The Historical Journal, 24, 4 (1981), pp. 997-1002.

Printed in Great Britain

OCTOBER AND THE WORLD:

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION AND
ITS AFTERMATH

October igiy: A Social History of the Russian Revolution. By Marc Ferro. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Pp. xiv + 345. £13.50.

The Debate on Soviet Power. Edited by John L. H. Keep. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1979. Pp. xiv + 465. £15.00.

Les premiers communistes frangais: formation des cadres et bolchevisation. By Danielle

Tartakowsky. Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980.
Pp- 215-
October and the World: Perspectives on the Russian Revolution. By Paul Dukes. London:
The Macmillan Press, 1979. Pp. vii + 224. £10.00.
The history of the bolshevik revolution has long been overshadowed by the
continuing topicality of the issues it raises. It is therefore not surprising to find that
historians are still fighting the same battles as did the bolsheviks and their rivals,
albeit with the pen rather than the sword, spilling ink rather than blood.
In Britain, of course, the debate has been somewhat more oblique. On the one
side (in favour of the revolution) stands E. H. Carr, stating cautiously though none
the less controversially:
It may well have been true, as the rapid disintegration of the February revolution seemed
to show, that bourgeois democracy and bourgeois capitalism on the western model, which was
what the Mensheviks wanted and expected, could not be rooted in Russian soil, so that Lenin's
policy was the only conceivable one in the empirical terms of current Russian politics. To reject
it as premature was to repeat, as Lenin once said, 'the argument of the serf-owners about the
unpreparedness of the peasants for freedom'.1

On the other side stands Schapiro, angered by what he sees as this unnecessary
determinism and absorbed in demonstrating how ' a small, unpopular minority' 2
(the bolsheviks) seized power and set up a totalitarian regime.
This dichotomy in the historiography of the October revolution still holds fast,
and both Marc Ferro's October igiy and John Keep's The debate on Soviet power do
not really escape its clutches, though Ferro manages to transcend the positions of
Carr and Schapiro in a rather interesting way. For whilst he nods in Schapiro's
direction with the dubious assertion that the advent of'the so-called Stalin era' was
'obvious even in 1917' (p. 276), it is nevertheless a salient feature of his work that
he conceives of the revolution as coming from below, cribbed and confined by the
harshness of Russian conditions prevalent at the time. And whilst most western
historians have chosen to focus almost exclusively on the political level of reality for
an explanation of events, Ferro has attempted to dig deeper into Russian society
for the roots of the revolution. He is dissatisfied with the idea of revealing merely
the viewpoint of'the leaders of the Revolution, the politicians and the militants',

1
E. H. Carr, The bolshevik revolution, 1917-23, 1 (Penguin, London, 1973), 110-11.
2
L. Schapiro, The origins of the communist autocracy (London, 1955), p. 351.

997
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 99^ HISTORICAL JOURNAL

and wants also to consider the 'various groups' whose history 'did not necessarily
proceed at the same pace as the historical process that occupied the headlines...'
(p. vii). But does Ferro really succeed in integrating a history of the Russian masses
in 1917 with an account of the events leading to the bolshevik coup that October?
The book is organized into two sections. The first is devoted to the disintegration
of the February revolution, the second analyses developments leading to the October
revolution. In one sense Ferro's account follows the well-worn path marked out by
Chamberlin's classic The Russian Revolution igiy-ig2i, but in other respects it
approaches the subject from a rather different angle. In terms of form, the angle
chosen is decidedly awkward. For instead of a carefully woven narrative (in the
manner of Chamberlin), we face a much looser and more disjointed framework, with
separate themes taken out of sequence and formed into distinct chapters. The reader
thus loses a sense of the whole into which these parts fit, and chronology is thrown
to the winds until we encounter the October rising in the last chapter. But in respect
of substance, Ferro's approach has a great deal to offer, particularly in his discussion
of the army, the revolution in the countryside and the role of the factory committees.
The defection of the army was crucial to the collapse of the provisional
government which had come into being that February on a wave of high
expectations amongst the masses. But the new government failed to stay afloat. The
army soon began to fall apart, and with the attempt to crack down on indiscipline
in the summer of 1917, the authorities inadvertently drove the rank-and-file into
the arms of the bolsheviks, who alone matched the wildest demands of the rebellious
populace. As one soldier wrote (on 9 August 1917):' Who are these Bolsheviks ? What
party do they belong to? The government attacks them, but we can't see what's
wrong. We used to be against them, because that's what the revolutionary
government wanted, but with all those broken promises, we are gradually going
Bolshevik ourselves. Send us some information' (p. 82). Whilst in the trenches the
soldiers were turning mutinous and looking to the bolsheviks for leadership, in the
countryside the peasants went ahead in many places and redistributed the land
themselves, essentially acquiescing in the bolshevik seizure of power rather than
actively seeking it. As Ferro notes: 'for the peasantry, it was clear that only the
" maximalists"- Bolsheyiks and left Socialist Revolutionaries lumped together-
really approved of what they had done' (p. 134). In the towns, on the other hand,
labour militancy strained at the leash imposed by local Soviets (dominated by
soldiers' votes), until finally with the achievement of a bolshevik majority in both
Petrograd and Moscow, the tether snapped and the provisional government was
brought tumbling down, a mere relic of times past.

By October the Bolsheviks had become inextricably entwined in mass

organizations - from factory committees to trade unions - pushing towards a new
structure of power. For having found that their own 'intellectual guides' of the
February days had let them down (p. 144), these organizations fell an easy prey
to bolshevik penetration. Thus a coalescence of interests explained the bolshevization
of these popular institutions:' the radicalization of the masses, who followed different
watchwords of the extreme left and showed their radicalization instantly, through
direct democracy, and the increase in organizational links between these institutions
and the Bolshevik party' (p. 203). The October rising was thus' the outcome of this
coincidence of factors - on the one hand, social pressures towards disequilibrium,
and on the other the chronic incapacity of the Provisional Government to head off
a rising, with Lenin's awareness of this incapacity, and his conviction that a rising
was opportune, necessary and beneficial to his own party' (p. 230).

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 REVIEW ARTICLES 999

Lenin receives far less prominence in this process than has customarily been
attributed to him by historians on both the right and the left. Even the first acts
of repression unleashed by the regime are ascribed not to the bolshevik leadership
'which was occupied in having congress vote for the seizure of power and the
appointment of people's commissars' but rather to the members of the committee
for the defence of the revolution ' who were, except in Antonov-Ovseyenko's and
Podvoysky's cases, humble militants, the NCO's of the revolutionary army. These
men', Ferro insists, 'were a part of the insurgent masses as much as of the Bolshevik
party, and their acts revealed the masses' will rather than decisions of the central
committee or party bodies' (p. 263). The terror, too, is described as originating from
below and only encouraged from above (p. 265). Ferro thereby turns upside down
the usual picture of the October revolution.
Therein lies the originality of Ferro's work, and even though one is occasionally
intrigued by references at the back of the book which do not actually provide
authority for some of his assertions, and puzzled by his conception of film as evidence
without accompanying qualification (see, for example, pp. 141-4), October igiy none
the less rectifies a grave imbalance further perpetuated by John Keep in his edition
of documents entitled The debate on Soviet power.
This is a useful volume containing the minutes of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee of Soviets from October 1917 to January 1918, all assiduously
annotated by the editor, who infuses it with a view of the revolution which stands
in bleak contrast to that of Ferro. From it we learn the astounding news that the
bolsheviks were 'neither by intellectual background nor by practical experi-
ence. . .well equipped to undertake the superhuman task of reconstruction' (p. 11),
which leaves one a little bewildered at how all those dams and factories somehow
got built. But this is only the first paper in Professor Keep's examination set at
advanced level for long-dead Russian revolutionaries. Not only are bolshevik
qualifications inadequate (evidently they should not have sat the examination), they
fail economics because they disagree amongst themselves on the policy to pursue
(p. 14), which is, of course, unknown elsewhere; and here, instead of receiving extra
marks for democratic discussion, they are penalized for incompetence. In sociology
the candidates persist in talking about a 'class struggle' which Professor Keep
apparently believes only exists when people are told about it. In case some misguided
souls associated revolutions with violence, we are corrected and reminded that the
doctrine of 'class struggle' stood to blame, for it 'perplexed ordinary people'
(probably professors of history included) 'or diverted their energies from more
constructive activities' as well as stimulating 'deeds of brutal savagery' (p. 17). And,
last but not least, comes the paper on political science, where the bolsheviks lose
marks for employing 'manipulative techniques' (unspecified) 'more consistently
and with greater sense of purpose' than their rivals (p. 20), which, as we all know,
is tantamount to cheating. In fact Lenin's deviousness seems to be Keep's key
explanation for the success (or disaster?) of the October revolution, and what is
entirely missing from this lurid account is any reference to the existence of mass
agitation coming from below, such as Ferro describes, and the beginnings of a civil
war, which at least goes some way to explain the establishment of institutions like
the Cheka.
Whilst Ferro seeks to iiminish Lenin's role, particularly where the initiation of
repression is concerned, Keep tends to exaggerate the degree to which he controlled
events, and in order to make this credible he presents us with the image of a Lenin
almost omniscient in his foresight (see p. 22, with respect to remarks on the Soviets)
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 IOOO HISTORICAL JOURNAL

and possessed of extraordinary consistency of thought (see p. 23). But the truth would
appear to be submerged somewhere in between these two opposing views. For Ferro
ignores a crucial feature in Lenin's thought on revolution - namely the impact of
the Paris commune and its bloody demise. In an article on the 'Lessons of the
commune', published as long ago as March 1908, Lenin pointed to two mistakes
which the French proletariat made in 1871. Firstly, they tried to act as patriots and
thus underestimated the intensity of class antagonisms. Secondly, in displaying
'excessive magnanimity' the proletariat 'underestimated the significance of direct
military operations in civil war, and instead of launching a resolute offensive against
Versailles that would have crowned its victory in Paris, it tarried and gave the
Versailles government time to gather the dark forces and prepare for the
blood-soaked week of May'. The lesson for Russians was that 'there are times when
the interests of the proletariat call for the ruthless extermination of its enemies in
open armed clashes'.3 The same thought had occurred to Lenin in composing his
article on 'The Russian revolution and civil war' in September 1917: ' . . .we have
learned much since the Commune, and we would not repeat its fatal errors, we would
not confine ourselves to defence against the Versaillais (or the Kornilovites) but
would take the offensive against them and crush them'. 4 Thus with the successful
seizure of power, Lenin was in no mood to give quarter. He preferred to err on the
side of pre-emptive attack against the enemy rather than cautiously await a repeat
of 1871. This, then, points to a strong element of consistency in Lenin's thinking.
But it would be wrong to imply, as Keep does, that Lenin suffered no doubts and
that therefore the tide of events did not in itself contribute to the shape of things
to come. Indeed, a reading of Lenin's writings during this fateful year reveals a far
more uncertain and contradictory mind than one might otherwise suppose.
For the man so bent on seizing power was also the author of 'The State and
revolution', a polemic against the idea of adapting the existing bureaucracy for
revolutionary purposes. It is here than Lenin talks wistfully about 'the mass of the
population' taking 'an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also
in the everyday administration of the State. Under socialism', he claims, ' all will
govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.'5 But he failed
to 'smash the old bureaucratic machine' as he had hoped,8 and by the end of 1922
was bemoaning the evils of a bureaucracy which ' we took over from tsarism and
slightly anointed with Soviet oil'. 7 Thus there were two Lenins both in 1917 and
after - the libertarian socialist as well as the authoritarian revolutionary. Ultimately
it was not merely the fact that the bolsheviks had seized power alone, but also the
primitive nature of Russian conditions which ensured that authoritarianism would,
in practice, predominate over democratic socialism.
These conditions found no counterpart in the west and this was precisely where
the tactics which the bolsheviks pursued so effectively in Russia met with such
recalcitrance. For the elements in Leninism which least suited western conditions
3
V. I. Lenin, Collected works, xm (Moscow, 1962), 476.
4 5
Ibid, xxvi (Moscow, 1972), 41. Lenin, Selected works, 11 (Moscow, 1970), 372-3.
6
' . . . to smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and begin immediately to construct
a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy - this is not Utopia,
it is the experience of the Commune, the direct and immediate task of the revolutionary
proletariat', ibid. p. 321.
' 'The question of nationalities or "autonomisation"', 30 Jan. 1922, Lenin, Last letters
and articles (Moscow, 1971), p. 18.

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 REVIEW ARTICLES IOOI

were the very ones which had triumphed in October and were then dogmatized for
export. But how was it that the west became the reluctant recipient of bolshevik
attentions?
The October revolution had been pre-eminently a Russian affair, but there was
no way of setting it apart from the rest of the world. Not only had it erupted within
a crucial sector of the allied camp during the first world war with an untimely
demand for peace, but its protagonists were also committed internationalists and,
more importantly, in Lenin this outlook had been strongly reinforced by the
experience of revolutionary defeat in 1905. That fateful year he had boldly and
falsely assumed that 'proletarian Europe will make it impossible for the crowned
heads of Europe to help the Russian monarchy'. 8 But defeat and the salvaging of
the Russian economy by French banks then taught a bitter lesson: 'the Russian
revolution can achieve victory by its own efforts, but it cannot possibly hold and
consolidate its gains by its own strength. It cannot do this unless there is a socialist
revolution in the West. Without this condition restoration is inevitable. ' 9 Thus, as
with the shaping of events at home from October 1917, force of circumstances and
a vital element in Lenin's own thinking combined to work towards the same
outcome. The bolsheviks, now in power, therefore sought to spread the revolution
abroad, and for this purpose eventually set up the Communist International in 1919,
an organization not merely of their own making but inevitably also conceived in
their own image. But here lay a fundamental flaw, unseen by many west European
revolutionaries (like Bordiga in Italy) who were blinded by the desperate need to
build an antithesis to the ramshackle and undisciplined Second International. For
bolshevik forms of organization and strategy were successful in Russia precisely
because they were peculiarly adapted to Russian conditions, whilst the situation in
the west was far more dissimilar than Soviet leaders ever supposed. Yet the
bolsheviks persisted in the belief that they held the recipe for revolution in their
hands, as Rosa Luxemburg had predicted: ' the danger begins only when they make
a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the
tactics forced on them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them
to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics'.10

The history of the French communist party (PCF) provides eloquent testimony
to support Luxemburg's contention and one looks to Danielle Tartakowsky's work
on Les premiers communistes fran$ais for some discussion of the problem. But the title
is unfortunately misleading. Hardly any live communists actually appear in the book,
which is really a detailed and erudite study of party publishing and training schools
during the twenties when the Comintern was desperately trying to bolshevize the
PCF. Although the author explicitly acknowledges the need to link such an abstract
j theme to the social and political milieu of post-war France (p. 14), the reader is none
the less suddenly thrust into a morass of detail about sales figures for party
' publications and attendance at party schools. One cannot but pay homage to the
wealth of knowledge displayed in this arcane area, whilst at the same time regretting
j a missed opportunity for uncovering vital aspects of PCF policy and policy-making
. during this period, especially as the author had the privilege of access to party
1 8
'A revolution of the 1789 or the 1848 type?', Lenin, Collected works, vm (Moscow, 1962),
! 258.
9
'The unity congress of the RSDLP', ibid. p. 280.
10
' Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Michigan, 1961), p.
79-

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 IOO2 HISTORICAL JOURNAL

archives. One looks in vain for a discussion as to why the PCF declined so
catastrophically by the end of the twenties, which was debated ad nauseam in the
Comintern from 1930 to 1931. Instead we face an account of the party safely confined
within the philosophy which dominated it at the time: assuming that the answer
to its problems lay in educating the membership and the masses to a particular point
of view, rather than questioning whether this viewpoint was actually valid or
relevant to French conditions. And just how important was this propagation of the
'Leninist' orthodoxy? It is striking that the PCF only really takes off as a mass party
when its leader, Maurice Thorez, finally breaks ranks in September 1934 and
declares for a popular front. Prior to this bolshevization meant a headlong decline
into oblivion, in view of the fact that France faced no revolutionary situation and
Moscow's prescriptions for tactics bore a closer relevance to Russia in 1917 than to
western Europe during the twenties.
The issue of the bolshevik revolution's impact on the world is one of the main
themes in Paul Dukes' October and the world which aims to examine the Russian
revolution 'in a new manner by taking historical and global factors into account'
(evidently in contrast to the approach of Aunt Sally, the well known historian of
Russia). But it ends up taking the reader on a Cook's tour of Russian history, which
swerves into unexplained detours at the whim of our courier, with additional
unscheduled stops in the South Pacific (evidently because he spent 1974 in New
Zealand) and the United States (for a short excursion into the unrelated realm of
American historiography). But like most multi-city tours it leaves the traveller
titillated but unsatisfied at the prospect of seeing so much yet in reality glimpsing
so little, and trudging home from the airport with snapshots which, once developed,
will be impossible to identify. But then it is still more enjoyable than staying at home,
and if Macmillans, the tour-operators, could lower the price from its present level,
it might be worth the money, especially as Mr Dukes, the courier, entertains us so
much on the way.
But what of 'October's' effect on the world? Narrowly conceived, it had little
impact on either east or west. It brought Russian out of the war, but did not result
in any basic shift in the allies' prospects, for they won in 1918. It led to the formation
of communist parties abroad, yet failed to spark off any successful revolutions on
the bolshevik model. It gave the west a good fright, but that was about all. None
the less, the new order it spawned has substantially disrupted the global status quo,
providing an alternative model for economic development, making a crucial
contribution to the destruction of German fascism - albeit at the price of hegemony
over eastern Europe, and acting as the bank and the barracks for revolutionaries
the world over. And since this latter activity continues to haunt the citadels of the
west, we should not expect controversies over 1917 merely to fade away.
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM JONATHAN HASLAM

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