The Russian Revolution and Stalinism

Lenin was "sterner" than Stalin and had often decided on "extreme measures" while "rebuking Stalin for softness and liberalism".
----- Vyacheslav Molotov on Lenin and Stalin

Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion -- how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.
----- John Maynard Keynes, "The End of Laissez-Faire"

Coup d'état Scholars:

• Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (1994)
• Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1995)
• Vladimir Brovkin, "Identity, Allegiance and Participation in the Russian Civil War" (1992)

• Shelia Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (1994)

Without question, the historical dividing line regarding the 1917 October Revolution in Russia (there was a February Revolution which set up a democratic government that doesn't attract much historical interest because it was swept away in October) was whether or not it was a true revolution of the masses or merely a seizure of power by the domineering Lenin and his small clique of Bolsheviks. Although ideally objective, historians are not immune from their own biases and ideological convictions and the ideological tinge that surfaces in their writings is noticeably louder when it comes to the Russian Revolution. As a consequence, conservatives typically depict the Bolshevik regime as a totalitarian dictatorship propped up by terror and coercion which interrupted the development of democracy while historians sympathetic to the left view the October Revolution as inevitable, having popular support, and not responsible in itself for the bloodletting, civil war, and terror - these were products of circumstance and necessary for the survival of the revolutionaries. In short, the old orthodoxy (the coup advocates) viewed Lenin, the Soviet Regime, and Communism as an abomination whereas the revisionists (uprising of masses) see a noble experiment that was derailed after Lenin's death.

Richard Pipes claims Lenin deceived the masses and seized power amidst the anarchy that was Russia in 1917 and proceeded to uproot all existing institutions and install a totalitarian regime. This nascent dictatorship imposed authority and enforced its will via terror. Pipes does not see the Tsar's collapse as inevitable, albeit it was highly likely. He believes the isolation and political apathy of the peasants inadvertently helped the Bolsheviks. With 90% of the country loyal only to their own communities and nonaligned, the intelligentsia, alienated from the Tsarist regime, was able to claim themselves as representatives of the people and play a major role. Thus, Pipes's revolution is one brought upon by human agency (more specifically Lenin and the intelligentsia as the masses acted as "spectators"); socio- economic factors play only a minor role.

Martin Malia emphasizes the long-term evolution of ideology and Russian politics. Malia sees the Russian Revolution as a tragedy because: (1) it was a dismal failure bereft of violence and (2) it was the original sin of an age characterized by international and social violence. Malia argues that Communism, specifically the path Lenin chose in 1917, has a sort of "genetic code" that forced the regime to undertake a permanent revolution from above to suppress capitalism and preserve the Party's monopoly of power. As the brutal results of its coercion belied any morality the regime stood for and the flawed economic system began to crumble, the Soviet collapse was only a matter of time. Malia adamantly argues that the illogical Soviet Regime could only be borne from special circumstances (hardly inevitable as the revisionists claim) and asserts that WWI produced the anarchy necessary for Lenin to seize power and create the coercive institutions of Sovietism. Such coercion was essential because there was no support from below and the socialist dream required the liquidation of property, profit, the market, and civil society in creating an unnatural order. Answering what he calls the "patent evasions" of revisionists who point out roads not taken from 1917 or structural reasons to explain the paradox of noble visions and bad results, Malia believes nothing went wrong with the Revolution, but rather the whole enterprise was wrong from the start. "The Soviet experiment turned totalitarian not despite its being socialist but because it was socialist".

Brovkin's contribution challenges the revisionist assertion that peasants supported the Bolsheviks. He argues peasants were a third force - "the Greens" - in the civil war. Brovkin claims the peasants had no ideological sympathies and simply fought against all outsiders rather than siding with the Bolsheviks as the revisionists claim. The Bolsheviks were able to emerge victorious not from popular support, but because they were the most militaristic, were not shy about using brute force, and their ability to dividing the peasantry by exploiting their local loyalties. After destroying its political opponents, the Bolsheviks were in power but endured a struggle against the peasantry for the life of the Soviet Regime. The NEP represented a retreat due to the Bolsheviks unpopularity whereas collectivization a renewed effort against the peasantry that resulted in a Pyrrhic victory. Brovkin concluded the peasants won in the1980s as reformers conclude private ownership might increase production.

The other significant strain that runs through all members of this historical orthodoxy is the continuity between the October Revolution and Stalin. Rotten at its core, they charge the revisionists legitimize the evils of the USSR by depoliticizing it and portraying it as an expression of society rather than imposition of the state.

• They dismiss the notion of a Bolshevik coup and assert the Revolution was successful because it had widespread support.
• They downplay Lenin's agency and argue the Revolution was inevitable due to socio-economic conditions and the inability of the Tsarist regime to reform itself.
• They tend to argue that many alternative paths were possible post 1917 and hence disregard totalitarian models or any inevitable continuities implicit in ideology. In sum they depict the Bolsheviks as diverse - democratic(?) - and expunge Stalin from the legitimate Proletarian Revolution.

Shelia Fitzpatrick, although still a revisionist, offers a distinctive view of the Revolution. Instead of condemning or condoning the Russian Revolution, it must be accepted into history. Fitzpatrick borrows from Crane Brinton's revolutionary phases (fervor for radical transformation, climax of intensity, Thermidorian disillusionment, gradual move to stability) and sees the Russian Revolution following such a course from February 1917 to the Great Purges of the late 1930s. In this matter, she sees Stalin as the fulfillment of October. Despite accepting this canon of the totalitarian school, her depiction of the Stalinist period is definitely more benign than that of say, Robert Conquest. Put crudely, the purges where a sort of cultural revolution created by social dynamism rather than a mechanism of a coercive regime. For Fitzpatrick, the Great Terror was a period of massive social mobility. She contends the relationship between the revolutionaries and masses was complex, but argues that it was popular as it seemed to offer a way out of WWI and an opportunity to seize land.

1. modernization
2. upwards social mobility
3. terror

As with the Russian Revolution, the historiography of Stalinism heavily reflects the ideology of the historian. It is almost a case of, "Tell me what you think of the Russian Revolution and Stalin and I'll tell you who you are". The are several key debates within the historiography: How much power the state held vis-ŕ-vis society, the extent the Terror was planned and executed by Stalin, the number of victims in the Terror, and why terror in the first place - was it an inevitable byproduct of Marxist-Leninism or the consequence of unique socio-economic conditions? Unlike other historical issues, there is little "lumping" (i.e. fencesitters who incorporate several historical views to present a synthesis that is more ambiguous than explanatory). Scholars are either fit the traditional model borne out of the beginning of the Cold War (sometimes called "Cold Warriors") that has Stalin at the apex of a totalitarian regime systematically using terror to eliminate potential and imaginary enemies or revisionists who claim neither Stalin nor the state exerted nearly enough control to fit the totalitarian model and thus the Great Terror is best explained under the circumstances of Soviet society. Not surprisingly, all the "Cold Warriors" blame the Soviet Regime for the deaths in the tens of millions whereas the revisionists call for numbers much less, some citing hundreds of thousands.

Key Scholars:

• Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (1990)
• Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 (1990)
• Malia, The Soviet Tragedy
• Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution

Scholars from this school view the terror as an intentional systemic evil initiated by Stalin that was rooted in the Bolshevik past. The terror was unleashed to consolidate rule in addition to implementing collectivization and rapid industrialization as Stalin's position was secure by 1929 but he was not in a position to impose his will on the state. The Kirov assassination (he was the most popular opponent of Stalin), orchestrated by Stalin, was used as a pretext to run the machinery Lenin created and liquidate potential enemies. This view of the Great Terror is not only a planned one, but a smooth running apparatus that could practically run itself. Although the scholars have backed off from the "Big Brother" picture of Totalitarianism as laid out by Hannah Arendt, they focus on high politics, the repressive nature of the regime, and do not recognize autonomous spheres of social or political activity (although Malia and Pipes more so than Conquest and Tucker). The Terror is above all the paranoiac Stalin's achievement.

There is a minor sub-debate as to why Stalin should be seen as the natural successor to Lenin. Some stress ideology (Conquest, Malia) and some point to a unique Russia history that has Stalin as a modern day Ivan the Terrible (George Kennan, Pipes). Robert Tucker is something of an anomaly as he argues for discontinuity. Tucker emphasizes the roots of Stalinism lay in Stalin's psychological makeup.

Key Scholars:

• Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (1985)
• Fitzpatrick, "New Perspectives on Stalinism" (1986)
• Fitzpatrick, "How the Mice Buried the Cat: Scenes from the Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces" (1993)
• Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 (1996)
• J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered (1984)

With Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the thawing of Cold War relations, a group of scholars challenged the totalitarian model and there was a general breakdown of the Cold War consensus. The revisionists are best subdivided into two sets, the "Conflict School" who aim to revise the top-down model and social historians who attempt to emphasize the agency of the masses. Both Revisionist schools by and large see Stalin as an aberration of the October Revolution and the socialist experiment.

The conflict school aims to revise the totalitarian characteristics the orthodoxy attribute to the Soviet regime. The conflict school still advocates a top down approach to Stalinism, but instead of seeing Stalin at the apex of a totalitarian pyramid, they argue that conflict between opposing groups and key figures characterized the Soviet Union. The Soviet system was neither monolithic nor was it static; with the number of influential sects within the party, it would be incorrect to claim all power stemmed from Stalin.
More specifically:

• Cohen discounts the orthodox model of a prostrate society crushed beneath a bully-type regime. Instead, he sees both a society and government divided into conservative and reformist camps. Because of these differing allegiances, Cohen concludes other (read: better) alternatives existed besides Stalin. Nikolai Bukharin and the continuation of the NEP is a counterfactual Cohen is particularly fascinated by.
• Getty contends the Soviet bureaucracy was too primitive to even contemplate a scenario with anything that resembled a totalitarian system or a smooth running terror apparatus. Getty's core-periphery relationship is rather drastic. The core where state control was partial consisted of Moscow and a few other large cities, whereas the vast majority of the countryside stood beyond the reach of the Party and made it impossible to assert efficient control. Furthermore, Getty states neither the Party nor the Police were sufficiently obedient or effective to assure optimal control from the center. High level confusion and competing factions account for the course of the terror.

The social historians reject the totalitarian structure and top down models completely. Rather, they analyze the Stalin period from below and demonstrate the agency of the masses. Comparisons to Nazi Germany - a common approach by totalitarian advocates - are abhorred. In short, rather than Stalin constructing the Soviet Union through the tools of terror, coercion, and his indomitable will, the social historians examine the impact that society and pressures from below had in shaping the USSR and Soviet history.

The most influential scholar here is Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick writes that the Stalinist regime was an initiator of social change but the regime only had limited control over the outcomes of such plans. She maintains that this period experienced a great deal of upward mobility in society as a new hierarchy of ex-peasants and workers replaced the old elite. With so much social change, Fitzpatrick calls for the need to reexamine the idea of a high level state coercion. With the Great Terror, Fitzpatrick adamantly claims the Moscow Show Trials cannot be used as the archetype because rural trials (away from Moscow) were straightforward and did not originate from the Kremlin. Another important difference lay in the fact the Show Trials were just extravagancies to root out political conspirators whereas the rural raion trials were indictments against Communists charged with exploitation and abuse of the peasantry. The title of her important piece, "How the Mice Buried the Cat" is telling. The peasant "mice" were able to charge and - significantly - credibly testify and rid themselves of the bureaucratic "cats". With the power the bury the cats, the terror provided the peasantry the opportunity to settle old scores, assign blame for disasters, and further their own ambitions. Despite the mice's ability to bury the cats, Fitzpatrick does not maintain this was a significant victory for the peasantry. They still had to live with the hated collectivization and were unable to bury the top cat - Stalin. Here Fitzpatrick seems to be answering some of her earlier critics who charged that she was ignoring high politics altogether.

Robert Thurston is a controversial revisionist figure because his thesis has rather unpleasant implications. Thurston denies that the Great Terror of 1937-1938 was a deliberate system, designed to gain cooperation through fear, of random violence by the state against society. Thurston contends that since the majority of Soviet people assented to the Great Terror, the distinction between state and society becomes blurred to the point of irrelevance. The old argument of attributing the Terror to an evil Stalin won't fly with Thurston; if one uses the term "evil", one must indict humanity because the masses went along with and shaped the course Great Terror out of their own volition. Thurston's depiction of the dreaded NKVD and the infamous prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky are much less malevolent (read: not such a bad lot) than is typical as he sees them as working in concert with the citizenry to arrest and root out enemies. As a result, society accepted the show trials and the mass arrests of 1937-1938 as necessary to defend the state. Besides adopting these unorthodox positions, Thurston scatters various assertions through his book that may cause someone familiar with the period to scratch their head and say, "Huh?" One instance is his assertion that the typical Soviet citizen did not live in fear - this in land with the Gulag Archipelago scattered throughout Siberia. This is a rather curious assumption as the NYPD patrol car is enough to skyrocket the pulse rate of citizens protected by a Bill of Rights.

As already stated, the totalitarian school place Stalin at the center of their story and the source of the Terror. Stalin planned, controlled, and used the Terror to further his personal agenda, which typically amount (with varying degrees of emphasis) to ridding himself of rivals, consolidating a dictatorship, a way to transform Russia as Ivan and Peter did before him, his paranoia, or ideological imperative.

Revisionists incorporate other explanatory factors for the terror and move Stalin away from the center and somewhere on the periphery. Three models have emerged:

1. Stalin Plus: Polycratic regime (i.e. not just Stalin) had less control over society than is contended. Policies were often improvised and implementations of such often diverged from the policymakers' intentions. This depiction of terror has the regime responding to troubles experienced in the 1930s (e.g. Jonathan Haslam sees terror as a response from opposition from the countryside and lower Party members) and through bureaucratic confusion morphing into something more indiscriminate with regards to victims and eventually waning due to its own inertia.
2. From Below: Fitzpatrick fits here as she cautiously posits that 'revolution from below' might be more accurate than 'revolution from above'. Peasantry influenced terror to further own interests and both workers and peasants benefited from a significant amount of upward mobility.
3. Top-Bottom Dynamic: Regime appealed to certain sects of the citizenry and responded to social pressures and desires by modifying its policies through process of negotiation.

Estimates of the number of people killed in the Great Terror vary widely and remain a point of contention among the totalitarian historians (whose estimates tend to be markedly higher) and the revisionists (whose estimates are lowest and are accused of being apologists). Due to the wide fluctuations of estimates (anywhere from a few hundred thousand - 60,000,000), one of several hypothesis come to mind:

1. Historians as a collective group have absolutely no idea and throw around numbers to support their overall thesis.
2. Historians count differently (one may not count a victim who dies of "natural causes" - read: exposure and exhaustion - in the Gulag years whereas another does).
3. Historians count from different years during the Stalinist regime. Historians that see the Terror as Stalin's tool to implement collectivization are much more likely to include the millions of dead Ukrainians during the early 1930s than those who see the Great Terror as a phenomenon only indirectly related to Stalin that ran its course from 1936-1938.
4. Accurate data is difficult to come by. Census data to begin with is problematic, let alone trying to figure out how many died in a country not known for its bureaucratic prowess or technical skills outside of chess, the T-34 tank, and AK47s.

The only real meaning one can derive from these numbers is the incredible range of historical opinion and, if the higher numbers are anywhere near the truth, the Soviet hellhole was without question the greatest tragedy in recent human history. By way of comparison, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews is generally accepted at some 5-6 million victims.

• Solzhenitsyn: 60,000,000
• Rummel: 51,755,000
• Medvedev: 40,000,000
• Brzezinski: 25,000,000
• Pipes: 23,000,000
• Conquest: 20,000,000+
• Cohen: 10,000,000 - 20,000,000
• Nove: 9,500,000
• Volkogonov: 3,500,000
• Thruston: Cites figures in the 2,000,000 - 3,000,000 range.
• Getty: 799,455
• Rogovin (taken from World Socialist Website): 700,000 - 800,000

Considering the population of the USSR in 1937 was around 164,000,000 - Stalin had his original census takers shot when they reported an unsatisfactory low number - caution should dissuade acceptance of the top three figures. As this would represent over 1/4 of the Soviet population, a genocide of Pol Potian proportions, that is difficult to believe would leave enough stamina, let alone Russians, to successfully fend off the Germans in 1941. The lower figures either reek of propaganda and apologia or only count those documented as shot (Getty) and should similarly be rejected. Stalin himself admitted to Churchill that he liquidated 20,000,000; I see no reason why this should be treated as dubious. Deliberately starved, shot, worked to death in frozen wastelands, beaten unmercifully by thuggish cronies, driven to the point of suicide, or killed by neglect/exposure - tally them all and the median value of 20,000,000 becomes fathomable.