Hindsight is 20/20: A Brief Introduction to Insurrectionary Movements of the 20th Century

Set the stage – early 1900s. The world was changing, and fast – The Bolsheviks seized power and formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, sending the West into the First Red Scare, the first World War was occurring, and Anarchists were forming pretty nifty societies. Wait, Anarchists? That’s right.

Even as a radical leftist, for a while I was under the impression anarchism had never been attempted before, much less attempted successfully on a larger scale, save for a few local hippie communes, each with varying success. Lately, however, I’ve been reading a lot about specifically the insurrections in Catalonia and Ukraine. Knowing that hindsight is always 20/20, there are lessons to be learned from such occurences.

I want to present a little bit of what I’ve learned, starting with what set the stage for such insurrections: the Soviet Union. In future posts I will actually get into the details of the anarchist revolts and societies. But the Soviet Union’s history, and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism are very closely tied with anarchists, often to the detriment of the anarchists.

In February of 1917, the Tsarist autocracy was overthrown. Multiple factions vied for political power, most namely, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. A ¨Russian Provisional Government¨ was formed, which was weak, and rife with infighting. Amidst the first World War, there was a nationwide crisis in Russia. Gross industrial production decreased exponentially, and the cost of living increased dramatically. Russia’s national debt by October of 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. It was not unheard of to hear whispers from the proles, misgivings about the competency of the provisional government. Mass strikes aplenty, economic, social, and political unrest marked the early years before the Soviet Union.

On the 23rd of October, the Bolsheviks voted 10-2 that ¨an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe¨. A man named Vladimir Lenin expressed his confidence in this new planned insurrection. The Bolsheviks created a revolutionary military committee within the Petrograd soviet, led by the soviet’s president, a man named Leon Trotsky, which is a name that will be repeated in future posts, as he later would be the man mostly responsible for the failures of the Makhnovists – one of the anarchist societies previously mentioned.

Early in the morning on the 24th of October, a group of soldiers loyal to Kerenskys’ government marched onwards into the printing house of the Bolshevik newspaper, Rabochy Put (Worker’s Path), and seized and destroyed equipment and thousands of newspapers copies. Kerensky’s government, the Directorate, was a faction created by the Russian Provisional Government, which opposed the Bolsheviks, and lasted for three weeks.

At 9 am, the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee issued a statement declaring the actions of those soldiers and their respective government. By 10 am, the Bolsheviks reclaimed that printing house. Skirmishes and insurrectionary warfare followed, until eventually, by November 6th, the Provisional Government was in a weak position. Railways and railway stations had been controlled by the Bolsheviks for days, preventing travel through Petrograd by the Provisional Government.

A final bloodless battle soon occurred. The infamous assault on the Winter Palace. 3,000 agents of the Provisional Government poorly defending the palace were quickly surrounded by workers and soldiers, who occupied the last telegraph stations, cutting off the palace’s communications with loyal military forces elsewhere. The Bolsheviks seized control of the palace, initiating a mass entry, even after Lenin had already announced the defeat of the Russian Provisional Government. Later, the assault on the Winter Palace would be portrayed in a more heroic light by Soviet historians, but its important to note how little resistance the government showed at this point.

The Second Congress of Soviets consisted of 670 elected delegates consisting of multiple factions including 300 Bolsheviks.  The Congress issued a decree which officially transferred power to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The revolution was over, but the remaining factions were not all unilaterally in agreement on where to go next. The Mensheviks believed the Bolsheviks had immorally or illegally seized power, for one. They soon seized power on their own in Georgia and declared it an independent republic. The peasant-run Left SR party was working with the Bolsheviks. Anti-Bolshevik counter-revolutionaries were common, and Lenin waged a war against them, until by the 15th of November, 1917, Lenin could confidently claim that there was “not a shadow of hesitation in the masses of Petrograd, Moscow and the rest of Russia” towards Bolshevik rule.

In the oncoming years, the Soviet Union began growing into itself, working towards whatever semblance of a Marxist dream it thought it had. I will talk more about its later interactions with anarchists in future posts, and perhaps talk more about the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. I definitely do not claim to be an expert on the Soviet Union, however. A lot of what I’m writing about is information I’ve learned only through very recent research. But I do know enough to say that:

Hindsight is 20/20.

While from an anarchist lens there may have been some positives to the Soviet Union, or lessons to be learnt, I see it as just that: something to learn lessons from. I question anyone today who uncritically sees the Soviet Union as an example of successful leftism. I do have my sympathies for Marxist-Leninists, as I used to think I was one (in reality I was wearing the old symbols for the sake of punk rock, for the sake of offending people around me, without knowing much about what I was claiming to stand for. This was shown obvious when I would draw hammers and sickles just as much as anarchy symbols on my homework assignments in school, not knowing anything about the historical antagonism of Marxists towards anarchists).

We can criticize the dictatorships of Lenin and Stalin without just parroting and repeating McCarthyist fear-mongering anti-communist rhetoric, however. I can say that I do believe that, for example, death counts attributed to these dictators were most likely exaggerated by the west, and still be extremely critical of the Soviet Union.

The anarchist’s issues with the Soviet Union lie not with collectivism, or the more economic principles of Marxism itself, but with it’s use of the State. Anarchists see the State as just as much an oppressive force as the market, whereas Marxists seek to use the model of a State to work towards a classless society. They essentially believe that through the dictatorship of the proletariat, society can be reorganized to be more socialist, and then the State will naturally erode as its job becomes more complete, and then a classless and stateless society is formed.

I take issue with this because bureaucrats don’t like firing themselves. The ML’s (Marxist-Leninists) fail to distinguish between bureaucrats under the label of socialism and bureaucrats under the label of capitalism. It doesn’t matter the colors of your flag, if there is an incentive for you to be greedy, there is a larger chance you will. While I reject the capitalist arguments against communism (“human nature”) I do think that such an authoritative system encourages and incentivizes being oppressive, just like capitalism does. Human nature is not inherently cooperative or inherently competitive, inherently oppressive or inherently egalitarian. We adjust according to the environment we’re presented with. But my thoughts on human nature are for another time. This post has had a lot of deviation from the topic, so in conclusion I will say:

The Soviet Union should be looked at for what it was – not what we wish it was. It was a highly centralized, highly authoritative regime which oppressed its denizens under the banner of socialism. It had unique conditions for it’s beginning, and ended up to be as oppressive as that which it declared itself in opposition to. It was successful in turning itself into a highly industrialized world super-power, while also being unsuccessful in realizing its dreams of any nebulous “working class liberation”.

Reason #101 to stay classless, if you ask me.

 

Sept. 24, 2018