Books

The inherent vice

Robert Conquest

1917: The Russian Revolutions and the Origins of Present-Day Communism Leonard Schapiro (Temple Smith £12.95)

The death of Leonard Schapiro is the severest possible blow to all who seek an understanding of the Soviet Union, as it was and as it is. For many years his advice had been sought by the more responsible statesmen of the West. And in the world of scholarship, his reputation was as one of a handful who have established the realities of Soviet history beyond cavil — though also writing. illuminatingly on Russian literature and other aspects of ,his native country's past (Schapiro was 12 years old when he left Petrograd in 1920).

This, his last work, is a history, and in the classic sense. As he writes, 'this book cen- tres on human beings — not social trends, economic theories or sociological analyses, but on what men and women did or tried to do in the circumstances they faced.' Not that Schapiro ignores the social and economic context; but his true concern is with the personalities and the politics, the motivations and the abilities, which decided the issues of the day. And, as his subtitle suggests, this real history was what deter- mined events for the years which have followed. We ignore it at, literally, our peril. Some people write as if the present Soviet leadership had just emerged from nowhere in particular, as statesmen of our time. In fact, Chernenko and Gromyko joined the Communist Party in 1931 (a par- ticularly bad year), Ustinov in 1927, and all the others at various points in the Stalin epoch; and were selected to suit, were form- ed by, the standards then established.

In dealing with the origins of the regime, it may be asked if a new historical account is needed. The answer must be yes. Recent scholarship, much of it Schapiro's own, has changed our understanding of a number of episodes, between them giving what almost amounts to a whole new perspective on the events of the period. This is particularly true of the months before Lenin's seizure of power, a time to which the author devotes more than half of this book. He does especially useful service in developing the obscure story of the muddleheaded or dis- ingenuous conduct of Rodzianko at the time of the Tsar's abdication; and even more in dealing with the tergiversations of Kerensky's handling of Kornilov, and the general paralysis of the insane which over- took the Provisional Government in the autumn.

There is, indeed, a new sort of 'recent scholarship' whose main aim is to re-

establish the old pro-Bolshevik legends about the period. One reviewer complains that Schapiro thought the moderate socialists failed because they were more idealistic than Lenin. Of course, Schapiro (like everyone else, including good Leninists) notes Lenin's lack of any im- mediate moral criteria, apart from whatever might assist him to take power, and the moderates naturally appear as having rather more common decency than the Bolshevik leader. But Schapiro is far more concerned to show the efficacy of Lenin's methods as against the incompetence of his opponents, especially when the latter were hamstrung by that old formula for suicide 'pas d'en- nemi a gauche'.

Unlike the February Revolution, when hundreds of thousands took part in the street demonstrations and fighting, not more than around ten thousand were used by Lenin to seize Petrograd in November. And among his supporters, a vast majority, even of the Bolshevik Party itself, looked to, and were duped into thinking Lenin wanted, not a one-party regime, but a socialist coalition.

Do these things still need saying? Ap- parently they do, for the review I mention- ed above (in one of the Sunday papers) asserts in all seriousness that Lenin was backed by the masses of workers, soldiers and peasants. If so, he might perhaps have got a majority in the elections to the Consti- tuent Assembly held a few weeks later, under conditions of Bolshevik control, in- stead of a measly quarter of the vote.

Schapiro devotes an interesting chapter to the establishment of Bolshevik power outside Petrograd, a subject only recently investigated with any care. Then comes, as the politically inexperienced citizenry began to see the realities of Bolshevik rule, the massive workers' unrest through 1918, the cycle of peasant risings, and the Civil War. My only quarrel with Schapiro over this period is that, like most writers, he rather overstresses the Civil War as against the concurrent — or rather, longer-lasting Peasant War of the period, which (or so a study of the 1926 Census implies) probably cost double the dead of the former. In any case, instead of the Peace, Bread, Land promised by Lenin to the masses, they got War, Famine and — eventually — collec- tivised serfdom.

During this phase, Schapiro is rightly contemptuous of the cant which, even to- day, represents the Soviet regime as entitled to a permanent state of rage and suspicion of the West because of the allied 'Interven- tion' in the Civil War. The extent of these minor, muddled and indecisive actions may

f s tervener, the British (called in orginallY the Archangel Soviet), which were 600 Or ed and wounded. More important, Lenin regarded the whole of Europe as 'involved to international nternational civil war, and himself in‘ tervened his head off, sometimes stic- l- cessfully, as in Georgia, though the Tolls!) Government', carried in the Red ArmY baggage train in 1920, had to be disbanded u i until a later occasion. Schapiro thinks that it is arguable that the allied intervention gave the Bolsheviks enough trouble to Pre; vent them 'from going in time to the aid (31 the Communists who had taken over precariously in the Baltic States, or to ha the short-lived Communist regime of Bela Kun in Hungary in March 1919'. And ltjs certainly true that fighting within the Soviet territories had such an effect. The new d Soviet Encyclopedia of the Civil War ati: Military Intervention in the USSR (M°sc°' 1983) says of one of the great Peasalij rebellions (Grigoriev's) that it `hindereu the,projected attack on Rumania in suPP°11 of Bela Kun. The (fortunately) egregious reviewer already cited actually describes SchaP"° attitude, and his view of Lenin, as a Pr.°: duct of the 'Cold War', though SehaPir,.0 . had, of course, made his views of ti7i Leninist state known before, after art.,, without reference to particular turns ci Soviet-W.-stern relations. The phrase e°in' war', used to confuse the publication of facts or opinions unpalatable to the Sovte; leadership with a condition of internatr tension, has long been a notorious indicatno. of muddleheadedness or malice or both ; The various attempts to form what °lin might call a 'détente view' of Lenin have long history too. Schapiro describes a British Labour Party delegation Moscow in June 1920. It met represeaes tatives of the suppressed socialist Part.14.1 and `even witnessed the dissolution,. wl`..c forty arrests, of the Moscow r Drintei-e Union, which had dared to organise a ",e meeting for the benefit of the visitors'• delegation mentioned this in its report, a_Pe parently through the pressure of a 1014 visiting sceptic, but it 'failed either to publish s.ecr;,. th eir a lf freedom) ewithd o mw)

out that the repression of freedom al112;lw

hhiacdh esaotcriaaslitsetds (i tat otrhetoripsti).0.eciti in Russia to all the delegation's fellow socialists'. This 'mealy-mouthed' report not far different from what is to be seen tclus day when the Labour Party NEC h°I _ fraternal meetings with the

Ponomarev (joined the Party in 191v9e)t•era:

Lenin welcomed (and his succesPt welcome) what he called 'useful idiots '• Bsis only the most feeble or falsified analli'„, could reach other conclusions t Schapiro's: 'This book is concerned v10 thhee workingthe principle o ut o of underlying lLy Lenin "who-whom" — who overcomes wh,.001 On this principle, compromise with polltiv..,e opponents is impossible: if one is to surt lajv oneself, they have to be destroyed,. 3 believed events politically.' And it i-sngthisP°inlistilsctse:'?

on the rule of one party against all others

against huge sections of the population Which Schapiro sums up as 'the inherent vice in Lenin's doctrine, from which derive the vicissitudes through which his unhappy country has passed'. The only slip I have found in this superb volume is the statement that the member- ship of the Central Committee elected in August 1917 has never been published. It can be found in the Soviet Historical En- cyclopedia Vol. 7 p. 703.