The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  36. For Marx’s and Engels’ revolutionary Radicalism in Germany, see Gilbert, Marx’s Politics, ch.10.

  37. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Revolution of 1848–1849. Articles from the Neue Rhenische Zeitung, trans. S. Ryazanskaya, ed. B. Isaacs (New York, 1972), p.136.

  38. For this argument, see Gilbert, Marx’s Politics.

  39. J. Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851 (Cambridge, 1994), p.247.

  40. J. Rougerie, ‘Sur l’histoire de la Première Internationale’, Mouvement Social 51 (1965), pp.23–46.

  41. J. Rougerie, Le Procès des Communards (Paris, 1971), pp.155–6. For the power of ‘associational’ ideas in the Paris Commune, its defence of producers and consumers’ cooperatives and direct democracy, see M. Johnson, The Paradise of Association. Political Culture and Popular Organization in the Paris Commune of 1871 (Ann Arbor, 1996).

  42. MECW, vol. ii, p.189.

  43. Cited in Y. Kapp, Eleanor Marx (London, 1972), vol. i, p.88.

  44. Karl Marx, Capital (3 vols.) (New York, 1967), vol. i, pp.330, 337.

  45. Marx, Capital, vol. iii, p.820. See also A. Rattansi, Marx and the Division of Labour (London, 1982).

  46. For the notion of scientific laws in history, see K. Marx, Preface and Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Beijing, 1976), pp.3–4.

  47. Cited in W. Henderson, A Life of Friedrich Engels (London, 1976), vol. ii, p.569.

  48. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, trans. C. Dutt (London, 1940), ch.2.

  49. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Moscow, 1959), p.82.

  50. See especially Engels’ introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx’s ‘Class Struggles in France’, MECW, vol. i, pp.187–204.

  51. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.234. See also D. Lovell, Marx’s Proletariat: the Making of a Myth (London, 1988), p.177.

  52. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.243. Though Marx’s view of the proletariat and the state was inconsistent, and in 1871 he argued that the proletariat had to smash the state machine as the Paris Commune had done.

  53. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Peking, 1974), pp.15–21. For this route-map, see Walicki, Marxism, p.96.

  54. For this charge, see D. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin. An Evaluation of Marx’s Responsibility for Soviet Authoritarianism (Cambridge, 1984), pp.61–4.

  55. K. Marx and F. Engels, Gespräche mit Marx und Engels, ed. H. Enzensberger (Frankfurt, 1973), vol. ii, pp.709–10.

  56. McLellan, Karl Marx, p.371.

  57. For a summary and analysis of its effect on workers, see M. Mann, Sources of Social Power. Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Welfare States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge, 1993), pp.597–601.

  58. For the distinction between earlier and later protest, see D. Geary, European Labour Protest, 1848–1939 (London, 1981), pp.35–7. There is some debate on the political radicalism of workers in this period. This analysis owes a great deal to Mann, Sources of Power, vol. ii, pp.597–601, 680–2. Geary emphasizes continuing radicalism, see Geary, European Labour Protest, pp.107–26.

  59. Cited in D. Baguley, ‘Germinal: The Gathering Storm’, in B. Nelson (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Zola (Cambridge, 2007), p.139.

  60. E. Zola, Germinal, trans. P. Collier (Oxford, 1993), p.288.

  61. Ibid., p.349.

  62. Ibid., p.523.

  63. For this analysis, see Mann, Sources of Power, vol. ii, chs.17–18; G. Eley, Forging Democracy. The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (New York, 2002), pp. 64–5, 79.

  64. ‘The Diary of Nikolaus Osterroth’, in The German Worker. Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization, trans. and ed. A. Kelly (Berkeley, 1987), pp.170–1.

  65. Ibid., p.172.

  66. Ibid., p.187.

  67. E. Weitz, Creating German Communism 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State (Princeton, 1997), p.51.

  68. Cited in The German Worker, p.409.

  69. V. Lidtke, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany (New York, 1985), pp.186–7.

  70. ‘The Diary of Otto Krille’, in The German Worker, p.276.

  71. For this point, see S. Berger, ‘Germany’, in The Force of Labour, eds. S. Berger and D. Broughton (Oxford, 1995), p.73.

  72. Lidtke, Alternative Culture; B. Emig, Die Veredelung des Arbeiters. Sozialdemokratie als Kulturbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1980).

  73. Lidtke, Alternative Culture, p.88.

  74. Ibid., pp.107–8; see also A. Körner, Das Lied von einer anderen Welt. Kulturelle Praxis im französischen und deutschen Arbeitermilieu 1840–1890 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), p.117.

  75. Weitz, Creating German Communism, p.50.

  76. Lidtke, Alternative Culture, p.52.

  77. ‘Diary of Otto Krille’, in The German Worker, pp.267–8.

  78. Eley, Forging Democracy, p.79.

  79. K. Kautsky, Selected Political Writings, trans. and ed. P. Goode (London, 1983), pp.11–12.

  80. S. Hickey, Workers in Imperial Germany: the Miners of the Ruhr (Oxford, 1985).

  81. J. Rupnik, ‘The Czech Socialists and the Nation (1848–1918)’, in E. Cahm and V. Fišera (eds.), Socialism and Nationalism in Contemporary Europe (1848–1945), vol. ii (Nottingham, 1979).

  82. R. Evans, Proletarians and Politics. Socialism, Protest and the Working Class in Germany before the First World War (New York, 1990), p.93.

  83. August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, cited in S. Berger, Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany (Harlow, 2000), p.89.

  84. The twenty comprised Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech lands, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

  85. For this episode, see James Joll, The Second International (London, 1968), p.33.

  86. Ibid., p.45.

  87. Quoted in G. Steenson, Karl Kautsky, 1854–1938: Marxism in the Classical Years (Pittsburgh, 1991), p.47.

  88. G. Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!” German Social Democracy, 1863–1914 (Pittsburgh, 1981), pp.120–1.

  89. Cited in Steenson, Karl Kautsky, pp.120–1.

  90. H. Goldberg, Life of Jean Jaurès (Madison, 1962), ch.11.

  91. J. Miller, From Elite to Mass Politics. Italian Socialism in the Giolittian Era, 1900–1914 (Kent, Ohio, 1990), pp.25–9.

  92. For an older view, that conflict was well-established before 1914, see C. Schorske, German Social Democracy. The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge, Mass., 1955); for a combination of this view and the argument that the war precipitated the split, see W. Kruse, Krieg und nationale Integration. Eine Neuinterpretation des sozialdemokratischen Burgfriedensschlusses, 1914–15 (Essen, 1993).

  93. Cited in P. Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism. Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx (New York, 1952), p.296.

  94. For Bernstein and revisionism, see M. Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism. Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1997).

  95. For the Social Democratic right and imperialism, see R. Fletcher, Revisionism and Empire. Socialist Imperialism in Germany, 1897–1914 (London, 1984).

  96. Cited in H. Mitchell and P. Stearns, Workers and Protest: the European Labor Movement, the Working Classes and the Origins of Social Democracy, 1890–1914 (Itasca, Ill., 1971), p.211.

  97. For the 1905 revolution, see Chapter Two, pp.77–9.

  98. For the SPD’s acceptance of a doctrine of ‘national defence’, see N. Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism (Cambridge, 1994), p.148.

  99. Haase to Rappoport, cited in G. Haupt, Socialism and the Great War. The Collapse of the Second International (Oxford, 1972), p.208.

  100. Cited in Joll, The Second International, p.178.

  BRONZE HORSEMEN

  1. Konets Peterburga (1927), dir. V. Pudovkin. For the themes in the film, see A. Sargeant, Vs
evolod Pudovkin. Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-Garde (London, 2000), pp.94–5.

  2. For the film and its reception, see V. Kepley, The End of St Petersburg: The Film Companion (London, 2003).

  3. R. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, 2000), pp.351–8.

  4. Cited in Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p.354.

  5. Cited in ibid., p.362. For the incident see pp.358–64.

  6. S. Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: the Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov, trans. and ed. R. Zelnik (Stanford, 1986), p.45.

  7. G. Freeze, ‘The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History’, American Historical Review 91 (1986), pp.11–36.

  8. For peasants’ attitudes, see O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy. The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London, 1996), pp.98–102.

  9. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker, pp.9–10.

  10. Cited in T. McDaniel, Autocracy, Capitalism and Revolution in Russia (Berkeley, 1988), p.172.

  11. For the effect of What is to be Done? on the Russian intelligentsia, see I. Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: a Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford, 1988), pp.30–2.

  12. J. Scanlan, ‘Chernyshevsky and Rousseau’, in A. Mikotin (ed.), Western Philosophical Systems in Russian Literature: a Collection of Critical Studies (Los Angeles, 1979), pp.103–6.

  13. N. Chernyshevskii, What is to be Done? Tales about New People, trans. B. Tucker, expanded by C. Porter (London, 1982), pp.320–6.

  14. For the argument that Chernyshevskii was actually very critical of his characters, even if his readers may not have been, see A. Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What is to be Done?: A Reevaluation (Evanston, 2001).

  15. For the critique of aziatchina, see C. Ingerflom, Le Citoyen impossible. Les Racines russes du leninisme (Paris, 1988), pp.60–1.

  16. Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What is to be Done?

  17. Chernyshevskii, What is to be Done?, pp.228–60.

  18. Ibid., p.242.

  19. Ibid., pp.228–60.

  20. See S. Morrissey, Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (New York, 1998), p.19.

  21. Ibid., p.25.

  22. For the debate, see F. Venturi, Roots of Revolution. A History of the Socialist and Populist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, trans. F. Haskell (New York, 1966), pp.429–68.

  23. Cited in A. Gleason, Young Russia. The Genesis of Russian Radicalism in the 1860s (Chicago, 1980), p.356.

  24. Daniel Field, ‘Peasants and Propagandists in the Russian Movement to the People of 1874’, Journal of Modern History 59 (1987), pp.415–38.

  25. A. Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill. Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton, 1993), pp.20–1.

  26. N. Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin, trans. Paul Rosta and Brian Pearce (Oxford, 1968), p.23.

  27. A. Resis, ‘Das Kapital Comes to Russia’, Slavic Review 29 (1970), p.121.

  28. This account is taken from Morrissey, Heralds, pp.75–80.

  29. R. Service, Lenin. A Biography (Basingstoke, 2005), pp.21–9; C. Read, Lenin. A Revolutionary Life (London, 2005), p.7.

  30. Service, Lenin, pp.21–9; Read, Lenin, pp.4–9.

  31. Cited in Read, Lenin, p.9.

  32. Service, Lenin, pp.100–1.

  33. N. Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin, trans. E. Verney (London, 1970), pp.264–5.

  34. V. Lenin, Selected Works [SW] (Moscow, 1977), vol. ii, p.304.

  35. Valentinov, Encounters, pp.67–8.

  36. Service, Lenin, p.115.

  37. Krupskaya, Memories, p.17.

  38. Cited in R. Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Left (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p.195.

  39. A. Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom (Stanford, 1995), pp.298–9.

  40. V. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii [PSS] (Moscow, 1965–8, 5th edn), vol. vi, pp.99–100, 171.

  41. Lenin, PSS, vol. viii, p.379.

  42. For the influence of Chernyshevskii on Lenin, see Ingerflom, Citoyen impossible, ch.11.

  43. For this point, see L. Lih, ‘How a Founding Document was Found, or One Hundred Years of Lenin’s What is to be Done?’, Kritika 4 (2003), pp.5–49.

  44. V. Lenin, Collected Works (47 vols.) (Moscow, 1960–70), vol. xxxiv, p.64.

  45. A. Ascher, 1905. Vol. 1: Russia in Disarray (Stanford, 1988), p.91.

  46. Tretyi s”ezd RSDRP. Protokoly (Moscow, 1959), p.262.

  47. L. Trotsky, 1905 (Moscow, n.d.).

  48. N. Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought. Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolutions (London, 1983), bk 1, pp.213–48, though some argue that Lenin and Trotsky were rather closer than this suggests. See M. Donald, Marxism and Revolution. Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists (New Haven, 1993), pp.87–93.

  49. R. Hilferding, Finance Capital: a Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, trans. and eds. M. Watnick and S. Gordon (London, 1981).

  50. V. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow, 1982).

  51. A. Bely, Petersburg, trans. R. Maguire and J. Malmstad (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp.51–2.

  52. Ibid., p.14.

  53. Ibid., p.214.

  54. For the role of the Bronze Horseman in Petersburg, see R. Maguire and J. Malmstad, ‘Petersburg’, in J. Malmstad (ed.), Andrey Bely. Spirit of Symbolism (Ithaca, 1987), pp.133–4.

  55. Bely, Petersburg, p.64.

  56. Ibid., p.65.

  57. Cited in J. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation. Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (Dekalb, Ill., 2003), p.33.

  58. L. Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, 1914–17: a Study of the War Industries Committees (London, 1983), ch.3.

  59. P. Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp.26–36.

  60. O. Figes and B. Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, 1999), p.31.

  61. J. von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals 1917–1920 (Berkeley, 1993), p.23.

  62. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, pp.70, 62.

  63. Ibid., pp.40, 62–4.

  64. For the soldiers’ committees, see A. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton, 1980), vol. i, pp.228–45.

  65. See, for instance, the resolution of workers at the Putilov factory, St Petersburg, 9 September 1917, in V. Cherniaev et al. (eds.), Piterskie rabochie i ‘Diktatura proletariata’, oktiabr’ 1917–1929: ekonomicheskie konflikty i politicheskii protest: sbornik dokumentov (St Petersburg, 2000), p.292.

  66. Resolution of workers at the Nobel plant, 4 April 1917, Cherniaev et al., Piterskie, p.334.

  67. Resolution translated in M. D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 (New Haven, 2001), pp.221–2.

  68. In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War, trans. Y. Slezkine, eds. S. Fitzpatrick and Y. Slezkine (Princeton, 2000).

  69. ‘Iz ofitserskikh pisem s fronta v 1917 g.’, cited in Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, p.21.

  70. Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, vol. i., p.188.

  71. ‘Instruction, 18 October 1917’, in Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, p.232.

  72. For Hilferding’s influence, see Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, bk 2, p.53.

  73. Lenin, PSS, vol. xxxiii, p.91.

  74. Pravda, 7 June 1917.

  75. Lenin, PSS, vol. xxxiv, p.316.

  76. This was the view of many members of the factory committees of 1917. See S. Smith, Red Petrograd. Revolution in the Factories, 1917–18 (Cambridge, 1983), p.198.

  77. ‘A Letter’, in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, trans. P. Constantine, ed. N. Babel (New York, 2002), pp.208–12.

  78. For this point, see Patricia Carden, The Art of Isaac Babel (Ithaca and London, 1972), esp. p.93.
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br />   79. Lenin, PSS, vol. xxxv, pp.195–202.

  80. For popular involvement in the persecutions, see Figes, People’s Tragedy, pp.520–36.