, 11; Soviets’
Kerensky, Alexander, 16, 19–21, geopolitical isolation, 38
85n17 Li Dazhao, 61
Khan, Batu, 96 Li Shaoqi, 44
Khitarov, Rafael, 131, 133 Liberation, 8
Kokand military revolutionary Liebknecht, Karl, 36
committee, 89n20 Lloyd George, David, 38, 53
Kolchak, Aleksandr, 24, 35, 37, Ludendorff, Erich, 150
113–14, 117 Luxemburg, Rosa, 36
Kollontai, Aleksandra, 90 Lvov, Georgii, 16, 81
Kornilov, Lavr, 20, 85 Lyriev, Nikita, 116
Kronstadt Rebellion, 25, 153–55
Kühlmann, Richard von, 105 MacDonald, Ramsay, 55, 163–64
Kun, Bela, 51, 143 Maklakov, Vasilii, 13
Kuzmin, Nikolai, 154 Malia, Martin, 64
Mao Zedong, 61, 180
Labor government (Britain), 55 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 60–61,
Lanauze Rolón, José, 61, 178 176
land, ownership: agrarian Martov, Julius, 7
revolution in China, 130–31; Marx, Karl, 7, 23, 141
nationalization, 23, 83, 85, 86, Marxism, 7, 50, 149, 158; Mao
131–32; reform, 16; serfdom, 5 Zedong’s views of, 181;
Lansing, Robert, 112 Nehru’s views of, 168, 170
League Against Imperialism, 58; Mauzan, Luciano, 27
Brussels Conference, 171n112 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 158
“Left-Wing” Communism, an Mensheviks, 7
Infantile Disorder (Lenin), 181 Messenger, 59
Lenin, Nikolai. See Lenin, Miliukov, Pavel, 9, 13, 18–19
Vladimir Mogilianskii, Nikolai, 96
Lenin, Vladimir, 20, 142, 181; Moor, Dmitrii, 27
8th Party Congress, 115; Moscow, capital of Soviet Russia,
“April Theses” speech, 18, 81; 30
centralized and coercive party
organization, 63; death of, National Association for the
43; early life, 7; expectation Advancement of Colored
of global socialist revolution, People (NAACP), 59
32; German Social Democrats Nehru, Jawaharlal, 57–58, 168
rejection, 36; imperialism “New Deal,” 135
196 Index

Nicholas II, 5, 11; as commander- Polish-Soviet War, 37–38, 57

in-chief, 13; Far East Port Arthur, 8
expansionist policy, 8; power post-imperial states, 65–67
under Fundamental Laws, 9; Pravda, 92–93
rebellion and abdication, 16; Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii, 92
slaughter of entire family, x, Provisional Government, 16;
24–25 “April Theses” speech against,
81; blame for losses in war, 18;
October Revolution: Chinese view, death penalty abolition, 16;
181–83; Hungarian view, 144; initial goal to win in World
People’s Front and, 136; tenth War, 16; July Days riots put
anniversary, 58, 171. See also down, 20; promise of Polish
Bolshevik Revolution independence, 80–81; tension
Octobrist Party, 9, 16, 19 with Petrograd Soviet, 17;
Orthodox Christian Church, 5 women’s suffrage, 16
Owen, Chandler, 59 Puerto Rican Communist Party,
61, 178
Palmer, A. Mitchell, 52 Puerto Rican League for Birth
Pascal, Pierre, 47 Control (LPCNPR), 61,
Peasants’ Congress (Petrograd), 142 178
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Putin, Vladimir, 67–68
Affairs, 32–34, 41, 42
“People’s Front,” 136 Randolph, A. Philip, 59
Peter the Great, 5 Rasputin, Grigorii, assassination
Petrograd, 10, 15–16; July Days of, 14
riots put down, 19–20 Rathenau, Walther, 124, 126
Petrograd Soviet of Worker and Recabarren, Luis Emilio, 60
Soldier Deputies, 15–16, Red Army, 24
17–18; appeal to German “Reds.” See Bolshevik Party
proletariat, 29; Bolshevik Reed, John, 50, 108, 138
control, 20, 83; Military- Remnev, M.I., 96
Revolutionary Committee, revolutions, study of, 64–65
21; Order Number One, 76; Richards, Michael, 65
Resolution of the Soviet, 85; Robespierre, Maximilien, 144n86
Trotsky confronts Dan, 83 Rolland, Romain, 52, 151, 176
Phrygian cap, 136 Roy, Manabendra, 133
Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 5, 69 Rudnianskii, Endre, 116n47
Poland: Chamberlain’s view of, Ruhle, Otto, 51, 147
167; Comintern report, 117; Russia, post-Soviet era: foreign
promise of independence policy, 67; international
by Provisional Government, propaganda network, 67–68;
80–81 Moldova, 67; Ukraine and, 67
 Index 197

Russian Empire: farms and Scheidemann, Philipp, 111

farmers, 1, 4; Great Reforms, Second Socialist International,
5–6; imperial regime, 5–6; 11, 37
importance of collapse, 65; secret police: Cheka, All-Russian
industrialization, 4; population, Extraordinary Commission,
1; treatment of Jews, 5–6; 30; OGPU, 45; Petrograd
treatment of workers, 7 Security Police (Cheka), 25
Russian Revolution, 47–48, Skocpol, Theda, 64
149–50; American view Skoropadskii, Pavlo, 96
of, 78–79, 141; “Bloody Social Democratic Party of
Sunday,” 9, 14; calendar, “Old Germany (SPD), 111n41,
Style” or “New Style,” 21n4; 177n116
comparative perspective, 64; Socialist Party of America, 50
Eastern European fear of, Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs),
57; European fear of spread, 116n49; founding, 7–8;
53–55, 63; global impact, 48, opposition to Bolsheviks, 25;
50–51, 64; global opinion, support for Russia in World
52; global tactics, 120–23; War I, 11
imagined communist future, Socialist Worker’s Party (Chile),
90–92; industrialization effect, 60
48; intellectuals’ opinions Sokolnikov, Grigorii, 107
of, 52; Lanauze’s views of, Sorel, Georges, 176
179–80; Latin America, effect South African Communist Party,
on, 60–61; Lenin’s impact 59
on collapse of imperialism, South African Native National
11–12; “Letter to American Congress, 58
Workingmen,” 108–11; South African Worker, 171
“October Manifesto,” 9; success Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
or failure, 62–64; Volynsky Deputies, 76–77, 82, 86
Guards Regiment mutiny, 14 Spain: proletariat in, 136;
Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Marxist
Worker Party, beginnings and Unification, 136n73
split, 7 Stalin, Joseph, 46, 60; Communist
Russian Socialist Federal Soviet University of the Toilers of
Republic, 124 the East speech, 127–29; on
Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Guomindang, 45; power after
Republic, 107 Lenin’s death, 43
Russo-Japanese War, 8, 12, 58 Stolypin, Pyotr Arkadyevich,
assassination of, 10
Samsonov, Aleksandr, 12 Stone, Bailey, 64
Sapozhkov, Aleksander, 100 Struve, Peter, 8
Scavenius, Harald, 54, 156 Sukhomlinov, Vladimir, 13
198 Index

Tan Pingshan, 132 Union of Soviet Socialist

Taylor, Graham Romeyn, 78 Republics, foreign relations:
Tchitcherin, George, 124, 126 Chamberlain’s view of, 166;
Third International. See Czechoslovakia mutual
Comintern assistance treaty, 46–47,
Tito, Iosip Broz, 44 166; Franco-Soviet Pact, 46;
Toynbee, Arnold J., 63 Nehru’s views of, 168–69; non-
Transcaucasian Socialist aggression pact with Poland, 46
Federative Soviet Republic, 40 United States: American
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 4 Socialist Movement, 138–41;
Travin, Petr Ivanovich, 108 immigration and foreign
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. See World radicals, 53; industrial
War I unionism, 136; “Red
Treaty of Rapallo, 124 Scare,” 52–53, 59; Russian
Trotsky, Leon, 20, 24, 43, 83, 154; immigrants’ labor impact, 48;
Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Seattle labor strike, 50–51,
32–34; global revolutionary 142; Spanish-American War,
flame, 46; “The Transitional 109n40; workers’ movement,
Program,” 134–37; Treaty of 138; World War I intervention
Brest-Litovsk, 103–7 in Russia, 112
Tukhachevskii, Mikhail, 46n31 Uritskii, Moisei, 25
Turkestan, Provisional
Government of Autonomous, Vassiliev, T., 154
88 Voltaire, 152
Turkish War of Independence, Volynsky Guards Regiment
116n51 mutiny, 14
Voronkov, Mikhail, 115–17
Ukraine: memoir detailing
Cossack seizure of Ukraine, Wang Jingwei, 130
96–99; post-Soviet, 67 “Whites”: opponents of
Union of Democratic Control, Bolsheviks, 24; propaganda
152 posters, 25, 27
Union of Liberation, 8 Wilson, Woodrow, 17, 53, 108
Union of Soviet Socialist World War I: Allied secret
Republics: collectivization agreements published, 33,
of agriculture and famine, 87; Allies, support for, 28;
169n110; creation of, 39–40; American Expeditionary
First Congress, 40; Great Seal Forces and foreign intervention,
of, 40–41; Lanauze’s views of, 35, 112; Battle of Tannenberg,
179–80; racial equality viewed 12; beginning of, 10–11;
by W. E. B. Du Bois, 173–75; Bolshevik Decree on Peace,
Turkestan autonomy, 88–89 32–33; Czechoslovak revolt,
 Index 199

34–35; effect on Russia, 92, 103–7, 156; Treaty of

12–13; expectation of return Versailles, 54; troops to restore
of Dardanelles, 18–19; initial order in Petrograd, 19–20.
view of, 11; June offensive in See also Ukraine
Galicia, 19–20; Kazakh and World War II, Anglo-Franco-
Kyrgyz peoples’ rebellions, Soviet military alliance, 57
13; Murmansk region, Allied
intervention, 107–8, 112; Paris Zachariadis, Nikolaos, 44
Peace Conference, 53, 115n46, Zemstvos and the town councils,
156; peace talks with Central 5, 13, 16
Powers, 33–34; Petrograd Zhang Guotao, 132
Soviet control of Petrograd, Zhang Tailei, 133
19–20; reorganization by Zhenotdel, Women’s Section, 90
Petrograd Soviet, 76–77; Zhou Enlai, 133
revolutionary effect of, 12; Zimmerwald socialist conference,
Russian losses, 12–13; soldiers’ 11
health, hunger, mutiny, 74–76; Zinoviev, Grigorii, 30–31, 42, 43,
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 34, 55, 117, 162, 177–78
“On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov
have reinvigorated the study of a turning point in world history. Instead of rehash-
ing the internal dynamics of the Bolshevik takeover, the authors have carefully jux-
taposed the international ambitions of the Bolsheviks with the Revolution’s recep-
tion around the world.
“Daly and Trofimov pair their lucid introductory essay with documents from
Soviet officials, intellectuals in South America, W. E. B. Du Bois in the United
States, and others, so readers will quickly realize how revolutionary ideas cross
oceans and transcend geopolitical boundaries. This volume thus takes a topic
once reserved for students of Russian history and places it in a world historical per-
spective; those interested in global history, European history, and, of course, those
fascinated by events in Petrograd and Moscow will find ample sources of inspiration
in this text. As the Russian Federation is now exerting its influence on a global scale,
the time is ripe to consider the Russian Revolution in such broad terms.”
—Nigel Raab, Loyola Marymount University

“Thoughtful, readable, and concise, this little book sets the Russian Revolution in its
global context. Though primarily focused on the period from 1917 to the 1930s, it
nicely illustrates the many ways in which the effects of the Revolution are still being
felt today.”
—Rex Wade, George Mason University

Also available in the Passages series:

Ian Barrow, The East India Company, 1600–1858: A Short History with Documents

R. Po-chia Hsia, Matteo Ricci and the Catholic Mission to China,

1583–1610: A Short History with Documents

Jonathan Daly is Professor of History,

University of Illinois at Chicago.
Leonid Trofimov is Senior Lecturer in
History, Bentley University. ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-624-7
90000

Cover image: Konstantin Yuon, New Planet (1921).

© The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
9 781624 666247

Passages: Key Moments in History