LENIN’S EXILE YEARS
In the summer of 1914, the socialist movement suffered the worst defeat in its history when it became clear that the international solidarity of the proletariat, its ideological foundation, was an empty phase and could not stand the test of events. The Socialist International collapsed in the face of World War I, much to the despair of the socialists believing in the strength of their movement. Vladimir Lenin at first refused to believe that the German social democrats had obeyed the fatherland’s call to arms. In every European country the great majority had instinctively adopted the patriotic attitude. Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, felt Russia must be defended against invasion and all the Mensheviks thought likewise. The workers’ movement organized into parties adhering more or less strictly to Marxist ideology, had obtained real successes in the fight for labor legislation and civil rights; this seemed to show that existing society was reformable, whatever the doctrine might say and thus to knock the bottom out of revolutionary programs.
At the outbreak of World War I, Lenin was in Poronino, near Krakow in what was then Austrian Galicia, close to the Russian border, agitating among local Ukrainians. The Krakow police arrested him as an enemy alien, until an Austrian socialist leader vouched that Lenin was not a tsarist spy but a “bitter enemy of Russia”. Investigations by Austrian officials determined Lenin was a revolutionary fanatic who had publicly endorsed Ukrainian separatism–a central aim of the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. Lenin was released in early September and sent with his wife on a military mail train to Switzerland, where he would spend his time conspiring against the Tsar.
Already on the Austrian radar, Lenin came to the attention of the German foreign office in 1915, and this included Alexander Israel “Parvus” Helphand, previously chairman of the Petersburg Soviet upon the 1905 arrest of Trotsky. After a Siberian exile, Parvus lived a rich and interesting life abroad in Germany and then Turkey. On Jan. 1915, he met with the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and told him, “The interests of the German imperial government are identical to those of the Russian revolutionaries”. Lenin and other Bolsheviks received funding from Estonian nationalist and Bolshevik, Alexander Kesküla.
Lenin held the minority doctrine of “revolutionary defeatism” that he outlined at socialist exile congresses at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, Switzerland in 1915-16. He argued that socialists should work to bring about the defeat of their own country and thereby “turn the imperialist war into civil war”. Rather than counsel draft resistance, socialists should encourage workers to join the military and turn the army “red” by promoting mutinies.
BOLSHEVIK CATALYST OF CHAOS
In the months before the February 1917 Revolution, Lenin had fallen off the German radar somewhat, but eventually learned of the Revolution in March 1917 from an Austrian comrade and wanted to return to Petrograd at once. A Swiss socialist, Fritz Platten, arranged the train trip though Germany to Russia. Lenin, 19 Bolshevik associates, Menshevik Julius Martov, and six non-Bolshevik members of the Jewish Bund rode together on the train. Germany appropriated 5 million gold marks for revolutionizing Russia, in March and April 1917. Lenin’s train was not sealed, contrary to urban legend, because the Russians had to switch trains after crossing the border into Germany. Two German army officers joined Lenin on the German train along with trade union official Wilhelm Jansson, who took orders from Parvus. Both Lenin’s acceptance of aid from the Germans as well as his support for Ukrainian separatism were openly discussed in a prisoner of war camp. Germany did in fact dispatch socialist exiles of all stripes into Russia to exacerbate between the Soviet and the Provisional Government in the new post-Tsarist era. Lenin was but one revolutionary, but his extreme views on the War and support of Ukrainian separatism made him a potent catalyst of chaos, a one-man demolition crew sent to wreck Russia’s war effort. As Parvus himself explained to the German minister in Copenhagen in late March, to prevent a revival of Russian fighting morale under the new Provisional Government, the “extreme revolutionary movement will have to be supported, in order to intensify anarchy”. Parvus remarked, Lenin was “much more raving mad” than the rest of Russia’s socialists.
Lenin’s train arrived at Petrograd’s Finland Station, April 3, 1917. At the Bolshevik Party headquarters Lenin launched into a fiery two-hour speech denouncing the “piratical imperialist war” along with party back-sliders who had offered support to the Provisional Government still fighting it. Lenin’s program was so extreme, that the Party organ, Pravda, refused to print it. April Theses was Lenin’s radical pacifist program which was aligned with Germany’s wartime goals. Germany army intelligence in Stockholm reported the following day to the German high command: “Lenin’s entry into Russia is successful. He is working exactly as we wish”. The German government spent 2 million marks to support revolutionary propaganda in Russia.
THE BOLSHEVIK COUP D’ETAT
The Provisional Government was finally put out of its misery by the Bolshevik coup on October 27, sometimes called the October Revolution. This post-Tsarist government was the Soviet of People’s Commissars, or Sovnarkom. At this time Zinoviev, Rykov, Rjazanov, Lozowski, and other prominent Bolsheviks demanded the formation of a Socialist government composed of all Soviet parties. They declared that the formation of a purely Bolshevist government would lead to a regime of terror and to the destruction of the revolution and the country. Lenin hoped that the elections to the All Russian Constituent Assembly would bring the Bolshevists a majority, but the elections proved otherwise. The Bolsheviks got a mere 9,000,000 votes compared to the 23,000,000 for the other socialist parties, and 4 million for bourgeois parties. The Sovnarkom indefinitely postponed the opening of the Assembly, due on November 28, and demanded an investigation into electoral abuse. The opposing parties wanted the Assembly and staged a large demonstration the same day. The leading right-wing party, the Kadets, was banned, its leaders arrested, and its printing presses smashed. On December 7, the Cheka, Soviet secret police force, analogous to the Nazi’s Gestapo, was established. Support for the Assembly was called “counter-revolutionary”. The first session began January 5 and ended at 4 a.m. January 6. The Palace was closed and surrounded by troops. The one and only fully democratic body in all of Russia’s history lasted less than 13 hours. This marked the real turning point where all pretense of socialism was smashed on the path to totalitarianism.
As the new Tsar for the Bolshevik dictatorship, Lenin called the masses “children who needed to be protected from their own misguided inclinations”. Under Lenin’s dictatorship, the Cheka took the initiative in shooting opponents and spreading terror throughout the nation to consolidate centralized dictatorial power. Lenin said violence was necessary for revolution. “The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitute for it of a new one which is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word”. Violence was deemed integral to the proletarian dictatorship and revolution. The Bolsheviks were akin to Fascists, using palingenetic fervor, ushering in a new era or new humanity. Heretics and unrepentent members of the bourgeoisie were murdered. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, known as the Cheka, was empowered on February 22, 1918 to arrest and shoot immediately all members of counter-revolutionary organizations.
The military backbone of the dictatorship was the Red Army, formally established by the Sovnarkom in January 1918. War Commissar, Trotsky, conscripted thousands of ex-officers and non-commissioned officers from the now defunct Tsarist Imperial Army. To ensure loyalty to the Communist Party, commissars were attached to every military unit. Obedience was guaranteed by the Cheka. By 1920 there were 3 million troops in the Red Army. In lieu of an actual proletariat, this mass of soldier employees formed the foundation for the new totalitarian state falsely termed “communist”.
SOURCES:
Historically Inevitable: Turning Points of the Russian Revolution, Ed. Tony Brenton
Social Democracy vs. Communism by Karl Kautsky
https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-the-russian-revolution-off-the-ground/a-41195312
The Russian Revolution – Sean McMeekin
The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed To End by Robert Gerwarth
Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 2 by Leszek Kolakowski